Heart of a Lion Mind of a Cub FINAL MANUSCRIPT Book, Audio Book Ready (1)

A Deathbed Confession in Five Movements

by

GENUES SHACON

means-electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other-except for brief quotations in critical This is a work of creative nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. The experiences described are real; the composites serve the truth, not the individuals. Published by GENUES SHACON [Address to be finalized] Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data [To be inserted] ISBN: [To be assigned] ISBN (e-book): [To be assigned] Cover design by DA ARTIST Interior design by DA ARTIST Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For the cubs who are still in the fire. And for the lions who showed me the way out. For Ola Mae Jones-who held the house together when the house was trying to fall. For Eric Crumble-whose name deserves more than a chapter. It deserves a monument. And for every child who was told they were not enough. You were always enough. The program lied.

Every lion was once a cub that the world tried to keep small. This book is the story of how the cub grew-not because the world got kinder, but because the heart refused to stay quiet. - Genues Shacon

You’re about to read a confession from a man on his deathbed. Before you do, I need to tell you something: that man is not me. And that man is entirely me. Let me explain. Heart of a Lion, Mind of a Cubuses a fictional framing device-a deathbed confession-to tell truths that are devastatingly real. The narrator you’re about to meet is a composite. He is not Genues Shacon. He is not one man at all. He is the accumulation of every man I’ve known, loved, failed, watched fall, watched rise, watched die too early, watched survive against every odd the system ever stacked. His voice is mine. His data is ours. His confession belongs to a generation. But make no mistake-the experiences in these pages are drawn from real life. My life. The lives of people I grew up with, people I mentored, people I buried. The neighborhoods are real. The patterns are real. The wounds are real. The only thing fictional is the bed the narrator is lying on. Everything else? That happened. That’s happening. Right now. To someone you know. I chose the deathbed because it’s the one place where no one performs. When you’re dying, the mask comes off. The resume doesn’t matter. The image doesn’t matter. The only thing left is the truth. And this book is obsessed with the truth-not the comfortable version, not the inspirational-poster version, but the version that makes your chest tight and your eyes wet and your fists clench. The version that actually changes something.

inheritance-the code that was written into us before we were old enough to read it.Movement IImaps the wounds-the fractures in the house, the poisons, the screens, the quiet emergencies that no one talks about at the dinner table.Movement IIIis the turning point-the people and the villages that interrupt the fall.Movement IVis the rebuild-the architecture of a new identity, a new economy, a new scripture. AndMovement is the roar-the moment the cub finally opens its mouth and shakes the earth. You can’t skip to Movement . The roar only means something if you’ve walked through the fire that forged it. One more thing about the data. Every statistic in this book is sourced from real research-the CDC, the World Health Organization, Harvard, the Federal Reserve, SAMHSA, the Surgeon General’s office, peer-reviewed studies from institutions that have spent decades quantifying what communities like mine have been living for centuries. The data isn’t decoration. It’s not there to make the book look academic. It’s there because the data is the proof that the lived experience isn’t anecdotal-it’s systemic. When I tell you the house was cracked, the numbers show you the fault line runs through the foundation of the entire country. When I tell you the screens are rewiring our children, neuroscience confirms it. I didn’t include a single statistic I couldn’t verify. Because you deserve better than guesswork. You deserve the receipts. Which brings me to the one rule I wrote this entire book under: Respect The Reader.

the only thing that actually changes anything. RTR means I trust you to handle what’s coming. It means I wrote every chapter as if you were sitting across from me, eye to eye, and I owed you the whole story. Not the highlight reel. The whole story. Now-a word of care. Some of these chapters are heavy. Chapter Six especially. The Quiet Emergency deals with mental health, with the silence that kills more people than the noise ever did. If you need to stop, stop. If you need to breathe, breathe. If you need to cry, cry. If you need to call someone, call them. Then come back. Because this book does not end in the dark. This book ends in the roar. And you need to hear it. The roar is the whole point. But it only lands if you let the silence hit you first....