Photo courtesy of the Hemphills
Sean and Shanice Hemphill
Sean and Shanice Hemphill (2025)
On a warm afternoon in the early 1990s, a teenager, Sean Hemphill, was hanging out with a friend on Milwaukee’s north side, near 48th and Burleigh. At one point, they stopped by the friend’s house a block away, and that’s when Sean saw her.
“She came out the front door,” Sean said. “It was Shanice, my friend’s sister. I took one look and said to my friend, ‘Who is that?’” He issued a friendly warning. “That’s my sister. Stay away from her,” then Shanice warned me to stay away from her brother. That got me laughing.
But destiny had other plans. Sean missed his chance right then, but he was new to James Madison High school, and earlier in the year, he had seen Shanice, fell for her beauty, and said to himself, “I am going to marry that girl.”
A connection formed.
“I was instantly attracted to her,” Sean recalls. “It was love at first sight, at least on my part.” It took a whole school year to get Shanice to truly acknowledge Sean as more than just another guy who thought she was pretty.
Shanice, for her part, remembers the bond more as developing gradually. “We were close,” she said. “We became really good friends. I didn’t see him as a boyfriend right away, but he was someone I could talk to. He made me feel heard.”
Lives Shaped by Trauma
Their lives outside of school were already shaped by trauma, community and family issues. They lived in the inner city populated by African Americans at a time in history when Milwaukee’s manufacturing jobs had moved to foreign countries. Unemployment was high, and an underground income source had emerged based on drug dealing. Part of the north side became a Third world economy, traditional jobs having disappeared, families broken up, gangs taking over, public housing emerging in neighborhoods.
The oldest of four children with three brothers, Shanice was growing up in a home strained by addiction. Her mother battled drug use, and her father, normally a stabilizing figure, had died when she was just 11.
“I felt unsafe, unprotected,” she said. “We were living in the inner city, and it was a challenge. I went to North Division High school my freshman year while still living with my grandmother. When I moved back with my mother, I went to Pulaski my sophomore year. Then finally James Madison my Junior and Senior Year. I was always moving around, sometimes living with my grandmother and just trying to feel safe. And when my dad passed, I didn’t know how to grieve.”
Wanting Something Different
At 18, Shanice became pregnant by a drug dealer with a reputation. “I was looking for love and acceptance,” she said. But Sean, even then, just as a friend, never abandoned me. He stepped up. He looked out for me and my baby son, Devin, like they were his own.”
By that time, Sean had gone off to college in Illinois. But he visited Milwaukee often, and when he came home in the fall of 1994, Shanice was four months pregnant with Devin. Sean did not hesitate. “I was there,” he said. “She needed help, and I was going to be that help. I wasn’t trying to get anything in return. I just cared about Shanice and her son.”
Over time, their friendship deepened into something more. They leaned on each other, emotionally and practically. They were both navigating complicated lives, trying to rise above the taxing environment around them.
Eventually, Shanice became pregnant again, this time, with Sean’s child. Their son, Donovan, was born in July 1999 just one month after they got married on June 19 of that year.
“I wanted to live a different life,” Shanice said. “I had been around people making destructive choices, drugs, crimes, chaos. But I wanted my children to grow up in a better environment than I did. In 2000, we got counseling from a pastor, recommended by Sean’s father, and I accepted Christ and wanted to do everything for Christ. I thought we could build something new and better. But Sean did not accept Christ.”
Back then in his early 20s, Sean was still clinging to the religion of the streets. “I came from a stable, loving home, my parents were ministers, but I still wanted something different,” he said. “I wanted to be around what I thought was power, street gangs that frequented our neighborhood. I led a life of gang affiliation and violence. I began to self soothe through constant use of marijuana to deal with the depression, anxiety and manic-depressive moods I was used to feeling. Violence became a normal part of my life, and criminal acts led to prison. I was self-soothing with marijuana and selling drugs. I wouldn’t do counseling because Black people didn’t do counseling. But I always kept a job and supported Shanice and our boys.”
In 1995, Sean was arrested for drug possession with intent to deliver, and he served one year in prison. After his release, he came back to his family, determined to try again. But the old habits remained. He was still gang-affiliated, still using, still caught in cycles of violence and fear. “I couldn’t shake the pull of the streets,” he said. “It was like an identity. But it was also an escape from the pain I wasn’t facing. There was something in me, wounded, restless, that I didn’t know how to fix. Drugs did that to me. Depression followed.”
The Breaking Point
Then came the breaking point.
In what he now calls an act of slow-motion suicide, Sean committed a string of crimes in one night: three armed robberies and an assault on a gas station clerk. He wasn’t trying to get rich. He was trying, in his own words, “to die.” He said, “I didn’t want to kill myself with a gun, so I acted out, hoping the police would kill me. I didn’t care anymore.”
The cops did not kill him. He was arrested, pled guilty, and sentenced to 34 years in prison. He ultimately served 21.
