As a school counselor in Virginia, I sat at the 504/IEP table many times helping families navigate a system that can feel intimidating. As a parent, I sat at the same table supporting a child I knew longer and better than almost anyone in the room.

I have watched parents sit quietly as a team discussed their child using language that seemed disconnected from the child they knew.

Jargon. Acronyms. Eligibility criteria. Educational impact.

I could see it in their faces. They were becoming recipients of information rather than members of the team.

And then, as a parent, I have sat across from incredibly caring, well-intentioned educators, often entering the meeting full of hope, only to leave wondering how we got so far from seeing the child who brought us together in the first place.

At times, I have even refused to sign the written IEP. That is not a position I take lightly.

I know how much educators care. I know how complicated these decisions can be. I know there are laws, budgets, policies, competing needs, and limited resources.

But I also know what it feels like to look around a room and wonder: If this process is difficult for me to navigate when education is my profession, how is a parent supposed to navigate it when it isn’t?

And how many children go without support because their parents don’t know which questions to ask?

I am increasingly troubled by how often we seem to wait for children to fail before we decide they need help.

A child may be working twice as hard as their peers to accomplish the same task. Yet because they are technically passing and maybe even doing well by report card metrics, we conclude they are doing fine.

In essence, we are punishing them for pulling off the miraculous.

I have worked with families who appropriately advocated for and received what their children needed, even when those children had above a 4.0. Those parents understood the system. They had the cultural capital to know which questions to ask and what “policies” they did not have to simply accept.

They knew that “is the child failing?” was the wrong question.

The better question is: “What barriers is this child having to overcome to succeed?” And “are these barriers unnecessary and within our power and ethical code to remove?

That brings me back to the table.

For parents, loving our children well through this process means being relentless advocates. Know our child’s strengths. Know their challenges. Learn what warrants specially designed instruction. Know the difference between accommodations and modifications, services and supports. Learn what would most benefit your child.

And don’t be afraid to say: I don’t want my child to have to fail unnecessarily before we help them.

This is not the same thing as saying you are trying to shield them from difficulty. As I wrote last week, challenges that help children grow are different from obstacles that make it harder for them to learn.

Tell the team what happens when your child spends all day over-functioning to keep up. And if your child’s behavior begins to reflect the overwhelm, don’t be too quick to accept a story about defiance, laziness, or lack of motivation without asking what might be underneath it.

For educators, while this may be your hundredth IEP meeting, it may be the parent’s first. The acronyms that may feel obvious to you may sound like another language to them.

Explain without patronizing. Ask questions you can’t answer without the parent.

The goal is not for a system to determine how little it can provide. I understand the purpose of “least restrictive environment” language. I also know it can sometimes be weaponized to justify withholding support a child genuinely needs.

Nor is the goal for parents to determine how much they can extract.

The goal is to help the child.

The child is not the problem to be solved. They are the person to be understood. When we forget the difference, we risk ushering the child into the all-too-familiar shame cycle:

Everyone else seems to manage it so much easier. Why can’t I? Something is wrong with me. I’m just not good enough.

What if the message were instead: Yes, it’s hard. We see how hard you are working. Let’s figure out what you need.

Maybe that is what loving a child well looks like at the table.

Not having every answer.
Not winning the meeting.
Not proving who is right.

Just being willing to see the child clearly enough, and love them well enough, to keep asking what they need.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

For other children, though, going back to school also means preparing to push through.

Preparing for the noise. The transitions. The expectations that don’t always make sense. The assignments that somehow take twice as much energy as they seem to take everyone else.

Preparing to figure out when to speak, when to be quiet, when to ask for help, and when asking for help might make you feel even more different.

And sometimes, preparing to mask.

Over the past week, I spent five hours with professionals in a local school district talking about neurodivergence. We talked about the many ways ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and other differences can show up in schools. We talked about masking and the ways schools, even when we mean well, can unintentionally reward children for appearing less like themselves.

I don’t think most of us wake up and say, “Today, I want to build a school culture that teaches children they have to hide who they are.”

And yet, sometimes that is exactly what happens.

We reward the child who sits still, even when sitting still makes them less available for learning than allowing them to move. We tell a child to “get it together” or call them lazy because we cannot see the executive functioning challenges happening beneath the surface. We say, “It’s not that hard,” because it isn’t hard for us.

And somewhere along the way, a child can begin to receive a message that has very little to do with learning:

The version of you that succeeds here may need to be less like you.

In my first reflection, I wrote that love that requires someone’s erasure isn’t love at all. And I think schools give us an opportunity to ask whether we really believe that.

I’m not suggesting that children should have no expectations. They need structure, accountability, boundaries, and preparation for a world that will not always accommodate them.

That tension is real.

We have to prepare neurodivergent children for the world while also preparing the world for them.

That requires us to distinguish between challenges that help children grow and obstacles that simply make it harder for them to learn.

What if flexibility wasn’t viewed as lowering expectations, but as removing unnecessary barriers to meeting them?

I’ve seen what can happen when we stop looking only for deficits. I remember asking students with ADHD what they thought about parts of the student handbook.

Let’s just say they had some thoughts.

Creative thoughts. Outside-the-box thoughts. Thoughts that made me reconsider assumptions adults had apparently accepted without much questioning.

What if, instead of only asking how a student’s brain gets in the way, we became more curious about what that brain notices that the rest of us might be missing?

One begins with a deficit. The other begins with curiosity.

And curiosity, I am increasingly convinced, is one of the ways we love students well.

Not every struggle will have a neat explanation. Not every question will lead immediately to a diagnosis. Not every barrier will have an easy solution.

But not having all the answers does not mean we have nothing to offer.

Sometimes we can offer a different kind of clarity.

The clarification that struggling does not mean you are broken. That difficulty is not the same thing as deficiency. That your brain working differently does not mean it is working wrongly.

And that you do not have to become someone else in order to deserve dignity.

So, as children head back into classrooms this year, I hope more children encounter adults willing to ask different questions.

Not, “Why can’t you just get it together?” But: “Help me understand what this is like for you.”

And instead of asking simply whether our children are ready for school, I hope we will ask whether our schools are ready for them.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

I got to share some of that rhythm with local school counselors this past weekend.

Hours before a gunman forever altered so many lives on the campus of Virginia State University, we gathered in Alfred W. Harris Academic Commons on a beautiful day to sharpen one another on many of the topics relevant to serving well in today’s K-12 schools. School counselors from Richmond City, Sussex County, Petersburg, and Charles City were strategically gathered by RPS leadership and graciously hosted by the VSU Counselor Education program and the School of Education.

Just steps away, VSU incoming freshmen were being welcomed by university administrators and special guest Cam Newton as they prepared to move from high school into their higher education endeavors.

The day represented so many of the things I cherish: affirmation, honest acknowledgment of systemic realities, resolve to resist and rise above them, imagined possibilities, and sharpened individual and collective vision for the year ahead.

I facilitated a session on crisis intervention and restorative practices in K-12 schools.

We talked about the importance of providing both accountability and support - engaging WITH others in ways that are empowering, connected, and restorative.

And we named the risks of other postures: high accountability with low support (engaging TO others, becoming authoritative, punitive, and power-tripping); low accountability and low support (NOT engaging at all, being absent, disengaged, or disconnected; or high support with no accountability (engaging FOR others, slipping into saviorism or enabling).

The time reminded me just how much happens in schools.

The relationships. The celebrations when a student reaches a goal. The silly jokes. The hard conversations. The meetings that become therapy sessions. The colleagues who become friends who become family. The students and families who become part of your village. The celebrated wins. The commiserated hard days. The disagreements. The collective trauma. The miraculous overcoming.

