Not lectures. Not lessons. Just things noticed, questions raised,
and ideas held loosely. Growth begins when we are willing to ask better questions.
Identity March 2025
On the difference between who and how
We spend a lot of time asking who someone is. Their name, their job, their credentials, their accomplishments. We have entire social rituals built around answering that question the handshake, the title, the resume. But those answers tell us very little about the things that actually matter. How does someone treat people when they're tired, or disappointed, or afraid? How do they show up when it's inconvenient? That is the question I keep returning to.
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The distinction between who and how is not just philosophical. It has practical implications for everything, for counseling, for parenting, for leadership, for the way we understand ourselves. We can have a very clear sense of who we are (a husband, a pastor, a professional) and still have very little clarity about how we are being those things. CAMM begins there not with roles, but with the way we inhabit them.
Reflection January 2025
What I learned from listening
Years of sitting with men, particularly Black men, in counseling spaces taught me more than any study could. Not just what they said, but how they said it. The pauses. The redirects. The things that came out sideways because there wasn't a straight path to them.
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Men are often described as not wanting to talk. I found something different. They wanted to talk they just needed a space where talking was not going to cost them something they couldn't afford to lose. Building that kind of space is the real work. Everything else follows from it.
CAMM November 2024
The four dimensions are not a checklist
CAMM grew out of observation, not a predetermined framework. And what I observed again and again in counseling, in research, and in life was that the dimensions don't line up neatly. They don't take turns. They aren't sequential. They talk to each other constantly.
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Someone's relationship to spirituality will directly shape how they experience their sense of self. Their sense of self will shape how they show up in relationships. Their relationships will shape how they engage with their community. And their community the stories it tells, the values it holds, the expectations it carries — will shape their spirituality. CAMM is a model for holding that complexity, not a formula for resolving it.
Philosophy September 2024
On why I stopped leading with my credentials
There was a time when I opened every introduction with my title, my degrees, my publications. It felt like the expected thing, the thing that established credibility, that earned the room. And then I started noticing how it closed things down. People would sit back. They would become recipients of expertise rather than participants in a conversation.
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Credentials matter. Training matters. Experience matters. But I have found that the most useful thing I can offer in most conversations is not what I know it's the quality of my curiosity. The willingness to be genuinely interested. The decision to treat the person in front of me as the expert on their own life. That doesn't mean abandoning preparation. It means holding it lightly enough to actually listen.
Culture July 2024
Culture is not a backdrop, it's an actor
One of the most persistent errors in how we think about masculinity, especially in clinical and educational spaces, is treating culture as context rather than cause. As the backdrop against which the real story unfolds, rather than one of the main characters.
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Culture doesn't just influence how men behave. It shapes what they believe is possible. What we believe we deserve. What we believe it means to be strong, or to struggle, or to ask for help. The CAMM takes culture seriously as an active force, not an excuse, not an explanation, but a participant in the ongoing construction of identity. You cannot understand how a man is doing without understanding the cultural world he is doing it inside of.
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More conversations to come
These reflections are ongoing. New thoughts are added as the work continues —
which is to say, regularly. If something here resonates, or raises a question
of its own, reach out. That's the point.