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Joshua Stephens | 2 days ago

The Slow Burn: Intention & Impact

I was up at a cigar lounge recently and ran into an old buddy. Well, maybe buddy is a stretch. More of an acquaintance, but someone I've spent a fair amount of time with.

They were having a hard day, and I, unintentionally, was razzing them a bit too hard. You know how it goes. A little banter between guys, giving each other a hard time, nothing particularly malicious. Except this time, I apparently didn't read the room very well. Which, if you know me, probably isn't all that surprising. Sometimes I'm about as emotionally perceptive as a brick.

Anyway, I ended up causing offense.

Fortunately, we had a conversation about it. And while I won't get into the particulars, some of the feedback I received hit home. It was something along the lines of, "You have a narrow conversational scope. If people aren't talking about what you want to talk about, you change the subject."

Ouch.

Now, there's a part of me that wanted to immediately defend myself. Explain my intentions, provide some context, or point out the various ways that assessment wasn't entirely accurate. But instead, I tried to listen. Not to respond, but to understand. And the more I listened, the more I realized that, to a degree, they were right.

I mean...it's true.

There are plenty of things I have a hard time conversing about. Small talk, for instance. I've never been particularly good at it. I'd much rather learn about who someone is, where they've been, what they've overcome, where they hope to go, and what drives them. I want to know what makes someone tick. What keeps them up at night. What they're passionate about. What they've learned along the way. Those are the conversations that get me going. Not because I believe other conversations are beneath me, but because I'm far more interested in who someone is than what someone does.

In fact, I have a hard time talking about work. Not because I don't enjoy working. Quite the contrary. I love building things, creating things, and seeing ideas come to fruition. But I've spent a considerable amount of my life trying to separate my identity from my accomplishments. I've learned, sometimes the hard way, that what I do isn't necessarily who I am. And while I certainly don't want to dismiss someone's pedigree, accomplishments, or the things they've worked hard to achieve, I don't particularly want those things to be the foundation of our relationship either.

But alas...there I was. Causing offense with a brother.

After some retrospection, I started to recognize that perhaps there was more truth to the feedback than I initially wanted to admit. I've been in my head a lot lately. Cigars, blends, packaging, distribution, licensing, profit and loss, margins, inventory, retail relationships...the list goes on. Kaitlyn and I have been pouring an enormous amount of ourselves into building Brolo. And while it's something we're incredibly passionate about, it's also something that has consumed a considerable amount of my mental bandwidth.

And, although it's difficult to admit, I think my pride has started surfacing.

Not necessarily in the way we traditionally think about pride. I'm not walking around thinking I'm better than everyone else, or that what I'm doing is somehow more important than what someone else is doing. At least, I don't think I am. But there's a subtle kind of pride that can creep in when you're building something. A kind that convinces you that because your intentions are good, your actions must be too. That because you're working toward something meaningful, the things demanding your attention are somehow justified.

And somewhere in the process of building something centered around connection, I may have become a little disconnected myself.

That's a hard thing to admit.

Here's where it gets interesting...

As I was processing the conversation, I found myself mentally building a case for why this person's assessment of me wasn't entirely fair. I mean, I personally volunteer hours of my week serving in a local ministry. And it's not isolated to the things I'm particularly talented at, like music or connecting with people. It's unloading trucks at seven in the morning, running a service from 8:15 to 9:30, attending another service at ten, breaking everything down around 11:30, and finally getting home somewhere around 1:30 in the afternoon. It's early Saturday mornings spent studying Scripture with other men, being challenged, sharpened, and spiritually formed. It's helping people at the drop of a hat, showing up when it's inconvenient, and making myself available when there isn't much time to spare.

Surely that counts for something, right?

And then I caught myself.

I was using the good things I do as evidence that I couldn't possibly have gotten this one thing wrong.

As if serving someone on Sunday somehow excuses dismissing someone on Tuesday. As if being intentional in one relationship guarantees I'm being intentional in another. As if all the things I do behind the scenes somehow negate the experience someone has with me when we're sitting across from one another.

The reality is, this person doesn't see all of that. They don't see the early mornings, the late nights, the conversations, the service, or the countless other things that occupy my time. Nor should they have to. They only know the version of me they've experienced.

