The Full Story
About the series
Stolen and Forgotten Gifts was inspired through Darius' clinical practice
for nearly 15 years specializing in child/ adolescent counseling.
During this time, Darius focused heavily on ages 3 - 12
where he unexpectedly noticed how often early beliefs
about help, inadequacy, and perfectionism unspoken in families developed through
childhood and into adulthood. In his work with adults, Darius connected how psychiatry
in the Black community often requires healing their inner child
whom often felt they had to answer lots of questions about life on their own,
with judgment, or with little room for mistakes. Through learning vulnerability
via psychotherapy, Darius gave his adult clients the opportunity,
to many for the first time,
the chance to disclose how childhood help, independence, and self-reliance
became strengths, but also the very instruments preventing
vulnerability with their intimate relationships and within self.
Through beginning to write during the 2020 pandemic and shifting
his practice to virtual psychotherapy from in-person,
Stolen was birthed.
Stolen and Forgotten Gifts is a series of short-reading, self-paced resource books
on creating, re-tooling, and restoring intimacy within relationships through
topics surrounding vulnerability within diverse groups.
​
The Stolen series hopes to bridge a growing literacy gap within relationships
in which the demand for greater emotional awareness and flexible communication styles
can levy relationship challenges when
socialized norms for behavior no longer fit the 'modern relationship.'
Mission
Create short, re-readable content for
relationship seekers unable to fully benefit from
culturally informed, psychological resources
due to a lack of cultural prioritization
in 'modern relationships.'
Vision
Our goal is to activate readers
seeking relationships with the audacity and trust
to interrogate socialized masculinity
that does not compliment the unyielding demand
for vulnerability, emotional readiness
and awareness, and self-accountability
to perform and compete
in 'modern relationships.'
