#Sherman Boggle | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

heartsofstrangers · 5 years

Photo

What has been one of the most challenging things you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“The molestation of my son when he was 11 years old; I miss him being a part of my life. It was tearing me apart, spiritually within, and I started using drugs even harder. Because there was so much other stuff that I was going through, but that was the bottom that drew me deeper and deeper into hell. The thought of someone having sex with my son and I couldn’t stop it—it was mind boggling. It was all I could ever think of and I would smoke, smoke, and smoke to stay up because I was afraid to go to sleep. That was the most destructive thing in my life, and he’s not in my life now. I used to try to talk to him about it, but he still says that it didn’t happen, so I leave it alone. He’s grown now. He liked the man and liked what he was doing to him. That’s his journey. That’s his purpose. For a long time, I blamed myself because I wasn’t there. He was the child I protected. When he was a baby, I always felt somebody was going to do something to him. I always had him with me because I always felt somebody was going to hurt him. I don’t know why I had that feeling. I carried him forever. People would say, ‘When you going to put that boy down and let him walk?’ I protected him, not knowing why.

“When it happened, I went to the school because I was so depressed I couldn’t work. Being on the State, with food stamps and all of that stuff, I was embarrassed because I was raised that you don’t get on relief, you don’t get on the State, you work for what you get. If there’s something you want and you can’t afford it, it’s not meant for you to have; that’s how I was raised. Be independent and self-sufficient. After I got hurt on the job, I came here and ended up on the State with my children. I was so tired of getting a check twice a month up here. I just wanted to get a job, but people up here would say, ‘Girl, you want to get a job?’ When I called DCF when what happened with my son, they said, ‘You must be crazy. You’re going to get your check cut,’ and I said, ‘My check? I don’t care about the check.’ I wanted to help my son and I wanted to get a job. Knowing what my son was going through, I brought him to Clifford Beers; I went right on the bicycle to Clifford Beers. I feel like I put money in front of my son by getting a job and nobody would help me.

“I was getting ready to go to work—I went to school, and the lady who watched Musadi would come there. I went to school on the Boulevard at night, and I came home one night and they had been there. He had had sex with Musadi and he had sex with Leanne, and he was really, really upset because the man gave Pam his money, and she was going give him $20, and he said she didn’t give him his $20 and he wanted his $20. I thought they just sold my son. I was just so afraid—I could have called the police and told on her. Fear is something. Fear is something, you know. I just miss him.”

Who is Pam?

“She was a lady who lived on Beer Street. She was a dealer. I didn’t know she was into that, her and her husband. Then I found out that they called her husband ‘Black,’ his real name was John, and it turned out that he was the one. I blamed myself for years. I trusted people, but I learned that you have to be careful; sometimes, nice people are perverts. The nicest people to you and you trust them with your child. That’s why you have to be careful, but then they put so much fear in the child and that’s why it took him so long to tell me. They put fear in my son and told him that if he told anyone, they were going to kill his whole family (mother, sister, niece, brother). They said, ‘I’ll kill your whole family.’ That’s why he didn’t tell and held it in for so long; fear that he would hurt us. But I didn’t believe he was going to hurt us because I was so close to Almighty, I knew that he lived inside of me; he’s not a person that lived in me, but the spirit that was in me. Even though fear was there, the doubt just didn’t go off. Are you going to be smoking crack all of your life? If you don’t stop smoking crack, you’re going to die. Wow! This is taking me so many places.”

At this point, you’re sharing that you’re not making enough money through the support of the State to support your child, so you’re going to school, or you’re working, which is taking you away from him?

“I was going to school and was getting ready to get a job working with an agency on Sherman Avenue. It was too much stress on me and I wanted to go to a program. I had called DCF, but they didn’t help me get into a program; they just left me. I sent my son down South to his grandfather and his father and Talama got an apartment for her and Annetta. James went at first because his father came and got him.”

Those are your other children?

“Yes. James is my oldest son. His grandmother brought his father up here and they took him South. Musadi’s father is from the South too, but he was never in his life. He would be in his life when nobody was around. It used to bother him because one day he asked me, ‘When people are around, why does my daddy act like he doesn’t know me?’ But, when he went to the park by where we lived, right across from my back door, Stacey would come and teach him how to box, but he doesn’t say anything to me when people are around, because he was married. He wanted me to name him one thing, but I wanted to name him Clive, a strong name, because he was my last son. He said he wanted me to name him Jamar Musadi, and I told him, ‘Nope. This is my last child, and I’m going to name him a family name.’ He said, ‘If you name my son Clive, I’m never going to own him,’ and he never did. That’s what Musadi was looking for—a father. He knew his mother loved him. I always just wanted a man role, but I always made wrong choices. I felt like I neglected him. I wanted a better life, that’s how I was raised. Even now, I’m happy and feel good, I have medical coverage and stuff. Plus I worked so hard, and I liked what I did. I have lots of skills. I paid the Federal and the State. All that money that they gave me, I want to give back. I just want to be able to look at what happened with my children. I’m realizing now that I had nothing to do with it. I’m at the point now that I don’t blame myself because one day he told me that wasn’t the first time that happened. He told me that when we lived down South, somebody molested him there too. He never told me who it was, and I always wondered. Wow. When we moved up here, he was in the third grade; it was already happening.”

When did you find out that it was happening? How did you find out?

“He was eleven. I would get so angry. I knew something was wrong because he would go outside, he would go outside, and then go back and forth, back and forth to the bathroom, making pooh all the time. I would smell it and was wondering why would it be smelling like that. I had a friend named Willie, and we were real tight; he was gay and worked for the bank. We were real good friends. Being that I got to know him, it was helping me a little bit, out there in the front because I couldn’t change my son. Trying to find acceptance—that’s his life. Sometimes I wanted to know more about it so him and his friend would come over. They would do their thing, that’s how I found out what the smell was. I would be getting high and they would be on the other side of the room, walking around the house, and that’s how I got used to the smell. And then Musadi would be in the house, and I would say ‘Willie’s not here.’ Ask me something else.”

Through your relationship with your friend, Willie, you were able to recognize some of the signs that your son was engaging in some of the behavior.

“Yes. The person who lived down the street would come home and would have cakes, he always liked cakes. That’s how he got him, he would always buy him cakes, and then he would come in the house and I would ask him where he got the cake from, and he would tell me that somebody bought it for him, and I would tell him, ‘I told you about taking stuff from people. We have stuff here,’ and he would say, ‘I like this.’ That’s how he lured him.

