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Gracefully Imperfect
Gracefully Imperfect episodes
- Dear Firstborn
In this episode, we reflect on becoming a Father to a 12-year-old. From selfishness to realizing the sacred mission of fatherly nurturance and protection, our Firstborn continues to teach us about the essence of living life to her fullest capacity.
In the spirit of Ubuntu (e.g., “a person is a person through their relationship with other people”), this intimate reflection will help you draw parallels, become inspired, and develop a sense of curiosity.
Proclamations for deep reflection:
“Fatherhood is healing-centered, and consequently, a liberating force.”
Recent Collaboration:
Collaboration Special w/ Revolutionary Social Work Podcast
6/28/2025, 12 pm MST / 2 pm EST
Listen/Watch the last episodes of Gracefully Imperfect:
Ways to Connect and Support Genuinely:
Order my self-written poetry anthology, "The Depths Below"
Subscribe to the Podcast, share with a loved one, and write a review—we are on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, too!!
Subscribe and share the Substack publication, CREATIVST.
Subscribe and share Soul Medicine
Send comments and feedback to the business email -[email protected]
Connect, follow, and share on LinkedIn and the Service page
Connect, follow, and share on Fanbase
Connect, follow, and share on Instagram
Get full access to CREATIVST. at creativist.substack.com/subscribe30 min - The Origins of Liberation Social Work
In this episode, we briefly explore how liberation social work, as an alternative perspective and lens, emerged and some of its key influences. We highlight the inspirations of NTU, Optimal Conceptual Theory, and the science of African Psychology.
In the spirit of Ubuntu (e.g., “a person is a person through their relationship with other people”), this intimate reflection will help you draw parallels, become inspired, and develop a sense of curiosity.
Proclamations for deep reflection:
“Liberation is the process of purging and untethering the soul, freeing from alien consciousness and the power bases that stagnate and delimit the illumination of the soul and the expansiveness of social and cultural consciousness. Its means and aims are predicated on a human life enhancing paradigm, supported by dignity-affirming values and informed and expressed by particular cultural orientations. - Brotha Kyle Toon
“The family, which includes the living, the dead. and those yet-to-be born, is the center. The family or peoplehood is the center of existence. It is the center of the universe. For African people our peoplehood thusly becomes the source of human definition.” - Dr. Wade Nobles
Upcoming Events:
Collaboration Special w/ Revolutionary Social Work Podcast
6/28/2025, 12 pm MST / 2 pm EST
On Apple, YouTube, & Spotify
Listen/Watch the last episodes of Gracefully Imperfect:
Ways to Connect and Support Genuinely:
Order my self-written poetry anthology, "The Depths Below"
Subscribe to the Podcast, share with a loved one, and write a review - We are on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, too!!
Subscribe and share the Substack publication, CREATIVST.
Subscribe and share Soul Medicine
Send comments and feedback to the business email -[email protected]
Connect, follow, and share on LinkedIn and the Service page
Connect, follow, and share on Fanbase
Connect, follow, and share on Instagram
Get full access to CREATIVST. at creativist.substack.com/subscribe33 min - So Much Things To Say Pt. 2
In this episode, we explore personal facets of life, such as addressing past, present, and future traumas, family, graduation, and seeking meaning through fatherhood, as well as domestic and global geopolitical realities. We also examine the power of collectivity as a people-oriented instrument of power to combat systems of oppression.
In the spirit of Ubuntu (e.g., “a person is a person through their relationship with other people”), this intimate reflection will help you draw parallels, become inspired, and develop a sense of curiosity.
A quote for deep reflection:
“We must understand the tremendous value of the study of history for the re-gaining of power. If our education is not about gaining real power, we are being miseducated and misled and we will die “educated” and misled.”
- Dr. Amos N. Wilson
Upcoming Events:
Juneteenth Collaboration Special w/ Revolutionary Social Work Podcast
6/19/2025, 7 am MST / 8 am CST / 9 am EST
https://riverside.fm/studio/aces-studio-T1Ehj
Ways to Connect and Support Genuinely:
Order my self-written poetry anthology, "The Depths Below"
Subscribe to the Podcast, share with a loved one, and write a review - We are on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, too!!
Subscribe and share the Substack publication, CREATIVST.
Subscribe and share Soul Medicine
Last article on Soul Medicine: A Liberation Social Workers Perspective
Listen/Watch the last episode of Gracefully Imperfect:
Send comments and feedback to the business email -[email protected]
Connect, follow, and share on LinkedIn and the Service page
Connect, follow, and share on Fanbase
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Get full access to CREATIVST. at creativist.substack.com/subscribe35 min - So Much Things to Say Pt. 1
In this episode, we delve into the multiplex realities informing the sociocultural and sociopolitical experiences of Black and Brown bodies. The focus lies on the forces and apparatuses interfering, disrupting, and generating chaos in our ecosystems, worldviews, value systems, priorities, interaction with reality, and consciousness. In the spirit of Ubuntu (e.g., “a person is a person through other people”), this intimate reflection will help you draw parallels, become inspired, and develop a sense of curiosity.
