Ep. 001 Love Made Me Do It

In this episode, I explore the idea of a pedagogy of love. Love as the central architecture for all that we do - our living, our working, our relating, our building new worlds.

I tap into some personal stories - from my time as a foster mom, to the classroom, to the work I do now - to illustrate the power of love as a north star and root system.

Listen all the way through for a feeling-filled heart-to-heart at the end - a word of life and love to YOU.

For more support in anchoring your work into a paradigm of love, check out  MAKE YOUR BODY OF WORK LOVE LETTERS TO YOUR PEOPLE.

Transcript:

Years ago, I came across a meme—it was a neon sign that said, Love made me do it. I saved it to my phone and posted it on Instagram. It was 2015 when I found it, and it spoke so much to why I did what I did at the time. Things that didn’t make sense to other people, things that pushed against existing systems and the status quo. I knew deep in my heart that I was doing it because of love.

Love was such a strong theme in my teaching, in my living, in my choices. And I think I’ll have to tell you the stories to help you appreciate that I don’t mean that in a surface-level way.

When I posted that meme that said Love made me do it, it was during the time I had become a foster mom. I was single, living in a one-bedroom apartment. Many of my students lived on that same street. When the social worker called to ask if I would take in one of my students—because she had nobody else that they could place her with—I didn’t feel prepared. It made no sense. I was 26 years old, estranged from my family, with very little support and no partner. I was living off a public high school teacher’s salary in a one-bedroom apartment. Why would I say yes?

When I talked to some of my friends, they said, “We know you have a big heart and you want to help people, but that makes no sense. You don’t have to do everything.” The social worker was clear that if I didn’t accept her, she would remain in the system. When I went to visit her and saw the inside of the foster system—the group homes, the conditions there—I couldn’t say no. Love made me do it.

In the six months that I was a foster mom, it was probably the biggest challenge of my life. I’ve faced a lot of challenges, but maybe that one was the hardest because of all the systems I was up against, the opposition from people close to me, the wounds it surfaced in me. Maybe because I realized that love isn’t enough when you’re facing systemic issues and inequities. But I never regret any choice I made that was rooted in love.

Becoming a public high school teacher and living out a pedagogy of love, I know every day that I showed up to do that, I was living in my fullest purpose. Saying yes to the lessons on love that opened my heart to meeting and marrying my husband, becoming a mother to my two children—those are the moments I know I’ve lived in my fullest potential as a human being.

Love motivated me to heal, to stay alive even when remaining here felt impossible. Love carried me to put the pieces back together, creating wholeness for myself and pathways of healing for my family and lineage. It’s still messy, and many pieces still look broken, but love keeps me praying, waiting, tending to the soil that grows the possibilities I long for in myself, my community, and this world.

When I became a public school teacher, I was greatly shaped by critical pedagogy. People like Paulo Freire, Antonia Darder, and bell hooks talk about a pedagogy of love. For academics and pedagogues to construct entire systems to understand how humans learn—or how they are conditioned and unlearn that conditioning—and to devote not a small portion of their work to love, that means something. It’s worth noting because mainstream society tries to confine love to poetic, romantic, or feminine spaces, implying that those spaces are less rigorous or less powerful. Love is treated as optional, decorative, outside of the systems that make the world run. If you ask the white men in power, they’ll tell you love is a joke. And that’s a huge reason why the world is the way it is.

So I sit with my story about Love made me do it. All the moments where I made the most impact were the ones where I existed most fully as myself. Times when students came into my classroom carrying so many wounds and mistrust. Early on, I would tell them: Whatever you need me to be—mom, dad, uncle, auntie, big sister, cousin, mentor, coach—I’ll be that for you. I love you. I want to see you flourish, alive, joyful. I want to see your gifts supported. I love you. This matters to me. I’ll put my life on the line for you.

And as a classroom teacher in America from 2012 to 2023, that did mean putting my life on the line. We weren’t protected in our service. We were bracing every day for armed shooters—and they did come. I’ve been in two active shooter lockdowns, not drills—real threats. Every day, I stepped into the classroom ready to risk my life for my students.

