317. Working Through the Dark with Asante Cleveland

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The Daily Helping Episode 317: Asante Cleveland

Asante Cleveland: [00:00:00] Whatever you want to be great at, it takes work. It's not just going to happen. You have to be committed and dedicated to it.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:00:13] Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster, food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strive to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your daily helping.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:00:57] Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Daily Helping podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And this is another episode in our Athletes Voices series on The Daily Helping where we interview exceptional athletes doing exceptional things in the world. With us today is Asante Cleveland. He's a former NFL tight end who played for the 49ers, Patriots and Chargers over the course of his fouryear professional career. Prior to this, he played football at the University of Miami, and he recently published his first book, Walking Through the Dark. And we're going to talk about that. He's also currently a campaign specialist at Revive and the co-host of the White Tiger podcast. Asante, welcome to The Daily Helping. It is awesome to have you here.

Asante Cleveland: [00:01:40] Dr. Richard, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:01:42] You know, it's fun for me because we're now doing this series and I've had so many great athletes come in, but what's always inspired me and I found amazing is athletes come from all different walks of life. But so many of them have had to overcome unbelievable adversity, not only before leading up to their playing career, but at times during their playing career. And I know your book is about your upbringing, and I wanted to give you a space to talk about your story and to share what you went through, what you overcame, and then we'll talk about how you're making a difference in the world now. But I'm honored and grateful that you're here to tell your story with us today.

Asante Cleveland: [00:02:29] Thank you so much. I grew up in Sacramento, California. My parents were divorced, and the challenge was one of my parents was abusing me while the other wasn't. And so it was tough dealing with that growing up. Also seeing how my friends weren't going through the same reality. So there was one instance where it got bad, and I told my dad what was going on and he came to my school. He saw that I had marks on me, told my principal and principal called Child Protective Services. So effective immediately I was removed from that bad situation. Now, at the time, dealing with child abuse was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. But it was ultimately the best thing for me because now I had an opportunity to live with my dad. My dad played in the NFL. He was a great man. He really taught me how to carry myself. But by living with him, I had more time to dive into sports. It became my outlet, and I was a soccer player for a long time. And then I eventually started my love for basketball. And I thought that that was going to be my path to college. And I started playing football my freshman year of high school. I didn't really like it that much, but I was pretty good at it. And then my junior year of high school, I got my first football offer where I was getting no attention in basketball. So that's when I had to make the switch to like, okay, I need to focus on football. And after my senior year, I had an incredible opportunity to play at the University of Miami, where I had a lot of ups and downs there too.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:04:22] The abuse that you spoke of by your mother, how old were you when that started?

Asante Cleveland: [00:04:27] It started when I was like four or five. So they got divorced when I was five. And so what I didn't realize was she would only hit me when he wasn't there. I'd never really like made the connection. And then once they told me that they were getting divorced, my first thought was like, okay, I have two houses now, two Christmases. Like the fun things you think about that. What didn't really click for me was like, oh, I'm now going to be alone with her for a lot longer. And when I would -- the way the custody was set up was I was with my dad every other weekend and then with her for like 11 days straight. So there was a lot of -- like I was never like a disrespectful kid. I wasn't getting in trouble at school. I wasn't fighting. But if I didn't turn in a homework assignment or one instance, I was told I had to get 100 percent on a test because I didn't bring my math book home, I got a 95 and I still was getting whipped for it. So there was just a lot of things that I just felt weren't fair and I didn't really know who to talk to about it. And I rarely told my dad until I would tell friends at school. Some like that I really trusted what was going on and what I didn't know was one of my friends had been telling his mom because he was so bothered about like what I was telling him that she eventually reached out to my dad and said, hey, you need to get your son. He's not in a good situation.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:06:04] So it was because of the friend's mother that your dad went to the school?

Asante Cleveland: [00:06:08] It's because of him. It put it on his radar because I wasn't talking about it when I was spending time with him. And so one day he asked me, he told me that if anything was going wrong, that it's okay to tell him. And I cryptically asked him, I was like, well, if you were the one hitting me and leaving marks, like, should I tell on you? And my dad said, if I was foolish enough to be doing that to you, then yes, you should tell on me too. So that's what gave me the confidence that when another instance happened that I should reach out to him.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:06:51] And for how long did that go on for?