“When we moved up here and, like I said, I wasn’t working and it was always me and Musadi. When I did start using drugs, my son didn’t get the attention that he always got from me. He wasn’t getting it anymore, and I know my baby was kind of lost. He wasn’t getting it anymore, and somebody else got his attention. I don’t know how that happened down South because he was always with me. He didn’t go to a babysitter when we were down South. It’s something I’m going to figure out. When we moved up here, our whole lives changed. I already had a bunch of anger with me; a family had stolen our inheritance. I already had a bunch of anger in me. I got so cold. I really had lost me.”

Had you already been using drugs when you moved here?

“Not really; but when I got hurt, the doctor was helping me. Someone came to my house and I was in so much pain, my head was busted, they would give me Xanax and all that stuff. I was sleeping all the time, and someone said, ‘Try this.’ I knew that cocaine was for pain. I learned that in high school. One of my friend’s parents were doctors, and I knew that they used it for pain. To me, cocaine was a good thing. I remember when I was in high school, I would get powder and I would take four blows, three times a day, so that I could cook, lift pots and stuff, go wash clothes and take the boys to the park. It would numb the pain, but then when I got up here, I didn’t trust people and didn’t want to get high with people, so I had a friend of mine come up here and we tried the freebase. I wanted to help people, but how can you help somebody when you know nothing about it? He came up here and I got high for seven days, and we got some crack. I was going to quit after seven days, but that doesn’t work. Then I learned that the pain goes away really quick with crack.

“Whenever I would go to a program, come back and be clean, all that excruciating pain would come back. I never was into pain-killers so I would go back to smoking crack. I got so far out there, not knowing who the person was doing it to my son. I wanted to kill everybody, I really did. Every time he would tell me somebody, and then he would say it’s not them. There was one guy, he was working, and he would always come by on Thursday, and Musadi said that it was him. My plan was, he would come over on Thursday and he always put a big lug on his pipe, he would stand up, and he would be outside of himself, his spirit wouldn’t even be in his body. So, that day, I was planning on him taking a big hit and my boys had a bat behind the door. My goal was when he took that big giant hit, I’d snatch the bat, hit his knees, and when he was down on his knees, I would beat him in the head. I had planned that out. When he grabbed his head and fell on the floor, I would beat his dick up. That’s how angry I was.

“However, that night I got set up. Somebody called. I wasn’t supposed to be going anywhere that night. A girl came to my house. I had told her not to come to my house at night, as I was meditating and I didn’t want to see anybody. She came with a guy, and she knew I didn’t play that, I didn’t want anybody bringing strangers to my house, and then she wanted a beer, but she didn’t want to go down to the after-hours spot. She was always prostituting and I didn’t prostitute back then, I hadn’t gotten to that point. She said she wanted a beer, wanted something to drink. I told her that I wasn’t going to the after-hours spot because I had my pajamas on. Then the guy asked me for $20, and I told him I didn’t want to smoke that night. You can get two for me and she said, ‘Come on, Mom,’ and I told her not to come to my house. And then after I was putting my coat on over my pajamas, a thought hit me, wear a coat, because I knew that something was going to happen. I put on a leather coat with fur around the collar; I had never worn that coat in New Haven and I wore that particular coat to the after-hours spot. When I was walking down Edgewood Avenue, I saw a police car in front of me, with the lights blinking. I was thinking that I didn’t do anything and I walked past them. I would always say hi, and they never bothered me. When I walked past him, he snatched me and threw me on the car, on the back door. I knew I hadn’t done anything so I elbowed him and asked why he was doing this to me and he told me to get in the car. I thought to myself that something must have gone wrong, maybe he’s protecting me. I got in the car and he asked what my name was.

“I remembered that my boyfriend used to go to Stop & Shop a lot and would come home with lots of meats, and I wondered how he was getting all this meat. He made me go with him one day, and he was throwing all this meat in the buggy. I asked him how he was getting all of that and he told me not to worry about it. I got mad because he was always bringing it home and the boys and I wouldn’t eat it. I was pissed off in that store, but if I left, he would beat me up. I was walking around the store, thinking that my boys needed batteries for their cars. I had no money and I don’t know what possessed me to get them some batteries and popcorn. I said to myself ‘I’m getting out of here,’ and, as I was getting out of the store, the security guard came up to me and said, ‘Excuse me, Miss, will you come upstairs?’ When he took me upstairs, there was JJ; he had stolen all of those meats. The lady said to me that she could tell that I didn’t know how to steal because I was right in the camera. She asked me what I had and I said that I took some batteries for my boys and some popcorn. That’s exactly what I had in my pocketbook. I said that I was really sorry, but she had already called the police. She said that she could see that I was getting things for my boys. Then they came and I started freaking out because I was in Stop & Shop and all the people were at the cash registers. The police came, put me in handcuffs, took me to jail with JJ, and then they let me go and gave me a Promise to Appear. I asked them how I was going to get home and they told me to tell the Boss Man that I was coming from jail and he’d take me home. I had never done anything like this before.

“When JJ was up there, they asked him what his name was and he said Henry Birch, which was my father’s name and he was deceased. I couldn’t believe he said that and then he looked at me with that mean face and I knew that I couldn’t say anything. I was released with a Promise to Appear. When the day came that I had to go to court, JJ asked me where I was going and I told him that I had to go to court because I have a Promise to Appear and, if I don’t do, they’ll have a warrant on me. He said, ‘Oh, you don’t need to go to court.’ I said, ‘What? They’ll put a warrant on me and I’ll go to jail, you know that much.’ He said, ‘Just ignore that. You did nothing before and you’re never going to do anything.’ So I didn’t go. So, that night, when the girl wanted me to go get her something to drink and the police put me in their car and said, ‘What’s your name?’ I remembered that JJ wouldn’t let me go to court. He would have beat me up, he wouldn’t let me go anywhere. I said my name was Charlotte Birch. When the police looked it up, there was nothing under Charlotte Birch, and he told me that I could go. When I was just about to go, he opened the door to let me out, the thing must have made a sound, he got back in the car and said, ‘Your name isn’t Delores Birch, it’s Charlotte Birch.’ I didn’t really like that name so I didn’t use Delores up here. He said that he had to take me downtown, and I had my pajamas on. I asked him why he had to take me downtown and they ended up taking me to Niantic. I cried for three days because my kids didn’t have me—I was always home. The lady got Musadi again. This is taking me so many places. I guess it is what it is.

