About this Website

Welcome!  I am convinced there are a lot of people looking to explore more deeply our human yearning to be connected and to live together in peace.

This website invites the exploration of critical conversations vital to the intersection of personal and community life: love, spirituality, leadership, recovery, and justice.

The topics considered here include:

Racial Equity & Social Justice – how each of us has the opportunity and responsibility to actively contribute to a more fair and equitable community and world and how, together, we can take on the challenging work of righting racial inequities and unjust practices. 

Spirituality & Love – how the many ways of loving and beliefs about love connect with and nourish our souls, spirits, beings—our spiritual growth.

Recovery & Growth – how facing and recovering from the misuse of substances or addiction to behaviors can improve lives, families and communities and provides opportunities for learning and growth for all.

Leadership & Transitions – how thoughtful attention to the ways leaders transition in and out of leadership positions can positively transform the experience for the leader, the organization, and those served.

About Tom Adams

My life experience has provided me with opportunities to participate in these conversations in many ways.

Faith, doubt, and a hunger to love more deeply have accompanied me from my childhood.  These took expression in spending high school and college in a Catholic seminary, studying to be a priest, then deciding that life was not for me and moving away from organized religion. I was blessed with an opportunity to lead a nonprofit in my mid-twenties. Inner pain and outer appearances of success led me to misuse food and alcohol in ways that led me to Twelve Step programs in my early thirties and back to my faith. 

My nonprofit career focused initially on neighborhood development and later on leader transitions and development. I have helped many leaders improve their neighborhoods and hundreds of organizations move through a leader transition. Both brought issues of racial inequity front and center. As a result, I have found myself doing what I can to advance racial justice.

My interest in spiritual growth continued and led me to Shalem, a Washington, D.C.-based ecumenical contemplative community. Together, the Twelve Steps and Shalem encouraged me to continue to grow spiritually. Ultimately, growing spiritually led to a thirst to better understand love – what it is, where it comes from, and how it grows.

As a friend has pointed out, I don’t bring advanced degrees to all the issues I hope to explore here. Instead, I bring the joys of a rich family life with my wife Geraldine, and our four children and six grandchildren, along with a lifetime with amazing opportunities to see connections and a desire to be in dialogue with other seekers about the intersections of these issues. I bring my conversations with many friends and mentors and a trust that others will join and further advance the discussion.

Thanks for exploring the information here, sharing your experience and voice by responding to blog posts, and sharing this website with others.