[upbeat R&B music] - What's up, everybody?

My name is Nate Ollie, and I am honored to welcome you to Fatherhood, where we aim to uplift voices and redefine legacy.

This show is all about giving black fathers a platform to share their real and raw experiences, their trials, their triumphs, and the invaluable lessons that come with being a father in today's world.

Now, for some, that journey may have taken an unexpected turn, one that separates them from their children, their families, and even from themselves.

And today, we are gonna be sitting down with a group of fathers who have faced one of the toughest battles, incarceration during their child's life.

They've turned struggle into strength, trials into testimonies, and their past into purpose.

This is Resilient Fathers: A Story of Redemption.

Now, here to help me drive this conversation today, this important topic, is Pastor Sean Calhoun of COGIC Prison Ministries, the Assistant Director of 901 BLOC Squad, Mr. Brian Tillman, as well as songwriter and entrepreneur, Jordan Williams.

Welcome, gentlemen.

Now, we've heard how fatherhood is shaped by our experiences, right?

But for each of you, that journey took a difficult turn.

So, what I'd like to talk about first is the circumstances that led you to incarceration and how it impacted your relationship with your children.

And Pastor Calhoun, I'd love to start with you for that one.

- I think the first thing is my father not being in my life and doing what I thought was best, living a life of crime, drugs, gangs, fighting.

And that put me in prison at 18 years old, as a kid.

And I grew up in prison, and I just think that I was misguided, because of my father not being there.

I was smart.

I could do all the book work, but in my mind, I ain't have no money.

So, it was all said and done, I wanted some paper, and so I did what I thought would be best for me to get some paper without robbing people, or stuff like that.

And that mentality led me in prison.

- So, with me growing up in public housing, falling in love with instant gratification at a early age, I was exposed to every negative attribute that you possibly could imagine.

I'm actually from a 38126 zip code, which is the poorest zip code in this city.

So, at a young age, I was an athlete, three-sport athlete, straight A student.

But having a father that was absent at the time, I got entangled in the streets.

And that led to me developing a hunger and a thirst for money, for the fame, to be seen.

And those action, attitudes, and behavior landed me in federal prison with a astronomical sentence and basically put me in a predicament and a situation to where I couldn't be present to be the father that I needed to be.

But I used that as a springboard and as a platform, that was my why.

I didn't want my children to experience what I had experienced.

So, that was the fire that ignited me to change my action, attitudes, and behavior.

Because kids, they emulate what they see you do, not what they hear you say.

So, I couldn't tell my son, don't gang bang and don't sell dope if I was continuing to do it.

So, I made the transition, made the preparations while I was incarcerated to come home, to be the man of God that God had called me to be.

- That's what's up.

- I love it, I love it.

And that, I love what you said, specifically, around what children see, you know?

'Cause at the 100 Black Men of America, which I'm a part of, I'm a member of, we have a saying, is, "What they see is what they'll be."

And it's so, so very, very true.

And I think that we could have an entirely different panel discussion on instant gratification- - Oh, yes sir.

- But Jordan, I would love for you to tap in on that question as well, in terms of the challenges you faced during incarceration.

- Yes, sir.

Well, I'll go, like he said, I actually grew up in the 38126 area also.

And my father was present.

He did come around very often.

We spent a lot of time together.

However, he wasn't able to implement the teachings, I didn't get to, he told me, but I didn't get to watch him show me, you know?

So, a lot of my habits I learned from my mother, and a lot of those habits tie into instant gratification.

You know, women used to getting their way.

So, I mean, I can say it now, I was used to getting my way, and life was somewhat easy for me.

I never struggled, I never studied for tests, I was really intelligent, so I passed everything with flying colors without ever trying.

And I just thought life was gonna be like that for me forever.

And when the opportunity came to make money, more money than I was making working at McDonald's, I took it and I didn't look back no more.

So I was only incarcerated for a short amount of time.

However, it taught me a lot.

And in the time that I was in a battle with my first daughter's mother and also waiting for my second daughter to be born.

So I had one daughter being put in foster care in Florida, and I had another daughter on the way.

And I was like, "Man, I just gotta make sure I get outta here and I do not come back."

But real quick, one thing people don't think about a lot of times as black men, our mother, sometimes they raise us, but they raise us to fill that void of not having that man in the home.

And we make a lot of decisions based off of trying to be there for mama when we really gotta figure out how to be there for ourselves so that we can be there for everyone that needs us.

Because mama, she don't mean no harm, you know what I mean?

But she feel like she need help.

