We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sam Qavah John. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sam Qavah below.
Sam Qavah, sincerely appreciate your selflessness in agreeing to discuss your mental health journey and how you overcame and persisted despite the challenges. Please share with our readers how you overcame. For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.
Persistence. I spent most of my life hoping I would be gone the next morning. My mind was broken and so was my body, heart, and soul.
I was 16-years-old when I dropped out of high school, was admitted into a psych award and underwent what became a decade long journey to find peace and grace for myself. I was lost without direction and didn’t know if I wanted to keep going.
My story is not ideal. I have tried to kill myself on 5 different occasions before the age of 25 and this year marks 1 year without making an attempt on my life and my 4 years sober. I cease to exist without taking the steps to be the man I wanted to be and reject the notion of who I was destined to be. My story is in more ways than one, an open book, with my 4th book coming out at the end of this year. I was diagnosed with clinical depression, anxiety, rage, violence, and suicidal tendencies.
Something brought me through those dark, lonely nights… it was a hope to work towards and a man I knew I could be. My only north star was creativity. My mind would never stop creating things, crafting worlds and the people that would inhabit them and I knew that that would be the first step on the way out of the darkness. And so, I kept creating even when I was objectively “bad” at it because something in me knew that even the greatest to ever do it never started out amazing.
I persisted because I had to. For a while, I thought it was because I was too weak to take my own life but looking back now, I know it came from a strength I didn’t know I had. A strength that came out of the core of my devotion to Jesus and my desire to be the best version of myself that kept me in therapy and in the 12 Steps Program for about a decade and counting.
I wanted to be an artist, I wanted to be a husband and a father but… the first thing I knew I had to be was better. I had to get the help I needed. I had to ask for it and humble myself to receive it and with each step, I grew as a creative professional and as a human being. I kept living and persevering because that was all I knew how to do. If I wasn’t fighting with every fiber of my being to keep going, I would have been gone a long time ago. I persisted because I had a job to do. I had people to help. I had souls to care for. I was a protector, born and bred. Born out of the pain of abandonment and stepping into the vision of reassurance. Huge shout-out to Josh Lind (my mentor and brother in Christ) for helping me discover this. I had to persist. Because no one could love the way I could. Or protect as fiercely as I could. Or create as vulnerably as I would. I had a story to tell, a testimony to give and a life to live.
My mental health struggles made me who I am today. Every therapy session, every prescription, every treatment. It made me the man I am proud to be and the man who echoed through the recesses of time to tell every version of myself to keep fighting because there is still work to be done. And we are just getting started.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I tell stories and I build worlds. In everything I produce, I try to bring all the experiences, tools, and skills I have acquired during my time as a student and as a worker. I love telling stories and I love making people feel seen, heard, acknowledged and loved. Each project is thoughtful, raw, and at the same time vulnerable. From my books to my performances to business strategies that I help develop, I have engaged with every aspect of that path with a beginner’s mind, knowing the 10,000 hours I need to accumulate to truly master each of them and slowly but surely building up that bandwidth.
Ever since I was a little boy, I would find hope, joy, peace, laughter and role models in the art I would engage with from culinary to theater to film and tv, these things brought me hope in the darkness. They allowed me to reach for the stars and dream dreams that were far beyond my station. I would never stop dreaming and that disposition took me 9000 miles away from everything I had ever known. When I talk about my brand and the works I’ve created, it brings me a deep sense of purpose and joy because I know that I can bring a smile or a laugh or an emotional release to people when they didn’t even know they needed it. That’s what brought me this far in life. Knowing that I had that movie or book or show that didn’t judge me or push me aside but would let me be as I was in the moment, free of expectations and measures I could never reach. I wanted to do this for someone else someday and at the young age of 26, I can rest easy knowing that I have done that for countless people not just through my art but in and through the way I live my life and hold myself.
My artistry and my humanity cannot be separated from each other. I live my life with my heart and soul on my sleeve and I don’t pretend to be who I’m not in either sphere of my existence. I lead with love and I explore every sphere of creativity. I have had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I am not where I wished I was but that won’t mean that I will ever stop creating. I haven’t been published, signed by an agency, or been part of a stable of creatives but that doesn’t mean I will ever stop publishing or writing or performing because that’s what I was put on this planet to do. To bring that hope, joy, love, and freedom to people. I am not interested in outside accolades and my work couldn’t be less enticed by it. I create because I have to and I enjoy every second of it.
I have my fourth book coming out in a couple of months: The Invisible Thread, hope to have another one-man show done and ready to perform by Fall 2025 and the film version of my first one-man show will be available soon! I have also opened up a wing under The Qavah Collective for coaching, mentoring, and public engagements. It has been an honor to get to do what I love for a living and I won’t ever stop. Not for anyone or anything.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Listening, Prioritizing, and Reflection are the three skills that have allowed me to step up and step into the man I am today and the creative professional I strive to be.
