As Featured in Bold Journey Magazine
We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dr. Darrien Jamar. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dr. Darrien below.
Dr. Darrien, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
As a kid, I spent a lot of time alone. Even when I wasn’t alone, even when there were people around, I felt alone, inside. Chronically, my thoughts, emotions, and words felt misplaced. So, I learned to keep them to myself. I learned to survive being in environments where I felt deeply uncomfortable…out of place. At the same time, I learned to create spaces where I could see myself, where I could be heard and seen. My journal became that place for me. It was a Harry Potter journal that I got from the fall book fair in the third grade. That journal became the one place I could turn to, without judgment. It became the one place where I could be scared, lonely, happy, angry, where I could dream, where I could cry, where I could be gay.
What does this have to do with resilience? Everything. Resilience, to me, is not only about how you survive and overcome adversity in your life, resilience is just as much about the compassion, wisdom, emotional freedom (instead of emotional baggage), and perspective that you also walk away with and get to carry in the world as a healing light. My Harry Potter journal helped me write my way to higher ground, to a place of love, to a place where I am seen and embraced for who I am.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I didn’t realize it then. I was only in kindergarten. When I got off the bus that day at Royal Tartan Lane and no one was there to drive me to the last trailer on the left, my life changed in a profound way. For the first time, I had to walk down that dirt road by myself. I cried. I yelled. I screamed.I resisted the experience of the moment. I was angry. But most of all, I was afraid. I didn’t think I could do it. I didn’t think I could walk that road by myself.
My work, the work I have been called to do, is about guiding others back to themselves. I know for sure that all roads lead back to the quality of the relationship that you have with yourself. That day, in kindergarten, was prophetic in a sense. It has become a metaphor for my life…for my work. That day I learned I was strong enough to walk the road before me, and those roads I would have to travel later in life. We have it within ourselves to become the people we have been destined to be, and life will help us do that…I am here to help others do that. I have been called to help others walk their own dirt roads.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1) Seek wisdom. Growing up, I was ashamed to say that I loved hanging around my elders. I enjoyed the company of my Great Grandmother, Grandma Hattie. She was in her late 80s then. She passed away at 104 two years ago. I loved hearing her stories. I loved hearing her talk about heaven as if she’d been there before. She’d retell the same stories over and over, and I’d listen to them as if I were hearing them for the first time. Each story was wrapped with a gift, sometimes easy enough for me to open in the moment, but most of her stories would reveal their powers later in life…when I needed the lesson most. My Grandma Hattie taught me the value of wisdom.
2) Do it anyway. During college, I felt completely overtaken by the fear of public speaking. Despite being a communication studies major; despite the public speaking classes I’d taken—I was scared to speak in front of others. Yet, despite my fear, some part of me refused to keep me from approaching my fear. Some part of me consistently sought out opportunities and moments that would challenge the validity of this fear. Looking back on my experiences at Longwood University, I am most grateful for the number of times I did it anyway…the moments where I stood alongside both my fear and my courage.
3) Listen to your dreams. Recently, I watched the movie “Babe” for the first time. I found myself most inspired by the sheep; at some point during the movie, they advised Babe to listen to your dreams, to the dreams you keep dreaming. For many of us, we aren’t able to take our dreams seriously because we are so weighed down by our past, our pain, our trauma. I know that was the case for me, for a while. But one day, after being on the road of healing for some time, you begin to realize that not only are your dreams possible….that you are here on this earth to see them fulfilled. Trust your dreams, trust the clarity they will one day offer you about yourself…about life..about what is possible.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
“Finding Me” by Viola Davis. It’s a book I read last year. While reading it, I felt this underlying theme showing up alongside each of the stories she so viscerally shared: trust your life’s timing, trust the rhythm, pace and mess of your life. I have struggled in my relationship with time and I have resisted much of my life story and history, specifically the messy parts. Reading her book last year, I felt myself constantly exhaling, becoming lighter with each turn of the page. As a result, I was inspired to walk more as a way of slowing me down…as a way of taking time to see, feel, and hear from my life. Along the way of these walks, I have caught myself mesmerized not just by the flowers I see, but by the weeds too. Viola’s book, complimented by my walks in nature, are helping me redefine my idea of beauty. I am falling in love with my life more and more, as it happens…as it naturally unfolds.