The voices behind the movement
Meet the Founders
Two men who decided that the most powerful thing they could do was tell the truth about what they had been carrying.
Co-Founder & The Story
Brandon Rawls
A former collegiate football player, minister, career coach, father, and author, Brandon has lived a journey marked by searching, surviving, breaking, becoming, and remembering. From childhood pain and family wounds to the pressures of performance, love, loss, fatherhood, divorce, and the long road back to himself — Brandon's life became the ground where Room on My Shelf first took root.
Before there was a book, a screenplay, a podcast, or a movement, there was a poem. Brandon wrote it to give language to something he had carried for years — not just about what happened to him, but about what lived inside him because of it. That poem became a mirror, a prayer, a map, and eventually the emotional seed for everything Room on My Shelf would become. Brandon's gift is his willingness to go first. He tells the truth in a way that gives others permission to tell theirs.
"I do not stand before people as someone who has life figured out. I stand as a man still becoming, still listening, still making room."
Co-Founder & The Guide
Righteous Chester
Righteous Chester is a mentor, entrepreneur, storyteller, and co-author whose gift is helping people see meaning in what they have lived. Where Brandon brings lived experience, Righteous brings reflection, structure, and vision. He has the ability to listen beneath the surface, ask the deeper question, and help transform personal pain into shared wisdom.
In the creation of Room on My Shelf, Righteous became more than a collaborator — he became a witness, a builder, and a guide. Through conversation, creative partnership, and spiritual imagination, he helped Brandon's poem and life journey take shape as a larger story. Together, they saw that Brandon's experience was not only Brandon's experience. It was a doorway into a much larger conversation about emotional storage, inherited silence, identity, love, and healing.
"Brandon opens the door through vulnerability. I try to help illuminate the room through reflection. One says, 'Here is what happened.' The other asks, 'What does it mean, and who else needs this language?'"
Why we built this
Two men. Two gifts. One shared belief.
Room on My Shelf was born through the conviction that healing begins when people are given permission to tell the truth about what they have been carrying. What began as a poem became a screenplay, then a novel, then a conversation — and now a movement designed to help people create room for the emotions, memories, dreams, and truths they have been taught to store away.
Brandon and Righteous believe that every person has a shelf. Some shelves hold pain. Some hold purpose. Some hold silence. Some hold the younger versions of ourselves still waiting to be seen. Through storytelling, reflection, community, and love, they are building a space where people can finally begin to unpack what they have carried.
Room on My Shelf is not simply their project. It is their offering. A story from Brandon's life. A framework shaped through Righteous's guidance. A movement rooted in the belief that love is the way, healing is possible, and no one should have to carry their shelf alone.
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