Heal Forward
To heal forward, you first have to know what carried you through. For me, it was a podcast, and today I stood within the walls its host had raised. The Mental Wealth Expo, convened by Charlamagne tha God and the Mental Wealth Alliance, completed an arc that began in 2018, when I first tuned in to The Brilliant Idiots, the program he co-hosts with Andrew Schulz. Most listeners hear comedy. Beneath the laughter, I heard a steady and unusually candid education in caring for the mind.
In 2019, after five years away from the classroom, I returned to school as the eldest statesman in the room. The decision required me to leave my friends behind and resettle in another city, and the strain of that season was considerable. There were days I thought very little of myself. Yet I understood the hardship for what it was: the work required of me, and the price of admission to a better future.
Through that season, Charlamagne and Schulz were constant company. Amid the irreverence, Charlamagne returned again and again to mental health, insisting that tending to one’s mind is an act of strength. What we consume, and the environments we inhabit, shape far more of what we eventually do and say than we tend to admit, and those conversations left their mark on me. They sustained me through my undergraduate studies and, in time, gave them direction. For my final-year capstone in 2022, I developed a mental health triage platform designed to connect individuals with qualified experts, an idea that traces directly back to hours spent listening.
In time, the show became shared ground. Friends I introduced to it became members of the Brilliant Idiots gang in their own right, among them Emmanuel Makobi, who still sends me clips before I have reached the episode, along with whatever Andrew happened to wear, so that we might attempt it ourselves. Both hosts dress with deliberate care, and their example has quietly raised the standard to which we hold ourselves.
The expo opened with an invitation rather than a lecture: turn to your neighbor, because no one in the room was walking this road alone. The first conversation, on nervous system regulation, brought Michelle Williams together with Koya Webb and Jovian Zayne, and it recast the body as a faithful messenger.
A racing heart or a tightening stomach, they argued, should not be overridden. Pushing through teaches us to ignore the very signals designed to protect us, while a slow, deliberate breath restores a sense of safety. They spoke of ritual as nothing more mysterious than intention: greeting the morning with gratitude and a glass of water before the demands of a screen, and ensuring that the care we extend to others is matched by the care we reserve for ourselves. Emotion, too, requires an outlet. Feelings that are suppressed linger until they are written down, walked off, or released through something as simple as a letter of forgiveness.
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Toward the close, Michelle addressed the men directly, assuring us there is no shame in admitting, “I’ve been having a hard time.” From that stage, it sounded like the continuation of a conversation Charlamagne had begun with me years earlier.
A later panel, featuring the clinical psychologist and scholar Dr. Rheeda Walker, turned to life after a diagnosis and offered the most clarifying counsel of the day. Its premise was that a diagnosis explains a person without defining them. The speakers urged care with language, favoring “I have been diagnosed with” over “I am,” since the mind tends to become what it is told it is, and since hope remains the precondition for any real change.
They were equally clear that we should never be afraid to be assessed by experts. Being evaluated by a qualified professional is itself a step forward, the first concrete movement toward getting better, and a far wiser one than diagnosing oneself through a search engine. They distinguished the psychiatrist, who typically prescribes, from the psychologist, who assesses and treats through therapy, and they presented medication as an instrument rather than a verdict. A good therapist, they noted, is recognizable by two outcomes of the first session: you feel safe, and you leave hopeful. Even so, there is no magic pill. Diet, movement, the company we keep, and the content we consume all shape the mind, which is why one panelist encouraged us to reset our algorithm.
The panel closed by framing healing as a matter of alignment. One speaker described learning his triggers and enlisting what he called bodyguards, family and friends entrusted to check on him. Another recounted how his mother’s symptoms receded once she returned home to live near her sister. Recovery is sometimes less about acquiring something new than about returning to who, and where, we are meant to be.
Away from the main stage, I had the chance to speak with Taylor and Nyla and to take photographs with each of them, a genuine thrill after years of watching them on screen. As a devoted fan, I shared something of what the show has meant to me: how it steadied me through a difficult season and became woven into the way I understand myself. They received it warmly, and the exchange, though brief, carried the weight of years.
The voice that accompanied me through 2019 now convenes rooms in which thousands undertake that same work together. To heal forward, I have come to believe, is to release what we have carried and then to extend to others the hand that was once extended to us.
The Mental Wealth Expo began with a gentle reminder that none of us walk this road alone, so turn to your neighbor and lean in. Your body speaks softly through a racing heart or a knotted stomach, and a slow breath, a pause, or a small morning ritual can tell it you’re safe. Give yourself the same care you pour into others, let your feelings move through you, and savor the little joys. If you’ve been given a diagnosis, know that it simply helps explain you; it never defines you, and there’s no shame in leaning on a trusted professional, or on medication if you need it. Healing grows when you surround yourself with the right people and live true to who you are.
Heal forward.
