Keilen Crenshaw learned early that the world responded to force. Taken from his mother at 10, cycling through foster care, carrying unchecked anger that eventually led to a four-and-a-half-year federal sentence — survival was the only thing he knew.

What he didn't know was where that anger came from. Or what it had cost him.

In this episode, Keilen traces the full arc: from a school hallway in DC to the Middle Fork of the American River, where getting thrown from a raft and coming up gasping taught him something prison never could — respect. Now a recovery support counselor at Jubilee Housing in Washington D.C., he brings that hard-won wisdom directly to the men who need it most.

This is a conversation about the difference between surviving and living.

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When Aaron Burris walks into the dining room of the Inside Circle Healing Home, he feels two things at once — joy and grief. Joy because a dream that was born in prison circles, in chapel chairs, in hushed conversations about what if we built something — is now real. Grief because some of the men who dreamed it with him didn't make it out to see it.

In this conversation, Aaron sits down with Eldra Jackson III to talk about what it really takes to come home after incarceration — not just physically, but as a person. He talks about Butch, a man who knew how to navigate every system inside prison walls and couldn't survive the one outside them. About the near-misses in his own decade of freedom. About the question that has become the center of his healing work: Who am I without prison?

The Inside Circle Healing Home isn't a halfway house. It's not a program. It's a place where men coming out of incarceration can learn to iron a shirt, balance a budget, ride public transit safely, and — more importantly — figure out who they are when nobody's watching.

This is the story of how it got built, who it's built for, and what it means to plant a seed for a tree you may never sit under.

How do you find self-love after 15 years in prison? In this episode, Edwin Lee joins host Eldra Jackson III to share his raw journey from a lonely childhood in San Francisco's Chinatown to finding his humanity behind bars.

Edwin discusses the "Tiger Parenting" that fueled his early resentment, his transition from gang life to becoming a certified counselor, and the "culture shock" of leaving prison for a world that moves faster than ever. It is a powerful conversation about the pressure to succeed, the complexities of modern reentry, and why healing is a lifelong process.

Support the Work: Learn more about our mission to heal systemic trauma at InsideCircle.org.