I think about the people who show up again and again to do the nearly impossible. They enter the school building each day carrying way more than lesson plans.

Cafeteria workers. Teachers. Instructional assistants. Counselors. Coaches. Administrators. School psychologists. Custodians. Bus drivers. Front-office staff. Social workers. Nurses.

Educators are being asked to teach content while also navigating mental health concerns, family crises, behavioral challenges, social dynamics, learning differences, technology, paperwork, testing, and whatever new crisis shows up on their calendar.

And yet they keep showing up for the young people entrusted to their care. And they are doing it while being told, in one way or another, that they will have less money, less time, and fewer people to help them accomplish it all.

So, as schools become the bustling, never-a-dull-day spaces again this month, I’m wondering:

How do we engage WITH the people entrusted with this work?

Not simply TO them – doing things to people without really engaging them.

Not FOR them in ways that make us feel helpful while quietly taking away their agency.

NOT by standing at a distance and hoping someone else figures it out.

But WITH them.

Maybe that means finding a teacher’s classroom wishlist and buying a few things. Maybe it means discovering when the next faculty meeting is and dropping off handwritten notes for the staff, or bringing snacks or lunch. Maybe your schedule allows you to become a substitute teacher, giving someone who has been running on empty a day to breathe. Maybe you volunteer. Maybe you show up for career day and talk with students about what you do for a living.

Or maybe it starts even more simply.

Ask a teacher, counselor, administrator, custodian, bus driver, or front-office staff member:

What would actually help?

Not what looks good. Not what we assume they need. What would help? To notice. To listen. To support. To affirm. To share the load when we can.

And not just if you’re a parent. All of us. Schools are not merely buildings where other people’s children spend their days. They are places where our communities are being formed.

So, back to school. Back to the backpacks and bulletin boards. Back to the lesson plans and lunchrooms. Back to the children who will need more patience than we realize and the adults who will give it to them.

May we be the kind of community that cares for the people caring for them.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

Then, after coming home, my wife and I celebrated twenty-one years of marriage. Twenty-one years of learning each other, loving each other, frustrating each other, forgiving each other, and still choosing each other again and again.

Sure, our dinner reservation spot called 60 minutes beforehand to tell us the power was out, but it was nothing pizza and ice cream in Church Hill couldn’t fix :)

Meanwhile, life picked up right where it left off before vacation. Classes to prepare. Emails waiting. Papers to revise. Laundry that somehow multiplied while we were gone.

And I continued researching cemeteries.

Exciting twist, I know.

Not because anything is wrong. At least I certainly hope not.

But the older I get, the more I find myself thinking about what I can do now to leave as few unnecessary burdens as possible for my family. End-of-life planning isn’t exactly romantic, but love has a funny way of expressing itself through practical decisions.

Choosing a cemetery. Thinking through burial or cremation. Asking questions now so the people you love don’t have to answer them later.

As I was doing all of this, I kept hearing Dottie Peoples in my head: “Get your house in order.”

The song is talking about something much bigger than choosing a cemetery, of course. But sometimes getting your house in order is an expression of love. Not because you expect to leave tomorrow, but because you know that someday someone else will have to sort through all you leave behind.

Maybe that’s one expression of love we don’t talk about very often.

As I searched, though, something else caught my attention.

I began noticing how many historically Black cemeteries around Richmond have been neglected. Headstones leaning. Grounds overgrown.

And standing there, I felt the kind of sadness that comes when something feels both wrong and familiar. It was as if the ground itself was reminding me that memory, too, requires tending.

There is a particular kind of stillness in a neglected cemetery that feels less like peace and more like abandonment.

And it struck me that the same instinct that led me to plan for my own family is connected to the responsibility we carry for the families who came before us.

Love can be that expansive.

Love is preparing so those we leave behind don’t carry burdens we could have carried ourselves.

It is caring for elders with dignity.

It is making sure the next generation knows the history that made their lives possible.

It is building institutions and communities sturdy enough to hold the people coming behind us.

And perhaps it is also refusing to let the people who came before us become forgotten simply because they can no longer speak for themselves.

Sometimes love looks backward. Sometimes it looks forward. Sometimes it asks us to tend what was handed to us and prepare what we will hand to someone else.

Perhaps the question isn’t simply, “Do I love them?”

Perhaps the better question is: What am I willing to do now because I love them?

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

This Sunday I was back home in church.

Within twenty minutes we’d worshiped through house, soul, funk, jazz, and hip hop inspired gospel music. No, it’s not February. Just worship.

Last week we were in Turks and Caicos. My family has already decided it’s becoming another home for us.

This morning reminded me that some places have been home much longer.

The historic Black church.

I grew up in the historic Black church tradition - Bapticostle denomination, in particular – in the Bronx. #IYKYK

I was initially licensed to preach in a historic Black Baptist church in Charlottesville.

I didn’t know it then, but the historic Black church had been teaching me to pray the Lord’s Prayer long before I ever studied it.

“Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

There was one assumption underneath that prayer nobody ever had to explain: We ain’t there yet.

As my ministerial journey unfolded, I served in a variety of settings, all of which influenced who I am today.

And I can’t even lie - I came to appreciate a 60-90 minute worship service. LOL. And as much as I still appreciate putting on my Sunday Best, I warmed up to jeans or khakis and a polo without wondering if my salvation was in jeopardy.

And while I still know plenty of gospel songs where the choir moved so rhythmically you had to study the cassette insert to learn the lyrics (which I absolutely did), I also appreciate newcomers being able to follow the words on a screen.

But the more I moved through well-intentioned Christian spaces, the more I noticed there were parts of myself that seemed more readily welcomed than others.

My Blackness wasn’t rejected outright. That would’ve been too obvious.

It was simply expected to become less...central.

I noticed that while the rhythm of Black worship was embraced, the reality of Black suffering from which it emerged, past and present, was resisted.

We’d pray the same prayer - “Let Your kingdom come. Let Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” - but it felt a little different.

I began to realize how easy it is to invoke heaven to avoid confronting earth.

The historic Black church has always known we aren’t there yet. It has had to.

You cannot hear the book of Exodus while living under slavery without experiencing it differently. You cannot pray “Deliver us from evil” while living through Jim Crow without praying it differently. You cannot say, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” without noticing all the places earth still refuses.

We as Black Christians have rarely had the luxury of pretending earth resembles heaven. And that isn’t cynicism. It’s testimony. It’s witness. Whether through slavery. Black Codes. Convict Leasing. Jim Crow. Redlining. Voter suppression. Prison Industrial Complex. Black maternal health disparities.

I can still hear the moans and the cries of my elders as a child, even as I write this.

The prayer “Your will be done….” wasn’t decorative language. It was survival language. But not only survival language. It was resistance language. Hope language. It was the prayer that reminded a people living through hell on earth that heaven still had something to say about it. It insisted that what is right now need not always be.

The historic Black church has taught us that hope is not the absence of memory. Hope is what memory becomes when it refuses to surrender to despair.

That’s why, when I read about the death of Nolan Wells in Mississippi, I began with memory. That this is the same state that took 30 years to convict Medgar Evers’ killer, for example. We have witnessed too much to separate today’s questions from yesterday’s history.

So, yes, I still believe heaven is our hope. But perhaps Jesus taught us to pray “on earth as it is in heaven” because love refuses to confuse hope with denial.

Perhaps our calling now is not merely to inherit the witness of the historic Black church, but to steward it. To make sure our children know why we sing the songs we sing. Why we ask the questions we ask. Why hope and honesty have always belonged together.

To remind them that Black joy, Black worship, Black grief, Black scholarship, Black children, Black elders, and Black futures all matter to God.