Asante Cleveland: [00:06:55] The last time was when I was 11. Yeah. So sixth grade.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:06:59] Okay. And obviously, it's always interesting, like we can jump forward and tell like ten years of our lives and 45 seconds. But when you were then placed with your father and CPS pulled you and you went to go live with your dad, did you have a relationship with your mom after that?

Asante Cleveland: [00:07:17] No, there was no contact at all from her side, and it was confusing at the time, but ultimately it was best for me. At that time, my dad had just started dating my now mom who adopted me when I was 21, but they had just started dating. And so I was coming into essentially like a two-parent household when I started living with my dad. And it was the best thing for me because she was a great role model. She was very loving, supportive. So although my birth mother wasn't in my life, I didn't feel that whole of not feeling loved from them.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:08:06] So now you're obviously an adult. It's been many, many years. Have you had any interaction with your mother since that time?

Asante Cleveland: [00:08:13] I have. So when I was a -- my senior year of high school, I had just in the month of February, I got my driver's license. I committed to University of Miami. And midway through the month, I had to go and testify at an administrative hearing. And based off her job as an educator, she was trying to get another job and or an administrative position, and they were just going through the case to deem like, was this incident going to affect how she performed as an administrator or whatever. So that was the first time that I had seen her and really thought about that time in about seven years at that time. And since then, there has been a loose communication. I tried to -- I reached out and we had a sit down. I didn't really hear anything that felt genuine. So our communication isn't there.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:09:22] And we just talked about some really hard stuff, of course. And I know you wrote this in your book, so take us through what else your book is sharing with people that's important that people could know about.

Asante Cleveland: [00:09:39] Well, I wanted to share my story in the book, not just to say like, oh, woe is me. These bad things happen. I wanted to share because I want to encourage people that you can overcome anything. The traumas that you've endured don't have to define you. You can succeed and rise up in spite of. I started, I wanted to put this out in 2020 when the first lockdowns happened, and that's when I realized that there were so many not only kids, but women who were in abusive relationships who were now trapped. They had nowhere to go. And if you remember, at that time, there was really no end in sight. And so I knew that there were so many people going, like really struggling and dealing with that abuse at that time. And I just wanted to share my story to encourage them that they can overcome anything. They are strong, they're resilient, and they will succeed in spite of.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:10:40] And I know you don't have the communication with your mother, but it's interesting because I've worked with a lot of domestic violence clinically in the past. Forgiveness is an interesting thing. And a lot of times, when somebody goes through something that hard, it's difficult to be able to forgive the person, particularly if the other party is not receptive or even in your instance, communicating. So talk to me about what forgiveness means to you.

Asante Cleveland: [00:11:16] Forgiveness for me is just really accepting someone for who they are. No judgment. You know how they came up. You know what they've been through. And you just have to, like for me, I had to release expectations. That's what got me to a point of just forgiveness. Like I had all these expectations of what should have been done, how things should have been handled, and they didn't. So I just had to release the expectations that someone's going to show up in a way that I think they should. They are going to show up how they are, and that's okay.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:11:59] That's so interesting. And well said that it's, for you, it's removing the expectations. I love that. Okay. So I want to jump back to college a bit. So you're at the U in Miami. Were there other schools you were considering?

Asante Cleveland: [00:12:14] I was committed to Washington State my whole senior year, and then I put out my highlight tape after like I got my first offers my junior year. I wasn't that good at football. I didn't think I really had it figured out. So I spent that summer just studying all the top tight ends in the country, like seeing what they were doing that got them so much attention. And so after my senior season, I was like number 63 in the country before the season. And then after I put out my highlight tape, I was boosted to number 14. So that's when University of Miami came and recruited me really late in the process and after a visit. And at that time, the U Documentary had just come out on ESPN, and I was sold.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:12:59] I love it. All right. And so then drafted into the NFL and --

Asante Cleveland: [00:13:06] Undrafted.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:13:07] Undrafted.