And apparently, at least in this particular instance, that version wasn't particularly flattering.

And that's on me.

I think there's something worth examining here, especially for those of us who consider ourselves people of faith. It's one thing to be intentional about serving others when we've specifically set aside time to serve. It's another thing entirely to carry that same posture into the ordinary, unplanned moments of our lives. The moments when we're distracted, tired, preoccupied, or simply trying to enjoy a cigar.

It's easy to love people when loving people is what we've set out to do. But what about when we're doing something else?

Maybe that's where some of the real spiritual formation happens. Not necessarily in the things we intentionally do for others, but in the way we treat people when we're not thinking about ourselves as servants.

And man...that's convicting.

With all that being said, there's another side to this that I think is equally important.

I can't be all things to all people. Because eventually, trying to be everything to everyone will make me someone to no one.

I've spent enough time on this earth to recognize that not every relationship is meant to become a lifelong friendship. Not every personality is going to mesh with mine. Not everyone is going to understand my sense of humor, my priorities, my passions, or the season of life I'm walking through. And that's okay. Some relationships are worth letting go. Others are worth pursuing. Some require a little distance, while others require a little more intentionality.

The challenge is learning to discern the difference.

And in this particular instance, I believed the relationship was worth leaning into.

Not because I needed to defend myself, justify my intentions, or convince this person that I'm actually a pretty decent guy. But because I believed there was something worth learning. Something worth considering. And perhaps, an opportunity to better understand someone whose experience was different from my own.

Just as I didn't know the context behind why my banter landed the way it did, they didn't know the context behind where I was mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. We were two people experiencing the same interaction through entirely different lenses, neither possessing the complete picture.

And I think that's something we tend to forget.

We judge people through the narrow lens of our own experiences. We assign intentions to their actions, construct narratives around their behavior, and draw conclusions without knowing what they're carrying. We expect grace for the things going on in our own lives while sometimes forgetting to extend that same grace to others.

Understanding someone's context doesn't necessarily excuse their behavior. It simply gives us an opportunity to respond with a little more compassion.

And compassion doesn't require agreement.

I don't necessarily agree with every piece of feedback I received that day. Some of it was fair. Some of it lacked context. And some of it probably said as much about the other person's expectations as it did about my behavior. But I don't think I have to accept someone's entire assessment of me to recognize that there's something valuable buried within it.

Likewise, I don't feel the need to justify every intention or explain every circumstance that contributed to the interaction. There's a point where explaining ourselves becomes little more than defending our ego. And if I'm constantly trying to convince people that my heart is in the right place, perhaps I should spend a little less time explaining my heart and a little more time examining my actions.

Because good intentions don't automatically produce good outcomes. And being misunderstood doesn't automatically mean we've done something wrong.

Both can be true.

I think one of the more difficult parts of growing older is recognizing that we can be right about some things and wrong about others, all within the same conversation. We can have good intentions and still hurt someone. We can genuinely care about people and still fail to make them feel cared for. We can be committed to personal growth and still have some pretty significant blind spots.

And maybe most importantly, we can receive correction without allowing it to redefine our entire identity.

That's a balance I'm still learning.

One of the things I love most about cigars is their ability to bring people together. Different backgrounds, different beliefs, different experiences, different walks of life. People who might otherwise have absolutely nothing in common find themselves sitting across from one another, sharing a conversation over a cigar.

It's one of the reasons Kaitlyn and I started Brolo in the first place.

We believe there's something incredibly valuable about slowing down, being present, and making room for genuine human connection. Not the superficial kind. Not the kind where we're simply waiting for our turn to speak. But the kind where we genuinely take an interest in the people around us.

And yet, I'm learning that being around people and being present with people are two very different things.

You can spend hours sitting across from someone and never really see them. You can share a hundred cigars with someone and never understand what they're going through. You can build an entire community around brotherhood and still find yourself needing to learn what it means to be a better brother.

I certainly do.

Perhaps that's what I've been wrestling with the most. The realization that the very things I value, the things I talk about, write about, and hope to cultivate through Brolo, are the same things I have to continually practice in my own life.

Not perfectly. Not without mistakes. And certainly not without the occasional uncomfortable conversation.