Shooters aside, I approached teaching like a life-or-death craft, because it is. Teachers hold power to shape lives. I’ve heard enough stories: My 11th-grade teacher said something that destroyed my confidence. And I’ve heard others: My fifth-grade teacher gave me my first notebook, told me to write, handed me a mic, and I’ve believed in my voice ever since.

If that’s not power, I don’t know what is. If I can’t wield that power with love and care, who am I to take up that space?

It’s that same love that keeps me anchored in my integrity now. Entering the online coaching field made no sense, especially after earning a PhD. But I didn’t do that PhD for prestige—I did it to protect my communities, to have leverage to sustain our spaces. I wanted to keep teaching in ways that mattered. But eventually, I was pushed out of my district and had to make new meaning. The question guiding me became: How can I still offer my gifts to the people who need me most? I realized my path was to create outside of institutions rather than fight from within. Love—for myself, my community, and my purpose—propelled me to walk that path, even when it looked strange to others.

What anchors me in uncertainty? When safety and security feel fragile? Love. Always love.

Now, after years in the online space working with sensitive, heart-led humans, I see one of their biggest hurdles: marketing under capitalism often costs too much to our integrity and inner safety. When we leave the structure of a nine-to-five and try to sustain ourselves through meaningful work, we have to confront what we believe about visibility and self-promotion. Too many talented people get stuck there, waiting for permission to do their work.

I was one of them. My saving grace was returning to what I’ve always known: when you have something to share, share it out of love. Make your work a love letter to the people looking for you.

I’ve done this at many points in my life.

When I was looking for a full-time teaching job, I decided to fully show up as myself. I wasn’t going to play it safe or hide my approach. I wanted schools to know who they were hiring. So on my résumé, I added the tagline: Infusing education with love and hope. In interviews, I brought printed photos of my classroom spaces and told stories about my students, our community, and transformation. Every interview I went on, I got offered a job being exactly who I was.

When I was building programs that didn’t exist before—like BSU or the spoken word class—the burden fell on me to build and sustain them. Funding field trips, buying curriculum, inviting speakers—all of it required communicating who we were, what we were doing, and why it mattered. I had to speak clearly, truthfully, and lovingly so people would believe in it.

For my elective spoken word class, I had to fill my own roster every year against resistance. Counselors wouldn’t suggest it, parents didn’t understand it, admin questioned it. So I went room to room, person to person, saying: This space is designed for you—the ones pushed to the side by this system. I love you. It matters deeply to me that you get to know the power of your voice. I’ve made the space. All you have to do is show up. It’s going to change your life. And it did.

There’s so much emotion there because it’s love. I’ll never regret a day I spend feeling this way about what I do and who I do it for. I want to activate that in everyone I meet. I’ve always told my students—they’re the teachers too. They are the teachers in their own lives.

I just want to remind them—because they already know deep down who they are and what they hold. They know what they’re meant to give, create, and leave behind. They just live under layers of oppressive systems that spend trillions to silence that knowing—to suppress voice, belief, connection, and power.

If I’m going to spend my journey remembering what it means to be fully alive, I’m pulling others with me. We don’t make it through this without each other.

My work is a love letter to the people who feel too much, who still know what hope feels like even when it’s hard to hold onto. It gets easier when we do it together. There’s joy and there’s power in doing this together.

There’s no other way forward without love waking us up, reminding us what we’re meant to do, showing us who’s waiting for us, emboldening us to make decisions that make no sense to others, and to risk it all.

It has to be love that made us do it.

So I’ll wrap up this heart-to-heart with a few questions:

What is love asking you to do today?
What’s been knocking on your heart, refusing to leave you alone, reminding you it’s waiting for you?
If you could flip open the pages of your story, what would your Love made me do it moment be?

To get started—what do you need? What do you already hold? Because if not you, then who?

I’ll leave you with those questions. Drop me a line. Let’s talk more soon. We have more to untangle on this topic of love—what we’re supposed to do with it, with these dreams, this belief, this courage to change what we can’t bear to accept.

We’ll talk again soon.

Start learning with the free email course 6 Lessons Sovereign Storytellers Live By.