My full name is John Lee Gaston White. I was born in the United States of America on July 4, 1984, at 4:44 pm. I am an “Independence” baby. As a child, my father would call out for me to come to him, shouting “John Gaston” or “JG” for short.

Driven by love of country as a believer in a free America, I endeavor to examine, reimagine, and ultimately, write my way to this freedom — a nation dedicated to radical self-examination in pursuit of what the sum of us can accomplish, an America worthy of our children and the inner child in each of us.

Reimaging manhood and family, stepping into my father’s shoes, my mother’s heart, my earliest memories, my trauma and my fear, I mine them to understand how I might reimagine myself. How we might approach reimagining ourselves. And, what it takes to transform a nation.

My central vision is one of healing and self–examination – of my personal life but also of the nation as a whole. What I am essentially saying is that to heal the world we need to heal the nation; and to heal the nation we need to heal men and, before that, boys.

As a writer and poet, entrepreneur and tech-hybrid investor, I champion the right to feel as my art form, writing about a different kind of revolution, the inner revolution to reimagine my country by first doing the work to reimagine my own life.

I am the author of the upcoming memoir Hold Me: I Am The Nation, a work of communal transformation through individual renewal. Hold Me: I Am The Nation is a story of imagination, pain, nation-building, and personhood, exploring my fears, dreams, love, and patriotism – the deep yearning I have for my nation, and the world at large, to see me, feel me, and hold me in the fullness and complexity of my individual humanity.