But intentionally.

I don't want to become someone who changes who they are simply to accommodate everyone else's expectations. I've spent too much of my life learning who I am to abandon that now. But I also don't want to become so comfortable with who I believe myself to be that I lose the willingness to examine who I'm becoming.

There's a difference between being secure in your identity and being unwilling to grow.

And sometimes, the people who challenge us the most are the very people who give us an opportunity to see that difference. So, to the brother who called me out, I appreciate the conversation. Even the uncomfortable parts. Especially the uncomfortable parts.

And to anyone who's ever found themselves on either side of a similar interaction, perhaps there's something worth considering. We don't always know what someone else is carrying. We don't always understand their intentions. And we certainly don't always recognize the ways our own actions affect the people around us.

But we can choose to remain curious. We can choose to extend grace. We can choose to listen a little longer, assume a little less, and recognize that there's probably more to someone's story than what we're experiencing in that particular moment.

And sometimes, the most meaningful thing we can do isn't to tell another story, offer another opinion, or steer the conversation toward something we're more comfortable discussing.

Sometimes it's simply to shut up, listen, and lean in.

Because brotherhood isn't just about finding people who understand us. Sometimes it's about doing the work to understand them.

The Slow Burn: When Good Intentions Get in the Way

Picture this. It's a beautiful Texas fall day. High in the 90s, low in the 70s, and blue skies as far as the eye can see. You know, fall in Texas. Where the leaves change colors sometime around Christmas and you can still get a sunburn walking to your mailbox.

It just so happens that I have a little downtime between where I need to be and whatever the world has to offer. And today, the world has to offer one heck of a haircut.

I've had just about every haircut imaginable. Chili bowl, undercut, mohawk, fauxhawk, the Liam Gallagher, the Noel Gallagher, Nikki Sixx, and everything in between. At 42 years old, I find myself walking this strange tightrope between presenting myself as a respectable professional and expressing who I actually am.

Heck, at this point, I don't know that I care about looking professional anymore. I'd rather look like me.

But my mullet had gotten atrocious.

As I've aged, my grays have become increasingly wiry. I understand Jack Russell terriers so much more now. It's like every gray hair has developed its own personality, none of which have any interest in cooperating with the others.

The crazy thing is, although the mop top has changed over the years, I'm a creature of habit. My friend Jordan has cut my hair for nearly 20 years, and she's awesome at it. We both grew up in the emo scene. Ya know, tight black skinny jeans, emo swoops, guyliner, and "TONIGHT WILL BE THE NIGHT THAT I WILL FALL FOR YOU, OVER AGAIN" playing somewhere in the background.

Jordan isn't just my hairstylist. She's a close friend. So the thought of letting someone else cut my hair felt a little like Judas collecting his thirty pieces of silver.

But people want what people want.

Enter Manny.

Manny is a relatively new acquaintance. One of those guys you barely know but somehow feel like you've known your entire life.

Kaitlyn and I serve at a local startup church on Sundays and pretty much whenever we're needed in between. What a lot of people don't realize about a startup church is that, for the whole thing to work, you've got to serve. A LOT.

Setup team. Praise and worship.

Hospitality. Children's ministry. Babies. Elementary school.

Sometimes you're teaching kiddos about Jesus, and other times you're praying for your own deliverance from a room full of screaming toddlers.

Maybe that's too real. But sometimes that's ministry.

Anyway, about two months earlier, I was talking to our pastor about how I felt a little out of place at church. Not because anyone had made me feel unwelcome. Quite the opposite, actually. But because I couldn't shake the feeling that I was the odd man out.

Remember that old Sesame Street song? "One of these things is not like the others."

Yeah. That one.

At six feet tall, with long hair and a body that looks like it's survived a West Coast graffiti war, I don't exactly blend in with the PTA families. The suburbanites. The Costco purchasers and Target shoppers.

Nothing wrong with any of that. They're wonderful people. I just felt different.

As my friend Pauly likes to remind me, I look like a cross between Stephen Wilson Jr. and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Not exactly the prototype for suburban church leadership, but these are the genes I was given, so I digress.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I met Manny.

Now, before getting my ears lowered, I decided to stop by a renowned cigar lounge. I had some time to kill, and there's hardly a better way to spend an afternoon than sitting down with a good cigar and absolutely nowhere to be.