And as a young man, as a man coming into his manhood, you feel like you want to help her.

And it can be to your detriment if you don't make the right decisions or if she's not in a position to tell you not to make those decisions.

That comes from having a father, for sure.

- Absolutely.

- Absolutely.

So my next question for the group is, well, I'd love to get y'all's take or your insights on what it's like coping with feelings of guilt, or regret as it pertains to not being there for your children during that time y'all were behind bars.

- I'll start off.

I mean, the guilt was, in all reality, I'm not there, but the real reality of the guilt was I was immature and I knew that I was not ready to be a father, even though I had fathered children.

And so being there burned all the bad off.

And I grew up by reading the Word and wanting to be a father.

And it gave me time and space to look at myself and to have a desire, because they say absence make the heart grow fonder.

So in the absence of being there, away from my children, it made me, to say as Jordan said, "When I come back this time, I ain't going nowhere."

And so, and I took that time to redefine my mentality as a father.

And I believe this, fatherhood is a opportunity to cultivate greatness.

And that's what I'm doing.

I'm cultivating greatness.

My daddy told me, he said, "I can't go back and redo the past."

He said, "All we can do is work from here."

And that's my mentality.

I made some mistakes in the past, but guess what?

Man, as long as I'm here, we pushing forward, we gon' correct what need to be corrected, and guess what, we gon' win.

- Gon' win.

- At the end of the day, we gon' win this thing.

And not over there, no, we gon' win together, 'cause I'm committed to it.

And I'm telling you, I'll take my last breath on everything.

Man, I'm there for my family.

I'm gonna do whatever it takes, 'cause if I soldier like that in the world for the devil, oh man, I ain't, I'm talking about, I was fighting for nothing, man.

I'm fighting for my blood.

I'm fighting for my children, man, you ain't seen me warm up yet.

And when it come to that, so I mean, man, we take all the pegs out when it come to me being there for them.

I take all my negative experiences, stuff that I didn't learn, that I didn't know.

And man, I'm putting it all in this fire for them children, for that family, for those that's coming behind me.

And whatever I took, I'm gonna try to make sure I'm in the way so they don't have to take them same hits.

- Amen, amen.

- Prison for me, was the best thing could have ever happened to me.

Sometimes something had to go wrong before something go right.

My experience in prison was that God used prison to do me like he did to children of Israel.

Prison to me was the backside of the desert.

He was preparing me and equipping me for the promised land.

Had he gave me the promised land at 18, when I went to prison, I would've destroyed it.

I would've totally destroyed it, because mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, I wasn't ready.

Prison taught me how to be a man, but it taught me how to be a man, because it forced me to connect to something that I had never seen.

Authentic manhood and unconditional love.

But it wasn't found in a man, prison forced me to connect myself to the creator.

I couldn't give my son what I didn't have.

So in order for me to be prepared and equipped to give him what he needed, I needed to connect myself to God who is love.

There's no way for you to give love, disconnected from love.

God is love.

So when I connected myself to God, he showed me how to love him.

And in turn, he showed me how to love myself.

And with that, he taught me how to love my son properly as a father, you can't give what you don't have.

So prison equipped me and prepared me to come back out here and give my son what he really needed.

An example of what authentic manhood really looks like.

- For sure, for sure.

- Amen.

- For sure, for sure.

- Absolutely.

You said that, I think, that's something that a lot of our viewers needed to hear specifically.

So I appreciate you sharing that perspective, Brian.

We were kind of talking about this earlier, but I would love to get y'all's thoughts on how the media portrays us as black fathers.

[Brian laughs] - Man, do we got time?

- We got a little time.

- Well, I guess I'll answer since this, we go this way for now.

So from what I can tell, when I look out into the world, when I look out into the media space as far as black fathers, it would seem as if they want to tell a story about what black fatherhood looks like.

But they never tell the story, or allow it to be told by an actual black father.

And I think that comes from the fact that just our culture in general, we don't own the things that make our culture what it is.

We create at a very rapid pace, not just children, but talents and our talents and our ideas create so much for society.

And sometimes that gets taken away from us.

And then it overshadows some of the things that are actually happening in our community and our lives that are shaping us into the men and the fathers that we are today.

And right now, I don't think society gives us enough credit for going out of our way from my generation trying to be the fathers that television has told us we were, absent, not there, not caring.

So now, we're overly caring at times, or we're overly there.

And it's still, to some degree not appreciated, because society has told the women that that's not what we do.

So when they encounter it, it's kind of like, "Whoa, he's actually here?

