Help the People with Shannon Riley

In this deeply personal episode, Shannon Riley opens a tender, unflinching conversation about his father a seventeen-year-old boy who held the pipe more than he held his newborn son. Through reflection, regret, and hard-won understanding, Shannon revisits the wounds of his childhood to uncover a truth many of us never learn:

Our parents were people before they were parents.
And most of them were broken children raising children.

This episode explores:

• Fatherhood and absence

• Addiction and generational trauma

• The two years of silence before his father’s death

• How manhood reshapes childhood memories

• Grace, compassion, and the long journey of forgiveness

• The difference between blaming and understanding

Shannon speaks to anyone carrying unresolved wounds, unanswered questions, or pain inherited from the people who raised them.

He also reflects on his novel Murder of Crows, connecting the themes of wounded communities, hidden battles, and generational silence to the truth he lived with his own father.

If you have ever struggled with a parent’s absence emotional or physical this episode may help you see the story with new eyes.