{"id":7023,"date":"2026-10-06T18:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T18:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/?p=7023"},"modified":"2026-10-07T02:15:57","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T02:15:57","slug":"family-and-loyalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/?p=7023","title":{"rendered":"Family and Loyalty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I woke up today with something on my mind. I&#8217;ve done a bunch of guys wrong, and I really regret it. If you look at me today, you might think what I&#8217;ve become is due to a bad childhood, but that&#8217;s not really the case. In fact, if you see anything good in me, much of that can be attributed to those formative years. I grew up in a tough part of Miami, surrounded by Cubans and other Hispanics. I&#8217;ve always felt a little out of place since I&#8217;m Asian, but the friends I grew up with were family to me. In fact, I almost thought I was Cuban because of this. They meant everything to me; they gave me whatever identity I had. So when I moved out of Miami, I didn&#8217;t know who I was anymore. I went from living in the city with a bunch of good friends to living on a farm with almost no friends, so I felt really lost living in Virginia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You see, these guys are really good guys. They&#8217;re fighters and lovers. They defend their territory and love their women deeply. So they hated the fact that I gave my mom a hard time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In fact, one of my friend&#8217;s moms didn&#8217;t like the fact that he was hanging out with me. She told him that if I could treat my mom that way, how would I treat him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She was right to call me out. Back then, I didn&#8217;t appreciate the sacrifices my mom made, and I let my own hurt make me reckless with the people who cared about me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Looking back, those guys showed me what unconditional loyalty looked like, even when I didn&#8217;t deserve it. It took me years and a lot of distance to realize that true loyalty starts at home. I regret the ways I fell short back then, but I\u2019m grateful for the grace and lessons they taught me about what it really means to stand by the people you love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"559\" src=\"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/watermarked_img_1156455330167207496-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7039\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/watermarked_img_1156455330167207496-1.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/watermarked_img_1156455330167207496-1-300x164.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/watermarked_img_1156455330167207496-1-768x419.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I woke up today with something on my mind. I&#8217;ve done a bunch of guys wrong, and I really regret [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7037,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/watermarked_img_1932718510144155139-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7023"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7053,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7023\/revisions\/7053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanjordan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}