I was wearing my Brolo hat. The one with our "Light Up & Lean In" mantra.

The owner noticed it and asked if I was a brand rep.

Now, I could have launched into the whole story about how Kaitlyn and I have poured our hearts, lives, and resources into this little cigar company. How we're betting on an idea that connection matters more than hype. How this thing is so much more personal than simply selling tobacco.

But I didn't.

"Yup. I rep cigars."

Truthfully, I wasn't there to sell Brolo. I was there as a consumer. Just a dude killing time before getting a haircut.

I picked up a Machetero, a budget-friendly Meerapfel cigar, and an Arayo. The owner asked a few high-level questions about Brolo, and I answered them, albeit somewhat vaguely. Not because I don't believe in what we're building, but because I wasn't interested in turning every interaction into a sales pitch.

Sometimes I just want to be a guy who enjoys cigars.

But then the train derailed.

This particular establishment has multiple lounges within the same business. Access depends on your level of investment. Spend enough money, and you can enjoy the privilege of sitting in a different room from everyone else.

Now, if you know anything about Brolo, you know our philosophy is pretty simple.

Everyone gets a seat at the table.

I've never been particularly fond of the velvet-rope mentality. The idea that the quality of your company should somehow be determined by the thickness of your wallet has always rubbed me the wrong way.

But hey, different strokes.

So I found myself in the main lounge. You know, with all the peasants.

As I sat there enjoying my cigar, I overheard a conversation between two gentlemen. They were talking about two brothers struggling with alcoholism.

Immediately, my ears perked up.

For those unfamiliar with my story, I've spent more than a decade in recovery. Addiction isn't something I've merely studied or observed from a distance. I've lived it. I've watched it destroy relationships, consume people I love, and nearly take everything from me.

So when I hear someone talking about alcoholism, particularly when they're talking about people they care about, something inside me leans in.

For about thirty seconds, I sat there listening. And then I started feeling uncomfortable. Not because of what they were saying, but because I felt like I was eavesdropping on something deeply personal.

So I got up, walked over, and introduced myself.

"Hey guys, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation. And honestly, it made me feel like I might be exactly where I'm supposed to be today. Mind if I join you?"

One of the gentlemen, Cabinet Selección in hand, looked at me and said:

"Actually, this is a client meeting, and we'd prefer to keep it that way."

Ouch.

I stood there for a moment, processing what had just happened.

"That makes sense," I responded.

And I quietly walked back to my corner, sat down, and continued smoking my Machetero.

Wondering what could have been.

Internally, though?

I was raging.

Do you know who I am?

I'm here to help.

I've lived through the very thing you're talking about.

You have no idea what I might have been able to offer.

And there it was.

My ego.

Not theirs.

Mine.

Now, don't get me wrong. I understand boundaries. I understand business meetings. Heck, I'm in the business of making sales myself. And I certainly understand that two strangers aren't obligated to invite some long-haired, tattooed guy into their conversation simply because he overheard something that resonated with him.

But in that moment, I didn't feel like I had been given a boundary.

I felt like I had been dismissed.

And there's a difference between what someone does to you and what you tell yourself they've done to you.

At least, that's what I'm learning.

My immediate reaction was to make assumptions. About their motives. Their character. Their priorities. I told myself they cared more about closing a sale than helping someone struggling with addiction.

But here's the uncomfortable truth.

I didn't actually know that.

I knew what I'd heard. I knew what I'd experienced. But everything else was a story I had written in my own head.

And wouldn't you know it, in that story, I was the good guy.

The compassionate one.

The one who cared.

The one who understood.

Funny how that works.

I had walked into that lounge already carrying some preconceived ideas about its culture. The private rooms, the hierarchy, the prestige. And the moment someone rejected my invitation to connect, I used it as confirmation of everything I already believed.

Prestige over patina.

At least, that's how I wanted to see it.

But the longer I sat there, the more uncomfortable I became with my own response.

Because if my intention was genuinely to help, why was I so offended that they didn't want my help?

If my desire was to serve, why did I suddenly feel the need to establish my credentials?

