You Only Grieve Because You Loved | Carl Manlan on Loss, Healing & Fatherhood | EP 508

Close your eyes and imagine. What if the things in life that caused us the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, are challenges. Challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried, but what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth and I am your host, Brian Smith. Hi there, I'm Brian Smith and welcome to Grief to Growth. And whether you've been walking with me for years or you just found this show today, I want to tell you that I'm glad you're here. The show is about making sense of life, especially when life doesn't make sense. We talk about grief, loss, and the questions that keep us up at night. Who are we? Where do we go when we die? And is it possible that the people we love are closer than we think? I bring guests so and help illuminate the path, no matter how dark it feels. And my guest today is Carl Mandlin. Carl's a man who's spent 20 years measuring prosperity for a lifetime of what it actually is. Borden, Abidjan, Cote d'Oi, Cote d'Oi, I think it is, here in the US, we call Ivory Coast. Carl's worked at the Global Fund and the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Union's Development Agency and Echo Bank Foundation, and served as Vice President of Inclusive Impact and Sustainability at Visa across Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Harvard Kennedy School, Aspen New Voices Fellow, Project Syndicate columnist, the kind of resume that just frankly blows me away. It comes with a 30,000 foot view of the world. But then loss came for Carl the way it comes for all of us, and really brought him down to the ground. What he wrote there was not a policy paper, it was poetry. His debut collection is called I Can Breathe. So Carl and I are two fathers who found our voices in the last place that we would look for them. We are actually frankly two black men who come up in cultures that don't encourage us to express our emotions. So today we're going to talk about what happens when a man trained to quantify everything runs into the one thing that refuses to be measured. We're going to talk about prosperity that you can't put on a balance sheet, about parenting children through a grief you're still carrying, about the strange gift of a father and a daughter building something together out of what was broken. So if you've been holding your breath waiting for the day it stops hurting so you can finally start living this episode for you. And if you want to continue this conversation after the episode, head over to grief2growth.substack.com. You'll find an article there about today's discussion where you can connect with me and other listeners. So with that I want to welcome Carl to Grief to Growth. Brian, thank you very much. What a generous introduction. It's really fascinating to meet you. You were born, we were just talking about like where you've lived. You've lived all over the world. You were born and you lived all over the world. And you just had an incredible resume. Tell me a little bit about your journey. How did that happen? It's one of these things where one day my father tells me, come with me to Arare. If you don't come, we'll never get a chance to know each other. I know when you are a late teen, you sort of listen to this and not to show what it means. And I'm glad I did because three years later he was gone. So when that happened, I was still a student. And I remember a day after I got the news, I still dialed this number and somebody else picked up. Then I walked on campus and I asked myself, okay, what do I do with myself now? Because suddenly what you thought was a pathway that you will be there to sort of guide and open that door is gone. And very quickly you realize when the funeral ends, people disappear. Because the reason why they were there no longer exists. And maybe that's their own way of grieving. But as a young adult, you don't necessarily understand because there's a loss, but there also is a gap. So I said to myself, there's only one thing that is left. And that's one thing that you also kept on reminding me when he was alive that my inheritance was my education. And that became for me the path that I chose to follow. And a lot of my friends and colleagues always laugh at the fact that every year I'm going to study something else. I'm not stopped. I have this urge to continue to learn and so on. And that's my way of also honoring we is and we was for me in many ways. So the path in a way was sown by him in many different ways that I sort of discovered along the way. And I'll give you that sort of one element where someone I didn't know that he knew gave me my first internship. A gentleman from Peru that I had never heard of. But his way of honoring his friendship with my father was to offer me my first internship that just opened the door to many other things that happened after. Wow. Yeah. That's cool. So your father gave you your love for learning. Your the passion for that. Absolutely. Absolutely. So let's talk about you know we talked a little bit before we get started about like we have even though we're from different parts of the world we have some commonalities in terms of our background the way that we were raised emotionally and not really being taught to express emotions. What was it like for you? You don't realize until you are grown up and you start to sort of ask yourself but how come they never said I love you as much as you would think that it should have happened. But the love was expressed in different ways. You had food on the table. You had clothes to wear. You had your Sunday outfit that was only for going to church. You had those moments where suddenly strawberries would be on the table and those were treats. So in a way you grew up with an understanding that there's love in the home. That it exists is there. But you're not given the words the tools to actually be able to express them. And I honestly did not understand it until very much later in my life when I started when I had children. And then I was okay so how do you then express in words that they can understand and not only in actions. You know it's really that striking that balance between love is an action and love can also be expressed in words. Not only in things that belong. So I think if I have to think growing up did I miss not hearing them? No because you know I understood that I was loved. I understood that it was there. Then you sort of move to the next generation and you have your children