In The Beginning
"Our story begins with the characters who gave us birth, including their past relationships with their parents and issues such as success and shame; power and abuse; love, loss, and addiction; heartache and secrets; and family myths." - To Be Told
Setting the Stage
My birth marks my entrance, but it is not my beginning.
I owe my start to the generations that came before me. Their lives, choices, losses, and longings formed the stage I stepped onto and the backdrop against which my own story would unfold. I cannot separate myself from the themes that preceded my arrival, because they shaped the conditions of my becoming.
To understand my story and the mission that emerged from it, you must first step into the simultaneously messy and beautiful inheritance that came before me.
“I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam…
I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes… Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”
— C.S. Lewis
For much of my life, I looked at my parents’ stories. Over time, I learned how to look along them. That shift changed everything.
Mother | Terrilyn
Senior photo from DePorres High School
This is my mother’s high school senior photo. I always liked it. But when I learned to look along her story, it became something far more meaningful.
At first glance, you see a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl standing at the edge of adulthood, full of promise and possibility. But when you take the time to look along the image, another story comes into focus, one that reshaped how I understand my mother and transformed our relationship.
Around the time this photo was taken, my mother and her three younger siblings were living through the unraveling of their family as their parents divorced. Shortly after the separation, her mother died suddenly from a brain aneurysm. In the wake of that loss, my mother was uprooted from her childhood home and moved into her father’s household, where she never felt welcomed or secure.
After graduating from high school, she moved out on her own, facing a rapidly changing world without the guidance, stability, or support she needed. What looks like confidence in the photo also holds grief, dislocation, and early self-reliance.
Father | Robert
Robert Steele (Middle)
This is a photo of my father in his early twenties, pictured with his aunt and uncle at a local club. On the surface, you see a man who appears well put together. But when you look along his story, you discover someone determined to prove his worth after a difficult beginning.
My father was born to a mother who was only sixteen. Later in childhood, he was given to a relative due to circumstances beyond his control.
At sixteen, he left home, got his first apartment, and found work, only to be evicted when his income fell short.
Those early disruptions shaped him deeply. In response, he launched himself into an entrepreneurial life, driven by a fierce determination to secure safety, stability, and a sense of self through work. His ambition was not simply about success; it was about survival and dignity.
Son | Kyle Christian Steele
My mother was working at a neighborhood store, trying to survive. My father was a regular customer.
“He was a flamboyant guy. I used to watch him get out of this fancy sports car that he made look tiny because he was so big.” — Mother
“She was a cute girl. All the guys tried to talk to her. Plus, I knew she was struggling, and I was in a position to help her.” — Father
After several years of dating, my mother became pregnant with me. The pregnancy brought joy, but also deep fear. Her life had been marked by instability, and the absence of her own mother weighed heavily.
“I was scared to have a baby because I didn’t have my mother around. I had friends who had babies, but they had their mothers.” — Mother
Through persistence and reassurance, my father helped calm her fears. On a rainy day in August, I was born at Hutzel Hospital in Detroit, Michigan.
That is the moment I stepped onto the stage.