Shanice was devastated. “Sean didn’t come home that night,” she remembers. “That wasn’t like him. I filed a missing persons report. That’s when I found out he’d been arrested. I was numb.”
Now a single mother of two young boys, she had no choice but to keep moving forward. “I had to step up because there was no time to feel sorry for myself,” she said. “I got a job at the phone company. I was the breadwinner now. Sean had always provided for us, but he was gone. I had to hold it down.”
Shanice purchased a fully remodeled home on 31st and Brown, a rough neighborhood plagued by violence and addiction. “People smoked crack outside our front door,” she said. “One night, someone fired a bullet into my sons’ bedroom window. Someone tried to break into our house twice. I was terrified. I remember thinking, I have to get my kids out of here.”
The early years of Sean’s incarceration were especially hard. Shanice made the long drives to visit him in prison. Their boys kept in touch with their father, but as the years wore on, life continued without Sean. Eventually, Shanice decided to leave Milwaukee behind.
“I needed a reset,” she said. “My aunt and uncle lived in Hastings, Nebraska. They told me to come there so I could have the family support. So I did.” Hastings, a small, predominantly white town, was a world away from Milwaukee. “It was lonely,” Shanice said. “A wilderness. But I found a good job in human resources. I did well. I started healing. I started to figure out who I was.”
Raising her sons alone wasn’t easy. Devin, her oldest, struggled with behavioral issues. When he was 16, Shanice made the painful decision to send Devin to Job Corps, a structured program that offered education and training. “It was one of the hardest choices of my life,” she said. “But I knew he needed discipline and a change of environment.” Job Corps was to help Devin earn a high school diploma and find meaningful employment. At 30, he now lives in Minnesota. Donovan, now 26, lives In Milwaukee
As the years passed, her marriage to Sean faded into memory. After 12 years apart, Shanice filed for divorce. “I had to let go,” she said. “I didn’t know if Sean would ever come home. I had to move forward, for myself and my kids.”
The Transformation
Back in prison, Sean was undergoing a slow and steady transformation. “At first, I wanted to change to get my wife back,” he admitted. “But then I realized that this change had to be about me. About who I wanted to be.”
He embraced Christianity. He read deeply. He began to examine his mental health and past traumas. He exercised daily, practiced self-discipline, and took responsibility for his actions.
“I came to understand myself,” Sean said. “I had been living with undiagnosed mental illness, PTSD and possibly schizophrenia. I had to face my demons. I had to stop blaming everyone else. I finally had to grow up.”
He also learned to forgive, including himself. “You don’t choose your parents. You don’t choose where you’re born, what race you are, or the circumstances you inherit,” he said. “But you can choose how you respond. That’s what I finally did, and I could escape my demons.”
After 21 years, Sean was released in 2021. He returned to Milwaukee a changed man. His two boys, now grown men, met him, one at the bus stop and the other shortly thereafter. Over time, the three men developed a father-son relationship they had been deprived of.
Meanwhile, Shanice was ready for a new kind of life. “I’d been working remotely for a company called Manpower Group,” she said. “My sons were grown. I had freedom. So I made a plan. I was going to leave the U.S. and live like a nomad.”
She packed her things, drove to Atlanta to drop off her car, then flew to Ecuador. “I was going to travel and work, explore the world on my terms, work remotely, and live in different countries,” she said. Then, something unexpected happened.
“Sean started reaching out,” she said. “He wanted to tell me about the experiences he’d had as a dad spending time with his boys, and he called me. We started talking every day.”
At first, Shanice was cautious. “I told him to move on, to date other women,” she said. “But he wouldn’t. He said, ‘I want you.’”
Their phone conversations turned into long talks about the past, their children, their personal growth. They realized they still loved each other, but more than that, they now saw each other clearly.
“I could hear the change in his voice,” Shanice said. “He had become a man of peace. He had done the work.” She left Ecuador and returned to Milwaukee. “We got remarried on July 5th, 2021,” she said. “This time, we were truly ready.”
Today, both 50 years old, Sean and Shanice Hemphill are partners in life and in business. They run Body by God Wellness, a holistic fitness and healing studio on Milwaukee’s south side. Sean offers physical training and nutrition coaching. Shanice teaches yoga, breath-work, mindfulness, and energy healing.
“Incarceration only works if the person inside does the internal work,” Sean said. “And I did it. At last, I can be the husband Shanice deserves.”
“We’ve both healed,” Shanice said. “It took time and a lot of deep work, but we’re whole.”
Their remarkable story, almost Shakespearean in diegesis, full of loss, love, trauma, and redemption, isn’t a straight line. But it’s a powerful testament to human resilience, to spiritual growth, and to the possibility of restoration.
Sean sums it up like this: “You know the back of a tapestry? It looks like a tangled mess, threads going every which way, no order. But when you turn the tapestry around, it becomes beautiful.”
To connect with Sean and Shanice, visit their website: bodybygodwellness.com
