I didn’t learn resilience from a book or a motivational speaker. I learned it on cracked asphalt in Brooklyn before the city woke up. I learned it from Coach Kurt, making my whole team run suicides because I wasn’t paying attention. I learned it from a family court judge in Schenectady, reading a ruling in a room that smelled of disinfectant and old paper, while I sat there not as a defendant but as a father who refused to disappear.
These aren’t theories. They are things I lived. And they’re in my memoir, The Bounce Back, because I believe somebody reading this needs them right now.
1. Passion Is Not a Luxury; It’s a Survival Tool
People talk about “following your passion” like it’s something you do when life is comfortable. For me, basketball was what I did when life was anything but. It was what I did when the apartment was full of arguments and thin walls and the smell of baked chicken that had been on the stove too long. It was what I did when I stared at another kid’s bright red Air Jordans and felt the shame of my own frayed laces.
I’d tie those same frayed laces before sunrise and walk out to Shady Park while the rest of Marlboro was still sleeping. Two quarters in my pocket for a cherry ice on the way home. That was my whole world, and that was enough.
Whatever pulls you forward when everything else is pushing you down that thing is not a distraction. It is the point. Protect it the way I protected those early morning hours on the court. Guard it like a hidden treasure, because that’s what it is.
2. Structure Is Not a Cage; It’s a Foundation
When I first walked into the gym at John Dewey High School to try out for the Flames League, I almost turned around at the door. I was eleven. My gym bag was small, and I was holding it so tight my hands were sweating. Kids around me had team hoodies from previous seasons. I had outgrown shorts and scuffed-up sneakers.
Coach Kurt didn’t care. He cared whether you listened. “We win as a team or lose as one,” he said on day one. That was it. No exceptions. If one of us messed up a drill, all of us ran suicides again. I hated it for about a week. Then something shifted.
I started showing up early. Staying late. One evening, Kurt was sweeping the gym floor after practice, and I offered to help. He glanced at me and said, “Champions clean up after themselves.” I didn’t understand the full weight of that at eleven. I do now.
Structure feels like a restriction until you understand it’s the thing that actually sets you free. A clear set of rules, a standard that doesn’t move, that’s more stable than anything I had at home. I carried that lesson well into adulthood.
3. Losing the Right Way Is Its Own Kind of Win
The St. Ann’s Cobras beat us twice in the regular season and once in the playoffs. One of those losses on our home court included Omar Cook crossing me over so cleanly that I fell. On the floor. In front of everyone.
I got up immediately. But the embarrassment didn’t go away fast. I replayed it for days. What I eventually realised, though, was that the gap between Omar Cook and me wasn’t talent. It was discipline. It was the number of hours. He had put in the work at a level I hadn’t reached yet. That was a fixable problem.
After those seasons ended, I still showed up to the gym. I’d ask Kurt to rebound for me and shoot until my arms ached. I received the Most Improved Player award that first year, not for scoring the most, but for showing up every single day. That trophy meant more to me than any win. It was proof that the daily grind gets noticed, even when you’re not the loudest person in the room.
4. Faith Without Action Is Just Wishful Thinking
The winter of 2020 into 2021 was the hardest stretch of my adult life. I was living alone on Clinton Avenue in Albany, paying $1,050 a month in rent on a part-time security wage that started at $17 an hour. Some weeks, I was choosing between paying the gas bill and eating three meals a day. I chose the gas bill. I ate one meal on some of those days.
One month, the gas bill came in, and I simply did not have it. I had run out of moves. So I called National Grid the next day, ready to beg for an extension. I gave the woman my account information and waited for the number I owed.
She said, “Mr. Powell, you don’t have a gas bill.”
I said: “Are you sure?”
“No, Mr. Powell,” she said. “It has already been paid.”
I still don’t fully understand what happened that day. But I know it changed something in me permanently. I didn’t wait for that miracle to do nothing. I was working overnight shifts, filing court paperwork, budgeting every dollar, and praying every night. Faith, the way I understand it, is not sitting still waiting to be rescued. It is moving forward in the dark and trusting the ground will hold.
5. A Father Who Shows Up Imperfectly Is Still a Father Who Shows Up
My son Jahlon was six years old the last time I saw him in person before the long separation. I have a memory of him at a park in Schenectady, running straight into every puddle he could find, laughing at himself, completely unbothered by getting wet. It used to get on my nerves. Now I would give anything to watch him do it again.
In March or April 2021, I filed a petition for visitation at Schenectady Family Court. What followed was a year and a half of hearings, rescheduled dates, attorneys who came and went, and paperwork that never seemed to end. I showed up to every hearing. I submitted every document. I followed every instruction, even when I didn’t understand the system, even when the system felt like it was designed to exhaust me into giving up.
In June 2022, visitation was granted. The judge said it plainly. No fanfare. Just: “Visitation will be granted.” I nodded. I didn’t jump or shout. I just felt this quiet, solid thing settle into my chest.
Later, I found out Jahlon had been living in Houston, Texas, something nobody had told me. That hurt. But by then, I had learned how to receive disappointment without letting it undo the progress. I kept moving. I kept calling. When virtual visitation was awarded on November 14, 2025, I didn’t know what to say when I first heard his voice properly. So I just listened.
Presence. That’s all it is. Showing up in whatever form is available to you. A father who keeps trying imperfectly, across distance, through a broken system, is still a father who loves his child.
The Bounce Back Is a Daily Choice
None of these five things came naturally to me. I didn’t wake up resilient. I woke up scared, tired, hungry sometimes, and alone more often than I’d like to admit. The bounce back isn’t a feeling you wait for. It’s a decision you make in the dark, before anyone is watching, with frayed shoelaces to go outside anyway and put the ball up one more time.
That’s it. That’s the whole secret.