If I truly believed that everyone deserves a seat at the table, why was I so quick to judge the people sitting at another one?

That's the thing about ego.

It doesn't always show up wearing arrogance. Sometimes it shows up wearing good intentions.

Sometimes ego looks like wanting recognition. Sometimes it looks like needing to be right. Sometimes it looks like believing that because you've walked through something difficult, you've earned the right to speak into someone else's life.

And sometimes it looks like being offended when someone doesn't recognize the value you believe you bring.

I didn't need those gentlemen to know my story.

I wanted them to.

There's a difference.

And that realization stung considerably more than their rejection.

Because growth requires us to confront the parts of ourselves we'd rather explain away.

It's easy to recognize pride in other people. We can spot arrogance from across the room. We can identify entitlement, vanity, and self-importance without breaking a sweat.

But recognizing those same characteristics in ourselves?

That's a different animal.

Scripture tells us in Proverbs 16:18 that pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

I've heard that verse a thousand times.

But I think we often imagine pride as something loud. Something obvious. The guy pounding his chest, demanding respect, telling everyone how important he is.

Yet pride can be remarkably quiet.

It can sit in the corner of a cigar lounge, smoking a budget-friendly cigar, convincing itself that everyone else is the problem.

And the danger isn't simply that ego makes us unpleasant people.

It's that ego makes us unteachable.

When we're convinced that our intentions are pure, we stop examining our motives. When we're convinced that we're right, we stop listening. When we're convinced that we've been wronged, we stop asking what the situation might reveal about us.

And when we stop examining, listening, and learning, we stop growing.

I think about this a lot in recovery.

One of the greatest gifts recovery has given me is the understanding that I don't have to be the smartest guy in the room. I don't have to have all the answers. I don't have to turn every experience into an opportunity to prove that I've learned something.

Sometimes the most meaningful thing I can do is shut up and listen.

And sometimes the most humbling thing I can do is accept that someone doesn't need what I have to offer.

That doesn't make my experience less valuable.

It just means the world doesn't revolve around it.

The irony of that afternoon wasn't lost on me.

Earlier, I'd been wrestling with feeling out of place at church because I didn't look like everyone else. And now I was sitting in a cigar lounge, upset because someone hadn't welcomed me into their space. In both situations, I was allowing my perception of how other people saw me to influence how I saw myself.

And perhaps even more importantly, how I saw them.

All because I was so concerned with being understood.

Maybe that's where ego does some of its greatest damage.

It convinces us that being understood is more important than understanding.

That being respected is more important than respecting.

That having something valuable to say is more important than knowing when to say it.

I eventually finished my cigar and headed out to get that haircut.

And while Manny was working on my increasingly unruly mop, I kept thinking about that interaction.

Not because I had come up with some clever response I wished I'd delivered.

But because I realized the experience had exposed something in me that still needed work.

And isn't that the point?

Not the haircut. Not the cigars. Not the recognition.

The work.

The ongoing, uncomfortable, sometimes embarrassing process of becoming a better human being.

A better husband. A better friend. A better brother. A better follower of Christ.

I've spent years learning that transformation rarely happens when everything is going my way. More often, it happens when something rubs me the wrong way and I have to decide whether I'm going to defend myself or examine myself.

That afternoon, two strangers didn't invite me into their conversation.

And somehow, without even knowing it, they gave me something worth thinking about.

I went into that lounge believing I might have something to teach someone.

I left realizing I still had something to learn.

Maybe that's what growth looks like.

Not being the most important person at the table.

Not even being invited to the table.

But being humble enough to recognize that every encounter, even the uncomfortable ones, has something to teach us.

Because the moment we become too important to be corrected, we become too proud to grow.

And I'd rather spend the rest of my life growing than the rest of my life being right.

The Slow Burn: Blacktops

When I heard “dress for the job you want,” I grabbed the flare cuts and snip toes, layered a tank under a leather jacket, and let the locks fly beneath a high-crown trucker hat. Aspiring to more than a normal nine-to-five, I was going to be a rockstar, come hell or high water.

And boy…there was quite a bit of hell and high water.

Touring the country is a lot more romantic on paper and film. You tend to capture the highlights: audiences singing along to your songs, road shenanigans, funny skits, packed rooms. High-energy dopamine hits delivered moment after moment.

