#194 - Kamisha Allen

In this episode of The 10 Ninety Podcast, Mason sits down with Kamisha Allen, a Phoenix, Arizona mother and founder of the HP Foundation — and the mom of J'Wan, a 21-year-old son she lost to a drowning accident 12 years ago. J'Wan was a football player, a scholar, a Harry Potter reader, and the person who changed everything about who Kamisha was. He was family-first, a jokester, and the reason she became someone worth being. She also almost lost him to a seizure years before the water took him — and she never saw it coming either time. Kamisha talks about what it was actually like to get that call — the phone she didn't want to answer, the knock on the door, the moment in the convenience store where she had to identify his tattoos and couldn't hold it together anymore. She gets into the guilt of letting him move in with his dad, the suicidal thoughts that followed, and the car crash that didn't kill her — and why she believes it wasn't supposed to. She also gets into grief, the dark tunnel of it, and what it actually means to find the light. She talks about the angel in the Dollar Tree, the green journal she still has, and how a little girl said the exact right thing and then disappeared. She talks about building the HP Foundation out of grief she wasn't done with yet, covering burial costs for families who lost children without life insurance, and sitting in rooms with other parents who get it in a way no one else can. And she talks about the neck tattoo that started as a bad decision and ended as scripture. About Harry Potter. About her grandson who looks just like J'Wan. About 12 years in — how the weight doesn't leave, but you get stronger carrying it. This one takes you to the dark and brings you back. "Be gentle with yourself."