René

In this episode of The Missing Conversation, host Steve Evans sits down with René — a psychotherapist from the north side of Houston who built his practice around men of color, and who spent much of his own life quietly at war with his self-doubt. René reflects on leaving home for college and the search for belonging that reshaped him — how an unexpected friendship and a hunger for cultural connection molded the man and the clinician he'd become. He traces the transition that changed everything: becoming a father at twenty-three, the hardest conversation of his life with his parents, and the drive that fatherhood finally gave a young man who'd never quite known what he was working toward. He speaks candidly about the mentors who fathered him professionally, the professional failures and self-doubt he had to own rather than blame away, and the choice he made again and again to put his daughter above his own ambition — turning down the better city, the bigger title, the PhD, because presence mattered more. He shares the crucible of a sudden paralysis that forced him, for the first time, to surrender and be cared for by others. With warmth, humor, and disarming honesty, René explores the tenacity that carried him from restaurant floors to his own practice, the love that finally arrived when he stopped chasing it, and the fulfillment he's never known until now — landing on what turned out to matter most: that his gut had been right all along, and the work of a life is learning, at last, to trust it.