But that’s not the full picture.

Dreams require sacrifice.

Like driving a tour bus through Iowa at 3:30 in the morning. Or getting a social media notification of wedding photos from one of your best friends...another wedding you weren’t able to attend, laid at the altar of dreams pursued.

You drift a little farther from your closest circle with each passing zip code.

You watch friends behind screens build lives. They get married, have children, buy houses, get promotions, while you’re washing jeans in a Love’s sink. But you tell yourself living as a musical gypsy is freer than surrendering to some construct built by “the man.”

Then the microwave beeps, waking you from the autopilot life has become. You grab your $2.99 burrito and head back outside.

A slave to truck stops and blacktops.

The show must go on at all costs.

The American Dream doesn’t feel so dreamy.

So you embrace the struggle, pursuing what could be.

But if you pay attention, there are beautiful moments between those yellow lines. A sunrise on the horizon kissing the tips of corn stalks. Stumbling onto a melody somewhere between miles of asphalt while the rest of the band sleeps. Windows cracked, wind rolling through a van full of exhausted souls singing Waylon Jennings at the top of their lungs.

Crowds responding to your art in unison.

The venues get bigger. Eventually, you’re not loading in anymore. Road crews take over. Things start looking a little more like the dream you imagined.

Yet somehow, in the middle of all that magic, you can still miss the forest for the trees.

The Slow Burn: Kansas City Cigar Festival

Last week, several of the Brolos and I attended the Kansas City Cigar Festival. The festival was Saturday, but we decided to make a weekend out of it. Because apparently a bunch of grown men with an unhealthy amount of cigars can't simply arrive at an event, attend it, and go home like normal people.

We left Dallas around 6-ish Friday morning and pulled into Kansas City around 4:45 that afternoon. In between were gas stations, snacks, questionable decisions, lunch at Bite Me BBQ in Wichita, and a quick stop at Old Town Cigars. Shoutout to Old Town, by the way. They had an awesome selection of boutique cigars, including some of the old-school Metapas from before Foundation rebranded them as Aksum. Those aren't exactly sitting on every shelf anymore.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Shawn arrived at my place a few minutes late and blamed traffic. In his defense, he wasn't lying. 380 in the morning is a complete nightmare. North Texas has grown at a ridiculous pace, and it seems like no amount of construction can keep up. Every road is simultaneously being expanded and somehow getting worse.

We loaded Shawn up and headed to a bougie neighborhood in Prosper to grab Justin. We made it through the gate, pulled up to the house, and there he was...sitting in a camp chair, bags packed, already smoking a cigar.

It was a sight for sore eyes.

Naturally, we immediately started roasting him for not even making it to 6:00 a.m. before lighting one up. His defense was that he was "afraid he would be left out." Justin is the newest cigar smoker in the group, but the man put the first number on the board that weekend. Kudos.

Next up was Mr. Babyface himself, Mark. Picture this: it's roughly 5:30 in the morning and Mark is standing outside next to his truck, bags packed, looking like his parents just told him they were taking him to Disney World. Everybody was ready. And for the next eight hours, we absolutely destroyed my car.

Four men. A few boxes of cigars. Windows cracked. Ash everywhere. I don't think it will ever smell the same again. But that's the price you pay for making memories around something you love.

We put Justin in charge of picking lunch.

This was our first mistake.

The Slow Burn: Maine

A reflection on Maine and the fear, pressure, and freedom that come with finally letting go of something you created.

Heritage: Recently, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about heritage and what that word actually means to me.

It’s an all-encompassing term.

There are the tangible things and the intangible ones. The personal and the cultural. Traditions, values, stories, recipes, land, names, beliefs, habits, and physical objects passed from one generation to the next.

Some things are handed to us intentionally.

Others just arrive.

Building Brolo has me thinking about heritage quite a bit.

The cigar industry, maybe more than most, loves heritage. Many brands benchmark their quality against generational pedigrees, old-world traditions, luxury positioning, or some combination of the three. Families who have worked with tobacco for generations. Names that stretch back a hundred years or more. Stories with roots deep enough to make whatever they're selling today feel connected to something much older.

And there's something beautiful about that.

But where does that leave a kid like me?

