What does it cost a man to grow up believing that strength means suppressing what he feels?

In this episode of Mama Never Told Me, Erica talks with Eric “Mr. E” about the lessons he wishes someone had taught him about manhood, emotions, relationships, marriage, and fatherhood.

Eric traces his understanding of masculinity back to childhood. Raised by a single mother during his early years, he later had a stepfather he admits he wasn't ready to listen to. Instead, some of his ideas about being a man came from the streets and images of men as aggressive, tough, and emotionally closed off.

Those ideas followed him into adulthood. Eric discusses falling in with the wrong crowd, incarceration, losing his mother, and how studying helped change the direction of his thinking and his life. He also reflects on intimacy, empathy, marriage, autism, mental health, and the difficult work of recognizing patterns without using them as excuses.

Today, as a single father raising two sons, Eric is trying to give his children something different: the tools to understand emotions before emotions control their decisions. He talks about teaching his sons openly about relationships, sex, women's bodies, intimacy, accountability, fidelity, and the responsibilities that come with adulthood.

At the center of Erica and Eric's conversation is a simple but consequential idea: emotions aren't weakness. Fear, sadness, anger, love, and empathy all carry information—but we have to learn what to do with them.

It's a conversation about what Eric wasn't taught, what experience taught him instead, and what he's determined to pass on differently to his sons.

Who sees the brilliance in a child when behavior, circumstance or the system gets noticed first?

In this episode of Mama Never Told Me, Erica talks with Aarolyn J. Casillas about what it means to advocate for children who cannot always advocate for themselves.

Aarolyn brings experience in child and family advocacy, education and CASA/GAL work, alongside doctoral research focused on the experiences surrounding gifted and talented minority boys. Her work raises an important question: What happens when a child's potential is present, but the adults and systems around that child don't recognize it?

The sisters move between the professional and deeply personal—discussing CASA advocacy, CPS and the courts, parental responsibility, gifted education, military families, representation, health challenges, stress and the emotional weight carried by people who spend their lives caring for others.

Aarolyn also explains why advocating for a child doesn't mean automatically choosing one side. It means looking at the whole situation, listening to the child's lived experience when possible, considering the evidence and continuing to ask what is truly in that child's best interest.

And beneath the policy is a much simpler principle:

Children deserve to be seen for their potential and brilliance—not reduced to their circumstances.

This is a conversation about the children who can disappear between policies, classrooms, courtrooms and assumptions—and the people willing to keep looking out for them.

Mama Never Told Me — for the things we were never told, but always felt.

Take a breath with me.

Today we’re naming the bravery it takes to let your calling grow up alongside you.

Dezaree’ Lusk braided cosmetology, clinical social work, and a fierce love for veterans into Divine Beauty Bar—a place where wigs, healing, and legacy live in the same room. From late-night dorm-room sew-ins to a nationwide “Free Wigs for Veterans” initiative, her story reminds us that purpose can shapeshift without losing its heartbeat.

Inside the episode

• Origin spark: the first pair of shears and a big dream
• When beauty work becomes mental-health advocacy
• Why an MBA felt necessary—then surprising
• Legacy threads that keep the mission steady
• A gentle permission slip for anyone itching to pivot

Hand over heart, notice any spark of “maybe I can evolve too.”

This conversation offers shared experience and reflection, not medical advice. Every body is different.