When he was 16 years old, Jahnesta Watson found himself in the middle of a familial drama that unexpectedly shifted the trajectory of his life.

Prior to this moment, Watson, now 28, had been the golden child. Beloved by most within the family, he was incapable of doing any wrong in their eyes. But he admits he made a terrible mistake by confiding in a family member.

“I had this uncle, the cool uncle; the kind of uncle who would slip you a beer on the side when no one was looking,” Watson told The Reckoning. “We were close; really close.”

So close that Watson decided this uncle would be the sole person he would confide in about his sexuality.

“Big mistake,” he said.

After an ugly altercation with the family matriarch, Watson’s grandmother, the uncle, shared Watson’s secret.

Award-winning chef Deborah VanTrece is laying it all on the line. The highly-respected chef and owner of “Twisted Soul Cookhouse and Pours” in West Midtown has had to reinvent the model for her successful soul food restaurant more times than she could have ever imagined in 2020. But during times of uncertainty and stress, clarity is not often far behind–or in VanTrece’s case—the desire to no longer publicly sugarcoat the challenges brought on by the pandemic, and the racism that she and other Black colleagues have endured in professional kitchens long before the pandemic upended the restaurant industry.