of your own. And then you say but there must be surely an opportunity to say it. And what I realized is that by having this conversation about emotions with my own children they express a different spectrum of emotions. And also they're not confined to a few things. They have the ability to sort of talk about sadness. They have to talk about joy. They have to talk about really many different ways that they express it. And what I realized is that for my boy that exercise was a little bit more complicated. Because the first reaction was using the hands or the feet especially when the feeling was more on the spectrum of being upset, being annoyed and so on. And it's how do you then build that understanding that you can actually use your words and that your words should be your first element. Or if you really cannot find the words then you have to find a way to calm down before you sort of get. And slowly we could see that okay this is evolving. That the first reaction is not just to react it's really to sort of find. And even for us as parents is also learning moment because then you sort of start to understand how each of your children understand and express those feelings that they have. So I can't say I missed it because I didn't know different but definitely I grew up in a very loving family environment. Yeah and you know as you said that very similar for me I was in my mid 30s and I was seeing a counselor and we were you know I was dealing with some issues and she asked me about my growing up and I said she said did your parents love you and I said of course they did. And she said well how did they show it? How do you know? Well because they fed me they took me to Sunday school they did all those things and she said but did they ever tell you and I'm like well no you know I didn't even realize that it was something that was missing you know. I don't remember touching my father growing up I don't remember ever literally touching him. So you know it's interesting because it's said we grew up in very different parts of the world but very similar experiences. Correct, correct. I guess you know the DNA that left the African continent kept some of the habits that the believed way shouldn't disappear. But we have a generation to change that and I think that's the beauty of this conversation realizing that you know there are similarities that brings us together. Yeah and it's really interesting because I only have girls. I had two girls. So I talked to a guy that has a daughter and a son he said they're different and I'm like are they? So are boys different from girls? They are. What I mean we have a he's a middle child I mean non-middle child he's a second child and we could see with friends that had the reverse like a boy and then a girl that the girls was slightly different in terms of our daring and how the things that you would do. In our case I think that the fact that he's following a girl is a little bit more mellow because it couldn't mimic or mirror things that you will see in terms of the energy that was being used. And having also a sister that is very caring so we are very blessed with that. Our first born both children and we could see when a brother was born how much he cared for him and as we find sometimes I mean you know the phone sort of pops with his videos or his photos and then there's one of them where she's actually he's talking to him and he's celebrating. So that relationship between the two of them is one that we observe and we make sure that we could allow that to grow and nurture in a way that you know and we remind them often and that's a beauty also of technology that you have those memories that are vivid. We didn't grow up we grew up not being able to really see who we were when we were kids. You have snapshots at very specific moments you know the Easter Christmas and so on and so forth all those but you do not have necessarily pictures of you going to the beach you go into the market you just don't have them but we have those elements and we can then you know there's a picture that I keep which the two of them are hugging each other in the way and that's love that they share I remind them that this is something that they must keep but I have something to show them whereas we were told and so you could you could sort of imagine what it could have been but how do you imagine something that is so far in a memory and you didn't have the words to express it and I think that's the difference that we have today we have with technology of well-documented evidence of the changes that are happening in the lives and that becomes another tool that allows us to raise them in a way that we can show them what it looked like I can show you that picture where you hugged your brother the smile the expression that you had that is something that you can see and say okay well if that's the way I felt and to me it raises another important point when you grow up in a family you are taught to love your brothers and sisters it's not natural you grow up with these strangers but by default and then we get to a place in our life where there are challenges between siblings and we start to ask ourselves about what has happened well because we haven't learned to love the person that they have become we have held on to what we understood they were and that is something that we have to think through and how do we manage that part so a lot of challenges come in certain families because at some point you look at your brother your sister and say okay but how did you become that person but that's not the question the question is how do I love the person that you become not everything of course is perfect you know I'm not suggesting that you but there's that element around how do you express love that you were not taught that is going to evolve and that to me has become something that I'm very intentional about the children to realize that you are changing as a result you have to think about how do you love the brother of the sister that you have as they evolve to become the person that they will become yeah yeah well you know you've you've had this amazing an electoral background and the successful career all around the world and stuff a lot of times people that have had that really don't make this connection this emotional connection that you've made what do you think it is that was the catalyst that you mentioned your father but were there other things I mean the starting point of my life was in the understanding how you save lives so my father was a medical