What Love Looks Like
Jun 12, 2025Melvin Hawkins Is Our Rock
There are some people who change your life just by showing up. Melvin is one of those people—for my son, and by extension, for me.
My son needed something I could never give him. Not because I didn’t love him. Not because I didn’t try. But because some things can’t be taught secondhand. My son needed a Black male role model. Someone who didn’t just see him, but understood him. Knew the tightrope he walks every day as a young Black teen with an intellectual disability. Knew the risks. Knew the heartbreak. Knew the stakes.
Melvin Hawkins does.
He’s a licensed therapist who works not for status, not for accolades, and certainly not for the paycheck. He works to save kids who look like him. Period.
He’s not interested in being anyone’s hero. But make no mistake: this man is doing heroic work.
He shows up, day after day, to make sure Black boys don’t fall through the cracks. Especially those with special needs. Because he knows—firsthand—what happens when they do. He’s seen too many of them end up in the juvenile system, where instead of being helped, they are criminalized, discarded, and forgotten. He’s fighting tooth and nail to keep my son from becoming one of them.
And he’s doing it in ways I’ll never fully know or understand. Not because I don’t care. But because I live in a body that walks through the world with privilege-blurred vision. My love is fierce. But his insight is lived. That’s the difference.
Watching Melvin work is like watching someone carry water up a mountain for a village. Tireless. Unrecognized. Essential.
He’s a trained professional who has to work twice as hard as many of his white colleagues just to be taken seriously. He holds advanced credentials while some unlicensed, underperforming white therapists get better pay and less scrutiny. It’s enraging. It’s infuriating. And it’s not even surprising anymore. That’s the problem.
But Melvin doesn’t flinch. He just keeps showing up. For our kids. For my kid. For all the kids who get overlooked, underestimated, and over-policed.
This isn’t saviorism. Let’s be very clear. Saviorism centers the do-gooder. Saviorism is performative. Saviorism wants credit.
Melvin doesn’t want credit. He wants freedom. Healing. Justice. He wants Black children to live.
He is our rock. He is my rock.
I have learned more from this man than I can say. And while the dysfunction of our society continues, I want to pause and say: Thank you, Melvin.
Thank you for seeing my son.
Thank you for believing in him when the system doesn’t.
Thank you for modeling what it means to show up with integrity, love, and unshakable commitment.
Thank you for showing me how to listen differently.
You’re not just saving lives. You’re showing us what it means to be fully human in a system that often forgets what that even means.
I will never stop being grateful.
Marion Van Namen
Founder, White Awake Parenting
Don't miss a beat!
New moves, motivation, and classes delivered to your inbox.
We hate SPAM. We will never sell your information, for any reason.
