Coming Back to move forward

Coming back allowed me to see—not just through screens or headlines, but face to face. I saw the pain in people I love, in people I share history with. The kind of pain you can’t understand from a distance.

I’m not here to deliver something. I’m here to discover something—with them. Because the real gift isn’t in some program or intervention. The real gift is in us—our conversations, our shared memories, our presence with one another.

And being with them, not as a provider of answers, not as someone with a plan in a box—but just as a human—deepened my commitment. It fortified my commitment to recovery and to justice for all. I let them know: I don’t have it all figured out. But I’m here. And I want to listen.

I’m not here to deliver something. I’m here to discover something—with them. Because the real gift isn’t in some program or intervention. The real gift is in us—our conversations, our shared memories, our presence with one another.

This life, these relationships—they’re the packages we’re meant to open. And inside, we find the joy we bring to each other’s lives.

I stand in both realities, a part of mine is yours and vice versa.

Two Places, one heart.

Can a person belong to two places at once?

Can they carry two concerns, hold two loves, walk two journeys?

I believe they can.

I believe I do.

Some might call that a contradiction.

But to me, it feels like truth.

Like wholeness.

I am from there—the city that made me, tested me, taught me.

And I am here—in a place that has welcomed me, grown me, given me peace.

And I love them both.

I am responsible to both.

Perhaps “place” isn’t the best word for it.

Because this doesn’t feel like geography.

This feels like presence.

This feels like being.

Being, I’m learning, can stretch across time.

It can live in multiple homes.

It can love without dividing.

It can return without losing.

It can root without becoming stuck.

So yes, I belong to two places.

And maybe that means I don’t fully belong to either in the way people expect.

But I do belong—to the story.

To the people.

To the purpose that stretches between them.

Every person I met with, on my last trip, is either a memory to be reckoned with or a promise to be hoped for. Featured here are my friends Stacy and her beaux, Bryant.

This is the first place I stepped in 1989, upon my arrival to Abilene, Texas—the notorious 13th Street

In my new city I get to use all of the lessons I learned from the old one. Here I am speaking up at the Commissioners Court, advocating for justice and decarceration of our local jails.