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Missions of Service
to the Transformational Power of Love
Michael Jordan claims to be 49 years old going on 14.Mike, a member of the ManKind Project-Memphis Community since 1993, has worked in many roles in that community. He served with distinction as the Chairman of the MKP-Memphis Board of Directors and is now the community's historian and the new editor of the center's newsletter.
As a certified counselor working with addicted adults at Synergy Treatment Centers, Mike has also made enormous contributions to the wider community of Memphis. He was a builder of the first men's empowerment group in Memphis, the Memphis Men's Council, and has given countless hours to various 12-Step programs in Memphis, all without fanfare or desire for recognition or gain.
In addition, Mike somehow finds time to be an entrepreneur, a husband of 26 years, a father, a godfather, and a grandfather.
Those accolades don't reveal that Michael, who was incarcerated in the Arkansas penal system at the age of eighteen, spent 20-some years struggling with his own drug and alcohol addiction.
Michael wrote a poem about his prison experience that begins like this:
They asked me what I'd learned in prison, After I'd spent months behind the Iron Gate. I told them I'd learned but one thing, And that was the destroying power of hate.Today he says, "I never succumbed to that hate and never was a hateful person." Michael finally got clean and sober in 1989. Soon afterward, he decided that he would rather be working with recovery groups than in a "comfortable" management career. So Michael closed his retail clothing stores and spent the next three or four years volunteering in numerous 12-step programs, even creating a group for addicts that were not welcome in the others. These days Michael is jovial and easy-going but admits that his sobriety and healing did not come easy.
Mike's volunteer work in healing and recovery in Memphis has been so widespread for so long that when he attended the New Warrior Training Adventure, he already knew 23 of the 30-some staff, either through working alongside them or helping with their own recovery.
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