Healing the Soul of the Father: An Evening with Dr. Cynthia Williams and Dr. Curtis Jasper
On a warm Wednesday evening in June, I walked into the Loudermilk Center’s Pope Room in downtown Atlanta and immediately felt something different in the air. The room was filled with Black fathers and sons, uncles and friends, all brought together by a shared pain that didn’t need words. This was “Soul of the Father,” a special seminar held right before Father’s Day, focused on supporting men carrying grief and trauma. The atmosphere was gentle but powerful; warm and welcoming, yet strong enough to invite men to drop their usual guard. I didn’t know what to expect, but I found a safe space where silence and toughness gave way to real conversations about healing.
At the center of it all was Dr. Cynthia Williams, our host for the evening. Dr. Williams is a grief and trauma doula, basically a guide who helps people navigate their darkest moments of loss. She founded Love From Afar (The Christopher Allen Williams Foundation) after experiencing deep loss in her own life.
She’s dedicated to helping people and communities heal from grief, trauma, and loss. Through Love From Afar, Dr. Williams has made it her mission to turn grief into hope and loss into legacy. Every story of pain, she believes, can become a stepping stone toward healing for someone else.
From the moment she welcomed us, Dr. Williams radiated both empathy and strength. She shared pieces of her own journey and encouraged everyone to forgive in order to make room for what heals. It was clear she had turned her personal tragedy into something purposeful. Her presence alone made the room feel safe for men to open up about wounds they kept hidden.
Standing beside her was Dr. Curtis D. Jasper, who led the seminar with incredibly insightful talk. Dr. Jasper is a psychologist and psycho-educator known as the “Counselor for the Culture.” His life’s work centers on Black men’s mental and emotional health, teaching Black men how to achieve sustainable wellness, inner peace, and purpose. A former educator turned counseling psychologist, Dr. Jasper approaches mental health in what he calls a “non-colonized, highly culturally competent” way, meaning he tailors his guidance to the real lived experiences of Black men.
He’s also an author and speaker who’s gained widespread respect, even earning the 2024 Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award.
Meeting Dr. Jasper in person, I found him both scholarly and quite down-to-earth. He started by joking that he wouldn’t give a traditional lecture. This would be interactive, with everyone participating. That put some nervous guys at ease before he smoothly moved into the night’s heavy topic.
The theme revolved around something often overlooked, namely grief, and more specifically, fathers grieving during Father’s Day. While this holiday is celebratory for many, it can be soul-crushing for men who feel broken by family estrangement, losing a child or parent, or relationships that fell apart.
Honestly, the seminar felt more like a community heart-to-heart than a lecture. As the discussion flowed, you could see the men’s body language change. Arms uncrossed, shoulders relaxed. Some shared personal stories. One talked about losing control as a father when children grow up and leave home.
Another spoke about how his father never said “I love you” until he said it first. Each time someone opened up, the room collectively exhaled in empathy, like we were all releasing weight together.
While the emotional openness was powerful, Dr. Jasper’s insights gave us a framework to understand our experiences. He put into words many things Black men feel but rarely say out loud. One of his most powerful distinctions was between grief and grievances. Grief is the pain we feel when we lose someone or something.
Grievances are lingering resentments or blaming others for our pain. Grievances can help us express concerns and seek resolution, but we can also hold grievances against ourselves. This was a revelation. You can forgive someone, let go of a grievance, while still mourning what could have been.
Dr. Jasper broke down grief into categories that hit home in a Black context. Personal grief is the intimate loss each person knows, like losing a family member. Collective grief is what an entire community feels after tragedies or crises. Sometimes we grieve together as a people. Then there’s disenfranchised grief, which is sorrow that society doesn’t validate.
Think of a father grieving a miscarriage or breakup, where the world tells him “it’s not a big deal” even though it is. And importantly, he addressed historical grief, the generations-deep pain passed down in Black families, from slavery through ongoing racial injustice.
Hearing this, I thought about how trauma can live in our DNA. Dr. Jasper gave voice to that truth, noting that some feelings weighing Black men down aren’t just our own. They’re cries of our ancestors’ unresolved grief.
