Sweating, Donuts, Cartoons, and the Voice in Your Head That Won't Shut Up

Sunday Stroll 08 | The Ugly Truth About Grief, Guilt, And What We Don’t Say Out Loud.

spent Friday in federal court, and the date of my next deadline—July 31st—hit me like a freight train. It’s the 27th anniversary of my son Malachi’s death. Most people want you to be "brave" or "romantic" about grief. They want you to pretend you had this perfect connection. The truth? I didn't know him. I was terrified. I was resentful. I was a young Black man in Ohio holding a dead infant and worried, above all else, that I was going to prison because no one would believe me. We don’t talk about that shit. We don't talk about the guilt, the jealousy, or the fear that the "rules" of family and love were things we were never taught. If you’re carrying a secret you’re terrified to say out loud—if your grief is mixed with shame, or your experience of "family" is nothing like what the world tells you it should be—this episode is for you. We’re stripping away the "pretty" version of survival and looking at the raw, jagged reality of how we define ourselves.

Sweating, Donuts, Cartoons, and the Voice in Your Head That Won't Shut Up

It's 10:12 on a Saturday night in St. Louis and it was hot enough today to slap you the moment you walked outside. I've got two chocolate glazed donuts in me, blood pressure medication side effects I won't bore you with, a bunch of archive episodes scheduled and one contemporary one I forgot to post, and a wife in the next room who watched 70s Saturday morning cartoon themes with me last night while I got unexpectedly emotional about watching them with someone for the first time. That's where this episode starts. That's also, somehow, where the whole thing lives. This one is about the inner voice. Not the spiritual version. The actual one — the one that tells you you've earned a third Guinness, that your black ass needs to sit down and shut up, that nobody wants to hear from someone who's been through what you've been through. The one that works harder against you than any person ever has. Including the ones who actually hurt you. We suppress that voice. We hide it so people don't think we're out of our minds. We perform being fine while it runs constantly underneath. And then we wonder why nothing changes. I'm not okay with that anymore. Haven't been for a while. The free workbook is at www.theloveofyourlifetime.com — scroll to the bottom. No email. No catch. Just the work.

Episode 51 | I Have A Felony. I Am Not A Felon. — And Yes, There's A Difference. And Who Might You, "Be?"

I have a felony on my record. I'm not going to soften that or dance around it. What I am going to do is make a distinction that changed everything for me — and might change something for you. There is a world of difference between I am a felon and I have a felony. Between I am an alcoholic and I had a drinking problem. Between I am an abuse survivor and I was abused. One collapses the experience into your identity permanently. The other keeps them separate. I have a pair of Doc Martens. I am not Doc Martens. I have a felony. I am not a felon. When I believed I was a felon — when I had fully internalized that label and everything the culture attaches to it — I couldn't get a job, couldn't provide for my family, couldn't imagine doing a podcast, couldn't see past the shame of what that word meant. The label was running the show. When I changed the language to I have a felony — something shifted. Not the record. Not the circumstances. My relationship to them. This episode is about the self-concept work that lives in the words we use to define ourselves. About the labels we've inherited, internalized, and never questioned. About what happens when you finally ask: is this who I am, or is this something I experienced? And yes — at the end, I'll tell you what the felony was for.

Episode 50 | You Are Amazing — And I Know You Don't Believe That Yet, But That's Okay...

It's late. Sharon's in the bedroom waiting to watch something on BritBox. I'm trying to keep this one brief. I had conversations at work today that confirmed something I keep coming back to: we are waiting for the world outside us to tell us who we are. And it never does — not accurately, not completely, not in a way that actually sticks. Because that's not where the answer lives. This episode is about what happens when you stop looking out there and start paying real attention in here. Not as a spiritual practice. Not as a therapeutic exercise. Just as the most honest thing you can do with the time you have. Eight billion people on this planet. Still no single agreed-upon definition of love. Because love — like identity, like self-worth, like the question of who you actually are beneath everything you've been told — is not a collective answer. It's a personal one. And you're the only one who can find it. I also talk about what I learned when I tried giving the course away for free. And about a television clip I saw this morning about a parent and a transgender child — not as a political conversation, but as the clearest illustration I've seen recently of what it looks like when someone is trying to find themselves and someone else keeps telling them who they are instead. You are amazing. You always have been. It's taken me years to be able to say that without flinching. And I know some of you aren't there yet. That's okay. That's why I keep showing up.

Episode 49 | Trigger Warning — You Are Responsible For Your Own Choices (Yes, Even That One)

Here's your trigger warning. I didn't get a fucking “trigger warning” the morning  I found my son Malachi’s lifeless body on July 31st, 1999. There was no one there standing with their hands up and asking if I was “ready” or offering me “warning” that what I was about to experience was going to so fundamentally change me that even now, in 2026, I would not ever understand. Trigger. Warning. My son Malachi was born May 20th, 1999. He was dead July 31st, 1999. He was 2.5 months old.  I'm the one who found him. And I can promise you, again, as I said — no one walked in beforehand and said to me, with that warm look that says “this shit is gonna hurt. Bad.” No, “hey, this might be difficult.” Trigger. Warning. So when I hear about trigger warnings on university campuses, in classrooms, before conversations that might be uncomfortable — I have some thoughts. Not because pain isn't real. It is. Not because difficult experiences don't leave marks. They do. But because somewhere along the way we decided that other people are responsible for managing our emotional responses to information — and that decision has cost us something. This episode is about that cost.  About the difference between what happened to you and what you're doing with it right now. About the fact that your father, your ex, your childhood, the person who called you a name — none of them are in the room with you right now. What's in the room is your thinking about them. And that part is yours. You participated in every single thing you've ever experienced. That's not blame.  That's the most liberating thing I know how to say. Also: a hawk flew by at the end of this recording.  Make of that what you will. This is from the archive. 2023.  Malachi would have been almost 24. He’s still dead in 2026. No almost 27. Trigger. Warning.