"He's actually wants to be present?

"He actually wants to change the diapers and feed the baby?

I didn't think men did this type of stuff."

But we do and we wanna do it, 'cause we don't want to have this stigma on us that we don't care, or that we're not gonna be there.

And we certainly went through a lot not having our own fathers, whether they were in our lives or present often, but we still didn't get it the way that I think we need it.

And so now we wanna make sure that that isn't the issue for our children or the generation that's to come.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

So for me, I think that the narrative and the framework of who we are as black men, the initiative is being pushed and the picture's being painted by individuals that aren't black men.

So I don't think it's a fair assessment for someone who hasn't walked in my shoes to be able to tell my story.

So I feel like that story that they're painting is incorrect.

- Yeah, and to your point, I mean, the data shows that black fathers are more present in a child's lives than our counterparts.

So I'd love to move on to the next topic, or the next question, rather.

In what ways do y'all feel like society underestimates, or overlooks, the role we have as black fathers today?

- So the thing is, looking at it from a different lens, if the presence of African-American men wasn't important, why is it when women receive assistance from the government and the foundation of what is considered to be a home that can thrive, why is it that the black man is eliminated from the equation, if we're part of the problem, rather than being the solution?

It's, to me, that's a oxymoron.

But it drives the point home that we are important, we are powerful, and they want us to be absent.

Because the thing is, the men are the head of the home.

From the creation of the world, the man has been the head.

And they've painted the picture to women and to think that, "Hey, you can take that position on and be a man."

A woman can teach a child to be a lot of things, but she can't teach 'em how to be a man.

That's the role and the responsibility of the man.

And that's why they're trying to eliminate us.

Because if we teach our black sons who they really are, not just teaching them what we've heard, but teaching them the things that we're displaying in our actions, attitudes and behavior.

If this catch fire from household to household, and black men take their rightful role as the head in our communities, in our home, we're gonna be powerful.

We're gonna control the narrative.

And that's scary to other people.

- Yeah, we'll be unstoppable.

- Absolutely.

- One thing, when we deal with culture, you have to deal with over time, traditions.

Culture is the majority of what they think and what they believe.

And I think that when it comes to society about black fathers, the culture has been what it is no longer.

And we, as black men, we changed the narrative by us showing up, staying strong and not, and not listening to all the noise.

But we, even as the statistics, the numbers has proven that, hey, we are there.

And this last point, everything through history that you wanted to destroy a people, you always remove the male.

Every, no matter where you go.

And the mere fact that we show up, not that you give us a pat on the back, because celebrating us as men for being a father is not a celebration.

It's our responsibility.

So whether you celebrate me or not, I'm showing up to do what I got to do, because I recognize the mere fact that I'm there, it's gon' stop so much other stuff that can't come there.

Last point, as young men, when we got to any girl we was going to see, when they mama came to the door, we smile and say, "Hey, Ms. so and so."

But when dad came to the door, you gotta change your whole game up, 'cause you know you ain't getting no boo tonight.

[laughs] It changed everything.

And so the mere fact that we show up and we're present, we changed the game.

- Now, I would love to hear from each of you about the most powerful lesson you learned about yourself through the process of rebuilding your relationship with your children.

- Okay, I'll go for that one.

So, rebuilding with my oldest daughter has been difficult.

She's in another state, Kamo.

Kamo's laws won't allow her to be sent back here, even when she wasn't in her mother's custody, now that she's in her mother's custody, it's hurtful, it's hurtful at times that she won't respond to a text, or a phone call unless they need something.

Unless her mother has told her that she needs something from me.

And so now it's time for her to help mom and reach out to dad, because dad's gonna do it for the baby, even though he might not do it for mom, which is not true.

I send money every week up, even when I was locked up, I was sending what I could.

So having the dynamic of, I have this one daughter that I love that lived with me for years, not living with her mother, just lived with me, I raised her, I took her to school every day.

I cooked her food, and now we have this somewhat estranged relationship, because her mother has put it in her mind that, "Daddy doesn't love you as much, "because he can't come 3,000 miles, or 1,500 miles when you need him or you want to see him."

It's difficult.

But I have my other daughter here, she's just turned two.

I have my first son in probably the next six to eight weeks.

- Congratulations.

- So I'm just looking forward to making sure that I get myself in a better position so I can bridge the gap regardless of where my children end up, I wanna make sure that there's a bridge that I can always cross to get to them.

And so that they know that my help and my presence is available to them whenever they need.

And it's a day-to-day thing.

It's a day-to-day thing.