doctor my mother was a nurse and I think one of the reasons why I probably never became one is because I was tired of waiting for others you know they always had a patient or someone that they had to attend to and I spent my my sort of young young life just waiting in the car for them and to me that was okay you know yes you say you love me but I spend that time so that idea of waiting but at the same time a lot of dinner conversation were really about either life that was saved what they were able to do or life that was lost and you know but when I was growing up it was the HIV AIDS was a big problem in the community and they were treating those cases at the rate that I just couldn't understand what it meant but I understood that there was something different that was happening and that ability to see these two focus their energy on us but at the same time in all these lives and making me understand that you as an individual you have to think about how you continue to help others so even though you know I spent time in financial services and my focus has always really been around that idea that I'm of service too because somebody else whatever it is but it's never about me as an individual but it's really about how do I where I am how do I serve a certain purpose and that is probably one of the things that have helped me to then sort of process when I lost them my father 25 years ago and my mother about 10 years later what it means to be in that situation you know what it means to no longer have that compass that was that focused the entire energy on savings saving lives and also protecting yours in mind in a certain way so that's where it's coming from you know I think as I think but that's really where it's coming from and that really appetite for learning and really trying to understand myself otherwise I'm not able to actually be a good father and a good husband as well because there are things you mentioned seeing a counselor and I remember when my father passed away there's a lady that came and say I'm a psychologist and you know I'm here you know to me I was okay what is it? but she planted the seed and when I returned to university I found a counselor that I saw and I think that was probably one of those moments where you realize that you can deal with this on your own yeah it's just you're not prepared for those moments yeah you know we are prepared for celebrations we're not prepared for those moments especially when there are certain moments so you need help definitely yeah and that goes back to what we were talking about earlier I was telling you it's great to see to see a man first of all because I don't see many men in my work and to see and to see a black man is very rare because we are taught here and it sounds like where you are too kind of keep it inside to do it on your own and even now it's been 30 years since I saw that counselor it's a little bit embarrassing for me to say that I saw a counselor because it's just not something that's really done in our community but it changed my life I saw her for about a year and it really helped me to understand these feelings that I was having that I didn't know how to express I think we we have associated seeking help for your mental health as you being a mad person you know that's the expression that you know when that happens that you are just a mad person but in a way all of us have some level of madness just that the degree exactly exactly sometimes it's just extremely you really need help and you need some medication but ultimately it's asking yourself a question how do I use all the talents that I have to the full potential if I am not well inside and that question we don't often ask ourselves because you know with life we have so many forms of entertainment and there's a word that I love to look at the roots of words destruction it means that you are taking your attention away from what you're supposed to be focusing on so what are these things in life that are distracting us from asking a very simple question how do I continue to be the best that I am with all my capabilities and sometimes we seek help so we are comfortable to seek help to fix the car maybe to paint the house and all these different things that have nothing to do with us but when I was in a couple of weeks ago in Switzerland is that the interesting analogy that they use that your body is a container so if you think of it as a container what do you how do you make sure that the container and the alchemy inside the container is working well it's all connected yeah so you can say you know what I'm going to be fit physically but I'm not going to focus about how do I become fit mentally yeah so your brain then is a piece of work that just doesn't get any exercise so you lift weights you run and all these things but your brain you know what doesn't need any help we all need a little bit of help from time to time and to me that has been it's been a journey because when a lady came to me and she told me about okay I'm a psychologist I can help my first reaction was rejection but she planted the seed and then I realized that you know what I have nothing to lose well that word distraction is I think it's so important because I again I think about like yourself and your parents being medical professionals and you being so successful outwardly you know making money and stuff like that getting the titles and the education a lot of times we think okay that's me that's who I am and people will even say to you what do you mean you're sad or whatever you've got everything and we forget about because the body I agree as a container so we're also focused outwardly we're being distracted by those things outward that we're not focused on what's going on inside which is the only thing that's really important it is and all these other things are temporary in September last year I had a meeting when my manager told me it was over so the title left immediately but I remember having this conversation which I think was a very honest and candid conversation and to me was organization of a right to make decisions what comes to mind in that particular moment with this news have a logistics for my children because the beginning was cool yet but it was a moment of realization as well that the priority is how do I get my children to understand that the family just got a shock and how do I use that moment as a teaching moment that was the opportunity to be able to come as a family and say you know what this has happened this is how we're going to deal with it