“When you have to look at something face to face, for what it really is, there might be pain behind it, but it’s understanding I can’t change it. I wouldn’t tell the lady what was going on while I was in jail because I was so worried that they were going to get my son. My blood pressure was going up and they put me in the infirmary because my blood pressure was so high they thought I could have had a stroke. I saw a counselor lady and I was crying and crying in her office, and she told me that I have to tell somebody what’s going on because I could have a stroke because my blood pressure was up to 200 already. I told her what was happening with my son and that he was eleven years old. She said ‘Miss, you’re not the only one. I don’t know what it is, but that’s the age; it didn’t just happen to you.’ She said that was the age that they get ahold of kids, that she believed me, and that she was glad that I shared it with her. After I shared it with her, I realized that I had to stop this crying. She told me that I was going to get out and would go to court on Monday; she didn’t know why I was sent there and said that I shouldn’t have been sent there, that I didn’t belong there. I went to court on Monday, the judge got mad and he wouldn’t see anybody else, and I was told that I had to go back to Niantic. I was crying and crying again. Eventually, it hit me “why are you crying so much?” You know you didn’t get sentenced, you’re not supposed to be here. They weren’t supposed to send me to Niantic. When the judge found out I was there for nineteen days, he was pissed. I wasn’t supposed to be in New Haven because the warrant was from Hamden. New Haven shouldn’t have done anything. If anything, when the warrant came up, they were supposed to call Hamden, but they took me.

“Whatever was happening, kept happening with my son. Like I said, my daughter knew the stuff. I think I forgave her, but I tried to get her to say it and she acted like this was nothing. I just don’t trust her anymore because she was a part of what was happening to Musadi. They’re real close. They’re real close.”

Were they both being molested?

“No, Joselyn wasn’t being molested. She never said anything to him, but said that she didn’t like him. I would go into the 4 C’s on Grand Avenue and sometimes I would take my granddaughter with me. That’s when I found out that Jocelyn wanted to get her own apartment, and she never did anything for her daughter. Her daughter couldn’t hug or touch her, nothing. She told me that she was going to get her own apartment; she said that when she turned twenty, people would say, ‘you’re twenty years old and still at your mother’s? You can get your own apartment; you got a little girl.’ That put juice in my daughter’s mind. I told my daughter that she could get her own apartment, but she couldn’t take Annetta with her. I told her that she didn’t do anything for her little girl and that she isn’t going to let anybody do anything to my granddaughter. You’re just not going to do it. I told her counselor that she was trying to get her own apartment and asked her to help get her an apartment at the Y for young mothers so they can bond with their kids. To this day, Jocelyn thinks she left home on her own, but me and her counselor worked something out, and then she got her own apartment. I get lost and stuff.”

It sounds like there’s a significant age difference between Musadi and Jocelyn.

“Yes. Jocelyn and James – there’s nine years, and James is two years older than Jubari. So, it’s eleven years.”

So, you’re in and out of Niantic prison at this time. It sounds like she had gotten her apartment.

“She had gotten her apartment, then she wanted to come back home, and I told her “nope, you’re not coming back home, you’re going to bond with your daughter because she calls me mommy … you can’t come back.” She was a little sassy and stuff anyway. One day I had gone to the 4 C’s and Annetta wanted to come with me. I had gotten a thought … JJ’s here so you stay here with JJ. She stayed there at the house with JJ and when I came back from the 4 C’s, my magazines that I had on the table were all torn up, every page was torn up, like she was sitting down, tearing all the pages, all over the living room floor, you could barely see the carpet. The pages were torn and thrown everywhere. I asked her if she was by herself and asked where JJ was, and she said ‘mommy was here’ and I said, ‘Your mother was here; she doesn’t even like JJ.’ She said, ‘Yes, she was in the room with JJ.’ I said, ‘Get outta here.’ I asked her what they were doing and she said that she was in the room talking with JJ. I said, ‘Oh, Annetta, your mother doesn’t even like JJ, why would she be talking to him?’ Then it dawned on me, she was only 2½ years old. I smiled at her, asked what they were saying and she said mommy was saying ow, ow and JJ was saying aah, aah. I asked her where she was sitting and she picked up her little chair, put it right in front of my bedroom door and sat in it. I said to myself this little girl is not lying.

“About two days later, I mentioned what Annetta had told me to Jocelyn. I was washing dishes, she back handed Annetta so hard that Annetta flew in the air, landed on her legs at the sink and then she jumped up, ran to her mother, and was crying, crying, crying. Annetta never told me the truth again; she lied all the time, and she doesn’t remember. She wonders why her mother acts like that because they have her thinking it’s me. I talked to Jocelyn about JJ and told her that I don’t want him. I wondered why he kept coming back here after he was locked up after beating me up, and now I know why; it ain’t for me, it’s for you. She just looked at me and I said, ‘well, what comes around goes around. You have a little girl right there too, you know – it could come right back to you like that.’ Annetta is something, but it’s okay because that’s how her mother does; Annetta doesn’t remember. Jocelyn makes her think it’s me because she loves me, and she just couldn’t figure out what was going on between me and her mother. Before she had the twins, she wanted to get us back together and said that she would take us out to dinner and said that we were going to talk. I told her, ‘honey, there’s nothing you can do, and it’s not me; I’ll tell you one thing – it’s not me.’ I can forgive what happened; what happened happened, and that’s it. She doesn’t remember what happened. If it wasn’t for her, I would have never known that.

JJ used to always tell me that Jocelyn doesn’t love me. She’s going to hurt real bad one day, he used to say that all the time. I never put two and two together and then I started having dreams of them together. I would tell JJ that I dreamed of him and Jocelyn, and then I would get beat up because I dreamt it. He would beat me up big time for saying that, but it happened.”

Where is your son in all of this?