To leave them a faith sturdy enough to tell the truth about earth while still longing for heaven.

That’s the witness I’ve inherited. And by God’s grace, it’s the one I hope to leave behind.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

Your course evaluations are now available.

Some professors open them immediately. Others wait a few days. One colleague once told me she’s never opened a single evaluation in nearly a decade of teaching.

Honestly, I get it. It only takes one harsh sentence to obscure the twenty encouraging ones.

Never mind the students who found their voice. Never mind the emails months later saying the class changed how they thought about counseling, leadership, or themselves. Somehow sharp criticism has a way of convincing us that it deserves the final word. Affirming comments are like, “We loved your class!” and the one critical one is like, “I’ll take it from here.”

As a professor, I still value feedback. We all need it. But over the years, I’ve found myself becoming increasingly interested in something else, too: Feedforward.

Instead of only asking, “What did you do wrong - or even what did you do right?” feedforward asks, “Given who you’re becoming, what might your next faithful step be?”

It’s a small shift in language. It can become a profound expression of love.

I was reminded of that this past week while attending the American School Counselor Association Conference in New Orleans.

Alongside two of my colleagues, I had the privilege of presenting on how school counselors might draw upon the cultural assets of students and families to better support Black neurodivergent students. We shared research, certainly. But we also shared pieces of our own families. Our children. Our stories. The gifts. The challenges. The joy and complexity of raising Black neurodivergent children and serving their educational needs in a world that often misunderstands them.

After our session, a woman walked up and asked if she could pray for me. She didn’t pray about the presentation or spend all her time congratulating me. She spoke life, wisdom, strength, purpose, and peace over me, my wife, and our three children. She prayed for the people we are still becoming.

As I walked away, I realized I had just experienced one of the most beautiful examples of feedforward I can remember.

It also struck me that conferences themselves are acts of feedforward. Yes, we celebrate yesterday’s work. We should. But we don’t gather simply to congratulate one another. We gather to imagine tomorrow’s possibilities.

The longer I teach, counsel, parent, and lead, the more convinced I am that most of us already know where we’ve fallen short. We replay yesterday’s conversations on the drive home. We remember the opportunity we missed, the apology we still need to give, the relationship we wish we’d handled differently. We jump into the shame cycle like expert double dutch jumpers.

What many of us struggle to imagine isn’t our past. It’s our future. I wonder what becomes possible when we refuse to let the past have the loudest voice and begin speaking life into one another’s futures.

As I’ve tried to grow into that posture with my students, I’ve actually noticed some interesting movement in classroom dynamics. Students take more risks. They ask better questions. They recover from mistakes more quickly. They are less anxious about getting everything exactly right. Not because the standards have become lower, but because growth - not perfection - has become the goal.

Now I’m wondering what our relationships might look like if we practiced more feedforward outside the classroom. What if spouses did? Parents? Friends? Churches?

What if we became people who refused to let someone’s worst day become the headline of their life?

To be clear, feedforward isn’t pretending mistakes didn’t happen. Nor is it saying that accountability isn’t important. It is, though, refusing to let yesterday have the final word.

Maybe that’s why that woman’s prayer has stayed with me all week. She blessed what, by God’s grace, I might still become.

Perhaps that’s what love sounds like when it speaks.

Not merely feedback.

Feedforward.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

I served as a bivocational pastor, honoring my calling to education and intentionally never taking a salary from the church. That allowed much of what we received to be redirected toward housing for the most vulnerable, counseling, supporting people returning from incarceration, and caring for one another in practical ways. And if someone ever asked about our marketing budget or strategy, the answer was simple: “if the community is meaningful to you, you’ll tell someone.” I loved that model. In many ways, I still do.

This was no better or worse than any other ministry framework. I have been a part of most over the years and each has their tradeoffs, for sure. But it was the architecture I was – and still am – most called to. I still imagine what intentional design toward that end might make possible.

What I remember most aren’t the key performance indicators, though we met them. What I remember are people. Meals shared. Hospital visits. Tears. Laughter. Meaningful conversations in our overcrowded home.

I loved those people deeply. I still do. Which is why leaving felt, in many ways, like losing an extremely close relative. The years immediately following were far from easy.

Nothing dramatic happened. There was no scandal. No one was pushed out. No headline-worthy ending.

Our season simply came to a close. And at the time, I couldn’t have explained it much better than that. I wish I could have. I just knew it was time.

Looking back now, I realize discernment sometimes arrives before explanation. Only years later did I begin to understand what my heart already seemed to know.

My questions began to change, and I rarely found myself mentioning the name of the organization that had helped us begin. It simply wasn’t where my imagination lived anymore, or perhaps ever, really.

I was increasingly called to name historical and current injustices as an expression of my faith rather than something separate from it, raise complex questions without the need for certainty in my “answers,” and to make room for people's lived experiences, including my own family’s emerging needs. And I began to realize, perhaps before I had words for it, that the framework that had helped us begin wasn't the one that would carry us into the next season.

That realization didn’t make the people who helped us start the church enemies. I am who I am in part because of their influence, and the relationships that were meant to outlive the organizational connection have. And for all of that, I remain grateful.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned Malcolm X and how after his pilgrimage to Mecca, he didn’t abandon his commitment to justice. He returned with a transformed vision of how that justice could be pursued. His cause remained, yet his perspective expanded.

I wonder if all of us experience something similar at some point.

Maybe not necessarily with churches. Maybe with careers. Communities. Friendships. Dreams. Even versions of ourselves.

We spend years learning the faith required to stay. Then one day we discover that a different kind of faith is required to leave. And not always because we’re running away, but because we’re running toward the person we’ve always been and are still becoming.

After we left, a close relative said something that stays with me to this day: “The image I’ve always had is that of a flame not having room to breathe.” Those words hit.

I am learning to be grateful for every space and place that has contributed to my becoming who I am today. And I’m also learning not to confuse gratitude with permanence. Not every season is meant to become a lifetime.

Sometimes the most faithful thing we can say to a season is,

“Thank you.”

And then, with fond memories, some grief and loss to process, and a hopeful heart,

“Goodbye.”

The Love Well

Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

I later shared that conversation on Facebook. As expected, it resonated, and it bothered some people. As my DMs quickly showed, people hear a sentence like that and immediately want to correct it.

“But think about all the freedoms we have.” “Slavery ended in 1865.” “America isn’t perfect, but...” “It’s not that bad.” “It came off as hateful.” “What is it that your kids can’t do that mine can?”

Over the years, I’ve noticed how quickly some rush to defend America. Or how quickly they rush to defend themselves from what they hear as an accusation.

At first glance, it can sound like empathy.

“Help me understand.” “I’m genuinely curious.” “I’m just trying to see both sides.”

Sometimes those questions are sincere. I’ve asked them myself. But I've also learned that genuine empathy isn't primarily concerned with making the listener feel better. It stays with the person whose experience has been shared. When our first instinct is to explain, defend, or soften someone else's reality so that we can feel more comfortable, something other than empathy may be at work.

I’ve been thinking about empathy a lot lately because, for one, I’ve been teaching a class this summer called “Professional Orientation and Ethical Practice in Counseling.”

And secondly, because I’ve also been spending time supporting a friend’s child in their efforts to secure an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for them. Whether it’s been my own children or this child of a friend or other families I’ve assisted in that process, I’m always cognizant of how hard teachers and counselors work when I step into those meetings. I know how impossible their jobs can feel. I know schools are underfunded. I know administrators carry enormous pressure. I’ve lived that life. And I genuinely care.