as a family and looking at my children almost a year later and how we have been able to navigate this I've given them tools to understand how you manage a shock Yeah I think that that's wonderful and the thing that all these things are temporary and sometimes life has to teach us these lessons and this is where grief comes in I was Kayla my daughter was nine months old so I was 38 years old and I was working in a job I was working for some microsystems and I got fired one day for something that wasn't really my fault or anything it was a long story but she's nine months old and I got fired and that's what you really you know a lot of people think okay well we identify so much with our jobs our career or our title Correct when that's taken away we completely fall apart and so those lessons come along and tell us okay that's not who you are all right that's not who you really are it takes us a while to get back on our feet but you know we make that adjustment yes you make the adjustment but also you get the opportunity to learn about yourself feelings of rejections that you didn't know maybe existed that someone somewhere has decided that you just line on an excel file that needs to be deleted right that's all it is by the end of the day so you go through the process of these emotions of rejections and so on and so forth and you say to yourself I mean I was saying to myself what a gift it was it may not sound for many people that but to me I was like no what a gift it is to be in a position where someone has decided that you need to get on a different path but you're not getting on that path because you are here so they had to do what they had to do for what was coming next and of course in the moment there are all sorts of emotions that people go through but the reality is that that act had to happen for what was going to follow yes otherwise so you can look at it and say oh how horrible it was you can look at it you know what actually you just you were the catalyst for what was coming and I have to appreciate that moment in that way with all the difficulty and the feelings that are going through everybody's mind in that moment and then you look back I mean it's not been that long it was September 2025 yeah wow but you know life has gone on and I couldn't have had a better opportunity to teach my children how do you manage a transition when it's a shock that happens and you know we were talking to the kids a couple of days ago because people we know found themselves in a similar situation and my daughter just said to a mom but that's what happened to Daddy so she has the blueprint of what it could be yeah at such a young age and that you can't replace you can't yeah and that's that's wonderful the way that you look at that is an opportunity and to be able to make that that transition so quickly now when I got fired I was I was angry I thought about suing I was scared I went through all those emotions I look at it now 30 plus 30 years later and I realized that was an opportunity and in fact it ended up opening other opportunities up for me that I ended up getting a job that was better and I made more money but at the time it felt like the end of the end of the world so that's the perspective that we can start to get it's it's it is and I'm not saying when it happened it was I was the most happiest person in the world that's what I'm saying yeah but what I also appreciated was the fact that in a way you have to be able to know yourself and sense that something is changing in your environment and those are small things you're no longer invited to certain meetings you never like you no longer don't get those emails so you start to see certain patterns and then you say you know what it's coming and you know when it happens yes of course you're still shocked but I had prepared myself for that day to come and the work on the book I started in February that year because I in 2024 late 2024 I met I had a conversation with someone who I connected on LinkedIn the next thing I know it's the same together Yende book festival that sort of pops up and I was like okay I've been writing this I had this idea of writing a book from the time my daughter was born and you know it's been it's been almost 13 years I had different maybe I should go to that conference but also wanted to go to a place where I've never been I wasn't likely to meet anybody that I know and then go so I went to San Miguel de Yende and I remember when I came back from there one of my colleagues was wondering okay what we're doing at the book festival in Mexico I just smiled and didn't say anything but inside of me I knew that this is what I needed and then the book started to sort of take shape and take form and that evening when I came home after I was fired my friend from Argentina who wrote forward sent me the forward that same evening because I was sitting at my desk okay what do I do tomorrow and I was like I guess you're going to finish this book so that's how sometimes when you are you're cognizant of a sign and the things that are happening you realize that it is actually a gift you will not necessarily see it in that moment I think that's something also I want to make sure that the listeners understand when it happened it's not that I was like wow what a wonderful gift no my mind was processing going through all these emotions and then you realize that in a way all the different things that I was doing in between my course at IMD on board governance a book and all these things actually kept me busy as I was trying to process and figure out what it was and you know the fact that this book was published in November has opened more doors than I even anticipated it would be they would open going to speak about forgiveness that forum in Switzerland would not have happened without that but I may not have finished also the book if I didn't get that sort of transition moment where suddenly I had more time on my hands yeah there's a saying that life can only be understood looking backward but must be lived going forward and one of the great things about getting older is you do have more time behind you and you can start to see the patterns and so when things do throw you off they don't throw you off as much I'm not saying like you said it's not like we revel in these things but it's like we'll see where this goes it becomes more of that than when you're younger and everything everything is the end of the world or a big disaster correct correct and you know as I said to the kids you understand your blessing