Nigel Mohammed is a teacher, writer and mentor who has worked with men and has been running men's groups in the UK for decades. He provides mentoring and resources for local men's groups, ministries and churches.
Nigel has also taught courses and provided development workshops for missionaries and leaders overseas and in the UK.
He has worked with the homeless, both in UK and abroad, and has helped people at risk of trafficking in Nepal.
Nigel's calling is to equip men to live in a 'story bigger than themselves' and he offers his resources both in person and online via his website LifeQuestTruth.
Personally, Nigel has had a huge impact on my life; he was running the first men's group I was a part of, more than a decade ago, and became my mentor. It was Nigel who once told me, in an act of brutal honesty, that sooner or later I would have to stop running from my inner pain and face it...
And to the best my ability, I did. And I am.
And I am grateful for the role of Nigel in my life. This is my attempt to honour him in taking the time to listen, really listen, to the story that is his life, and share this experience with you.
Recently, we sat down together during one of his visits to the beautiful town of Eastbourne that I am proud to call my home, and recorded the first chapter of the journey through his life-story. In a way that feels somewhat counter-cultural during these times of frantic shallowness, of clicks, swipes, and soundbites, we took our time and delved deep into Nigel's life, honouring the intrinsic details of the story and marking each turning point, giving it the attention it deserves.
We went after depth...
And it was good.
We discussed things such as:
Nigel's beginning in Trinidad and Tobago, his move to London, and the trauma of being abandoned and sent into a foster home,
The severe childhood trauma of being sent away from his mother as a little boy and then being re-traumatised by the abduction-like act of being 'taken back' to his family in Trinidad — only to be sent back to London in a few weeks time,
The severe trauma of not belonging to a family and not fitting into a category — including racially,
Never knowing what words like 'home' and 'family' truly mean,
How this childhood rootlessness has been manifesting in his life ever since,
Becoming a 'street boy' and the need for a 'surrogate father',
Breaking the law at a young age, becoming a football hooligan and looking for belonging in being a part of a 'subculture',
Tribalism and the need for a boy to bond, and belong to, something bigger than himself,
Hiding behind a false version of masculinity,
The possible subconscious repeating of patterns and re-enacting childhood realities in later life,
The importance of recognising the 'turning points' in life and their impact,
The search for adventure in young men and the curse of living in a society that has no male role-models but offer only destruction as a means of filling that 'vacuum' in a young man's soul,
Nigel's hitchhiking adventure in Europe: the hard work, the hunger, the resulting crime, and the subsequent brutal time behind the bars of a Communist prison in the former Yugoslavia,
His experience of humanity in prison and the struggle to adapt,
The way prison sentence can mean more than one thing in life,
The feeling of having one's 'wings broken' and being 'locked up in a cage',
The desire for freedom and the search for salvation through faith,
...this, and so much more!
