I've spent the first hours of today catching up on Fahamu Pecou's blog posts. It was not an easy task. Each story shared by Pecou evoked tears I have learned to hide out of fear of seeming "un-normal" to those I know and those I've yet to meet.

Reading Pecou's candid tales of hurt, realization, healing and forgiveness have once again forced me to toy with the idea of writing a memoir. For the past year, I have gone back and forth about whether I should undertake the intimate endeavor of putting my life stories on paper.

Although, like many who make the autobiographical journey, I am sure someone, somewhere may be influenced by the events of my being.  However, more than helping others, I believe being forced to record memories I have worked hard to forget, could be a valuable first step to healing my emotional ailments.

Making the decision to expose your demons for all the world to see is a complicated resolution.

After reading the narratives of my history, will people think they know me? Will they try to put me in a box? Will they run the other way when they see me coming? Will I hurt my family by being so forthright about the ups and downs of our lives?

These questions and others run rampart through my head as I start, then stop again with each potential entry into my book of life.

I have many unfinished projects. All of them therapeutic attempts at a healthier future.  Each one sitting idle while I deal with the fear of facing the incubus that has continued to plague my personal and professional relationships.

I still haven't quite committed to starting this project, but I am getting closer to quenching an insatiable need to not only be happy, but be healthy.  The desire to thrive will surely come out the victor, no?

I grew up without my father and for much of my life imagined what that relationship was like; to have a father. Now the father of a daughter and son, I am committed to being a  dedicated figure in the lives of my children in the hopes that I have done my part to heal the damages many black men and women have experienced due to significant lack of black male fathers and father figures.

This is how Brooklyn-born, Atlanta-based artist Fahamu Pecou describes the motivation behind the inception of his blog Passage of Right: A Black Man's Journey.  Decidedly candid, the blog pushes the limits of being more than just an online journal of his daily activities and engulfs readers into the history that has inspired one of today's most prolific artists to "end the cycle of disconnectivity which afflicts African American males."

From detailed accounts of the day his father murdered his mother ("during one of the most tragic events in my life, an experience that would alter the course of my life, I was completely unaware") to his personal journey of learning forgiveness ("Forgiving can be equated to breathing. One must breathe out in order to breathe in. You gotta let go to let in."), Pecou allows readers to access a very personal, very real, ongoing transformation.

Through his words, Pecou seems to hope others will not only be guided towards their own individual metamorphosis, but find encouragement to ignite communal rebuilding and reorganization.

Check him out.  Witness his revolution. Because not only is Fahamu Pecou the Shit, but he thinks we, the African-American community, are pretty damn fly too.

Thank you.

Photo: "Look Ma, No Shuffle" by Fahamu Pecou as photographed by C-Monster.