There’s confusion about what I lean into for the love Sharon and I share. Is it Neville Goddard, the law of attraction, the law of assumption, or some other spiritual or manifestation technique? I’ve explored all of that and more—Bob Proctor, Tony Robbins, NLP, chants, mantras, religion. If any of those approaches work for you, keep doing them. For me, something else became far more important: getting honest about who I actually am.

I grew up in a household where physical and emotional abuse was presented as love. My parents put a Bible in front of me while kicking my ass and told me they did it because they loved me. That early experience made it hard to distinguish kindness from manipulation, and it shaped the kinds of intimate relationships I later found myself in.

So how do you define a loving relationship when you’ve never really experienced what you believe one could be? In this conversation I look at that question through self-concept and internal dialogue rather than through another method. I talk about examining my emotional reactions in the moment, taking responsibility for how I show up with Sharon, and questioning my own perceptions instead of automatically blaming my past or someone else.

I’m not offering a new manifestation technique. I’m describing how learning to understand myself, moment by moment, afforded me the opportunity to experience a kind of love I once couldn’t clearly imagine.

People have told me — more than once, and from people who consider themselves spiritually advanced — that it seems like I'm trying to justify my happiness. Like I'm making a comparison, letting everyone know how bad things were and how good they are now. So justify this.

Today is May 20th, 2023. My son would have been 24 today. He was born May 20th, 1999, and he died July 31st, 1999. When he died, it challenged everything I thought I knew — not just religion, not just parenthood, not just the sanctity of life. Why did this happen to me, was I not the right kind of father, had I sinned too much. I don't have those questions anymore. When I tell that story now, it doesn't carry the emotional impact it once did, and that's because I don't take it personally.

I'm not denigrating anybody's trauma or claiming my life was worse or better than yours. His death was physical and also symbolic of a lot of other deaths — dreams, marriages, hopes — and it has taken me a very long time to get here. When you arrive at a certain point, the people around you may say you've changed, that you're almost unlikable, almost arrogant. So be it.

You are not beholden to any other living being on this planet other than yourself. That sounds like selfishness. It is. You cannot live someone else's life. You don't owe anybody an explanation. Take the time to get to know who you are — or who you'd like to be.

I've been thinking about culture — what it means to be born in this country to Black parents, to be taught what a man is, to have a worldview handed to me before I had any say in it. My father wanted me to play football because that's what manly looked like. I was good at it and I hated it. When I tore up my knee and the paramedics came onto the field, he told them there was nothing wrong with me.

What do you have to do to finally be loved?

I learned to keep my head down and say what people wanted to hear so I wouldn't get my ass kicked. I sat in a dark theater watching Romeo and Juliet and cried, but I couldn't let myself cry hard — I looked around to see who was watching, heard my father's voice telling me he'd give me something to cry about.

Nobody taught me how to listen to myself, to that little voice asking whether something was truly what I desired. I'm not telling you who to be. But I don't have the same definition of love as Sharon, and we work on that together.

Culture doesn't get to determine how I feel about her. I'm asking whether you've spent time with yourself asking who you actually are.

Even after a lot of self-inquiry, growth, and expansion, a small mistake can still drop me straight into my own ass.

That’s what this episode is about.

I was doing a delivery. The guy had two little kids, both excited. I missed a two-liter of Starry on the order. In the moment I felt like I had just fucked up their lunch because I wasn’t attentive enough. I told him I’d come back with a cold one, but the self-attack was already deep. That same energy spilled out and I snapped at Sharon. Then came the guilt for speaking to her that way.

I’ve done enough internal work that I sometimes think I’ve got a reliable process now. Then something ordinary happens and all that awareness gets kicked aside. Nobody gets in my ass more precisely or effectively than I do. Trying to argue with it or shut it down is like throwing water on an oil fire.

It doesn’t work.

Sharon had her own version of this a couple days earlier after a doctor’s appointment—second-guessing herself for not saying no.

Same pattern, different details.

What I’m learning, at least for myself, is that the attack has to ride itself out. Afterward I try to meet it with some patience and kindness instead of more debate. That doesn’t excuse the behavior. It just treats the whole thing as information.

We weren’t usually taught how to give ourselves that kind of compassion in our formative years.

I’m still figuring out what it looks like in real time.

How much of what we see on social media is real, and how much of it is an illusion we've decided to believe?

In this archive episode of The Real Empowered Self, I'm talking about that veil between what is real, what is imagined, and what we accept as truth.

A conversation with Sharon about social media personalities who had died by suicide brought me back to my own suicide attempt on November 2, 1994. I know what it means to reach a point where you don't want to be here anymore.

And it raises an uncomfortable question about the lives we see presented online.

We watch influencers showing off their bodies, their money, their relationships, and their supposedly wonderful lives. But what the fuck do we actually know about what happens when the cameras are turned off?

I even question what you can really know about me simply because you're listening to my voice.

And this isn't just about influencers.

I remember being uncomfortable enough with my own circumstances that I lied to potential dates rather than admit where and how I was living. I was creating my own veil because I didn't want someone to see what I considered ugly about my life.

So what illusions are we still maintaining? And how much of our dissatisfaction comes from comparing our actual lives with somebody else's carefully presented version?

I'm not suggesting that we can magically eliminate life's difficulties. I'm talking about getting to know ourselves, being honest about where we are, and questioning the appearances we've allowed to define what we think our lives should be.

What happens when the one thing you've wanted more than anything else in your life is to love and be loved, but you don't actually know what love is?

This Sunday Stroll is an emotional one.

I find myself remembering a morning during Sharon's cancer treatments when I woke up and discovered she wasn't in the lift chair where she'd been sleeping. The panic, the helplessness, and the anger at everything life had already thrown at us came rushing back.

Childhood abuse. Sexual abuse. My suicide attempt. The death of my infant son, Malachi. And now, watching my wife endure two cancers.

How much fucking shit was I supposed to carry?

But this morning, November 1, 2026, Sharon and I shared another moment of intimacy that reminded me how much my understanding of love has changed.

For much of my life, I allowed other people to define love for me. I entered marriages, adopted religious beliefs, and tried to become someone I thought another person could love. Eventually, I began asking what kindness, compassion, and love actually meant to me—and whether I was extending any of those things to myself.

I'm not suggesting that grief disappears or that we can affirm our way past painful experiences. I'm talking about an unfolding understanding of myself and a relationship that continues to surprise me.

I also share a song I wrote during Sharon's cancer journey, followed by some thoughts I hadn't planned to record about feeling unlovable, wanting to belong, and discovering a kind of love I once couldn't imagine experiencing.

When did you start making your own choices? And how many of those choices are actually yours, rather than decisions you've made to satisfy somebody else's expectations about who you're supposed to be?

I started thinking about this because of something as simple as music. I'm a Black man who grew up listening to Marvin Gaye and the Temptations, learned to play classical flute, and discovered Kiss and Black Sabbath along the way. Apparently, even what music we're supposed to enjoy can come with somebody else's rules.

But this goes a hell of a lot deeper than music.

Growing up, I was surrounded by expectations about who I should date, who I should marry, and what love was supposed to look like. My parents told me they loved me while doing things that left me questioning what love actually meant and what I was worth.

And those definitions don't necessarily disappear when we become adults.

So when you say you want a loving relationship, whose definition of love are you using? Have you actually decided what love means to you, or are you still carrying around somebody else's version?

I'm not telling you to reject everything you've been taught or go digging through your childhood. I'm asking whether the choices you're making today reflect who you genuinely want to be.

Because the way you see yourself, the conversations you have with yourself, and the definitions you've accepted about love all lend themselves to the relationships you're living.