- Well, growing up, I though I understood what love really was, how it was supposed to look, how it's supposed to feel.

In a child's intake on what love is from a parent is how it's perceived.

So I grew up a mama's boy.

My mom originally from Jersey City.

I'm originally from Jersey City.

I live with my grandparents.

She ran, she worked, did what she did trying to figure it out.

At some point in time, I don't remember the right age, but she sent me to Virginia.

Shipped me to Virginia, we moved here.

I like Hampton Roads, but as a youth, I just was doing everything.

I was expelled, suspended, I was expelled from every high school I ever attended.

So when I got expelled when I was 15, being a mama's boy, having such a close bond, she did sell mine that I didn't expect.

One day I came home, my biological father was there.

And this is my first time really having a real memory of me ever meeting him at all.

He comes, he chastises me, scolds me, picks me up, takes me to Florida.

Because I don't know how many people have been in these type of households, but sometimes a black mother has a thing where she can like summon the hands of God and they'll like come down and just like, I don't know what it is.

It just is amazing, right?

So when he come and get me, I'm like, I'm all ecstatic like, oh man, you know, I can escape.

Get down there, my father doesn't have a place to live for me.

He's the janitor at the local school.

It's still instability, but it's what I think I need.

But the confusion of what love still is at that moment is, because he's telling me, "I love you, I love you, I love you.

I'm your father no matter what."

My thing is, is that what love look like?

Somebody who just pops up?

You just pop up this whole time, all these years, you love me.

Okay.

I only lasted six months down there.

I already said I just was a teen with behavioral issues.

Six months, he ships me back.

He gets tired, puts me on a Greyhound bus.

I get to the Greyhound bus in downtown Norfolk.

My uncle's there.

My uncle's maybe 22, 23 at the time, so he's really an older brother.

So I say, "Where's my mom?

I'm looking for mommy.

Where's my mom?"

He like, "Your mom says you ain't coming back there."

I'm like, "What?"

He like, "Yeah, all that gang stuff you was into, marijuana or whatever, whatever it was you was doing, she said she ain't having it."

So my father pop up after 15 years and he loves me.

I'm a mama's boy.

My mama raised me and I can't come back there.

Okay, so he says, "Just stay with me until we figure it out."

Okay.

Within the next three to four weeks, I'm in a courthouse.

She did the unthinkable.

She gave up custody of me.

My mom given up custody of me.

So my uncle stepped right in, "Stay with me.

You don't got to go to foster care.

Stay with me."

But me staying with him pushed me further into the streets.

I had free reign, freedom.

He wanted to be my friend, but he loved me, but he still was stern, but not stern enough because I was his size.

What can you really do with somebody who has that type of behavioral patterns, don't really want to listen, think they know it all, don't have nothing culturally responsive to try to save them or do the preventative things.

Being that that pushed me deeper into the streets, that led me to juvenile placement.

Then it led me into incarceration as an adult.

So from the time I was 15 throughout the rest of my youth was my mom, homeless, having to pay drug addicts sometimes to sleep in their car just so I can go to sleep, to go to school the next morning, surviving.

A funny thing happened though.

When I became incarcerated as an adult, who do you think I look for?

My mom.

No matter what, mom always going to be there.

Hands of God might come with it, but she going to be there.

But it left a confusion because I'm torn.

I felt abandoned.

You gave up custody of me.

Now I'm going through these different type of things and I'm still standing.

I can stand in.

I can survive.

I'm going to die in these streets, but one day my mom's going to come looking for me.

She going to wonder what happened to her son because she loved me.

Year one, while I was incarcerated, the number you have called, year two, the person you've called, please leave a message after the tone.

Year three, year four, year five, year six, year seven.

Not a court date, not a sentencing, not nothing.

I'll call, no answer.

Birthday's no answer.

All right.

No response.

So I come home.

I come home, start a clothing line, called Carter Chavo.

Shameless plug by the way, these are my jeans.

Start a clothing line.

And I still felt, even though I'm not in the streets, I still could be in the culture.

I still can be around.

I'm still hip.

I'm not going out like no square, right?

I try to start doing everything legal and although my intention was pure, something happened, my 35th birthday.

I was robbed, assaulted, had a grade four lacerated spleen, grade three lacerated liver.

I was bleeding internally and didn't even know it.

A group of teens, a group of teens just asked me for a dollar as they usually do, "Hey, you got a dollar?"

"I haven't got a dollar, man.

""Can I use your phone real quick?"

So me, I seen me and them.

I said, "You know what?

I'm going to go over there."

Long story short, it led to a tussle due to the internal injuries and me bleeding.

As I was driving away, my body start convulsing.

I lose control of the car, crash into a concrete median.

Left forearm broke both the bones in my forearm, arm folded.

I wake up in the hospital, my mom, the first face I see.

On my birthday this happened.

What's even more significant is my mom was in labor with me on her birthday.

Her birthday's April 10th, mine's April 11th.

I was born 12 something in the morning, so she was in labor during her birthday.

So this event happened on her birthday.

I go into surgery because they had induced me to a coma pretty much to save my life.

Thank you to Setera.

I see her.

And at that moment it gave me a whole new love transcended all limitations that I had though and preconceived before.

I didn't care that I couldn't find her at certain days at certain times.

And that I called it that she abandoned me.

I had a lot of abandonment issues, even going through prison.

I just couldn't, I couldn't fathom how could you not be here?

Unconditional love.

What's that?

Is that not supposed to be a mother's love?

But me seeing her in that moment, it reminded me of every single time of critical moments through my youth.

She was there every time, even when I was bad and she didn't want to be there.

When I'm getting expelled from school, causing problems, having police come to the house, she didn't want to be there, but she was because she loved me.

That's real love.

But then I had opportunity to tell my mom at that very moment, "I don't care about nothing.

You're my first love."

I said, "I don't care that you abandoned me."

And I think if I wasn't in a hospital bed, damn hands of God probably would've came back because she said, "Abandon you."

She said, "Baby, do you know how much it hurt me year after year to not want to enable the person that you were becoming?

We didn't raise you like that.

Everything that you were doing, you were pulling and becoming somebody that we did not even know.

If you're doing that in my presence and I'm doing everything I can to save you and help you, am I the problem?

You had me questioning my motherhood of how effective I was in your life.

So sometimes removing myself to no longer enable you and force you to look in the mirror during them harsh times without a crutch, didn't you look in the mirror and decide who you liked that day?

All them years you was in prison and I wasn't there?"

She said, "Did you not have to face who you had to face and be who you need to become without mommy?"

From that day, my mom picked me up, she took me to her house.

We decided to start working on our relationship from that day.

Three months after that, she had a heart attack leaving me to feel like I was part of the cause.

See, that's a different thing with love when people show up.

People don't always show up the way that we want, the time we want and how we want.

Sometimes people have to remove themselves because they don't want to enable you because they too scared what sticking around you would look like and they just don't want to see it.

So in these lessons in life, once I got out and I was dealing with my mom, I decided I'm going to start a nonprofit.

I'm going to try to reach them same youth that almost inadvertently caught a, caught a murder without even knowing, over a dollar, right?

The moment I stopped caring about that, doing speaking engagements, going to the juvenile jails and detention centers, my mother started showing up for me on a regular basis.

I became the individual and the child that she groomed and she loved in a way where it didn't hurt her to love me.

A lot of times in underserved communities with a culture that we come from, the social ills that we normalize and internalize and we, things we think is love or the things that are love that we deem them evil and we villainize them, sometimes we got to realize we call it abandonment, but mothers call it love.