But when I step into that meeting, I refuse to prioritize adult comfort above the child’s reality. Comfort can mimic empathy, but when it does, it serves the adults and silences the very person whose voice should matter most.

Comfort asks questions that aren’t really seeking understanding. It offers perspective before presence. It explains before it listens. It sounds compassionate, but its first concern is often relieving someone else’s discomfort rather than receiving another person’s truth.

This dynamic clearly doesn’t stop at schools.

Someone says racism still shapes their life and the first instinct becomes explaining why things are better now.

Someone talks about discrimination and the conversation immediately shifts toward reassuring people who don’t want to feel accused.

Someone names history and the conversation quickly becomes about defending the people who feel implicated by that history instead of listening to those still carrying its consequences.

Someone posts about their child having a reaction to the 4th of July and others feel the need to defend America.

Some times the first casualty of discomfort is curiosity.

So, Dear Black child:

Don’t confuse empathy with protecting comfort. They’re not the same thing.

Don’t let anyone convince you that telling the truth about your experience makes you divisive.

Some people will insist that because one version of slavery ended, the story ended too. Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for noticing patterns.

When someone calls you the N-word and says it was “just a joke,” believe what happened.

When punishment doesn’t seem evenly distributed, pay attention.

When schools don’t receive the same resources, notice.

When someone tells you that “we all struggle” immediately after you’ve named something specifically Black, understand that universalizing pain is one of the oldest ways of avoiding a particular one.

That doesn’t mean other people don’t suffer. It means your suffering deserves to remain visible, too.

I do still believe in empathy. Perhaps more than ever. But empathy isn’t asking historically underserved people to carry everyone else’s emotional comfort while laying down their own truth.

Empathy asks us to enter someone else’s experience. Not erase it.

So, tell the truth. Even when someone else’s comfort asks you not to. Especially then.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

Now it was just me. Well, not quite. Our kids also decided to join me. And somewhere in the middle of lunges, push-ups, and whatever exercise we were doing at the time, our youngest starts to hype us all up: “When I say, ‘Who are we?’ y’all say, ‘Strong people!’”

Mind you, I was in no condition to be responding to anything. I was trying to remember whether breathing had always required this much effort. But she yelled it anyway.

“Who are we?” “Strong people!”

Again.

“Who are we?” “Strong people!”

The funny thing is, I didn’t actually feel strong. I felt tired. Out of rhythm. I missed the version of myself that could get through a workout without negotiating with the Lord less than halfway through.

The older I get, the less convinced I am that perseverance is simply a matter of willpower. When I was younger, strength meant pushing through. Now I’m beginning to wonder whether strength sometimes looks like knowing when not to.

Sometimes perseverance does look like pushing through.

Sometimes it looks less like pushing through and more like leaning – on God, on community, on breath.

Sometimes it looks like rest.

Fannie Lou Hamer understood what it meant to keep going while carrying a body marked by extraordinary hardship. Her famous line, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” wasn’t resignation. It was truth-telling. It was also a refusal to pretend that exhaustion wasn’t real. James Baldwin didn’t quit when he left America for Paris. He created enough distance to breathe again. He stepped away from a country that was suffocating him so he could keep writing the truth. Sometimes stepping away is not surrender. Sometimes it’s how we continue.

Years ago, while becoming a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated, my line brothers and I memorized a poem called Don’t Quit. 27 years later, I can still recite every line. But one line, in particular, has resonated over the last few years:

Rest, if you must, but don’t you quit.

It’s funny how the same words are heard differently with a few years in between.

At twenty, I heard determination. At forty-six, I hear permission. Twenty-year-old Paul heard: Keep grinding. Forty-six-year-old Paul hears: Pause. Breathe. Pivot if you need to. Then continue.

These days, I’m learning how to pause. How to honor my capacity, and that of my family. How to trust that the work will still be there after I’ve cared for the people carrying it, including myself.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received from a close college friend was this: Slow motion is better than no motion.

Resting is not quitting. Sometimes it looks like using the PTO you saved up. Sometimes it looks like tapping into your employee assistance program’s counseling services. Sometimes it looks like saying “no” without writing a dissertation explaining why. Sometimes it looks like yoga. I am, though, still trying to discern whether burpees remain part of God’s plan for my life.

Now, to be clear, there are some things we absolutely should quit. Sometimes wisdom looks like leaving behind work, expectations, or even versions of ourselves that no longer align with who we are becoming, even when it’s incredibly unsettling and difficult. Sometimes the faith required to leave is every bit as courageous as the faith required to stay. I’m reminded of Malcolm X who was no less committed to the cause when he returned from his Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, though his vision for how to pursue said cause shifted. That’s a different column for another Sunday.

This week, I’m talking to those of us who are simply tired.

If that’s you, rest. Not because the work no longer matters. But because you do. Borrow hope from your village until your hope returns. Receive support when it is offered. And trust that the work will still be there after you’ve cared for the person – and the people – doing it.

What if perseverance isn’t measured by how long we can go without stopping?

What if perseverance is measured by how faithfully we return to the work that love asks of us?

Rest, if you must, but don’t you quit.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

Our oldest daughter was born with pneumonia. Instead of bringing her home from the hospital, we watched her get wheeled into the NICU. I remember standing there looking at this tiny little person surrounded by tubes, monitors, and machines.

Now, up until that point, I had experienced significant moments in my life, such as losses, milestones, and moments of great relief. But this felt different.

I had just watched this little miracle enter the world through my wife. I was overwhelmed with love. And at the very same time, I felt empty. Empty of answers. Empty of guarantees. Empty of the illusion that loving her would somehow protect her from every hardship she might face.

The older I get, the more I think fatherhood is one long lesson in learning the difference between love and control. Love cannot prevent every disappointment, eliminate every risk, or make every decision for someone else. Love can only remain present.

A few days ago, my daughter got behind the wheel of a car and drove us down the road with her learner’s permit. And there I was again: full of love and empty of guarantees.

Like many fathers, I want to keep her and her two younger siblings safe. Shield them from mistakes, dangers, and heartbreak. But I’m slowly realizing that the assignment is not control. The assignment is to prepare them, guide them, encourage them, and eventually trust them.

That can be difficult. And for many Black fathers, there is often another layer. We are not only helping our children navigate the ordinary challenges of growing up. We are also preparing them for a world that may question their worth before it recognizes their gifts.

That responsibility is real.

And perhaps that’s why I have become increasingly convinced that fatherhood was never meant to be carried alone.

The strongest fathers I know are not the fathers who never struggle. They are the fathers who have people. People who tell them the truth, encourage them when they are weary, celebrate their wins, and help them see what they might otherwise miss.

So who knows how we’re really doing? Not our public answer. Not our church answer (we know you’re blessed and highly favored). Not our work answer (”I’m living the dream.”).

Our real answer.

Who can we call when we’re struggling? Who celebrates with us when we’re crushing it? Who challenges us when we’re off course?

People who remind us that being a good father does not require being a perfect father. That the goal, at least for me, is not perfection but presence.

Present enough to notice the moment. Present enough to apologize when I miss it. Present enough to ask for help. Present enough to keep growing. Present enough to love well through whatever season comes next.

Because maybe that’s what our children need most. Not fathers with all the answers. Not fathers with complete control. Just fathers who keep showing up.

Full of love. Empty of guarantees. Present anyway.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

And then on March 7, 1965, partly in response to Jackson’s death, our ancestors peacefully marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama as part of a broader voting rights movement.

They were violently met on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by a blockade of state troopers in a moment described as “Bloody Sunday.”

I remember walking across that bridge in 2012 with Julian Bond and others, reflecting on the many opportunities I now have because of the courage of those who paved the way.