forward in the future you don't understand them backwards otherwise normally and it's the same you have to see them as blessing pathways those that were locked that will open because guess what I mean God will never abandon you on the road they always be something that you make sure that you understand that there's a reason why I closed the door you know yeah you know it's funny because I'm an engineer by training and I like analyze things and so I I'd heard these things like you know life happens for you and stuff and I was like yeah I don't know if I really believe that or not and it's wild the older I get the more I do believe that the more I believe that things do happen for us we just can't really see it in the moment and as I write you know because I write on sub-stack a lot I'm telling people I can't prove this to you I can't I can't sit down and show you a formula or a path or I can't even give you a mechanism as to how it works but I can just tell you from experience that's the way it seems to work out yes and it does work out I moved to Nairobi about eight months ago and I remember my first professional trip when I started working in 2004 was in Nairobi and when I came here last year almost 21 years later I just looked at this moment and say to myself how life is that you know your first professional trip was here in Nairobi and when you embarking on this new professional transition that's where you land but this time you're no longer a professional tourist you are basically here now to sort of understand what this city has to offer for you to you I mean to me basically and it's just been a moment of appreciation for the fact that I'm back on the continent so you sort of spend your time in different parts of the world you learn a lot you appreciate a lot but there's nothing like being on the continent at the time when the continent itself is bustling with a lot of energy young people trying to figure out creating solutions and being able to observe and say to yourself my children are going to see this they're going to start having the environment which is built around the energy and the changes that are happening and they will not have to ask themselves whether they belong or not because the majority of people that are surrounding them will look like them so when you're raising that becomes the piece around raising children and trying to understand how do I find a place where more girls have the same hair texture as my daughter it may look trivial but it's not for a young girl trying to figure out her own identity and the question of belonging when you look around and like everybody has the same hair as I do okay so it means that when we're going to the swimming pool and we're coming out of a swimming pool we have the same opportunity in terms of how long you take to drive a hair yeah that's that's a really good point I've I've grown up you know here in America and surrounded mostly by people European background white people and I live in an area where it's mostly white people but I remember my girls when they were little one of my girls said like where are all the brown people why there's so many pink people around us and I I've only I've very very very rarely been in places where it's majority black or African background and I was in Jamaica for my honeymoon I remember being there for like a week and I felt so relaxed and I couldn't fret I mean I was on my honeymoon and I was in Jamaica but it was like everybody was like me and that's not an experience that we we have in America so that's an opportunity that your children are getting that that most people don't get here most black people don't get where I where I am yeah and being conscious of it helps also to make sure that the children understand it that difference is an opportunity to learn yeah and reassuring continually reassuring them that you are who you are yeah it's like it's like throwing dices okay the dice of the throne I was born in Abidjan yeah there's not much you can do about it yeah that's that's where he landed but he doesn't determine what you will become exactly and the journey is filled with all different all these different experiences where sometimes you're a minority and understanding what it means to be a minority and still be able to relate and engage with others is important other times well you don't have to figure out to ask yourself what you are because everybody around you yeah just is similar but all these are data points that when you get into the workplace become very important because unlike what my experience was they've already been in settings where they have to adjust yeah I grew up in Abidjan I left when I was late early 18 everything was more or less the same over time then I landed in Zimbabwe and for the first time I had to ask myself whether I'm Black or African I never had to ask myself the question before growing up in Abidjan oh wow yeah but in Zimbabwe given the history and the country became independent in 1980 and 18 years later there's still conversation about those elements and then I really had to start asking myself okay what does it mean to be Black because I never identified as Black I was Karl who was born in Cote d'Ivoire that's it the idea of what really didn't matter but in 1998 he started to matter and I really didn't belong with Black Zimbabweans because I didn't speak Shona and I was learning English at the time and White Zimbabweans or Indian Zimbabweans I just didn't fit into any of these different elements and I remember at some point we lived in a neighborhood that was called an Indian neighborhood and I was like what is an Indian neighborhood well very quickly understood what it meant everybody was there is Indian and the people that were working in their houses were people that look like me so suddenly you taking something which is normal the walk in your neighborhood there's no difference between you and the gardener except when you open your mouth maybe then so those are appreciations of how as a society we like to cluster and that gives a sense of safety a sense of belonging and then you know there are times when you look around and it's like it shouldn't be a question about safety you should feel safe regardless of you being in a minority situation or being in a majority situation because we're all humans and you know the external facial colors expression that we have it's just a data point but our ability to connect beyond so my last experience in Switzerland we were from all over the world but we all came and we all had