From the moment I arrived in Chicago, something shifted in me. I felt grounded, both literally and figuratively.
I grew up in what felt like the opposite of Chicago, a small rural town of about 2,000 people, where most residents were White and only a handful of us were people of color. We didn’t learn about diversity in school. I don’t ever remember the town or school celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Race was rarely discussed, yet it shaped so much of my experience.
I came to know two very different sides of community.
In many ways, I experienced deep love, belonging, and care. People shared what they had. They looked out for one another. They greeted each other by name, stopped to talk, offered hugs, listened deeply, smiled, celebrated one another’s successes, and showed up when someone was in need. Outside of my family, these experiences helped build my confidence and taught me that community could be a source of strength. They showed me that people who are not related by blood can profoundly contribute to one another’s wellbeing, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
But I also experienced another side.
In other ways, I was rejected, humiliated, and made to feel less than because of the color of my skin. That experience left me with an almost constant feeling of living outside my body. It wasn’t until adulthood that I truly began reconnecting with myself. Looking back now as a psychologist, I understand that disassociation was a protective response. My mind and body were trying to shield me from the pain, isolation, and confusion of navigating rejection while also experiencing genuine care from many of the same community spaces.
Those seemingly contradictory experiences taught me something that has stayed with me ever since.
Community is powerful.
It can cultivate confidence or diminish it. It can create belonging or isolation. It can nurture hope or deepen despair. It can help people flourish, or it can leave wounds that take years to heal.
What I’ve also come to understand is that communities do not exist in isolation.
The way we care for one another is shaped by larger systems, histories, policies, and cultural narratives. The stories we are told about one another influence how we see one another. Politics, media, historical trauma, and structural inequities shape what happens inside neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and families.
At the same time, communities have tremendous power to shape something different.
We can choose to build trust rather than fear. We can hold one another accountable with love. We can interrupt harmful narratives with deeper truths. We can cultivate cultures of care that are passed from one generation to the next.
That is why I created BECOME.
BECOME exists to help cultivate the conditions where people and communities can flourish. We work alongside communities to strengthen relationships, build systems rooted in collective care, and create environments where every person has the opportunity to realize their inherent potential.
Because I know firsthand that community changes us.
The question is not whether community will shape us.
The question is, what kind of community are we becoming?