A quote for deep reflection:
“…if Afrikans are to liberate themselves from European domination, empower themselves, enrich their quality of life, they must repudiate the power of Europeans to characterize their ethnicity and through it, gain power over them by characterizing their own perceptions of themselves..” - Dr. Amos N. Wilson
Ways to Connect and Support Genuinely:
Subscribe to the Podcast, share with a loved one, and write a review - We are on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, too!!
Subscribe and share the Substack publication, CREATIVST.
Subscribe and share Soul Medicine
Last article on Soul Medicine: A Liberation Social Workers Perspective
Listen/Watch the last episode of Gracefully Imperfect:
Order my self-written poetry anthology, "The Depths Below"
Send comments and feedback to the business email -[email protected]
Connect, follow, and share on LinkedIn and the Service page
Connect, follow, and share on Fanbase
Connect, follow, and share on Instagram
Get full access to CREATIVST. at creativist.substack.com/subscribe33 min - Reality This, Reality That
In this episode, we delve into the concept of reality, touching on the contours of its influencing, persuasive, and controlling nature of our minds, emotions, consciousness, behaviors, and personality wiring. Reality depends on a people's ontological and epistemic structure. So, in other words, reality is best understood and interpreted through a culture's particular knowledge and truth-seeking systems. In the spirit of Ubuntu, this intimate reflection will help you draw parallels, become inspired, and develop a sense of curiosity.
A quote for deep reflection:
“Our children is brought up with wisdom and understanding. We was brought up in ignorance, that we had to search to find the truth. But our children born and from them born them hear the truth.” - Bob Marley
Ways to Connect and Support Genuinely:
Subscribe to the Podcast, share with a loved one, and write a review - We are on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, too!!
Subscribe and share the Substack publication, CREATIVST.
Subscribe and share Soul Medicine
Last article on Soul Medicine: A Liberation Social Workers Perspective
Listen/Watch the last episode of Gracefully Imperfect:
Order my self-written poetry anthology, "The Depths Below"
Send comments and feedback to the business email -[email protected]
Connect, follow, and share on LinkedIn and the Service page
Connect, follow, and share on Fanbase
Connect, follow, and share on Instagram
Get full access to CREATIVST. at creativist.substack.com/subscribe37 min - Talkin' Love Pt. 2
In this episode, we continue the discourse on Love. Traveling through adolescence to adulthood, I open the portal to some life experiences that have partially shaped and influenced my Love journey. Eventually, my Wife and I found each other unintentionally, and while neither one of us was ready to embrace the fullness and powerful vibrations of Love, she demonstrated nothing but grace, decisiveness, and patience as I went through a matrix of confusion, disbelief, and immaturity. Towards the end of the episode, I recite a self-written poem titled “Let Love Live” that I wrote on behalf of my Love to my Wife, recited for all listening ears, and located in my independent poetry anthology “The Depths Below.” I hope this intimate reflection will help you draw parallels, become inspired, and develop a sense of curiosity.
Let Love Live:
An everlasting touch
meets an everlasting grip;
Who can say that lasting love
can never exist?
Be honest and love yourself, and in return
someone will love you.
The blacker the berry
the sweeter the juice,
Love is an eternal drug
And I am addicted to you.
Ways to Connect and Support Genuinely:
Subscribe to the Podcast, share with a loved one, and write a review - We are on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, too!!
Subscribe and share the Substack publication, CREATIVST.
Subscribe and share Soul Medicine
Last article on Soul Medicine: A Liberation Social Workers Perspective
Listen/Watch the last episode of Gracefully Imperfect:
Order my self-written poetry anthology, "The Depths Below"
Send comments and feedback to the business email -[email protected]
Connect, follow, and share on LinkedIn and the Service page
Connect, follow, and share on Fanbase
Connect, follow, and share on Instagram
Get full access to CREATIVST. at creativist.substack.com/subscribe32 min - Black Woman University: Grandma Toon
In this episode, we reflect respectfully and humbly on Grandma Toon’s influence on my understanding of community, spirituality, and family: exercising love as a practice, investing in the transformation and growth of community members, applying the concept of family-first, being congruent and real, and holding space for inner wisdom (prayer, somatic practices, quietness). I hope this intimate reflection will help you draw parallels, become inspired, and develop a sense of curiosity.
The recited poem is self-crafted and self-written:
Queen Mother Granny,
life has been exceedingly daunting when wanting more collideswith the growing pains generated by the heartbreak and existential soresthe body absorbs…disenfranchised by grieving alonein front of the only window seal in thiscold, dark, depressing home -Oh, Granny,what time is it?how did I get here?Is my mere existence in alignment with and according toyour prudence, purpose, and visions?when the clock stops ticking, time will tell and revealthe heavy, hearty truth -buried…hidden…concealed…and shielded by earthly spectacles glamorizing popculture on the center stage, supplying pureentertainment on sick days rather thanpreventative medicine, as our souls areencroached upon by the narrowness of life’swicked maze…Sweet Granny,I’m engulfed by suffocating shadows of impermanenceand poisonous hazes of constitutional destruction,my heart bleeds with sadness for holding suchexistential weight of the unsavory fate withoutyour perceptiveness and graceso much is at stake…with so little time to waste…please, Queen Mother, look over this place -and help us - all of us - see your lovelyrare essence manifest and inculcate graceful,moral immunity in every village, town, city, orCOMMUNITY!Ways to Connect and Support Genuinely:
Subscribe to the Podcast, share with a loved one, and write a review - We are on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, too!!