Asante Cleveland: [00:13:07] Made it to the NFL.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:13:07] All right. Well, that's a bigger -- that's actually a larger achievement because statistically getting into the NFL as an undrafted free agent, it's considerably harder. And so you made the roster. At that point, were you already kind of starting to think about what might be next after football? What were you thinking about at that point?

Asante Cleveland: [00:13:31] Yeah. I was never under the illusion that football was going to be everything for me. I knew that I had to have a plan B or yeah, a plan B. But at that time, my rookie year, at the end of the season, I worked in the marketing department for the 49ers. After my second year, I did a broadcasting internship for Comcast Sports for like three weeks. So I thought my path was going to be, once I retire, get into sports media and just go that route. And when I did retire, I dipped my toe in the water. I was at NBC Sports Radio for a little bit. And the scary thing was I didn't really like it that much, so I now had to readjust what I thought my future was going to be.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:14:23] Did you like it while you were doing internships? Like, was that --

Asante Cleveland: [00:14:27] It was interesting and fun, but at that time, it was still all theoretical. So there was no real like boots on the ground. It was like a taste of it, but it wasn't the real thing.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:14:36] Okay. So now you're realizing your playing days are over. What you thought you were going to do, you're not going to do it. So what was the pivot? 

Asante Cleveland: [00:14:45] The pivot was me banging my head into the wall a lot of different times, like trying a bunch of different things. The biggest struggle was once I retired, there was -- you hear about athletes, how they struggle, how like financially they go through it, how relationships. A lot of them get divorced once they retire. And I started to realize how it's all like mental health related. There is so much of a lost identity once you retire. You lose a community. You lose a lot of structure. So you're trying to figure all these very key pillars in your life out all that once. And so I was doing much of different things that I thought was interesting. People would invite me like, hey, I think you should join my company and do this or help me out with this. And because at the time, I didn't really have anything going on for myself, it was easy for me to say yes without really considering was this what I really wanted? Is this what I'm interested in? And I spent a lot of time kind of just following people around. I learned a lot along the way, but ultimately, I wasn't putting myself first in that early transition.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:15:54] That's a good lesson. You put -- so you stopped banging your head. You put yourself first and what did you figure out that is your thing?

Asante Cleveland: [00:16:03] I figured out that I want to help people. I want to help athletes in specific during that transition. I just wanted to encourage people that you need to like figure yourself out. I think a lot of guys need to go to therapy once they're done. But me writing the book was a stepping into my own vulnerability. I knew that there were people that I could help by sharing my story. And so I knew that I have this power having this athlete platform that I can use for good. I can help kids and people that were affected by trauma by sharing my story. But also I can help athletes figure out how they can transition by encouraging them to be vulnerable, encouraging them to take time and figure out who they are without sports.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:17:02] That's beautiful. And so tell us a little bit more about some of the ways that you're doing that today.

Asante Cleveland: [00:17:08] Yeah. So also, by being here at Athletes Voices, I'm learning new ways to grow what I'm doing. But I am speaking to kids, football teams, about just resilience, which I believe is so important for kids to develop early, learning how to handle and overcome adversity. And then for like the transition piece, I started working at an ad tech company. So this was something I wanted to do because my career ended after an injury, and I wanted to do something that wasn't predicated on how well my body held up. I also wanted to do something that was so different from football that would challenge me to have to learn something new. And I knew that through my time in football, through my time in sports, I can learn anything. So I wanted to learn something that was complicated. And through Covid, I saw how important understanding like the digital landscape was. So I wanted to learn digital media.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:18:13] I'm sure that will serve you well and your efforts to help children.

Asante Cleveland: [00:18:16] Yeah.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:18:17] And so 5 years, 10 years down the road, where are you?

Asante Cleveland: [00:18:23] Oh, five years down the road, I would like to have written another book specifically about the mental health challenges of the transition and how people can help figure themselves out and move through transitions successfully. Also speaking. And then 10 years from now, I would like to have hopefully written some more books. There you go.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:18:45] A prolific author.

Asante Cleveland: [00:18:46] Yeah. And just continue to help athletes be successful. Ultimately, I just want to encourage people to work through their own traumas as I didn't realize the abuse that had happened back when I was 11 years old still had an effect on me until I was like 27.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:19:08] You said work through your trauma. How did you work through yours?