“Musadi? He was there. Whenever Jocelyn was in the bedroom with JJ, the man with the money would be in the room with Musadi. Jocelyn knew it all the time, she knew all the time. JJ would be with Jocelyn—It was a cult thing. Jocelyn was there; I don’t know if she knew what they were doing. Whatever they call it … rituals? Yes, rituals because Musadi explained to me how they do it. Then again, she could have been right there doing the rituals, I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. I do love her unconditionally and that’s on her path, but I miss my son and she allowed all this to be happening, and I did so much for her. I stopped my life for her. I couldn’t work anymore. I kept her daughter for her so she could go back to school. I couldn’t even pick her up because I couldn’t lift anything over five pounds. Jocelyn went to school and I wondered how I was going to do this; how could I bathe this little girl. I would put the pad thing on the bed and would do it real easy because I couldn’t use any muscles. I would rub around her and would give her oil baths. She was in a towel and I would turn her over by taking her little arms; Annetta was my weights to exercise and made my legs stronger. She loved music when she was an infant. I would put her between my legs, hold her hands and then I would do like this … I was exercising. I would stand up and I would dance with her. She loves to dance now. God blessed Annetta to be my weights because they thought I was never going walk again, never do anything; I would be bedridden forever.”

What happened to you to be in that condition?

“At the housing department, like I said, they tried everything to do me in. When I had the burning truck, they cut my brakes, and the brakes went out. We were hauling dirt one day at a dumpsite where it was real deep and you could see the tops of the trees. It was muddy that day and Dennis told me to “come on back, come on back,” but I wouldn’t watch him, I would watch my back tires. That day he said there was a woman at the dumpsite that was so deep that when she lifted her bed up, the truck fell down in the dump thing and she died. So, I always watched him because I could never trust him because he always got hurt when I worked with him. I didn’t like working with him. I had an old truck and the tailgate would fall off and there was a chain on one side so it wouldn’t fall all the way on the ground, but one side would fall off.

“This particular day it was muddy and, when I lifted my bed up, I didn’t go all the way back, even though Dennis was saying, ‘Come on back, come on back.’ I said ‘shut up’ and just threw my thing up and went back really slow. When it got all the way up, the mud got stuck in the bed so the thing flipped, but when the mud fell, it didn’t fall all the way down; it fell in the ditch. So when it fell out of the truck slowly, it fell right here so, therefore, the tires couldn’t go anywhere. If it hadn’t, my truck would have flipped over; my truck went way up in the air, and he was laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing, and said “just jump” and I was way up there and he was down there. I said ‘no that I wasn’t going to jump because my shirt might get caught on that thing; I’m not jumping down’. When I said that I wasn’t jumping down there, all of a sudden the front of the truck just came down to the ground and I got out. Dennis said that he didn’t know why women worked out here anyway and then he told me that I had to help him put the tailgate back up. I told him that I couldn’t lift the heavy tailgate of that old truck; but, then I thought about what my foreman had said. He said that you shouldn’t say what you’re not going to do because they’ll never hire any more women; what you do is pretend that you’re doing it, and then say that it’s too heavy, you can’t do it. So, that particular day, I made motions, and I had the side with the chains and was lifting like this here, but wouldn’t take my eyes off of Dennis. So, I was looking at Dennis and it was getting really heavy, so I looked real quick to see how much chain I had left and, when I did like that, he just let his end go and it whiplashed me. He was just laughing, laughing, laughing. The whole tailgate shifted on me. When it happened, I flexed like this, but I didn’t know if I was standing because I couldn’t feel my legs. I didn’t know if I was standing or my legs were broke, and it was up to here. I stood there for a while, took some breaths, and I just looked down (I didn’t want to bend yet). I looked down and saw my boots on the ground. My feet had gone into the mud. Now, if it hadn’t been muddy that day, I would have broken my back; the mud had become a cushion. He put it back on there and I went and told the foreman what Dennis had done and he asked me if I wanted to go home. I said that I didn’t, that I’d be okay, and I took it easy that day.

“After work that day, I went to the laundromat and, when I finished drying, all of a sudden, all in here just locked up and I couldn’t walk. I wondered what happened and then I had a spasm from the weight of the tailgate. I drove myself to the hospital and they gave me something for muscle spasms. Then it got worse and worse … my neck, everything, my shoulders, I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t walk. It just locked up in the nighttime. When I did go to the doctors, nobody would help me. Everybody was saying that I was really, really hurt, but they worked for The State and didn’t want to lose their job. I went to lawyers to try to help me, and nobody would help me. My husband had passed and I went down South with my oldest son. People from the Highway Department saw me, and they couldn’t believe it. They said that I would never walk again, but God helped me.

“I had gotten a lawyer, Mr. Dewitt. I was hurting so bad and I had driven all the way to Cheraw. I was crying and had to lay down. Cheraw was a good distance from Dillon. It was a black man too. He sat up in his chair and said, ‘You worked for the Highway Department? And, how many children do you have? You’re going to win this thing.’ I figured he was really going to help me. I went to go see him and the day the hearing was supposed to be, he called after I took my medicine, around 11:00 at night, and I was out. I had no phone at that time so I had to walk all the way to Lennon’s house and I answered the phone, he apologized for calling so late at night, but said that he was calling to let me know that the hearing for tomorrow had been cancelled. I was kind of glad because I was so drowsy. The next thing I know I had lost the case. I got a letter stating that I lost the case because I wasn’t there for the hearing. They had cut off my worker’s compensation and everything. They were really doing it to me, but he tricked me. He got that money and he told me that the hearing was cancelled.

“There was a lot of depression because I was played in so many different ways that I turned to crack to relieve the pain, but I got the Wellness and stuff; it has helped me so much. I’m so glad that I didn’t go to opiates because I would probably still be on opiates. Being that I met with Wellness—it’s really helping me fantastically. The stress with my son doesn’t bother me as much, but he’s just not in my life, although I haven’t stopped loving him. I know they’re still controlling him. They do, and I don’t even get into it with him, especially when he told me that day, ‘Mom, they’re never going to stop, they’re never going to stop, because they don’t want you to win.’ Sometimes I feel the way he is towards me is because of the man. He would tell me things sometimes, it would be just me and him in the house, and he would tell me different things and explain. Then, one day he came in and told me that he couldn’t tell me anything anymore because he said “he knows everything I tell you and he gets really mad.” So, he stopped telling me anything. I don’t know if the cult thing still got him or what because he changes up so much. I do know that cult stuff can happen. Through him, my son, especially he explained all the things they do … get in the mirror and call the demons; afterwards, they even had him snorting coke, and that was enough. Deep inside, I feel that’s the reason why. I still can’t believe it was him doing that that day, going to my crotch. It don’t be him. Like that lady, that teacher’s wife … she said that something’s different in my son because the voice that was coming out of him in the kitchen, while he was tearing everything up, was definitely not my son.”