Subscribe and share the Substack publication, CREATIVST.
Subscribe and share Soul Medicine
Watch the Podcast interview w/ Brotha Gary Taylor, LCSW
Last article on Soul Medicine: A Liberation Social Workers Perspective
Listen/Watch the last episode of Gracefully Imperfect:
Order my self-written poetry anthology, "The Depths Below"
Send comments and feedback to the business email -[email protected]
Connect, follow, and share on LinkedIn and the Service page
Connect, follow, and share on Fanbase
Connect, follow, and share on Instagram
Get full access to CREATIVST. at creativist.substack.com/subscribe33 min - Talkin' Love Pt. 1
In this episode, we initiate a deep exploration of love. Drawing from lessons learned, divine messages, and golden insights gathered from formative childhood years - through the aches and pains of the life process - and crystallized during the co-journeying process of matrimony, helped with the reconceptualization, reimagination, and relearning of the transcendence and transformative power of love. I hope this intimate reflection will help you draw parallels, become inspired, and develop a sense of curiosity.
A quote for deep and intense reflection:
“Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love because you want it. You can only earn - by practice and careful contemplation - the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God - carefully.” - Toni Morrison (Rest in Power)
Ways to Connect and Support Genuinely:
Subscribe to the Podcast, share with a loved one, and write a review - We are on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, too!!
Subscribe and share the Substack publication, CREATIVST.
Subscribe and share Soul Medicine
Last article on Soul Medicine: A Liberation Social Workers Perspective
Listen/Watch the last episode of Gracefully Imperfect:
Order my self-written poetry anthology, "The Depths Below"
Send comments and feedback to the business email -[email protected]
Connect, follow, and share on LinkedIn and the Service page
Connect, follow, and share on Fanbase
Connect, follow, and share on Instagram
Get full access to CREATIVST. at creativist.substack.com/subscribe31 min - Contradictions and Paradoxes II
In this episode, we discuss a recent life experience with hypocrisy, deceit, and disillusionment manifested into questioning human dignity and worth. Drawing from lessons learned, divine messages, golden insights gathered from community practice - including familyhood, helped with the restoration of dignity, courage - self-knowingness. I hope this intimate reflection will help you draw parallels, become inspired, and develop a sense of curiosity.
A quote for deep and intense reflection: “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together” - Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Rest in Power)
Ways to Connect and Support Genuinely:
Subscribe to the Podcast, share with a loved one, and write a review - We are on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, too!!
Subscribe and share the Substack publication, CREATIVST.
Subscribe and share the Substack newsletter, Soul Medicine
Newest article on Soul Medicine: A Liberation Social Workers Perspective
Kyle Toon
Read full story
Listen/Watch the last episode of Gracefully Imperfect:
Read full story
Order my self-written poetry anthology, "The Depths Below"
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Get full access to CREATIVST. at creativist.substack.com/subscribe36 min - Why Social Work?
In this episode, we briefly explore the personal pivot from military officer to liberation social worker. Drawing from lessons learned, golden insights of spiritual substance helped me realize that the human services work fulfilled in the military accurately translates into a liberation social work practice context. I hope this intimate reflection will help you draw parallels, become inspired, and develop a sense of curiosity.
A quote for deep and intense reflection: “Man's consciousness is a creative act and the kind of consciousness one has will determine the kind of world one creates” - Dr. Amos Wilson”
Dr. Amos Wilson’s book, “Afrikan-Centered Consciousness Versus the New World Order”
Ways to Connect and Support Genuinely:
Subscribe to the Podcast, share with a loved one, and write a review - We are on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, too!!
Subscribe and share the Substack publication, CREATIVST.
Subscribe and share the Substack newsletter, Soul Medicine
Newest article on Soul Medicine:
Listen/Watch the last episode of Gracefully Imperfect:
Order my self-written poetry anthology, "The Depths Below"
Send comments and feedback to the business email -[email protected]
Connect, follow, and share on LinkedIn and the Service page
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Get full access to CREATIVST. at creativist.substack.com/subscribe35 min
About Gracefully Imperfect
From the publisher's feed
Gracefully Imperfect is a podcast that bridges Afrocentric cultural worldview, black lived experiences, emotional vulnerability, and optimal personhood development. For African/Black people world…
over, regardless of geography, ethnicity, religion, language, or cultural nuances, this podcast centers the transformation of silence and suppression to unmitigated, self-defined language and action. Together, with Revolutionary Love and compassion, we can move towards experiential learning by embracing our most emotional, vulnerable, and imperfect selves.
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