Buckle up!! I don’t look like what I’ve been through, and if you have a hard time with transparency, my story is full of it. Oh, it’s not that I’m going to tell you the vivid details of my sexual experience or the horrid abuse I endured while serving these United States. But, as I tell my story I don’t believe in sugar coating things. It has been what it has been, and it is what it is.
I was called peculiar as a small child. They didn’t know what to make of me because I was different. At two, as my mom shared with me, I was on a train ride with her and a group of conductors were talking. I tried getting their attention, but they kept talking like I was invisible. I interrupted them by tugging on one of their jackets. I had something to say, and they were going to listen! By the time I was a kindergartener, I would try to tell my mother how to cook. Some days, I would come home with new words, tell her how to spell them and use them in a sentence. I remember my teacher taking me to the principal’s office to share about a picture I colored. I didn’t seem to be in trouble. I was telling them that on my picture was a Negro boy and a Caucasian boy…..the principal and all of the ladies in office were laughing and hugging me. At the time, I had no idea what they were so happy about. I went from there to being an excellent student, until my rebellious teen years. I spent exactly six months in college, only to discover that I did not want to be there, which lead me to enlisting in the Marine Corps. Some of the other significant events were giving birth to my one and only son, being married for a brief stint, having a spiritual awakening, being ordained, becoming an author and award-winning songwriter, becoming a grandmother and an abstract artist, and all of the stories intertwined therein.
My life consists of many twists and turns, good and bad. It has been interesting, scary, shocking, inspiring, dark and triumphant. Every bit of it makes up the fibers that have formed who I am and what I believe. I am as grateful for the bad times as I am the good because it made me strong and resilient. The “Forrest Gump-like” experiences I’ve had would be unlikely had I not lived them. There is not a dull moment in my story, thus, my opening line….buckle up!
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