That was a lady who was fostering him?

“Yes.”

You had been telling me before we started the interview, about the hand up your leg. This was your son you were talking about? You were sitting on the couch or lying down?

“I was laying down on my daughter’s bed and he came over, we were talking, and the TV was on. I was laying on my stomach and he put his hand on my leg (and I was thinking ‘this is my son – that was a love touch’). I was laying there, I guess I fell asleep, and I was thinking ‘what is he doing – how far is he going to go?’ and I knew how the thing was controlling him. I knew that was not my son doing something like that. Not to startle him, I stretched and yawned. I flew downstairs to tell Joselyn what Musadi just did, and she said “oh, mom, no he didn’t.” That’s when I realized she was in on this and thought, ‘what do they do?’”

Did you have a conversation with Musadi about what was happening to him?

“Yes, we did conversate, but he didn’t say anything. Matter of fact, he told me in the beginning it’s more like that didn’t happen. So to say what was happening, he don’t go there. To keep from arguing, I stopped talking about it.”

But when he was young, you mentioned something about having him write with a crayon?

“Yes. I had him write with a pencil about what was going on in his life and that’s when he told me that he feels like he’s in a cage, his heart is outside of the cage, he’s trying to reach to get his heart, and he can’t reach it. It’s something to wonder about. I don’t know much about cult stuff, but the little bit that my son shared with me. I told him that we’re going to the police department and they’re going to show you a book with some pictures in it, and he said I’m not going to show the picture. I told him that they would be looking for expressions that would let them know that’s the person. When I said that, my son got up, punched the kitchen wall, and made a hole it in. He said “I like him and I like what he does”. That’s when I decided he needed a check-up and I called DCF. I took him to the hospital and, when the people came out and told me what he said, I said that I can’t handle this anymore, call DCF and tell them to come get my son. When I went home, I started sweeping and cleaning up and, the next thing you know, I saw the police car pull up in front of my house. I told them the truth, this is my life, and I can’t handle it anymore. They knocked on the door, and I told them that it was open and to come on in. There was a man and a lady. They said, ‘umm …’ I said ‘yeah, I know my son, you don’t know what I’m going through and I can’t handle this anymore on my own; I just can’t do it anymore, call DCF and that’s what you need to do—I need help for my son.’ Both of them just stood there and didn’t say anything. I let them know what I was going through and no one wanted to help me. I said that I was helping my child. They said, ‘Okay, Miss,’ and they just got in their car and left.

“The police did call DCF and DCF called me and they were so proud of me. They couldn’t believe I called DCF. They said ‘I can’t believe you called us’. They said that usually when things like this happen, a neighbor calls and the parent never calls. She said “but you called us”, and I said “yes, I want to help my son, and I’m on crack, I can’t go to sleep at night because they get in here. I locked the doors, but they still get in.” Then I later found out they weren’t even locking the door.

“My landlord’s mother came over one day after that happened. She sat on the floor on the carpet (she used to live there—it was her family’s house) and asked me if my son was eleven years old, and I said yes. She said, I’ll tell you what move from this house, take your children and move. When we moved there, the boys found a Ouija board in the basement, and I told the boys to get that thing out of here. They took it and threw it in the dumpster down the street and do you know the next day, that thing was right back. I said, ‘oh God, get that thing out of here’. I told Cheryl that my boys found a Ouija board in the basement, they threw it out in the dumpster, and it came back. She looked at me and smiled. I asked her who used to play with Ouija boards and she said ‘we did when we were kids; we used to do rituals and stuff. I said, “girl, you did rituals and was calling dead people” and she said that they were just playing. I told her that was not a game, she never told me that they called people back, and I asked her if they ever sent anyone back. She said no and I told her that those spirits are still here. It was weird, and then I had to because they were doing all these things. I would pray all the time and I had my little meditations. I told her that she needed to send those people back. I didn’t want anything to do with that stuff because I’m not into that.

“All these things kept happening was happening and happening, and getting worse. I would pray, because I knew that they were there, but there was one that was black. It was so tall, you couldn’t see the head. It was like a … I don’t know, but I could picture it now. I told Cheryl because she was fixing up the second floor and she was going to move into the house. I told her that she called those spirits here and never sent them back. I told her that there was one that just wouldn’t go, that it was mad, and that it must want to see her. When I said that to her, she stood straight like a soldier and said, ‘well, I’m ready—I’m a soldier’. I looked at her and thought to myself ‘God, they really did’ and eventually I got out of the house. That stuff is not just on TV. When I see things on TV, they got that story from somewhere; it only comes on Scifi, but it happened.

“When I was in Niantic and talked to that lady and, especially after Cheryl ‘s mother came over and told me that. As a matter of act, we stayed there for three years and people on Edgewood Avenue would say that no one ever stayed there over a year and that we were the longest people who stayed there. No one had ever stayed there over a year because something would always happen to their family, but it was an experience. It may sound crazy or whatever, but hay. That’s because people don’t talk about that stuff. I did share it with my clinician and I would talk about it because I didn’t care, I wanted to talk that stuff out of me. You have to let people know and once I told it, they put that label on me. Me and my children we really, really experienced it.

“When I did go to the program and James came back, Joselyn said that Donlan and Musadi were laughing one night and that somebody had called her house and said that they had got the wrong son, who they wanted to get was James, and they were laughing and said that they were going to get him. They said that they got the wrong son, James is the one that they need to get. Joselyn was laughing and I told her that that was nothing funny.

“Things would happen to my brother here in New Haven, and I would warn James because James was an outgoing person. He would be trusting people and look what they had done to him here in New Haven, by people he thought were family. He found those people, or they found him, and they ended up setting him up, and he went to Rikers Island for five years. They were looking for us, the first people that stayed here, when Clive lived in Manhattan. On the way going back to Manhattan, at Union Station, the police came up to him and they wanted to see his ID. They looked at the ID and they said it was the right last name, but the wrong first name. Back then, Levander, he sold, I don’t know what he was selling, maybe heroin, I don’t know I was a kid, I didn’t know anything about it. I think I was in grammar school when that happened.

