Shaka Senghor

And my family, my parents, they hadn't created space for me to talk about it, which is something that I think a lot of people end up being trapped in shame because there's no space to talk about it.

And finally, I was 50 years old the first time I ever told my dad my reason for breaking into that man's house.

And I called both of my parents.

And I remember talking to my dad.

I'm a dad.

And it was this moment where I just said to him, you know, hey, here's my why.

And I could just feel through the phone, my dad, just like, oh, whoa, you know, as a dad that could not have felt good that, Hey, I took my off the bar, maybe, or maybe not.

I don't know.

But I explained to him, like, it wasn't nothing he did.

This guy was just who he was.

Right.

Um, and so there's these moments that I've experienced it.

And even with my past where it came full circle, which was one of the things that inspired the book is my brother was murdered in 2021.

I fly home to Detroit to help with the burial process, all the things.

And there was a moment where I'm just sitting there and my stepmom, my bonus mom, she's crying because she's grieving my brother's life.

And I was struck by this feeling of guilt at a time when I should have been grieving because I made somebody else's family feel like that.

And that moment for me was like, you know, this is a deeper level of shame.

And so what I did is I actually ended up writing a letter to the person who murdered my brother.

And that ability to understand that something had to transpire in his life for him to pull that trigger helped me process the feeling of guilt

but also the feeling of shame and recognize that the 19 year old me that pulled that trigger was a hurt, broken kid who had no space to heal.