The older I get, the more I realize just how much of my life has been shaped by sacrifices of generations before me.

I was reminded of that recently while walking the grounds at UVA during reunion weekend. It’s been 25 years since I graduated with my bachelor’s degree. The University, initially built by enslaved labor, was not open to Black students until generations later. And yet there I was, returning as an alumnus.

As Sylvia Terry, one of the deans in the Office of African American Affairs during my time as a student often reminded us, it is “our university.”

And there are moments in life where you realize you are standing inside someone else’s sacrifice.

The schools I attended. The degrees I earned. The positions I’ve held. The opportunities I’ve been afforded. None of them appeared out of thin air.

Sure, I worked really hard with all the opportunities given to me, without question. However, I did nothing to earn the opportunity itself. Whatever privilege I enjoyed was inextricably linked to those who preceded me.

Someone marched. Someone organized. Someone bled. Someone died. Someone challenged a system that told them no. Someone endured the unthinkable with the hope that I’d not have to.

And I walk through doors they never got to see open.

Gratitude matters. But gratitude alone feels incomplete. At some point, gratitude must become stewardship. Without responsible stewardship, the status quo remains.

And the way we tell history can make us think its battles are settled.

The names change. The circumstances shift.

However, every generation seems to discover that the work of widening pathways and protecting dignity is never quite finished. Every generation faces its own questions about whose humanity will be protected, whose opportunities will be expanded, and whose voices will be heard.

This lesson was underscored for me while working as a high school counselor years ago. You could walk through our hallways, and by the complexion of the classrooms, often tell which were standard level and which were honors and Advanced Placement.

Each year, letters generated through a program called AP Potential were sent to students whose PSAT scores suggested they might succeed in AP coursework.

Now I don’t know about you all, but if my potential was judged on my PSAT score alone….. never mind.

What we eventually realized was that the algorithm only did what people told it to do.

The system was not neutral.

Decisions had been made. And because decisions had been made, different decisions could be made.

So we broadened how potential was identified and encouraged more students, particularly Black and brown students, to consider opportunities they might otherwise have missed.

The change was not revolutionary, but it was real. It reminded me that influence often looks less like grand gestures and more like noticing a door that has been left closed and deciding to open it a little wider for someone else.

These days, I am less interested in whatever advantages I have and more interested in pondering what responsibilities come with them.

Because it’s not simply about what we’ve inherited, though grateful I am and always will be.

It is, though, about what we will leave behind.

We are all standing inside someone else’s sacrifice. The question is what we will do with it.

Someone widened the path for us.

How will we do the same for those who follow?

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

As a child, I really leaned into that verse. My bowl legs were fearfully and wonderfully made, after all. Hallelujah.

Seriously, though, this verse told me I belonged. It told me that my quirks, gifts, temperament, and personality were not accidents. That there was something intentional about my existence. Something sacred.

While I could understand being wonderfully made, I remember wondering why the verse said fearfully made. Was God scared when He made us?

My theology has evolved a bit since then.

What I eventually embraced was that the fear being described was not terror, but reverence. Awe. Love.

We are made with extraordinary care. All of us.

And that conviction is why I struggle with the ways LGBTQ+ people have been treated throughout history.

I remember one of my first high school students who came into my counseling office more than twenty years ago, terrified that his mom would reject him if he told the truth about who he was. She did, in fact, threaten to kick him out of her home and disown him when he did.

Then there were dozens more. Fear. Rejection. Anxiety. Conflict. Dread. Depression. Suicidality.

Young people wondering if honesty would cost them their family.

Same with my undergraduate students. Graduate students. Faculty and staff colleagues.

In ministry, there were adults and youth afraid that their authenticity would cost them their church community, their relationships, their marriages, or even their safety.

As a counselor, I listened. As a pastor, I listened. As a colleague, I listened. As a friend, I listened. And often, I grieved. I grieved the fear. I grieved the secrecy. I grieved the violence.

As the years passed, I also had to confront the ways I had, at times, helped uphold the very status quo I now lament. Not always through malice, but sometimes through silence. Sometimes through certainty. Sometimes by failing to ask better questions. That realization has been its own kind of grief.

I think about the brutality of the Stonewall era. I think about the murder of Matthew Shepard. I think about friends whose stories of dying by suicide never made national headlines. I think about people who spent years hiding because they feared rejection from those closest to them.

Somewhere along the way, I found myself less interested in winning arguments and more interested in asking a simpler question to the families of my students, congregants, and/or friends:

Do you love them? Not tolerate them. Not debate them. Love them.

Because disagreement does not diminish dignity.

I also recognize that some of the deepest wounds come wrapped in the language of love. Some people have been told they are loved while also being asked to carry rejection, distance, or silence. The pain created by that tension is real, and it deserves our attention.

So this is my simple message to my LGBTQ+ friends:

I am grateful you are here. I am grateful for your stories, your courage, your resilience, and your joy. I see the energy it takes to navigate a world that has not always been safe.

I see the calculations many of you still make before entering a church, introducing a partner, traveling to a new place, or deciding whether it is safe to be fully known.

I see it. And I honor it.

I lament the harm that has been done in the name of religion, tradition, politics, and fear. But more than that, I want to say something that should never be foreign to hear: You are worthy of love. You are worthy of dignity. You are worthy of belonging.

And when Scripture says we are fearfully and wonderfully made, I believe that includes you.

Today, I simply wanted to say so.

Out loud.

The Love Well
Pay Attention. Move with Intention. Love Well.

Finals were over. Graduation was around the corner. So naturally, there was no place those seniors would have rather been than sitting in a workshop with me talking about mental health. (I trust the sarcasm is obvious.)

I offered them three things to remember, should they hear nothing else I say:

Notice it.
Name it.
Don’t carry it alone.

To help them build a simple language for what’s happening internally, I introduced a common mental health screening acronym: S.I.G.E.C.A.P.S. – Sleep. Interest. Guilt. Energy. Concentration. Appetite. Psychomotor agitation. Suicidality.

Now, before you start diagnosing yourself, it is important to note that this is not meant to reduce our complex human experience to an oversimplified clinical checklist. Nor is it a substitute for professional mental health care.

Instead, it's a way to pay attention to ourselves in real life and recognize when we may need support.

We all have difficult days. We all experience stress, exhaustion, distraction, or low motivation. The point is not self-diagnosis. The point is awareness.

Are you sleeping much more or much less than usual?

Have you lost interest in things you normally enjoy?

Is your energy depleted?

Are you struggling to focus?

Has your appetite changed?

Are you more irritable than usual?

Have thoughts of hopelessness or self-harm begun showing up?

These are things worth paying attention to because we can normalize difficulty when we’ve been carrying it for a long time.

These symptoms don’t always come from overextension. But being stretched beyond capacity can make it harder to notice or name what’s happening inside us.

And noticing ourselves isn’t just a clinical exercise. It happens inside real systems that shape what we’re willing to see.

For example, I imagine I’m not alone in having participated in systems that incentivize burnout, call exhaustion commitment, or wait for a crisis before intervening and then blame the individual for what was always a systemic failure.

In these environments, fear of being judged, dismissed, or punished can make it harder to share difficulty with others.

At the same time, a community that doesn’t make time for wellness can eventually mistake survival for flourishing.

Which raises the question: What does it look like to care for our own well-being and live within our capacity in a culture that rewards constant availability?

For me, it starts with remembering that capacity is not character. Selah.

And if I’m honest, I am actively processing this principle in real time. A recent 360-degree leadership assessment for my EMBA program revealed that several people close to me think I could spend less time carrying the world on my shoulders. They used more nuanced language, but that was the gist.