Dr. Jasper also challenged the traditional stages of grief we’ve all heard about. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s model of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. He pointed out that this model was originally based on terminal illness patients, not men who’ve endured years of compounded trauma and loss.
For Black men, grieving isn’t a neat, linear progression. It’s often complex and cyclical. Many in the room visibly related to this. “Acceptance” feels impossible when new wounds keep reopening old ones, and when society doesn’t give the grieving process proper space to complete.
Grief, it turns out, is often learned behavior. How our families dealt with loss teaches us how we deal with it. Dr. Jasper gently reminded us that ultimately, it’s our choice how we want to handle grief. We don’t have to copy what we’ve seen.
One of the most powerful moments came when Dr. Jasper explored how deeply men connect their sense of self to fatherhood. In many communities, especially ours, men are raised believing their value lies in providing, protecting, and having children. Being a father becomes more than a role.
It becomes the whole identity. But what happens when that role is taken away? Through loss, separation, or distance from children, many men struggle to understand who they are without that daily connection. Dr. Jasper had been through it himself.
He offered a heartfelt reminder not to let any one identity define our entire worth. Be a good human first who happens to be a father. It hit home because so many of us build self-worth on being needed by people we love. When that need changes or disappears, it leaves a void. But his message carried hope. Even when life shifts and roles change, your value remains. You’re still here. You’re still whole.
Dr. Jasper then challenged harmful assumptions society makes about Black fathers and the complex realities that often stay hidden. He talked about how children, even those whose fathers weren’t consistently present, sometimes unconsciously adopt narratives that automatically cast fathers in predetermined roles without understanding what really happened between their parents.
In many stories, mothers naturally become the good guys while fathers get villain status. But this oversimplified version rarely captures the complete truth of what both parents experienced.
The reality is children don’t witness their fathers’ private struggles, the barriers they faced, or the heartbreak of wanting to be present but encountering obstacles like legal battles, incarceration, or relationship conflicts that made consistent involvement difficult. Society has conditioned us to default to one-dimensional portrayals of Black fathers as absent or uncaring, when the truth is far more complex.
He pointed out a funny irony. As young men grow up and become fathers themselves, they often discover firsthand how challenging these situations can be. When their own relationships with their children’s mothers don’t work out, they suddenly find themselves painted as the villain in the same way they might have once viewed their own fathers.
Sometimes they even begin to understand the complexities their own fathers faced, seeing dynamics they couldn’t recognize as children. This cycle continues because it’s what society taught us to expect.
Each insight landed with grace. I watched men rubbing their chins in thought, others visibly relieved to have words for what they were feeling. It was like Dr. Jasper handed out puzzle pieces that many of us had been trying to solve alone. Now, in that room, the pieces started forming a clearer picture. It was one that said you’re not alone, and you’re not weak for hurting.
As the event wound down, Dr. Williams opened the floor for final reflections. One by one, men stood to express gratitude. Dr. Williams reminded us that this was part of a monthly mental health series she hosts, with each month tackling different aspects of emotional wellness. June is Men’s Mental Health Month, which made the focus on fathers especially fitting. She encouraged everyone to return, bring friends, and keep building this healing community.
I left that evening feeling profoundly moved and surprisingly light, like I had set down a burden I didn’t know I was carrying. For anyone who wasn’t there, I wish I could truly capture the magic that happened in that room. The best I can do is urge you, if you ever get the chance to attend something like this, do it.
Whether you’re a father, son, mother who wants to understand, or simply someone who cares about Black men’s mental health, these gatherings are special. They’re changing lives.
Dr. Cynthia Williams and Dr. Curtis Jasper are doing incredible work. Heart work, in a world that desperately needs it. They’re helping men heal unseen wounds and reminding all of us that sharing our pain isn’t weakness, but a step toward wholeness.
Javan "Check Three Times" Anderson
Founder and editor-in-chief of Three Times Magazine, a platform dedicated to spotlighting the voices shaping culture through raw, unfiltered conversations. As a writer, poet, and creative visionary, Javan is passionate about documenting the intersections of fashion, music, art, and independent thought. Through Three Times Magazine, he invites readers into deeper stories, powerful dialogues, and the creative worlds behind the work.
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