experience of grief and this one grief to me has become such a powerful element because it is one thing that for sure you will experience it is and maybe people don't make the connection deeply enough you only experience grief because you loved you don't agree what you don't love if you don't have any feelings for that and a couple of months ago maybe you also remember there was a tower that was burning in Hong Kong that you remember seeing those images and I remember seeing that on the feed and then I just I scrolled past then I came back to it because I said but okay what kind of person have I become that I have this image actually it was a video of a tower that is burning and I can just scroll past this and you know so the world is losing empathy that's a really really good point you know because I do remember that and I remember when I was younger talking to a good friend of mine who happens to be Jewish and you know the stuff that was going on in Israel at the time and even you know like the Holocaust and I would say well I grieve for the people in the Holocaust and he goes you can't grieve for them because they're not your people and I'm like yeah but we're all we're all human so we are tribal in a sense and we do have color and we have race and we've got all that stuff but on the other hand we're all one tribe in another sense you know and hopefully I could feel empathy for people in Hong Kong or in Gaza or wherever they happen to be correct and at the moment with all the floods of information destruction that we get I think we may be losing our ability to empathize for things that we should be because we're humans yeah I agree and how do we bring this back? Well it starts in the home your children needs to understand that something that happens miles away from them has an impact on rest you know and when the the latest war started on the 28th of February it was still in the UAE I mean I happened to be in the UAE at the time and suddenly you realize that money can do certain things and the UAE was able to protect themselves in a way that many of the neighbors are not able to and suddenly your own experience of a war is very different because of the location that you find yourself in but you know it's sort of the designers of a country have decided they had to protect what they have built it's the same as protecting your mental health because you get attacks every day from different parts of the ecosystem some of them are useful data as are not but how do you shield yourself to be able to protect yourself and ensure that you can actually process what's coming and filter and allow to actually live a full life that's my hope There's got to be a balancer the thing is one of my favorite albums is Pink Floyd The Wall so I don't know if you're familiar with that with the album or the whole concept but you know the whole thing this guy he's building he gets he keeps seeing all these things happen in his life you know his father dies in the war and he goes into education and the educational system you know beats him up and he's building these this like shield around himself The Wall right and then he finds out basically The Wall is a prison because now he's inside and he's isolated and that's I think it's a really great analogy for our world it's like it is so much like you see that thing on Hong Kong you just scroll by because it's too much but if we do that too much then we're losing our humanity so we've got to find that balance to like I want to still feel the feelings I want to have empathy for people but I can't let it overwhelm me yes or being overwhelmed that's exactly what it is because at some point you saw that the defense system will also overwhelm so then if you fingers your body how do you protect yourself the body the container right and not being overwhelmed because sometimes you don't always see what's happening inside and then suddenly you have heart attack or you have all these different ailments that sort of pop but they've been building slowly that's what they are called silent killers but they also have to do with lifestyle and the things that you sort of carry on and one of these things that we have to learn how to manage is grief is loss is those emotions that come from being fired and so on and so forth and really getting into yourself and focusing your energy on your ability to start to understand who you are inside and how do you respond not react to the things that are coming your way because often we react and in the reaction then you sort of realize that your heart your blood pressure is going to go up your every all these elements are going up but eventually you have to bring them down I mean I went to a place yesterday where I made a booking and on the exchange text exchange everything is agreed I get to a place no they solve this the item to somebody else I say okay how is that possible? I showed them the message you say well you know it's first come first serve I say okay but I don't understand yeah you had agreed and I in that moment I was not furious I just said to the person can I speak to your manager to find a solution spoke to the manager manager said okay I'll give you a call tomorrow by 10 o'clock 1004 she calls me and she start by apologizing about the fact that she's she's late by four minutes and I said to her no I mean it's okay it's not the end of the world and I said I found a solution for you that's humanity exactly that someone realizing that a mistake was made and they find they're gonna find a solution it's not the perfect solution but the fact that she committed to 10 a.m. next day she did deliver on the call even if the answer was negative she respected me as a human being because she honored the word and I think as we go through life and having all these tools and that allows us to connect we cannot lose that ability to remember that we have to stick to our words because our word is what creates a bond between us yeah that ability to trust that what you are telling me I can rely on that information and I can actually be at peace and I don't have to worry I don't have to raise my blood pressure because I have to figure out okay is this gonna come is this gonna come and if it doesn't come what is the story that I'm gonna have to hear we have become very good storyteller of excuses that we should actually be storytellers of an opportunity that comes by sticking and believing in the fact that what you say is what's gonna happen and it may not happen but at least you committed to your word and you did what you