05/01/2026
I just finished a training session. And I need to share something while I'm still in it.
I had no plans to record today. But some mornings demand to be remembered. This was one of them.
I've been training since I was 14. For most of my life, I thought I was just someone who loved to work out. But over these past couple of years — going deep into the internal world, the emotional work, the things that were left unaddressed in childhood — I started seeing what training was actually doing for me.
It wasn't just exercise. It was regulation. It was medication. It was the place I went when I had no words for what was happening inside. Training was the transmutation — where I could take the rage, the grief, the weight of everything, and move it through my body into something productive.
For years, training was my glue.
So when my training fell apart during the depression — when the one thing that held everything together stopped holding — that's when I started to see how fractured things actually were underneath. And that was brutal. But it was also the beginning of something real.
Three things came to me this morning while I was training. I wrote them down.
The first one was: training has been my beard for the tears.
The second one was: Z is the me I never got to be.
Z is my youngest. Six years old. Full fireball. Every emotion on the surface, every desire, every opinion — he just lets it fly. And I watch him and I feel this mix of inspiration and something almost like grief. Because I know what I couldn't dare say at that age. I know what I was taught to contain.
Watching my boys express their fullest selves in every single moment — it ministers to me. I'm going to be learning from my six-year-old. And I'm at peace with that, because that's what mutual edification looks like.
The third thing I wrote down was: I fought against my yin and yang all of my life.
I thought about Black Panther. About T'Challa and Killmonger. My father wanted me to be T'Challa — composed, contained, a certain way about himself. But in my heart, I always had more Killmonger. That side that sees truth with crystal clear eyes and has zero tolerance for what's wrong. That fire. That rage. That unshakeable knowing.
For my whole life, I looked at that side of myself as a flaw. Something to kill off. Something to sequester. Something to be ashamed of.
And suppressing it caused me immense pain.
But here's what I know now: it's not a flaw. It's fire. And fire needs somewhere to go — not a cage.
The only place I ever truly allowed myself to be fully me was in the gym. No performance. No manicuring. Just the work.
I don't have the tolerance to keep manicuring myself anymore. And honestly — I never should have had to.
Who I had to become in order to survive began so early that my formative years are woven through with it. I'm still making some decisions for the first time. Learning what it means to live as who I actually am — not who I had to be.
And my father — rest his soul — didn't teach me how to quit. That's one thing I know for certain.
I will research. I will create. I will trial. I will fail. I will repeat. And I will win. For myself. For my sons. For my sisters.
You are your masterpiece.
P.S. What I'm realizing more and more is this: the tools that held us together when we were young — those structures served us. But they are not meant to stay forever in the same form. Renewal isn't starting over. It's starting again — from everything you've already survived.
Committed to Your Success,
Coach T
