The Survivor’s Tribute
I could have been writing this in memory of my brothers, but instead I’m privileged to celebrate their lives while they’re still here.
As a producer, every project I create carries the same goal: to raise consciousness through emotional storytelling. Do I want you crying or screaming after I publish? Usually not. But I do want you to pause and think about how this connects to you and the role you play in being a better human.
I think a great deal about how and why humans connect. What makes us relate, what moves us to empathize and what gives us space to be vulnerable with each other. Paying respect to Men’s Health Awareness month, I chose to connect over something I don’t see or hear people talk much about: their scars.
Scars are the small fragments of ourselves that remind us of what we’ve been through. Just like physical attributes, they take on various forms. They pose as conversation starters, pregnant pauses, breath takers or even knee slappers and jaw droppers. And if you ask about the history behind a scar, you can never prepare yourself for what you’ll hear.
Our scars unearth truths about us that we don’t cognize because we subtly ignore it or sometimes it’s just too painful to relive. Whether physical or mental, I find that more often, men conceal the scars they carry from their life experiences because they are terrified to hear themselves relive these moments. The void of spaces to confront these scars contribute to unhealthy habits that eventually disrupts their chances at finding peace and calm in their life.
Think back to your own scars and the history behind them, what story do you tell? Is it the embarrassing consequence of being a curious kid, a naïve mistake that left a regretful reminder or a deeply painful experience that caused you permanent damage? The point is, we all live with trauma that we are consciously or subconsciously still healing from. This project is meant to document unique stories of the scars left by life altering events, to inspire proactive health and wellness for men.
The stories shared here represent people who woke up expecting to have a regular day or went to bed thinking it was just another ordinary night. Whether they heal or not, our scars are stories we can’t run from. Scars are the homogeneity that makes us no different from each other. So the next time a scar stirs your curiosity, think about the last time you sat with someone and asked them “Are you hurting?”
Thank you Asher, Kevin, Kufre and Franck for being truthtellers.
And a special thank you to Steve (JSYK/Photography) and Sebastien (SP1 Films/Cinematography) for lending creative genius to this tribute.
Full length stories will be shared on the Sons of Hollis YouTube Channel and shorter snippets released to our Instagram Page.
“I realize that it’s like 4 o’clock in the morning and I just can’t go back to sleep. At around 8 o’clock I tell my mom I think I need to go to the hospital. Typically I try to avoid hospitals.
Then she says okay then, this must be serious, meet me in the front by my car and we’ll go to the hospital.
And I can’t even put on like my left shoe, I can’t put it on. We get to the hospital and they say fill out these forms, but I can’t remember my social security number. That’s odd, I’ve done this, I know these numbers. You know what, maybe I’m just really tired. They say okay fine we’ll do that later. Then they tell me to sit down and they ask me to raise my hands and I couldn’t raise my hands. Then they asked me what day was today and here’s where I pause. Now I knew i was having an issue remembering dates and times.
But I said (to myself) okay ‘Today is September 7th, today is September 7th’ and when they ask ‘What day is it?’, I’m trying to say it but I can’t say it. I can’t escape what I’m trying to say and I say ‘It’s July 24th.’
Then the nurse looks at me and looks at my mother and says ‘This young man is having a stroke.’”
“After everything is said and done I see some blood on my shirt. So I’m telling my friends, I’m like ‘Yo, check yourselves I think somebody got cut, check yourselves. You might be cut.’
Then I went to fix my shirt and noticed that my shirt was heavy. I looked and my shirt is drenched in blood.
I lift my shirt up and my guts… A little bit of my guts were like, out of my stomach.
I end up being stabbed 6 times in total… two different knives.”
”A little bit after the party, we’re driving home and we turn the corner and get to a stoplight, and I hear my door in the back open.
Somebody gets into the car with a big henny bottle. So at first, I’m like, ‘Is this really happening?’, this guy must think we’re an Uber or something. I turn around and tell the guy to get out the car. He gets out the car and immediately throws the henny bottle at my car. At that point, I got out the car and chased the guy down the block. I felt disrespected.
As soon as I grab him, we both slip. He ends up hitting his head on the brick wall and my knee ends up smashing into the brick wall and I fall.
At that point I couldn’t get up. And I thought, ‘This guy is gonna kill me’ because I can’t even get up. I’m trying to get up and I notice my knee cap is on the left side and my knee is on the right. At that moment I knew it was over.
I shattered at least eight to nine bones in my kneecap and I had to get a major surgery which to be honest with you, changed my life… I didn’t think I’d ever be able to walk, play sports or do anything that I really really like to do.”
“They did the procedure and when I woke up, I asked the nurse ‘Hey how’s everything? Are we good?’ and she said ‘The doctor needs to talk to you.’
Still at this point, very confident. I’m like ‘ok it happens, it’s fine, you’ll be okay.’ I remember sitting down.. I tell him ‘Hey doc, how’s it going? What’s the news?” and he said ‘Your polyps are pre-cancerous.’
At that point, everything froze. I’m 31 years old. I had precancerous polyps in me.
I didn’t know what to think and even till this day sometime just thinking about it shakes me up. Now every two to three years I’ll have to go because they found precancerous polyps in me. I have to think about it for generations to come…those that come after me need to be mindful of that.”
