Where Listening Leads:  A Daughter’s Journey into Her Father’s Story

January 13, 2026

I didn’t expect the conversations with my father to be what they are becoming. 

What I thought would be a series of interviews for the book project has become something closer to a shared act of remembering—unrushed, layered, sometimes uncomfortable, and occasionally surprising. Each time we talk, details emerge that I didn’t know to ask for, stories that didn’t make it into family shorthand, moments that complicate and challenge what I thought I understood. I find myself listening not just as a writer, but as his daughter, aware that something is shifting as his memories move from his interior world into the space between us.

What has surprised me the most is not just what my father remembers, but how his remembering is affecting me. I notice myself responding in ways I didn’t anticipate—pausing longer, asking different kinds of questions, sitting with silence instead of rushing past it. There are moments when a detail he shares reframes something I thought I already knew, and others when I realize how much of his life unfolded outside my line of sight. Listening very closely requires more than attention; it requires a willingness to be rewired—emotionally, relationally, intellectually, and other ways yet to be named—by what is being revealed.

Outside of our conversations, the material continues to surface in quieter ways. My dreams have become more vivid, more insistent, as my subconscious has decided to participate in the work alongside me. I don’t keep a traditional journal, but I’m paying attention to what rises—images, feelings, realizations that arrive unannounced. Rather than feeling weighed down by this process, I feel lighter, as though something long held captive is finally being allowed to move toward the end of a dark tunnel.

* * *

A few days ago, during a conversation with my father, he recounted a family trip to Niagara Falls.  There is a photo of the two of us, sitting at the overlook or observation deck, with the falls in the background and the roaring river below. Neither of us understood at that time what would be waiting for us, decades later.  

There is a growing awareness that this work is carrying me, and perhaps both of us, toward unfamiliar terrain. I feel as though I’m standing at the edge of something—aware that once I step forward, I will be changed by what I encounter. I don’t yet know how deep the water is, or what it will ask of me, only that staying on solid ground no longer feels possible. This moment, this pause before the leap, feels worth marking.

For now, I’m allowing this work to unfold at its own pace. I’m listening closely, paying attention to what stirs, and trusting that meaning will continue to reveal itself in layers. This feels less like the beginning of a book and more like an orientation—a way of standing still long enough to understand where I am before moving forward. Whatever shape Black Men of Measure eventually takes, it will be informed by this moment of attention, curiosity, and openness to being changed.

I don’t yet know where this process will lead or what it will ultimately ask of me. What I do know is that listening to my father speak candidly to me as his daughter, and trusting me as his life’s unofficial chronicler, has altered my relationship to him, to the material, and to myself. There is a sense of standing at the edge of something newly visible, aware that movement is inevitable. For now, it feels enough to acknowledge the shift—to honor this moment of readiness before stepping fully into what comes next.