My early adult life appeared enviable. I graduated from an elite university, traveled the world, and listed stints in politics, consulting, and finance on my résumé. My future seemed secure after accepting a scholarship to a top-10 law school. But the exterior was just a gleaming facade. Inside I was hollow, searching for something I could not name or point to. I did not know that the road there ran downward, or how I would come to walk it.
A few months before starting my law career, I came to clarity handcuffed to a hospital bed. Five years of incarceration followed, most in 8′×10′ cells on the max-security tiers of Chicago’s infamous Cook County Jail. What carried me through were the love of family and friends, the teachings and techniques of wisdom traditions I’d never before taken seriously — and the men I encountered and befriended in prison. These were “the worst of the worst,” I was told — and being locked behind bars with them was supposed to make me scared and miserable. But something very different transpired: just as Life was forcing me to make sense of the unthinkable, I was in the company of men who had been both victims and perpetrators of extraordinary trauma. Over the course of thousands of hours of friendship and informal therapy within those cinder-block walls, we went places that few would visit of their own accord. We explored death, and grief, and shame, and trauma. Guilt and the loss of innocence, and the potential within every human being for both unspeakable evil and unfathomable love.
These thousands of hours of staring at the human shadow shape my work. They are more valuable than any degree or certificate.
In the years since release, I’ve continued the practices that saw me through, while adding new ones that weren’t available behind bars: music, dance, community dinners, mentorship given and received. Professionally, I counsel patients at a free substance-use treatment clinic in one of Chicago’s most underserved neighborhoods. There, I continue to stare at shadows and help others open their eyes to see for themselves. For on the other side of every shadow is the Light.
