Raised to ask questions, not just answer them.

Raised by a psychologist and a pastor, I grew up in a home where both the mind and the spirit mattered. My parents didn't teach me what to think — they taught me how to think. Instead of giving me answers, they asked questions.

Whenever I faced a challenge, my mom would ask: How does it make you feel? Why does it make you feel that way? What can you learn from it? What can you do about it?

I was born and raised in Puerto Rico until sixth grade, when my family moved to the United States. Overnight, I left behind my friends, family, language, and everything familiar. For the first time, I had to rebuild my identity.

Sports stopped being something I loved. It became who I was.

As the years went on, I became known as "the athlete" — or as most people called me, "DMD." I found success in track, cross country, soccer, and eventually basketball, going from one of the slowest runners on my HS team to one of the top runners in the state.

My senior year was everything I had dreamed of: captain of the varsity team, 20+ points a game, All-Conference honors, and interest from the collegiate level. But it still wasn't enough — I wasn't chasing college basketball, I was chasing Division I.

Without realizing it, sports stopped being something I loved. It became WHO I AM — my purpose, confidence, identity, and personal worth.

So I took one final leap: I packed my bags, moved across the country to a post-graduate basketball academy in Arizona, and gave myself one last chance to make my dream a reality.

A storage closet became my sanctuary.

That question led me into the darkest period of my life. My thoughts began racing, pulling me deeper into fear and uncertainty — how would my family see me, how would I start over, how were years of bouncing a ball going to help me in life? The more I held onto those questions, the deeper I fell into depression.

In a house with fifteen people, I desperately needed a place to process everything. At the end of the hallway was a small storage closet where everyone kept their extra bags. One day, I cleared it out, laid down a blanket and pillow, and made it my room. It became my cocoon — the place where I lived for half a year, wrestling with the mental warfare I was experiencing.

It was there I returned to the foundation my mom had given me growing up. Instead of asking "Why me?" I began asking, "What new chapter is trying to emerge in my life?" I started to see how my passion within the game connected to the new passions I wanted to explore — that I wasn't starting over, I was starting ahead.

In this place I experienced my greatest pain, and it became the place where I received my greatest gift.

Arizona stopped feeling like a battleground. It started feeling like home.

Everything we were doing was the opposite of what our coach had taught us. Instead of hiding our emotions and acting tough, we began talking about things athletes rarely talked about — purpose, identity, fear, and life after sports. We stopped talking about stats, status, and girls, and started talking about what we were really feeling.

Slowly but surely, we stopped seeing each other as athletes and started getting to know each other as humans. I watched the emotionless athlete share his dreams with the group. I watched the quiet kid speak up. I watched guys who were constantly at each other's necks begin to care for one another.

I watched uncertainty become confidence, confusion become clarity, and separation become community — because of the journey of self-discovery we embarked on together. I left Arizona without a Division I scholarship, but with my purpose.

What started in a closet was now filling classrooms.

Once my gap year was complete, I went to college on a mission — not just to earn a degree, but to create the space I wished had existed when I needed it most. I carried this work to Lynn University, where one-on-one conversations became group discussions, became workshops, became curriculum, became workbooks, became facilitation guides. We even presented research on the lack of self-awareness support for youth at Oxford, titled "The Great Mental Warfare."

The movement expanded beyond campus into high schools, colleges, after-school programs, nonprofit organizations, and athletic teams throughout Palm Beach County. I watched students who felt lost discover direction, athletes struggling with depression rebuild their identity beyond sports, shy students become leaders.

What began as one conversation has grown into 250+ workshops, 28 cohorts, 30+ youth mentors trained, over 15,000 hours of mentorship, and more than 2,500 students impacted in person. Today, that movement is called Find Your Mission.