“When we moved up here, James must have been nine, a man came up to me and asked if James was Levander’s son, Clive’s brother. Clive always said that James looked like Levander when he was a little boy. The man said that he always thought that was Levander’s son and I told him that that was my son. I didn’t even want to go there. I’m glad that James is no longer in New Haven; I really am. James is his own person. I’m glad he finally got a job. He would come to my house and I would tell him not to leave anything in my house, no money, nothing. Because if they come in here looking for something and they find it, it’s mine, it’s in my apartment, so don’t bring anything in here. I told him that I’m in recovery now and I don’t want any of that stuff in my house. I didn’t want him to smoke weed or anything. They tried, they really tried. He couldn’t get a job here.

“James finally moved. He had gone to Stone Academy and I think he almost had a 4-point something, a high score, but he couldn’t get a job here. He wanted to get a job at Yale, but he couldn’t get a job here. He was one of the top students at Stone Academy. He was always a top student, even when he was little. He was a smart, smart kid. He did get a job, and I had told him that he was getting older and needed to pay Federal taxes. (Look at me, I worked for The State and I can’t even get my stuff.) I told him that he had to get stuff.

“Musadi had a fantastic job with disabled children. I think he worked at a group home and something Musadi did, I never forgot things, but they didn’t fire him, something he was doing at a group home. Then he messed up – he was getting somebody’s Social Security check. The people asked Musadi to put it in his bank account. Musadi was making $30.00 an hour; he was doing really, really good and had been working for them for years. He put the check in his account and they busted him. Musadi lost that job and has no job now. He’s a diabetic and doesn’t take care of himself. We talked one Thanksgiving about his father, who is a diabetic; his grandmother, my mother, and my father are all diabetic as well. It runs really, really thick on both sides.

“Musadi has no job anymore and they came and impounded his truck, and now all he has is Miss Keyes. Miss Keyes never let me see him and told me not to come around or call him. Now, a few years ago, once I got in here, she would call me and say that he has to do something because she is old now. She stopped me from doing things with my son. She wanted him to stay with Jocelyn, but Jocelyn wouldn’t do it. I don’t know what’s going to happen to my son. I got to look out for me because I know his capabilities. It ain’t fear because I know Center has me. I’m guaranteed Center has me now, but still if I was to really, really get involved, Center doesn’t want me to go there, just keep loving him unconditionally. That was his choice that he made; I believe he knows what he’s got to do. I don’t know what his plan is. I’m not concerned because I’m in a different space in life now.’

Who is Miss Keyes?

“Miss Keyes is a foster parent and she lives on Bassett Street.”

He’s still with the foster parents?

“He’s still there. A lot of kids were there and they moved on, but Musadi hasn’t. When I was talking to him a couple of Novembers ago, when we were at my sister’s for Thanksgiving, I told him that there are people he can talk to and he has to tell somebody, not just me because I’m not in the picture anymore, I’m not. I told him that he needs to tell someone what he told me. The day he told me he said that he was telling me because I’m his mother and he wasn’t telling anybody else. I let him know that there are people out there that can help him. The way things are … Look at the people in here. I pray he never comes here, but they don’t want him here. It’s just sad. When I was on the other side I prayed that he would never come through here. It’s a smoking cigarette; there’s nothing, no encouragement or anything. It’s just eat, eat, eat, you blow up. You eat to get full; it’s not about nourishment. People smoke, smoke, smoke cigarettes. People can’t even stand up—they push them out in their wheelchairs, they come back to their room, and hook them up to their oxygen tanks. I don’t want my son to come here. He’s going to end up going somewhere.”

Do you think he’s afraid to talk about what has happened to him, that he might be labeled or treated differently, or feel some pain?

“I think he’s ashamed because he knew the longest. I believe that’s what it is, despite what others may think. Even when I started taking him to Clifford Beers, eventually he didn’t want to go anymore. He said that the doctors were stupid and he didn’t tell them anything. I said that he told them what they wanted to hear, that he didn’t tell them what really happened. He’s just closed up. I pray that he does come out somewhere, but I’m not going to argue about anything, “well you said this and you said that, and then you tried to brainwash me”. It’s painful to know, that was my Bear; his middle name is Bear.

“Me and James were close too, but James always took care of everyone, he was the big brother. I always felt that someone was going to hurt Musadi. Until this day, James will say ‘you gave Musadi all the time’. James is angry, very angry. Musadi would lie on James all the time, and I would believe Musadi and James would get punished. Those things did happen, but that was then and this is now. I don’t hate nobody—those are my babies; I didn’t have to have them, but I did. There was fear, but I did, and I’ve come a long way with this.

“There was a time when I was really, really angry. People were doing all kinds of things to me, and they would let them. I remember one day I went to Walgreen’s. I used to use the vinegar and water douche, and they were on sale, Summer’s Eve, I think. I got a few of them and, when I came home, I put them in my drawer. A couple of days later, I was going to use one and I took it out of the package and it was open. Instead of it being like this here, it was backwards. It was like someone had taken it out, heated it, stuck it on, and stuck it on wrong. I asked Musadi about it. He came in the room, looked at me, and said that John was here and he had been smelling that stuff all the time and John put it in him. I said that there was something in it and asked him what it was and he said that they put something else in it. If I hadn’t noticed that it had been opened, I would have used it and didn’t even know what they had put in it. I would get really pissed with him and would spank him. I was so pissed because he was allowing people to do things. Some of things I just can’t say, but I know they did because I know how I felt when I woke up. I’m fortunate to be here—this was no joke.’

What’s been the catalyst of your recovery and healing? It sounds like you’ve experienced a lot of trauma.

“Step work, and I got a sponsor who doesn’t judge me or anything I say. Even if she doesn’t believe what I say, she doesn’t say so. I had to cleanse myself. It’s going on twelve years that I’ve had her. It would have been thirteen years, but I relapsed when I was clean for a year and two months. Through step work because I can’t say church. With step work and my higher power, Jesus Christ. I don’t look at that in a religious way. I look at it in a spiritual way, my spirituality. The power greater than myself is his holy spirit. Spirituality, not religion, because dealing with it religiously, it would take you to a whole different place. You can’t wonder about why this happened; it happened for a reason. For me, it was to learn something.

