“I always tell folks my roots are in a place called Eutaw, Alabama, but I was born and raised in Mobile. I’m named after my grandmother—Tempey Daisy Hamilton—and I’m the granddaughter of a sharecropper. My mom was the baby of thirteen kids. She was too young to pick cotton like my aunts did; her job was to ride the horse and pass around the water to everyone in the fields.

My family was active in the Civil Rights movement and picketed in Greene County. My grandparents housed horses in the back of their property for the Poor People’s Campaign mule train.

Several places shaped me. Growing up in Mobile, I was a little sneaky. I could get away with things because I was an athlete and a good student, making A’s and B’s. No one pays attention to the kid doing well in school, so I’d sneak off to see my girlfriends while everyone thought I was just being a ‘good kid.’ Meanwhile, my mom pieced together great opportunities for me. I went to Murphy High School, played basketball at Spring Hill College, and eventually found my way to social work at the University of Alabama.

I realized early on that I wanted to work with the ‘badass’ kids—the ones people label as “bad” or “difficult.” I worked in a 24-hour lockdown psychiatric facility with kids as young as seven. I loved the rapport I built with them. I wasn’t just their therapist; I was the person talking to them about life and skills, sometimes sixteen hours a day.

But as much as I loved the work, as a Black, masculine-presenting lesbian in the Deep South, I had to leave Alabama. I told myself if I got licensed in Alabama, I’d get a job here, and if I got a job, I’d stay. So I didn’t even apply for my social work license here. I got an internship and finished grad school in DC, got my clinical license, and started doing travel social work.

I took a girls’ trip to Denver and went hiking in the mountains. I looked around and said, ‘I need to live here. I also needed a husky named Chance and a black Jeep Wrangler.’

By 2020, I was living that dream. I found Chance in an animal shelter, but the Jeep became a black Bronco. I was doing travel social work, creating programs to address the intersection of racism and COVID. That’s where my mental and spiritual evolution really happened. The skills it took to get from Alabama to DC were sharp, but Colorado required me to sharpen a different type of tool—one that let me leave the ‘strategic maneuvering’ behind and just be.

In Colorado, I started an organization, Phases of Self Ascension, doing what I call ‘ancestral work.’ I hold individual therapy sessions, helping people process some of the most difficult times of their lives. I facilitate cross-racial dialogues with a partner, Rachael K. Sharp. She’s a 50-year-old white woman. We sit people in a room and have the uncomfortable conversations, then sit through the discomfort together. That’s where growth begins. This work feels like where I’m supposed to be.

I’m an only child, and my mom has always been my biggest supporter—she only missed three of my basketball games in my entire life. While I was out West, she was diagnosed with cancer. She needed me. I wasn’t ready to move back to Mobile, but I came back unofficially in ’22 and signed a lease in ’23.

Coming back has been a process of rekindling my relationship with this city. My relationship with Mobile has changed. I’m building new relationships and re-meeting people I’ve known my whole life.

I’m still working with teenagers who inspire me. Through a local non-profit, Mobile United, I’m teaching high schoolers to have conversations and support their peers who may be struggling with mental health issues or substance use; this happens in-person and through an app that they are building. It lights me up when they text me at nine o’clock at night to talk about their plans for college.

I’m an introvert; I still need my time to recharge and be outside. But I’m passionate about people being connected in a genuine way. I’m grateful to be back. I’m a healer, a builder, and an explorer—and right now, I’m exploring what it means to be home.”

Tempey