Cultivation of the Heart

By Julius Thibodeaux

Cultivation of the Heart is the antidote for the impenetrable hearts—young people who have suffered from a great number of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES). Although many have deemed our youth who are at the center of gun violence to be “unreachable,” research and evidence has shown that investing in our youth can produce significant positive results in their overall behavior and ability to resolve conflict. I know firsthand because a licensed psychologist diagnosed me as someone who was so prone to violence due to my exposure to trauma at an early age, that the chances of me ever changing were slim to none. She said that I would always resort to violence as a means of problem-solving. Fortunately for me, I had mentors, family, and friends that poured positive energy, love, and support into me that eventually softened my heart, reversing the abuse, abandonment, and trauma that had over the years hardened my heart as a young man growing up in the concrete jungles of Richmond, California. They loved me when I didn’t know what it meant to love myself. They showed me how to love myself when I didn’t have a clue. All of my mentors were experts in the field of de-escalation and relationship building.

You can’t help someone grow if they don’t trust you. The callouses formed on a damaged person’s heart is designed to protect them from more hurt and from further damage. The problem with a hardened heart is that you can’t plant seeds in it that are sure to produce positive fruits that all can benefit from. It’s impenetrable. Therefore, the seeds of love that need to get in can’t get in, and the seeds of hate, heartache, and pain that need to get out can’t be weeded out. At least, while that person is still the owner of a hardened heart. However, once a mentor with the skill of a farmer enters their life and begins to cultivate the heart, positive seeds can be planted, negativity can be weeded out, and beautiful fruits can be produced.

With the help of others who invested in me, I embraced the process of heart cultivation and discovered that I could do so much more with a soft heart than I could ever do with a hardened heart. Nothing good can ever be produced from a barren land, but fertile ground is the seed bed for miraculous things that are often beyond our wildest dreams. Cultivation of the Heart is that seed bed where miraculous transformation and beautiful evolutions take place. We credible mentors have to be the skilled farmers who cultivate the hearts of our young people, especially those at the center of gun violence who are simply sharing the hurt and pain with us that the world has given them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662465994

Book preview

Chapter 1

Know Thyself

I had uncontrollable anger issues as a young teen. It was like driving a car with no power steering fluid.

—Julius Thibodeaux

For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to bulletproof my heart. To watch pain bounce off of it like raindrops colliding with those cheap plastic yellow coats that we were all given for protection growing up in the ghetto. Protection from abandonment, betrayal, and heartache. From racism, poverty, and self-hatred. Protection from the projectiles that fly recklessly through our community with malice aforethought. All seeming to be natural occurrences that have been inevitable in my life like the first day of winter or those other three seasons that come and go as they please. Faithful for the most part but occasionally breaking their promises and raining in July. Apologizing then reaching 90 degrees in January. We love to predict the unpredictable. It gives us a false sense of power. To lie and say that we already knew what was coming when we really had no clue. To say that we never really cared when the truth is that we’re heartbroken and speechless. We allow pain to define us and anger to hold us hostage for unimaginable periods of precious time. Time that we should be using to heal our multiple gunshot wounds. Our multiple heartbreaks. Every one of us in this professional space of credible mentorship has to explore the painful detailed map of our journey. We have to know where we have been in life. Who else was there? Who wasn’t? How did that affect us? How did we try to fill all of the voids in our lives? The gaping open wounds. Are we pouring salt into those wounds? Are we allowing others to do so? What happened on this journey? What or who could’ve helped us along the way? Have we taken the time to heal? Is our inner child okay? Can we now provide to a young person what we feel was missing in our lives? Can we patiently ascertain the facts to customize a life map for a young person who has their own unique set of circumstances? Unique set of issues. Identifiable scars on our minds, bodies, and souls. This map is important because as a young person with no direction, I need you to explain to me how you arrived here. How did you heal? If you were out there shooting people in the name of your hood, then how did you correct this behavior? Was it the death of a loved one? Was it the birth of your first child? Even for those of us who did settle down with the child’s mother, got a job, and moved away can an external act change who we are inside? It’s unprofessional to tell a young person that the birth of your child changed your life, if that’s all you’re telling them. Look how much vital information you have left out! All of the sacrifices! The alternative decision-making. The paradigm shift in the way one thinks. The wins and the losses. A professional will provide their fellow with a road map! A detailed road map that is inclusive of these things. Violence is how those of us who have a difficult time expressing ourselves resolve conflict. It’s high on our list of problem-solving. It’s usually all we know. It’s miseducation or a learned behavior that doesn’t magically disappear because you have a child. It lacks the direction that we so desperately need. Remember, you are a guide for lost souls who are trying to find their way out of a very dangerous maze of chaos, turmoil, and confusion. It’s your job to provide them with direction and a pathway to success.