“My friend, Johnny, the one I told you about – I could just accept him. Remember, I told you about the guy that had killed him? I wanted to help this kid because I always knew he was going to be feminine from when he was a little boy. Every time I went to Josephine’s house, he always took to me, bouncy, bouncy. As he grew older, I’m the one he would come to and share stuff with. I prepared him and opened his eyes; it is what it is. I didn’t get the understanding that inside you is a female – God put the wrong person in you. I wasn’t there yet because I always thought that God didn’t make mistakes. I always felt that somewhere down the line, someone did something when he was a little infant; you don’t know. All he knew was that he was looking for that feeling somewhere. Someone had given him that feeling, that’s the way I look at it. Someone did something to him as an infant, when he was a little tiny baby, on the bed because that’s how people do it; they’ll do it to an infant with a diaper on. They will do that because no one can tell nothing, but I never told him like that. I would school him and let him know not to let people take advantage because he didn’t know. He was the cutest little thing, he should have been a girl. He just loved him some bouncy.

“People would say. ‘Wow, you and Johnny are always together, umm … if anybody can change Johnny, you can.’ I would just laugh at them. People would be thinking that me and Johnny were doing something. Me and Johnny (he was younger than me) thought it was so silly because I already knew what he wanted. When he was a teenager, he was doing the same thing as me and he had to slow down. He’s still so special to me. A person is going to do want they want to do or what they think makes them happy. I accept it with him, even little El, even with them. I guess because it wasn’t my child, I don’t know. I just want to pay attention to you to let you know. You got to be yourself. I look at how times is now, we all have feminine and masculine; we all do. Some people say ‘I’m just masculine’; no, we all have two. We really do; it’s just which one overpowers the other one. I have a recovery CD that explains that we all have a feminine side and a masculine side, and it’s all good. I used to listen to it so much and it helped me a lot.

“I can’t be around my son, even though I’ve grown and expanded so much, I know what he went through. I know the goal of theirs, I don’t know, yes I do know … he’s still part of something.

Even his little girl’s mother, she doesn’t want Musadi around their daughter without Jocelyn or Annetta. I believe something happened because she doesn’t trust Musadi with his own daughter. As a matter of fact, he did something to Annetta when she was little when we lived on Commerce Street. I would be the one to give Annetta a bath all the time because Jocelyn would never do it. One night when I was giving her a bath, I was washing her, washing her really, really good and she did something she never did before. I washed between her legs and she said “oh grandma, oh grandma, let me do you, let me do you.’ I was sitting on the floor, by the bathtub, and that just blew my mind, ‘let me do you, let me do you.’ I looked at her and asked her who was playing games with her. She was so excited—it was like ‘wow … it just hit me when she said ‘let me do you grandma, let me do you’. I kept washing her, and she told me that Musadi would play tickling games with her. I told the people at the 4 Cs because Jocelyn wasn’t paying attention. They ended up telling DCF, and Musadi wasn’t supposed to be around Annetta.

“Whenever he would come and visit Jocelyn, and I came there on that weekend—he was sleeping with Annetta, and that never left me what he did. So I slept in that little bed too; we were all in there together. I don’t know ... I’m kind of concerned about my great grandchildren because Jocelyn doesn’t pay attention to this stuff or she lets things happen. I don’t know; I don’t know what Jocelyn’s choice is either. Kids will play, but … if it is, it is, but I think about my greats because if Musadi was to come there, Jocelyn would leave him there with them, and go and do whatever she has to do, and they’re little. That’s another reason why I don’t get involved. I know what he did to Annetta and I know what he was going to do to me. I don’t know what kind of relationship Jocelyn and Musadi have, I don’t know, but I know incest is in the family.

“There’s incest in the family and my grandfather was an incest. My mother’s mother told me about it. He always had sex with all of his kids. He had a child by one of his daughters. Moom was the baby, she went with Diddy, and she had her first child at age thirteen because she didn’t want her father doing to her what he was doing to the boys and the girls. Moom was always around Diddy’s family. She would be with Diddy behind the field and stuff, and they would stay together because she didn’t want her father to do that to her. The boy that my grandfather had with one of his daughters—the slave owner was pissed off about something with David and he was the one who told David that his grandfather was his father. He told him that his grandfather raped his mother and that hurt David really bad. David was so angry with Grandpa Jessie. One night, they sat down and had dinner together. David even let Grandpa Jessie smoke his last cigarette after dinner. He was sitting by the window, behind him, he waited until Grandpa Jessie finished smoking the cigarette, and then went outside and blew his head off. It’s in the family. They don’t talk about stuff like that, but I’m alert to it. I’m grateful that I know these things, but everybody else runs from it, but you need to know. You can’t shove it under the rug. It is what it is.”

It sounds like the pattern of abuse and trauma is continually passed on from generation to generation if it’s not healed or talked about.

“They don’t talk about it and they pretend it doesn’t happen. Nobody can say anything anymore, so the next generation doesn’t know. Children to children, they won’t know where it came from. I’m so glad that my Grandma Charlotte told me things. I’m just glad and I told my son, James, and Jocelyn so much. Jocelyn uses it as a weapon, but that’s okay, that’s okay. I thought she was going to be my best friend, but it ain’t like that. I never knew that she envied me as much as she does. I now understand that it’s attention, especially when I’m around. As a matter of fact, she told me that when I’m around, I get everyone’s attention. We are who we are.

“My son, James, has anger issues. One thing I realize is that children fail to understand that their parents went through a whole lot of stuff too. Parents had trauma and we pretend that we are so strong for our kids, that we can conquer anything. I was the toughest mama. Everybody wanted me to be their mother. I think that’s the envy of Jocelyn and James because all the kids would come talk to me about anything. They envy that I was nice to them, especially when things were happening and disappearing. James would say ‘yeah, you were nice to so and so and so and so, where they at now when you need stuff’, and I would look at him and it would hurt. All those kids are down South and if they were here, they would be there for me. I’ve met Center now—if there’s something I really need, he really does provide. He’ll guide someone to me because everyone that comes up, is sent from Him.”

What have you learned through these experiences with Musadi, getting clean, and arriving at where you are now in your life?