Asante Cleveland: [00:19:13] It started off by writing, but at first I had an awareness to it. I was working at this real estate job that I did not like at all. I was miserable. It was driving me to like, I was having like suicidal ideation and I was struggling. But the great thing about that job was one of my coworkers was this free, like we had to call a lot of investors, so he would call somebody nine times. They would block his number. He'd ask you for your phone to call the same person and just his relentless spirit while I was still struggling. Like every time I had to know, it was just like crippling for me. And I just couldn't understand why. And I asked him. He was telling a story about being a kid growing up and kicking a soccer ball in the basement and breaking a light. And I was joking with him. I was like, oh, did your parents, like, hit you for that or anything? He's like, oh, no, I probably broke that light like a hundred times. And it hit me. I was like, okay, he has no fear that there are consequences to his actions, like he didn't, growing up, second guessing everything he did. And I think that plays a part in why he is the way he is today. And so I started to recognize like, okay, there is a reason why I am, and I need to figure out why I'm like struggling with confidence and all these things. And so I started writing stories about what I went through as a kid, which became the framework for the book. Like I never intended to share them, but it all started from me, just like writing out what happened when I was a kid.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:20:52] Did in the process of sharing, so for you and a lot of people that experienced trauma, this is one way that they can help address it is to start writing, journaling, in essence, your journal, your trauma experience for the whole world. Now that you've put it out in a book. Knowing that this is going to be read by so many people, knowing that there may be people who have their own trauma that are going to pick up your book and experience it, what is that like for you?

Asante Cleveland: [00:21:24] It was very encouraging after just getting feedback from people who have gone through things saying like, hey, like I experienced this too. And it made me feel like less alone because during the process I was very uncomfortable with the fact like, I'm about to be very vulnerable. But just hearing how many other people have gone through it and also how many people have not really addressed it within their own lives has been just really important to see because that is, I noticed how many people were still going through their lives that had had some sort of burden that was weighing them down, that they may not have realized it was such a big part of their life still. And until they start working on it and trying to release some of that weight, they're going to their relationships are going to be affected, how they show up daily is going to be affected. And so I just wanted to like it's great journaling and having it out there because I just hope it encourages other people to work through whatever their own thing is.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:22:35] So well said. Asante, I've really loved talking to you. And your humility, your openness and vulnerability is so great. As you know, our wrap up every episode by asking the people who come on my show just one question, and that is, what is your biggest helping, that one most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today?

Asante Cleveland: [00:23:01] Do your best. That is the most important thing that I've learned. I was lucky that when I was a kid playing basketball, my dad was like -- the first time I was playing organized basketball and this kid kicked my butt up and down the court. It was bizarre to me because I was a good soccer player, and this was my first time playing basketball. So I figured since I'm good at soccer, of course I'm good at basketball too. And I was humbled. And so on the ride home, as I'm pouting in the car, my dad stops at this high school that has these outdoor basketball courts near our house. And he stops the car and says, Asante, I'm going to walk down to that far baseline. And when I turn around, if you're not standing at the free throw line, I'm just going to walk back to the car and we'll never talk about it again. But if you want to be great, you will meet me at the free throw line. So he gets out and just walks. I eventually follow him, but once we finally meet, he gives me a big hug and says, that kid wasn't better than you, but he has put in more work than you have. So whatever you want to be great at, it takes work. It's not just going to happen. You have to be committed and dedicated to it.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:24:21] I love that. Asante, tell us the name of the book again and where people can get their hands on it.

Asante Cleveland: [00:24:25] The book is Working Through the Dark. You can find it on Amazon. Yeah.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:24:31] All right. And we'll have links to that as well in the show notes at thedailyhelping.com. Well, Asante, thank you so much for being on the show. Keep doing what you're doing. I loved talking to you today.

Asante Cleveland: [00:24:40] Dr. Richard, thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:24:42] Absolutely. And I want to thank each and every one of you who tuned in to this episode. If you like what you heard, go give us a follow on Apple Podcasts and leave us a five star review, because that is what helps other people find the show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are and post it in your social media feeds using the hashtag #MyDailyHelping, because the happiest people are those that help others.