Study your parents and anyone else whom you were given the opportunity to learn from as a child. They are like artists painting on blank canvases. We are those blank canvases. Just about everything that we know, we learn from them. These are delicate times in our lives, as the adolescent years are often the most impressionable periods in our lives. Carefully examine the good and the bad about your surroundings. Then honestly assess whether or not you possess more good qualities or more character flaws. Chances are there are a little of both. This is what my mentor likes to call self-inventory. Many of us are raised by women with no positive male role model in sight, without a telescope. We pick up things that are very unbecoming of a man. A lot of female tendencies. I’m being very kind here too, so please don’t be offended. So many of our young people will find themselves in this predicament, while a great number of our aspiring credible mentors also have this shared experience of coming from a dysfunctional single-parent home. Homes where the father is usually absent or worse. Worse meaning that the mother is absent or both parents are absent. With no one to teach us how to deal with our emotions intelligently, we automatically mimic the emotionally immature and the emotionally unstable whom we observe on a regular basis. Many of us had no one to teach us that dark clouds were the prelude to a storm. That increased heart rates, sweaty palms, and the fact that we’ve stopped breathing regularly are also preludes to violent storms. Storms brewing inside of us in the form of anger and uncontrollable rage. In the environment that you and I grew up in, anger is a recognized and acceptable emotion. Meaning that you don’t have to suppress your anger. Suppress the initial emotion! That’s what we are encouraged to do. Be angry instead of the initial emotion. Use anger as a cloak to hide hurt, embarrassment, fear, and sadness. All these are weaknesses in the hood. We are not encouraged to be calm in the eye of a storm or to display self-control when visibly upset. Both invaluable strengths for any human being no matter where you are from, but sadly not always appreciated in the inner city. Oftentimes, these qualities and strengths are ridiculed and dismissed as weaknesses in the hood. It’s like someone asking you to burn a million dollars of your own money! That’s how valuable self-control and emotional intelligence are in areas where gun violence is prevalent. To be exposed to so much violence and trauma while simultaneously being encouraged to be impulsive! It’s literally insane! We need patience, compassion, and mercy in our hearts. We need to know how to manage our anger. To be encouraged to fight at the first sign of trouble is tantamount to being suicidal, especially in an environment where gun violence is prevalent. We proceed without caution because we have no knowledge of self. Without knowledge of oneself, we can have no sense of self value. They want us to live reckless and dangerous lives. Our young people are being bombarded with messages that are encouraging them to throw their lives away every single day. Do you know what that’s like for a young person who hasn’t discovered their own self-value yet? Not to mention that my mother tells me that I’m just like my damn daddy every chance she gets. My favorite rapper is telling me that I’m nobody because I don’t have a murder under my belt. Poverty classifies me as insignificant because I don’t drive a foreign car or own a pair of $1,500 shoes. The system oppresses me for crimes that I haven’t even committed but they believe I’m capable of committing. Law enforcement racially profiles me with malicious intentions to murder me as soon as I reach for my identification. Other ethnic groups devalue me. People whom I think should love me actually hate me and want to murder me too. The deck is truly stacked against me. I have enemies in every direction I turn. One of them is bound to get off a lucky shot or simply catch me slippin’. In my mind, that possibility is my inevitable reality.

I had uncontrollable anger issues as a young teen. It was like driving a