None of this is to suggest that we control every factor that shapes our mental health. Sometimes the challenge is biological, sometimes it’s systemic, and often it’s both.

Mental health challenges are not always our fault, but they are still worthy of our attention. We may not control everything that affects our well-being, but we can notice what is within our reach, name it honestly, and refuse to carry alone what was never meant to be carried alone.

We are not to blame for every struggle we carry. But we are worthy of the care required to carry it well. And sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is acknowledge our capacity before we exceed it.

Because noticing is an act of honesty. Naming is an act of courage. And refusing to carry it alone can be an act of love.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

My friend Chris picked me up for baseball practice, and somewhere during that ride he said:
“Did you hear about Dwayne?”

He died by suicide.

I remember only days earlier asking him if he was okay because something in me sensed that he wasn’t.

That was enough grief for a lifetime.

But life kept happening. And over the years, I would lose several more people in my world the same way.

So maybe that is part of why I struggle when mental health gets handled carelessly across so many spaces. I’ve spent enough time in K-12 schools, academia, and church communities to know how damaging that can be.

And while I’m often troubled by how mental health is discussed no matter the environment, I am particularly grieved when it manifests in faith communities.

And I say that as someone who still loves the church deeply.

I’m a church boy at heart. Certified PK, even. My childhood church family is my forever family.

Part of that love was formed in the small, ordinary yet meaningful rhythms my parents gave me. I can remember, for example, when my parents gave me a schedule for reading through the Bible every year, and they always told me:

“You’ll never read it the same way twice.”

They were right.

About seventeen years ago, during my first encounter with depression, I read the Psalms differently than I ever had before.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what was happening with me. I just knew I wasn’t myself. My thinking slowed down. I lost interest in things I normally loved. My speech felt less sharp. There was this strange tightness behind my eyes I couldn’t explain. Eventually, through counseling, more consistent exercise, trial and error with medication, prayer, and time, I came to understand that I was experiencing depression.

And then I read Psalm 13 again.

“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?”

I am not trying to diagnose David. I am simply saying the text felt more human to me than it ever had before. More honest. More desperate. More familiar.

And what struck me is how different that honesty feels from the way some church spaces rush to name every struggle as spiritual warfare.

And I started wondering how many people are still living inside the earlier verses of that Psalm while everyone around them rushes them toward the last one:
“But I trust in your unfailing love…….I will sing the Lord’s praise.”

I do believe the hope is there.
But some people cannot access it as quickly as others expect them to.

And everything ain’t a demon.

Years later, while in seminary, I preached from that passage and said a couple of things that still feel true to me now:
God can handle our questions, even when expressed in angst. And that sometimes we put God in a small box regarding how healing is allowed to happen.

Now, I do love a good tarrying service (IYKYK).

And I’ve also grown to appreciate counseling. Medicine. Rest. Exercise. Community. Breathing room.

These are not evidence of spiritual failure.

But in some church spaces, psychological suffering gets misdiagnosed and spiritualized so quickly that people begin distrusting their own experience.

Anxiety becomes lack of faith. Depression becomes a demon. Exhaustion becomes weakness.

And what starts as spiritual encouragement can quietly become spiritual gaslighting. And truthfully, I’ve had to reflect on the ways I may have helped maintain the status quo by not being louder for people who were struggling.

To be clear, I believe prayer matters. I believe faith matters. I believe spiritual life matters.

But everything unfamiliar or difficult to explain is not a demon.

Sometimes it is grief. Sometimes it is trauma. Sometimes it is a nervous system under strain. Sometimes it is a chemical imbalance. Sometimes it is depression.

And sometimes it is all of the above, layered and complicated.

And loving people well means working hard to learn the difference. Being more curious than controlling. More concerned with caring and less about being certain.

I imagine a church that partners with local mental health agencies to offset costs and remove some of the barriers that keep people from getting help. Or a church that normalizes medication in testimony. Or a small group that prays with someone and joins them in moving their body more consistently. A church where healing isn’t reduced to one pathway, but expanded to include every tool God has given us.

I do still believe the church can be a place of profound healing. But healing requires humility. It requires listening. It requires resisting the urge to oversimplify suffering we do not fully understand. It requires courage to challenge assumptions that harm, not heal.

People should not leave the sanctuary feeling ashamed for needing help.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

Workshops. Presentations. Zoom calls full of very smart people explaining how artificial intelligence is changing everything. Faster workflows. Smarter systems. Massive energy consumption. Water usage that should probably concern all of us more than it does. And the growing reality that our children will need to learn how to engage this technology responsibly because it is not going anywhere.

I’m still learning in this space myself, so I mostly listen.

But there’s one phrase that keeps coming up in almost every session:
“AI hallucinations.”

The phrase refers to moments when generative AI produces information that is false, fabricated, or completely illogical while presenting it confidently as fact.

But the more I hear the phrase, the more I realize it isn’t just a technical term. It is a window into how casually we borrow from mental health language without considering who gets diminished in the process.

So, every time I hear it, I cringe.

Sometimes I raise my hand. Sometimes I just drop a quiet note in the Zoom chat:
“I wonder if we can use different language to describe AI’s errors. The term hallucination may unintentionally trivialize serious mental health experiences for people already navigating stigma. I’ve started using AI fabrications or AI errors instead. Thanks for considering.”

Back to mute.

Sometimes people respond publicly, usually to clarify that no harm was intended. Honestly, I get that.

Most times, the response comes privately afterward. “I just thought of it as a way to say that AI is making mistakes. Didn’t think of it that way.” “Appreciate you naming it.” “Interesting. Makes sense.”

To be clear, this is not me pretending I have fully arrived on the issue.

I still catch myself using language that comes from an ableist place. My family catches me, too. Regularly.

So much of this language is normalized that we barely hear it anymore.

And that’s part of the point.

The words we repeat casually often reveal the assumptions we’ve stopped questioning. And many of those assumptions quietly frame mental illness, neurodivergence, and disability as punchlines, inconveniences, danger, instability, or deficiency.

Not always intentionally. But consistently. And repetition matters.

Because when diagnoses become shorthand jokes, the people living with them can disappear underneath them.

When “OCD” becomes synonymous with neatness, for example, we flatten a complex condition into a personality quirk.

When “bipolar” becomes a synonym for inconsistency, we reduce people’s layered lived experiences to a character flaw.

When we casually use “psychotic” to describe behavior we find extreme, upsetting, or incomprehensible, we turn a serious mental health condition into an insult.

And if we are honest, many of us inherited this language long before we ever examined it. From schools. From church spaces, which I’ll expand on next week. From media. From home.

Sometimes the issue is not just a single word, but the cumulative message our language sends about whose minds and experiences deserve dignity.

I found myself thinking about that recently while attending the confirmation service of one of my daughter’s friends at a local Episcopal church. At one point, the bishop asked the congregation a question that lingered with me long after the ceremony ended:

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

That last part stayed with me.

What does it actually look like to respect the dignity of every human being?

Because dignity is not only about how we treat people in moments of crisis. It is also about the language we normalize in everyday life. The jokes we repeat. The shorthand we excuse. The labels we casually attach to people’s experiences without considering what those words carry.

Language shapes what we come to believe is normal, acceptable, or funny. And when the language we normalize comes from mental health diagnoses, it shapes how we see the people who live with them.

Awareness gives us choices.

Not perfection.

Not language policing.

Just the ability to pause long enough to ask:

What does this language normalize?
Who disappears inside of it?
What assumptions am I reinforcing without realizing it?

Because loving people well may sometimes begin with something as small, and as difficult, as learning to speak about them, and to them, with dignity.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

For me, there’s so much appreciation. For the grace given, the patience shown, the discipline not withheld (my younger self would never believe I’d say that, but alas, here I am).