I didn't grow up with a mother and father.

There isn't some great family enterprise being handed down to me. I didn't serve in the Armed Forces, and the only time I was involved with law enforcement was usually in the back of a squad car.

What the heck is my heritage?

And if heritage matters so much, how am I supposed to compete with that?

So I started digging.

Not through ancestry records or old family photographs, but through the things that got me here. The memories. The scars. The people. The failures. The things I learned accidentally and the things life taught me, whether I wanted the lesson or not.

I started asking myself:

What makes Brolo, Brolo?

The first image that came to mind wasn't tobacco.

It was a hay bale.

I was probably six or seven years old.

During the summer, my Grandma would drop me off for a week at my birth mother's trailer in East Texas, back behind the Pine Curtain.

Every summer, I dreaded it.

My second stepdad was quite a doozy...a real piece of work. Abusive. Violent. Looking back now, I can see he was probably just an angry boy trapped inside a man's body.

But when you're six, you don't have that kind of perspective.

You just know you're scared.

They lived in the country....or, as East Texans pronounce it, the cunnnn-trrrryyyyyyyy.

The acreage seemed to stretch forever, with a little creek running along the back of the property. My mother worked all day as a nurse, and my stepdad worked as a carpenter, taking odd jobs here and there.

I don't remember him being particularly great at woodworking.

But the man sure knew how to rip a doobie.

Wherever they were, I wasn't.

Most days, I was on my own, traversing the countryside. Climbing hay bales. Jumping hay bales. Falling off hay bales.

And, eventually, crying next to hay bales.

I remember getting hurt out there once.

And I remember being angry with myself for getting hurt.

Scared because I didn't know if I'd be able to survive a sprained ankle, let alone another week unsupervised.

Broken because I was alone and hurting.

And nobody showed up that day to help me.

Although that was the first time I remember feeling it, it certainly wasn't the last.

Those experiences taught me independence.

Eventually, they also taught me control.

If nobody is coming, you learn to handle things yourself. You learn to anticipate problems. You learn not to need much. You learn how to survive.

Useful skills.

Until they're not.

Because somewhere along the way, independence can become isolation. Self-reliance can become control. And learning not to need anyone can leave you desperately wanting someone.

Maybe that's heritage, too.

Not everything passed down comes in a box.

A few weeks ago, I went to the doctor for a regularly scheduled checkup. Somewhere between the blood pressure cuff and the usual questions, she started asking about my family.

Heart disease?

Cancer?

Diabetes?

High blood pressure?

She was trying to understand my family history...to identify the things buried somewhere in my DNA that might eventually become part of my story.

In other words, she wanted to know:

What runs in your family?

It's a clinical question.

But I've thought about it differently ever since. Because a lot more than disease runs in families.

Work ethic runs in families.

Faith runs in families.

Temper runs in families.

Generosity runs in families.

Addiction runs in families.

The way we handle money. The way we argue. The way we love. The way we apologize....or don't. The things we celebrate and the things we refuse to talk about.

Somewhere along the way, all of it becomes inheritance.

We tend to romanticize heritage.

Grandpa's watch. Dad's old truck. Mom's recipe written in her handwriting. The family Bible with names and dates scribbled across pages yellowed by time.

And those things matter.

But heritage has a shadow side, too.

Some things are worth preserving.

Some things are worth restoring.

And some things need to end with us.

My childhood was a lonely one through no fault of my own.

As I got older, I started pursuing people.

At first, probably because I was afraid to be alone.

I was tired of being alone.

I was starving for belonging.

But somewhere in that pursuit, I discovered something much better than simply not being alone.

I found connection.

If this were one of my gospel-centered recovery pieces, this is probably where I'd spend the next thousand words talking about how human beings were created for connection.

And I believe that.

I believe true connection begins vertically...with God...and that healthy relationships with one another are a by-product of that relationship.

But that's another rabbit hole for another day.

Back to connection.

Because that's what Brolo is about.

Not heritage manufactured through some bullshit origin story.

Not luxury for luxury's sake.

Not pretending we've been making cigars since 1873.

Connection.

It's the early-morning text from a friend encouraging you to succeed while simultaneously making light of your many proclivities.

