Tuwan Spencer: The Cleveland Founder Challenging Black Men to Move Beyond Survival

Surviving hardship is one thing, but learning to live beyond it is another. For many men, it takes years to realise this difference. They learn to suppress their emotions, quietly carrying their burdens. As a result, they become the person everyone turns to, even when they themselves have no one to rely on.

Tuwan Spencer understands how habits develop. At the age of 17, he was incarcerated at Wende Correctional Facility, located outside Buffalo, New York. Today, he resides in Cleveland, Ohio, where he operates LIONH3ARTED, an organisation dedicated to teaching emotional regulation, self-leadership, and personal development.

His work raises a question that transcends the borders of America. What happens when the very habits that sustained your survival begin to erode the way you lead, parent, and interact with others?

In Britain, conversations about mental health, masculinity, and opportunities for young people continue in Black communities. Spencer’s story adds to these discussions.

"Adversity is the resource God used to find purpose," he said.

He is not asking people to pretend the pain never happened. He wants them to look at what hard times taught them, then decide whether those lessons still help.

When survival becomes a habit

Spencer learned to read a room before he learned to read himself. He got used to spotting trouble early. He hid certain feelings and acted as if he had everything under control. Those instincts helped him get through difficult places. As he got older, he realised they were holding him back.

He began asking himself: "Am I responding to what's happening in front of me, or am I responding to what happened to me years ago?"

That question sits at the centre of his work.

Old experiences shape how we read the present. An argument can feel like a threat. A simple question can sound like disrespect. A hard conversation can bring on anger or silence when it should bring thought.

Spencer, through LIONH3ARTED, conducts workshops, delivers talks, and imparts emotional regulation skills. He assists individuals in identifying these patterns and responding in healthier ways. Unlike those who attempt to erase past experiences, Spencer focuses on transforming future outcomes.

A conversation Britain needs to have

Spencer's life has been very different from that of most Black men in the UK. Even so, the questions he raises will sound familiar here.

In its 2024–25 State of Care report, England's Care Quality Commission pointed to inequalities facing Black people of African and Caribbean heritage in mental health care. These included barriers to getting the right support.

For some men, asking for help feels like failure. They are expected to stay strong, provide for their families and keep their struggles to themselves. Others find it hard to trust institutions, or fear they will not be understood if they speak up.

"You can be the person everyone depends on and still need somewhere to put your own pain," Spencer said.

The pressure to look unshakeable shapes how men handle relationships, fatherhood and work. It can also leave them with nowhere to turn when life becomes too much.

Spencer believes strength needs a wider meaning, one that includes honesty, support and taking responsibility for your emotions.

His message applies to Britain's African and Caribbean communities, including people dealing with migration, family duties and questions of belonging. Their experiences are not all the same. That is exactly why conversations about emotional wellbeing have to make room for different backgrounds.

Leadership starts with the individual

For Spencer, leadership starts long before someone gets a job title or a team to manage.

Self-leadership, as he sees it, means being honest with yourself. It means controlling your reactions, keeping your promises and owning the effect of your actions, even when you meant well.

A title gives you authority. It does not give you self-awareness.

A manager who takes every challenge as disrespect will struggle to accept feedback. A parent who grew up with discipline tied to anger may pass the same pattern on to their children.

Knowing where a behaviour comes from does not excuse the damage it does. It gives you the chance to deal with it.

Spencer said accountability should not mean humiliation. It means admitting what happened, understanding the impact and working to do better.

That matters in families, workplaces and community groups, where the behaviour of those in charge shapes everyone else's experience.

Emotional regulation is not silence

Spencer defines emotional regulation as knowing what you feel, understanding what may be behind it and choosing a response that matches your values, not the heat of the moment.

It does not mean bottling things up. It does not mean putting up with injustice.

This matters for Black professionals and community leaders who may face bias or closer scrutiny. Keeping control of your reaction does not mean accepting unfair treatment. It can help you stay clear-headed enough to challenge it properly.

His framework has five steps: notice a reaction, trace it back to earlier experiences, regulate your response, reframe how you see the situation, and take back the power to choose how you act. He calls it "Notice, Map, Regulate, Reframe, and Reclaim".

None of this is quick. Spotting a pattern is easy compared with changing a response that has become second nature. Spencer accepts that some people will need professional therapy as well as education and coaching.

The aim is to create a gap between what you feel and what you do, so you can respond with more thought.

What the next generation learns

Spencer's work also raises the question of what adults pass on to children.

Young people listen to what they are told. They also watch how adults handle frustration, disagreement and responsibility. A father who apologises after getting something wrong teaches a different lesson from one who insists his authority can never be questioned.

In England and Wales, youth justice statistics for the year ending March 2025 showed racial disparities in stop and search involving children. Black children made up 18 per cent of those searched where ethnicity was recorded. The figures do not show a link between emotional regulation and youth offending. They do offer wider context for discussions about Black young people's experiences.

Spencer wants young people to know that a mistake does not have to define them for life.

He believes resilience should mean more than putting up with hardship. It should also mean asking for help, learning new skills, mending relationships and building a better future.

That message matters to families, teachers, mentors and community groups across Britain who are working to give young people the tools and opportunities they need.

Rewriting the story

Spencer sets out these ideas in his book, Learn, Unlearn, Relearn: Processing the Emotions of Life in Three Steps.

Its central idea is simple. People need to understand what life has taught them, ask whether those lessons are still useful and build a new way of seeing the world.

Spencer has described his journey from prison at 17 to the work he does now. He said it has influenced hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people to picture a more emotionally balanced version of themselves.

He does not claim to be perfect. He wants people to see that they can change.

For Black communities in Britain, the value of his message is not in copying an American model. It is in asking how his ideas can add to existing conversations about wellbeing, parenting, youth development and leadership.

Spencer's story is his own. Building healthier communities will take families, teachers, health professionals and community leaders working together.

His main point is plain. People need the chance to understand their experiences, take responsibility for their actions and picture a future that is not limited by their past.

If the next generation learns to carry less needless pain and take more care in how they treat themselves and others, Spencer said, that is a legacy worth leaving.

For him, moving beyond survival starts with understanding what shaped you and taking responsibility for who you are becoming. Yesterday should not get to decide everything that comes next.