I remember those who are no longer with us today, but whose impact continues to breathe: Aunt Gloria. Aunt Bernadette. Aunt Betty. Aunt Novella. Mother Leggett. Deaconess Greene. And many others whose mothering has shaped the world around them and beyond.

There is deep gratitude. For mothers. For grandmothers. For the women who stepped into maternal spaces without biology ever requiring them to. For those who nurtured us, corrected us, prayed for us, protected us, and somehow made impossible things feel ordinary.

And for those who have known the grace of God in the absence of any earthly maternal presence – we see you, too.

And to the women grieving infertility, miscarriage, or complex experiences related to abortion, or hopes of motherhood that did not unfold as imagined: your capacity to nurture, protect, encourage, and love remains deeply meaningful and profoundly seen. It is not diminished by your pain. Many have already experienced your mothering in ways you may never fully realize.

One of my favorite Scriptures to declare each day is “This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24). So today, we rejoice. We honor mothers for helping make this world more humane, more compassionate, more livable.

And if I’m honest, though, Mother’s Day also makes me a bit tired and angry.

Because I try to imagine what many mothers carry. And I’m just imagining. Sigh.

Today, I think about the mothers whose children have been taken from them by violence, injustice, deportation, mental illness, addiction, poverty, or by white supremacist systems that have never treated all children as equally precious. I think about the mothers who still wait for the world to value the lives their hearts have always treasured.

I think about the mother and family of Daval Harrison, my childhood friend whose life ended in our youth due to gun violence. I will always remember him, and I continue to hold his family close, who I have always considered my own. I think about Ahmaud Arbery’s mother and the cruel reality of a world in which a viral video was needed before many acknowledged the sacredness of her son’s life. I think about the mothers of D’Sean Perry, Lavel Davis, Jr., and Devin Chandler, taken by gun violence on the grounds of my alma mater. And about the mother of Jaylen Martinez, whose life was cut far too short in the city I now call home. And – unfortunately – so many more. The stories are different, but the ache is similar.

I think, too, about mothers and children who have lost one another to suicide, carrying the weight of grief while trying to reconcile mental health struggles with the love that was always there.

I also think about mothers whose families have been separated in immigration raids. About Black mothers watching their communities simultaneously relied upon politically and disregarded through ongoing efforts to suppress their vote.

I think about Black mothers navigating a healthcare system that too often fails them. About the painful reality that Black women remain far more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth-related complications. And yet they continue to nurture, advocate, build, protect, and persevere with a strength that is both beautiful and heartbreaking.

I think about the quiet strength mothers carry every day.

Years ago, while preaching from 2 Kings, I was struck by the image of a grieving mother who “shut the door” before pursuing God for help. I’ve never forgotten that image. Mothers spend their lives shutting doors on things that would otherwise consume their families: fear, exhaustion, shame, despair, insecurity, doubt, generational pain. They move forward while carrying weight few people ever fully see.

We often celebrate mothers for their gentleness. I’m struck by their endurance.

I think today about the matriarchs in my own life: my grandmothers, the late Ruth Harris and the late Pearl McCovery. My mother-in-law, Brenda Sharp-Harris. My mother, Doris Harris, who at 87 still embodies wisdom and resilience in ways that astonish me. And my wife, Taylor, whose brilliance as a mother continually reminds me that motherhood has always involved something supernatural.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that many of us are standing today because somewhere, somehow, a mother shut the door on doubt and unbelief and held on to hope long enough for us to make it.

So today, we honor mothers not because they are perfect, but because they persevere.

And many of us are alive, whole, and hopeful because they did – and still do.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

I’ve sat with many students over the years (K-12, college, and graduate school), listening to their struggles with focus. Their frustration. Their restlessness. And how, almost inevitably, the conversation around them would shift.

“They just need to apply themselves.”
“They’re being lazy.”
“They know better.”

I’ve heard similar language in churches, too.

“Pray about it.”
“Have more faith.”
“Don’t let the enemy use you like that.”

Different spaces. Same message: Get it together. And if you were stronger, more disciplined, more faithful… it wouldn’t be happening.

We don’t always say it that directly, but it’s there. And if we’re telling the truth, many of us were socialized in that way. I know I delayed seeking support when I needed it because of how much of that I’d internalized.

As a former athlete – what you might call a “Division 5” recruit coming out of high school – I’ve seen how the very qualities that propel us toward success can also keep us from getting support when we need it.

Because endurance is important. Pushing through has its place.

For example, just this morning at the Girls on the Run 5K I ran with my daughter, I encouraged her to “keep going!”

And to be clear, that strength is real and helpful. But sometimes what helps us survive one thing becomes the very thing that keeps us from being well in another.

Strength is good.

But when strength becomes the only acceptable response, struggle gets mislabeled as failure. Not because people aren’t strong, but because we’ve refused to recognize the strength it already takes to keep going.

And too often, mental illness gets framed as a character flaw. We know that it isn’t. And as Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf recently said, “So many people are silent when the truth begs for advocacy.” His point wasn’t about mental health specifically, but about how easily we abandon people being harmed because speaking up on their behalf feels uncomfortable. And that silence – and worse the noise that replaces it – is harmful.

Mental illness is not a lack of discipline. It’s not a lack of faith. It is a brain navigating anxiety, depression, or trauma. It is a nervous system under strain. With children, it is not necessarily defiance or rebellion as much as it is a child whose needs don’t fit the narrow definitions of what we’ve decided “normal” is.

The well many of us have been drawing from – the colonized one I wrote about earlier – has taught us to read struggle as deficiency. And we learn to judge it, mock it, or hide it.

But a different lens is available. A healthier one. One that understands mental illness as health. No one tells someone with asthma to “just breathe better.” No one looks at a broken bone and says, “have more faith and walk it off.” We understand those as conditions that require care, support, treatment, and patience.

So what changes when we extend that same logic to mental health? What changes when love doesn’t rush to correct, but chooses to understand? When it doesn’t shame, but supports? When it doesn’t reduce people to their hardest moments, but stays present long enough to see the full picture?

Because loving well, especially here, might look less like calling people to be stronger…

…and more like making sure they don’t have to carry it alone.

So maybe the invitation this month is this:

To notice where we’ve been taught to moralize what is actually medical.
To question the language we’ve normalized.
To make room, both for ourselves and for others, to be fully human.

Because mental health is not a character flaw.

And real love learns how to demonstrate the difference. It honors the humanity beneath the symptoms. And it refuses to confuse suffering with sin.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

My own children loved learning again there. I met colleagues who will be lifelong friends, and I worked with students and families I expect to be sharing meals with for years to come.

My role was to tend to barriers to student learning, whether individual or systemic. And part of that work meant helping discern when a student’s challenges were not about effort or motivation, but about how they processed information, experienced instruction, or moved through the world.

In some cases, that meant recommending further evaluation. Families would pursue outside assessments and send me the reports. We did not have formal IEPs or 504 plans, but we used the information to guide support within our capacity and to partner with families around how strengths and challenges showed up in and out of school.

Over time, I became more familiar with the language than I ever had in my educational career: processing speed, working memory, executive functioning, sensory regulation, and more.

And with that language came recommendations: Extended time. Access to notes. Reduced multi-step directions. Small-group testing environment. Movement breaks. Use of noise-canceling headphones. Use of calculator or computer.

On paper, those might just look like accommodations. But in practice, they often felt like something else entirely. Relief.

For students, it often answered a question they’d been carrying quietly, but powerfully: “Am I dumb?”

For families, it interrupted a quieter fear: What did we do wrong?