Every day I wake up trying to just do better, get better, work on something.

And as man, I believe it's very important that we create, we are made in the image of God and God is a creator.

And anytime I'm not creating, I don't feel like a man.

And going through that incarceration thing, it taught me a lot about myself.

I'm a soft-spoken guy, but I learned, like Brian said, I learned a lot about being a man, having to be around nothing but men and having to conduct yourself as a man, being held accountable on how you conduct yourself, how you speak, how you walk, how you talk, how you do everything.

It just put me in a better perspective for when I got back that, "Okay, I think I better understand how I need "to be moving in the future "and controlling my emotions when dealing with the mothers of my children."

Because if they're emotional and then I get emotional, what do we have?

We have no order.

So actually going to jail taught me how to control my emotions much better.

So now, I don't do the back and forth.

- One of the things for me is when I look at my children, I see myself, I see the mistakes that I made, but I see the greatness that I could've became had my dad been there.

So as I look at them, I see me.

And so that's what gives me the challenge, because I honestly, since I have been home, one of the things that I tell my children is, "You will be better than me.

"You will be stronger than me.

"You will be smarter than me.

You will be more successful than me."

That is their commandment from their father.

Because I know that had I had that conversation since I was a young kid, I would be better than what I am right now.

So when I see them, I'm not the person that's when they make a mistake, "Oh, this, that, and other."

I say, "All right, cool, but we gon' do better."

And so I see greatness.

And that's why I said earlier, fatherhood is the opportunity to cultivate greatness.

And so when I see my children, I see them as with great potential.

And it is my job to help that potential come into fruition.

Because potential is not a promise, it's a possibility.

And when people have potential, if they don't have the right cultivation, then that potential will never come into fruition.

But when I look at them and I see what they're great at, I see what they're weak at, it's my job as a father to not see failure.

It's my job as a father to see how can I help them bring the greatness that's on the inside of them into fruition.

And I'm looking every day for them to be better and stronger.

One of the things that I told my children is, and I know this may sound a little arrogant, I'm looking for the day they don't even know who their dad is, "'Cause they know who y'all are, because you will be greater than me."

That is my commitment.

I want you to be stronger, wiser in everything to where, when it'll be, it won't be, "Hey, Calhoun, these your children?"

He'd be like, "Man, is that your daddy?"

Because coming up, I didn't have a father like that, and so that is my commitment to when I see my children, is that I'm committed to their greatness.

- What about you, Brian?

- So, for me, the transition from incarceration to being a father was one of the biggest challenges of my life.

I had a lot of work to do in a uphill battle, because basically my kids had been in an environment where the other parent was their friend.

So for me to come home and change the narrative, the dynamics and that framework, and based upon the fact I had been in an environment where I had to be aggressive, I had to be a predator in order to survive and to come home with that strong will, that accountability, that structure and that discipline, it made me be the bad guy with my kids.

- Oh man.

- But I made a promise to myself that although they didn't understand my stance and me standing on big business at the time for what I knew was right and what I know what would benefit them in their latter years, I took that stand.

And I can honestly say today that I'm glad that I did take that stance.

Because it was the difference in changing the trajectory of their lives.

And that discipline now is very much appreciated.

They respect the fact that regardless of how they felt, I stood on business.

Even with my son.

The most challenging conversation I had with him is when I came home, we had a misunderstanding about the fact that every kid wants his mom and daddy to be together.

But the reality is we had grown apart and that wasn't gonna be, so what I had to tell him was, "Son, one day you're gonna be a man "and you're gonna go on with your life and raise a family.

"And I can't make a permanent decision "about a temporary circumstance to appease you, 'cause one day you're gonna go on with your life."

And now, at 24 years old, he's a diesel mechanic and lives in Dallas and he's married and has a family of his own.

And at his wedding, three years ago, after he said, "I do."

He said he was never coming back to Memphis."

I said, "Now, I wanna take you back to when I first came home, remember what I told you."

All he could do was accept it and respect it.

He couldn't neglect it.

The truth had manifested itself into fruition.

That was my stance.

That was my challenge I overcame.

So as a father, I'm proud.

- Absolutely.

- Full circle moment.

- Full circle moment.

- Love it, love it.

Well, gentlemen, I really appreciate y'all spending your precious time with us today.

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.

I enjoyed hearing each one of you's perspective on fatherhood and what it means to you and your children.

And I want to thank all of you for joining us today on Fatherhood.

And until next time, keep uplifting voices, redefining legacies, and always, always, always fighting for fatherhood.

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