had to do and you can give a rational explanation you had a person and not giving them stories that now they are okay and that to me is also being able to leave the next generation with the understanding that things may not always work the way we expect them to but we have to be true to our words and we have to be able to actually ask ourselves inside how would they how would I have felt if this had happened to me? Yeah I love what you said about responding versus reacting that's something I talk about all the time when I'm working with my clients and stuff and something I try to work on myself because we have that knee-jerk reaction that the anger the frustration the how could the injustice how could you do this to me and you know it's taking that time to sit down to take a beat to calm your heart down to lower your blood pressure and say you know how can we how can we find a solution of this as a focus as a focusing on what's happened to us so that's a very useful skill that I know that you're you're teaching I want to I want to talk about the project that you're working on with your daughter because it sounds fascinating to me so tell me about that you know that project last time I checked with her she said to me daddy I'm busy I was like we did season one she said I'm busy so I I she she loves art she's very much into drawing creating and one day I was I was recording a reel and she was sitting opposite me and she was giving me instructions and solicited okay you need to smile a little bit more you know you need to do this and so I looked at this okay I said you know what maybe you and I can do a podcast together and the idea was really create that intergenerational conversation about things that may be important to her that she had not thought about that that maybe I didn't know about her and then it took her a while to sort of say yes after she was excited about the idea and I remember asking a younger brother why do you think she doesn't want to do it she said to me just don't worry she'll say yes just be patient okay so eventually one day she wakes up and then she says to me okay let's do it and of course I nagged a little bit and then she said yes and we went through this series of 12 conversations and I discovered things about her that I wouldn't have known because the setup of a conversation was that she was also engaging with another adult and we had an artist we had a curator we had someone that has interior design because I discovered through a conversation that actually she's excited about interior design for some reason this had never come up in our conversation and the idea for me is for her and I to continue to be able to have this intergenerational conversation where she also gets to hear because when you're having this conversation she would discover things about me that maybe wouldn't have come up in a normal conversation and the fact that I can give her the opportunity to build a different resume because ultimately we live in a world today where creating is a lot more important than just doing you have to create something that didn't exist so I said to her I don't think I would have I wouldn't have done this with your brother because that's not something that is interested in but with you what I see is that one day you can decide to take this in different directions you can decide to celebrate but you know what it was possible to move from a place where I was not having these conversations with people that I've seen coming home others that I've never seen coming home and then get to learn about their journey so the season two that we had planned was basically going to be 12 African women or half women of African descent so that as a young girl growing up beyond seeing a mother she has the opportunity to observe how 12 different women have navigated the world in which they find themselves that's basically the idea of a project a project was to give her the tools to start to understand what she can become through the eyes of other adults season one was a mix of men and women but season two moving forward was going to be only women she can basically engage with all the relationship and remember in the beginning we were talking about the fact that when my father died people disappeared but because I never had a relationship with them they were interested in me because of what they were trying to get for my father but this guy will come and take me to tennis lesson I mean I was like okay it's not my favorite sport but okay the guy but because he needed something for my father much later so it's also another way of making sure that my daughter has both relationships with adults if something were to happen to me they have a relationship already I am not the distributor she has also created the old network that yes I was an initiator but she took them forward and that to me is something that I realized that I wish I had when it happened and we do things in a way that we because trauma has a certain way of making us and ask ourselves a question of how do I build things that were missing when I needed them so those are building blocks that I wish I had that I'm making sure that it's available to them yeah I think that's wonderful I love how you're so intentional about these things you know our parents your parents my parents I know they did the best that they could with what they did at the same and I remember you know talking to my counselor about it and she said something about like you know are you angry with them I'm like no I'm not angry with them and I'm saying I'm not I'm not to this day I mean they did the best they could but you we have an opportunity to say what is it that I needed that I didn't get and you're so intentional about providing that to both your daughter and your son I think it's wonderful and you're setting you're building great memories with them and you're becoming you're a great role model for them for what they can do you know with their children so I think we are the generation that can kind of heal you know heal that emotional gap that our society built because we are our parents and their generation they were like it was about getting food on the table it was about are you putting food on the table that's the only thing that really matter you know do you have clothes do you have food and you know they weren't taught about emotional intelligence I read a book when I was as in my probably late 20s early 30s it's called Wild at Heart by a guy named John Eldridge and it was about fathers and sons in the relationship I