It's the random Tuesday-night HERF where, for whatever reason, the whole crew shows up, and you belly laugh until your face hurts.

It's an early-morning coffee where somebody finally stops saying they're "good" and tells you what's actually going on.

It's spending so much time smoking cigars together that you know your buddy's palate almost as well as your own. You know what he's going to love. You know what he's going to hate. And occasionally, you make a recommendation that he actually likes.

It's getting bombed by one of the Brolo's.

It's seeing the UPS truck turn onto your street....or maybe even chasing it down, and feeling that little dopamine hit because you know there's a box headed your way.

It's knowing that whatever ails you, somebody is rooting for you.

It's complete strangers finding each other in some random corner of Discord or Reddit, sharing a cigar through a screen, and eventually becoming friends in real life.

Those things probably don't sound like heritage.

At least not the way the word is usually sold to us.

There aren't any centuries-old family photographs.

No tobacco fields passed from father to son.

No crest.

No pedigree.

But maybe I've been thinking about heritage all wrong.

Maybe heritage isn't just about where you came from. Maybe it's about what you carry forward.

And maybe the things we weren't given are sometimes the very things we become most determined to give away.

I didn't inherit a great legacy of connection.

So I built my life around finding it.

And now we're building Brolo around giving it away.

Maybe that's my heritage.

Not the kind printed on the inside of a cigar box. Not a family crest, a famous last name, or some romantic story about generations of men who came before me.

It's messier than that.

There's some good in it. There's some bad. There are things I'm proud to carry forward and others I've spent most of my adult life trying to put down.

But all of it got me here.

And I suspect the same is true for you.

What's your heritage?

Not just where your family came from or the traditions you grew up with.

What did you inherit?

What runs in your family?

What did someone teach you without ever sitting you down to teach it?

What wounds shaped you?

What values stuck?

What traditions still matter?

What parts of the people who came before you can you see when you look in the mirror?

And maybe more importantly:

What are you doing with it?

Because at some point, we stop being merely the recipients of heritage.

We become responsible for it.

We decide what gets carried forward.

What gets restored.

What gets rewritten.

And what ends with us.

Heritage isn't just the story of the people who came before you.

It's happening right now.

In the way you raise your kids. The way you love your spouse. The way you treat your friends. The work you put your hands to. The things you make time for. The things you refuse to compromise. The table you build and the people you invite to sit around it.

Whether you realize it or not, you're leaving something behind.

When I think back to that little boy sitting alone in East Texas, hurt and scared and wondering if anybody was going to show up, I can't change his story.

Nobody came that day.

But I can decide what I do with what he gave me.

Maybe that's why showing up matters so much to me now.

Maybe that's why the table matters.

Maybe that's why connection matters.

Maybe that's why Brolo exists in the first place.

So maybe the better question isn't simply:

What's your heritage?

Maybe it's:

What will someone else inherit because you were here?

What impact have you made, or lack thereof?

And maybe that's convicting...if so...that was my intention.

Kaitlyn and I don't make cigars to avoid life. We make cigars to fully embrace it. The good, the bad...the hurt and the wins.

All around a shared smoke.

About This Blog

I wrote this back in 2017 and never published it. I found it again. And reading the words of the man I was has been an uncomfortable experience. This post is a multipart post about shame and where we can find hope. Stay tuned for the next post in the series...

The Slow Burn: Calluses

Some things can only be learned the hard way.

As a writer, I wage a lot of wars against a blinking cursor.

I get caught somewhere between what I want to say and what I think people want to hear. And I’m beginning to believe that’s a dangerous intersection.

The Slow Burn: Currents

The ocean never asked where I wanted to go…it simply carried me. Life works the same way. Left unattended, our faith, health, relationships, and purpose all drift. Currents is a reflection on recognizing when we've wandered and finding the courage to swim back toward what matters most.

The Slow Burn: The Things We Love

Beneath a Nicaraguan moon, hidden behind a mosquito net, tree frogs wage war against my sleep. Their calls echo through the jungle like ladies of the night working a truck stop, each one louder than the last. Halloween Moon Crabs scatter across the ground beneath our cabana. I have to pee...but I'm not getting out of bed. Nature can have this one.

The Slow Burn: Intention & Impact

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