Listening: A lot of my young life was spent fighting to be the loudest person in the room so that for once, someone would hear me and take me seriously and that is how I held myself for a long time. Once I began to enter the world, I had come to realize that I gained far more when I stepped back and listened. Initially it was passive with a desire to calculate and craft my response being at the front of my mind. As I grew and evolved as a creative professional and as a performer, that listening became active and now, I have stepped into that calling of listening intently and investing in people’s thoughts, opinions, and desires even if they don’t align with my own or benefit me in any way in that moment. I have learned that I never want to stop hearing what other people have to say and growing in the knowledge and wisdom that has and can continue shaping the world I am honored to be a part of. I want to give more than I took and the first step of that begins with recognizing what people want and what the world needs and that comes from being a person who listens deeply and loves freely.
Prioritizing: It is never the case of “I didn’t have enough time for it”. It is always a case of “it is not enough of a priority for me”. I recognized this around 2022 when I worked for the Academy of Motion Pictures. My commute was about 4 hours both ways and I worked a minimum wage job in one of the most expensive cities in the country (Los Angeles). I also wanted to publish my first book and prioritize self-care and growth during this period while ensuring that I gave the community and my church everything I had. In doing this for about a year, I learned a lot about the need to prioritize. If something was not a priority to me, I would have to sacrifice it in service of the things I truly wanted and I came to the realization that I had to realign my priorities and craft/plan my day out in such a way as to serve each of those priorities. Slowly but surely, I eliminated the terminology of not having enough time from my vocabulary and in its place established the reality that some things simply are not important enough to me and the life I am trying to live to be a priority. Creating this tough but necessary hierarchy has set me apart from the crowd and has helped me create a distinction that stands out instead of feeling the need to fit in.
Reflection: I lived in fear of reflection for such a long time. As a young man, I often felt like everything I did was wrong and that nothing I could do would ever fix that and so looking back only made me afraid and believe that I had messed everything up. As an actor, however, I was quickly educated on the necessity to look back to find my errors and room for improvement. And that begun tying in to every aspect of my core philosophy especially when I entered the 12 step program and clinical therapy. I needed to reflect and I needed to ponder, no matter how uncomfortable that made me feel. To this day, I sometimes have to force myself to reflect and journal but I know full well that that is the necessary step to elevate the kind of person I am and the man I want to be. The process of reflection is what steered me away from the path I was “destined” for and into the path that I chose. One that is free from expectation but grounded in grace, accountability, and non-linear progress.
Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?
My biggest area of growth over the past year has been beginning to believe that I deserve good things in this life. I spent so long with such a lack of self-worth that it became how I saw myself and identified myself. The things that I have said to myself over the past two decades were simply cruel and hurtful and I needed to start making those changes. By establishing new habits and neural pathways, with each step of this journey, I have become more comfortable with myself and more comfortable asking more of people. I allowed people to use me and walk all over me for so long because I believed that that is what I deserved. I couldn’t be worthy of anything more.
To challenge a state of mind that has been established over 20 years is no easy feat but just like with my suicidal tendencies and my sobriety, it is all about taking that first step. I have been accountable for my actions, shown grace and forgiveness to the people that have abandoned me and have committed to caring deeply for this little boy who had been left behind. This little boy who I hated and had to show up for. This little boy that I have now come to live and call my own. I had to stop trying to find love everywhere else and look to God for that part of me that was lost and then, bring that love and hopeful expectation to the life I now live. This past year is the hardest year I’ve experienced. I loved fully. I grieved deeply. And I forgave completely. It wasn’t easy but brought me to this moment in time where I can truly ascertain that I am the best version of myself and continue to strive to work towards evolving that person into the person that little boy wished was in his corner.
I fight because I have to. I grow because I want to. And for the first time in my life, I believe that I deserve the best this life has for me not because I am owed something but simply because of the things I have put out into this world during my humble existence and I rest easy knowing that this isn’t the end for me. My storehouses are full and I am the richest man alive. Every breath I take is a blessing and I won’t ever stop trying to be the person who shows up for people, protects the vulnerable, and gives everything I do everything I’ve got, resting in the peaceful assurance that what is meant for me simply will not pass me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://samjohnact.wixsite.com/perform
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/qavahcreates/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61563398761037
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-johnvg/
- Twitter: https://x.com/qavahcreates
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyUk6CX0ORd9mpYBzYaeeOA
- Other: PLEASE SHOP THE STORE: https://qavahcreates.my-online.store https://www.tiktok.com/@qavahcreates https://linktr.ee/thecreativearray
Image Credits
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) SCAD Museum of Art