remember giving it to my father and he's like why are you giving me this book I was like I like for you to read it he goes I don't read books you know and it's a whole it was a whole thing and it's like and it's just he doesn't have that that school that skill that ability because he wasn't giving it from his father yeah we all we have that responsibility and to me that's what it is I just say they did the best that they could absolutely yeah but because they did the best that they could we also are able to identify with things that we believed we're not there so and that's a piece of gratitude to what they did that even with what we see as gaps we can only identify them because there was love yeah exactly yeah yeah and a lot that you said that and you made it very clear that there there was love in your home you know it's like we're saying there there wasn't love in her home just wasn't expressed the way that people we are doing it today yes that way of doing it today and I think you know that's also what was a priority it was survival yeah you know that's that's what it is and I you know I can see between myself and my older sister that were the first two and then there was a big gap than the other two they came at the time when my parents were had a little bit more yeah yeah so their experience is completely different yeah and you know sometimes I look at these two and a half years I think you guys were adopted and there are things that I was would have never dreamt of doing yeah they were fortunate enough that by the time they came my parents could afford for them to be in private school from the time they were in kindergarten until they finished yeah yeah yeah and that is a reality it doesn't mean that they love me less but they made me understand that this is what we can afford so that's also another way of expressing love without saying it it's like you know what I'll do what I can I'll put you in the best school that I can afford right and I'll give you I'll give you the best school I can afford even if you only have one or two items and some of your friends are more but that's what it is but it was never about they are better than you because they have more we had sufficient nothing extra I say the extra was sometimes the strawberries that would come unexpectedly and that was really the joy that you had to share with your your siblings and and and bottom line is it is because of all that it did that we are where we are yeah exactly we're coming close to their time so I want to make sure we talk about your book before I let you go so tell me about your book so the book is it's written as a in poetry form but it's actually a chronological story of what was my first memory of grief and I start the book talking about the fact that actually birth is a trauma that sort of sets element for grief but we don't have a way to express it because birth in itself is trauma you leave a space that you were confined protected and you have to get into this world and in some cultures in West Africa when a child is born they beat the drum because that mimics the rhythm of a heart that is used to he or she as a baby is used to but it's it's really a traumatic moment both for the mother and for the child so in a way I started the idea that grief is a companion and that companion starts the journey from the time we are born and they are triggers for me the first trigger was when I lost my grandfather from my mother's side and it happened to be buried on my first communion it's just the way it happened so I have this very vivid memory of walking into the church with this beautiful hymn on this glory on this holiday that God has given us just didn't resonate true because at that age my God was my grandfather but he's gone so and the journey around grieving continues and then you know 25 years ago my father passes in very difficult circumstances and I buried that memory for a while in working and continuing to just focus on learning and working and learning and working and then at some point the trigger was actually birth and my daughter was born and then I was I remember holding her and then asking myself but how do I become a father I never had this conversation with my own father and you know the opportunity never presented itself and that's the moment where I said you know what I need to write about who he was so that she knows what grandfather was so I started writing then but I never finished the book it's still there somewhere on the computer and then I when I went to you know 13 years later I go to Samigatayende and then it's a poetry form that comes to express the story of what all these things that I've gone through I've made be to become a father because by the end of the day you know it's a collection of all these emotions the joy, the pain, the grief and on that day when I became a father to decide to be the best father that could be for her and then my son came two years later and to continue that journey with both of them but also writing is a form of legacy not necessarily to be remembered but to allow people to read what was going through my mind in that time and what this book has become for me is a place that I return even though I wrote it's a place that I return to and in those moments when I return to it I always find something different different emotion a different way of not because it's the best book in the world it's because it carries the emotions of what I became Yeah, yeah Well that's wonderful and it's been really a pleasure getting to meet you today and have this conversation and to learn about your works and your kids that you're leaving the legacy that you're leaving in the world you're making the world a better place so remind people of the name of your book and if people can reach you how can people reach you? The title is I Can Breathe and the reason why I didn't choose another title is because when you read it you're speaking to yourself I can breathe It's available on Amazon if you want to reach me I'm on Instagram I am LinkedIn and I make sure that I respond to the messages but most importantly for me being here and having this conversation is to realize that we are one Yeah, yeah and that's a power and the book that I wrote brought me to for us to have this conversation grew up miles apart Yeah Some years difference but we had the same experience Yeah, exactly Well again thank you so much for doing this great to see I don't know what time it is where you are but have a great rest of your day Thank you so much Brian I was going to connect