And for schools, if we’re honest, it exposed something we do more often than we admit. We misread difference and then shame what we don’t understand.

We say: Try harder. Focus. Apply yourself. Get it together. And we do so without always asking whether the conditions for success have actually been created.

When a student understands how they learn, something shifts. It becomes less about a label and more about how they experience the world. That is empowering.

And the question that stays with me is this: Who gets access to that kind of understanding?

As a public school educator, I’ve seen evaluations happen through eligibility processes, often when families push for them. (Those systems and the passionate educators within them are operating under real constraints like time, staffing, policy.) But I have rarely seen the same depth as in private evaluations. And too often, those reports feel less like tools for understanding and more like instruments for decision-making.

The private evaluations that came across my desk were not neutral in their accessibility. They require time. Resources. Money.

I remember sitting with families who felt relief when they finally had language for their child’s experience. Or with others who suspected something was there, but could not access the same level of clarity. The truth is, access to understanding is rationed. Not by need, but by resources. Some families get language that liberates. Others get silence that harms. That gap matters.

Without that understanding, children are too often mislabeled, disciplined, or quietly convinced that their struggle is a personal failing.

And for some families, especially those who have experienced systems that mislabel and overdiagnose, there is hesitation at even pursuing an evaluation; this is not always ignorance. It is protection. There are so many layers to that.

Because understanding changes how a child is treated. And how they see themselves.

We had each of our own children evaluated, a privilege I readily acknowledge. And for our youngest, the practitioner actually wrote her a letter – explaining, at her developmental level, how she learns, how she experiences the world, and why certain things feel the way they do.

It was more than clinical. It was human. It did something simple, but powerful: it helped her understand herself. She is not a problem to fix. She is not broken. Nothing is wrong with her. She is brilliance the world can’t fully see….yet. And that shift matters. That letter was a gift. Not because of a diagnosis, but because it answered the question so many children carry: What’s wrong with me?

Because not everything we experience is brokenness in need of repair or healing. Some of it is difference in need of understanding. Some of it is about exposing the ways in which our educational system and world are not set up for everyone, while still blaming the child.

What might change if more people had access to this level of understanding in the first place?

Loving people includes not just how we respond once we know, but whether we are willing to ask, honestly and persistently, who gets to know at all.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

To be clear, I wasn’t just leaning back, apparently. I was leaning back in a way that inspired others to lean back too.

My heart raced as my teacher talked. I remember feeling, more than anything, like a problem.

Then my father said something I have never forgotten:

It sounds like Paul may have some leadership potential. I wonder if we can figure out how to steer it in the right direction.

I sat up. Stuck my chest out a bit. And dared my teacher with my stare to “say somethin’ else!”

The meeting ended, and on the ride home I thought I’d double down.

Can you believe that teacher?!

It took about a half a second for my parents to interrupt me in unison with some words that began with Don’t you ever let us get a call like that again…..

So much changed for me that day.

My parents saw a strength where someone else only saw deficit.

And they also held me accountable.

Both things were true.

That memory has stayed with me because after years as a counselor and educator, I understand how consequential that exchange was.

By fourth grade, many children – especially Black boys – have already begun absorbing messages about who they are allowed to be. Too often, curiosity is labeled disruption. Energy is read as defiance. Difference is mistaken for deficit. These patterns have consequences, and for many Black boys, they are part of what feeds the school-to-prison pipeline.

Once deficit becomes the primary story told about a child, it can start becoming the story a child tells about themselves.

I was never formally diagnosed with anything, and I may not embody all that we now associate with neurodivergence, but I do know what it feels like not to be seen. And what it feels like when I am.

And now in a month when many are reflecting on neurodiversity, I find myself thinking not only about awareness, but about what it means to be understood. I have seen the harm that happens when neurodivergence is confused with laziness. When sensitivity is mistaken for immaturity. When a child’s way of processing the world is treated only as a problem to fix.

I’m not saying we ignore our growth edges. Far from it.

I’m simply underscoring what can happen when someone is seen differently.

Something opens.

I thought about that recently in Japan, moving through spaces so alive with sound, movement, and stimulation that at times it felt like Times Square multiplied. I loved it.

And I also found myself thinking about those for whom that environment would not feel exhilarating, but overwhelming.

What if who gets dismissed as “too much” is sometimes a nervous system doing the difficult work of navigating a world not built with everyone in mind?

What if attention differences sometimes carry forms of perception we have not learned to value? Like my daughter, who can tell you who in the room is about to cry, who is nervous, and what a face revealed before anyone said a word.

What if some of what we call deficit is actually unrecognized strength?

Maybe all of us have known what it feels like to be seen first through what is wrong.

And maybe all of us know what it feels like when someone sees what is strong.

That kind of seeing can be life-altering. It can change the story we tell about ourselves.

(Now, there is more to say about how families navigate these questions and who gets access to understanding in the first place. I may return to that in a future installment).

I just keep wondering what might be possible when we ask what strengths might be hiding beneath what we have been taught to misread.

To shift from asking:

What’s wrong with me?

To asking, with a little more curiosity and a little more care:

What’s strong in me, and in us, that we haven’t learned to name yet?

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.

Things are far from perfect here in Japan. But even in my first two days, I feel something: systems carry values, and those values shape how people experience them.

I’m here with my EMBA cohort, studying leadership and reflecting on how systems are designed. One thing is clear: design is never neutral.

We live inside systems every day, whether transportation, education, or healthcare, and those systems are always communicating something, whether we name it or not.

They tell us whose needs are anticipated.
Whose comfort is considered.
Whose humanity is centered… and whose is not.

When dignity is not built into the design, people are forced to make up the difference. They adapt. They overextend. They carry what the system was never designed to hold.

We see the friction, but we often mislabel the source. We call people “difficult” when they are simply navigating environments that were never designed with them in mind.

In schools, we design around narrow and often naive definitions of “normal,” then ask neurodivergent students to adjust, to mask, to fit. And punish them when they don’t. During a month when many are raising awareness around neurodiversity, it’s worth asking: awareness for what, if not redesign?

In our broader systems, we expect people to push through exhaustion, to navigate fragmented care, to figure it out on their own.

I think about my father navigating Parkinson’s, and how much of that journey required not just strength, but endurance in the face of systems around us that made care harder than it should have been. And in a month meant to raise awareness about Parkinson’s, I am reminded how awareness without structural change still leaves families carrying more than they should, for too long.

Much of what we experience as struggle is about design.

And as Black folks, we know this all too well. We’ve long known that many systems are doing exactly what they were designed to do.

Slavery. Black Codes. Jim Crow. Redlining. The prison industrial complex.

Design.

And the patterns persist. What we are seeing modeled by “leadership” back home only underscores this. Decisions are made quickly and loudly at times, but just as often they are developed over time, with a clear understanding of who will bear the cost. Project 2025 is one example of this kind of intentional design, where the outcomes are not accidental, but anticipated. That is not dysfunction. That’s design.

Policies that prioritize control over care.
Power over people.
Greed over generosity.

And then some folks act surprised when those systems produce harm.

But systems don’t drift into dignity.
They are led there.
Or they are not.

So the question becomes:

What do our decisions – our policies, our classrooms, our organizations – signal about who deserves dignity?

Whose needs do we prioritize?
Whose do we delay? Or straight up deny?
And whose voices are shaping those decisions in the first place?

Because love, if it is real, doesn’t only show up in how we treat people in moments.

It shows up in what we build.

And the systems we create, curate, and calibrate will always reveal the wells we’ve been drawing from. They will always shape the kind of love people experience on the other side of them.

The Love Well
Pay attention. Move with intention. Love well.