“Everything happens for a reason. It’s to strengthen you, to accept others for who they are even though you have been taught it’s supposed to be so and so’s way. There is no supposed to be no certain way but the way it is. You can’t plan anybody’s life. You don’t know anybody’s emotions. You don’t know other people’s desires, except for what they tell you, but it may not be true. I have learned people are who they’re supposed to be, they’re in their own process, if they’re not running from themselves, but it’s up to them. We can’t make anybody. We don’t even make ourselves. We might have intentions, but the thing about that is, nobody is that way, but being in the presence of an individual and know that if it could only be another way, but it can’t be another way the way you think it’s supposed to be, to please you. That’s what I’ve learned. I learned that this life, my children’s lives, anybody’s life—it’s what pleases them when they’re ready. When they’re ready—what will be revealed. You can see something and you don’t want it to be that way, and sit and wait for it to change to something else, but it isn’t supposed to change to something else. All I can say—with Musadi and all of my children, I planted the seed in spirituality and the Word.

“My son, James, has faith in Jesus, but as far as what the Bible says, James ain’t having it. My son, James, is something. He’s like an old soul. He feels like the Bible, how man switched the purpose of the Bible, to control people and they’re slaves. That’s where my son, James, is. James feels like how man has changed so much because of the books they’ve taken out. He doesn’t believe every word in the Bible. It’s a control thing and a negative fear thing, not a positive fear. I always felt that he was going towards … Allah is God, Buddha is God, he’s got different names.

“Jocelyn just isn’t into it. She’s not there. One day I asked her why she doesn’t go to church with me, and she said that she didn’t like the church that I go to because if she went to the church that I go to, people would see who she really is. I looked at my daughter and said to myself ‘God, who is she?’ It reminded me of something my mother had told me once. My mother had told me that I named her the wrong name after we had moved down South. She asked me why I was calling her Jocelyn, and said that she was a jackal and I should have named her Jacqueline. I told her that her name is Jocelyn and she said “I don’t know who you think she is”.

“One night I was watching Animal Kingdom and they were showing jackals and hyenas, and I thought about when my mother told me that I should have named Jocelyn Jacqueline. They were talking about jackals and hyenas. I said “wow” and now I see it as an adult. I wanted Jocelyn to be the way I saw her, but that’s not it. Her father was an atheist and she is an atheist, but she likes to portray that she really isn’t, but she is. He was an atheist and so was his sister; they both were atheists. They didn’t believe in God and we had nothing in common. With Jocelyn, I tried to make her who I wanted her to be.”

How did that work out?

“Not good at all, but my relationship with her is fine now, but when she sees me, it’s her time. I was downtown recently and saw her coming down the street. I called out to her and when she saw me, she ran the other way. She’s always been like that. I am who I am; I’m spiritual. I’ve always been that way, even when they were kids. In my house, I played a spiritual station; I love to dance. When I hear songs and dance, all those love songs, the only person I think about is Jesus. The love is in you; you don’t have to look for it. You are love, and just be you and expand the love. Me and my children – they’re on their page.”

What have you learned about yourself?

“What have I learned about myself? I’m a compassionate person. I care about others and sometimes I think I care about others a little too much and put myself on the back burner. I always put others in front of me. I always did … I always did. I would do without because if it weren’t for me it’s not going to happen. All that I have learned? I say within the last three years, I’ve learned more than I have in a lifetime. I really have. There were so many secrets, secrets, secrets. When I was a kid, I was told ‘you can’t tell anybody’. That’s a tough thing to say to a child, ‘you can’t tell nobody’. Then, all you’re going to do is think about it … you’re going to think about it and it’s going to play over and over in your head. I guess that’s why I’m so expressive now.”

Secrets can make us very sick.

“Yes. For real. Then you find out the secret was exaggerated. My grandmother would say to me all the time, “it’s a good thing you weren’t born when I was born” and I would ask my grandmother why she always said that and she said “because they would have lynched you.” I think about that every now and then and I think about other things that people have said to me now as I’m an adult. I remember when I had vocabulary words and I think I was in the second grade, yep Mr. Haynes’ class, and one of the words was lynch. I was the first one to raise my hand up when he said lynch. I thought my grandma meant they would beat me, so I said it meant to beat you, and someone else raised their hand, and said that it meant hanging. I was in shock. It shocked me. Oh, that day troubled me because I couldn’t believe my grandmother would say that … they would hang me.

“One day when I was in high school and something happened. My Uncle John, my father’s brother, had come to stay with us. He was always so cold to me all the time, but I loved him because he would always make ice cream when we went to Brooklyn. That’s the only thing I loved him …him making ice cream. One day after Uncle Calvin had passed, he called me a witch and said that I wished Calvin dead. I looked at him and told him that I did not. Then I remembered years ago, Nana was in her garden and I was sitting on the porch, watching her in the garden. She came back and took her little boots off and I said ‘gosh Nana, I hope Uncle Calvin dies before you do’ because I didn’t know what was going to happen to me and I always felt that I didn’t have anybody. He died first and he was my tie. If it wasn’t for him, I would have still been in New York all those years because Nana didn’t want me after I got pregnant. Uncle Calvin was the one that wanted me to come back with my little girl, but he went first, and I felt so guilty. That’s when I decided to go to my real Momma. She got answers for me and I’m so glad I did.

“I thank God for my Nana—she told me a lot. She didn’t really tell me, but she was on the phone all the time, talking about stuff, and I’m glad I was there because, even though I was a little kid and they think children don’t have ears, I’m glad I was there to hear. I needed to hear stuff from my mother, for real, because there were things my mother knew and it removed the anger. It was all good. It was all to make me whole. I’m not whole, but I’m on the way.”

If you could give your younger self, when you were a little girl, some advice coming from the woman you are today, what would you say to her?

“Stop being so hardheaded because you don’t know it all. I used to like to read. I was always reading something all the time. Yep, stop being so hardheaded because you sure don’t know it all.”

Do you have a favorite quote that you’d like to share? Anything that someone has said to you or something that you’ve read, even a verse from the Bible?

“Nothing formed against me shall prosper.”

What does that mean to you?

“Anything negative won’t interfere with my purpose. Whatever is supposed to be is going to be, if it’s meant for me. I don’t have to chase it. I don’t have to make it happen because life just happens. Oh, I have another on: It is what it is.”

What does that mean?

“Same thing … life is going to be. You have to go with the flow. You have to find a way, acceptance, not to be content, but acceptance.”

Do you think that it’s possible that by sharing your stories and experiences, in a way that is honest, could potentially bring someone else some hope and inspiration, in whatever they’re going through, they’re not alone in whatever they’re going through?

“Oh, most definitely. The things I have shared—I’m not the only one that went through this. I know there’s many people that have gone through similar situations and they think ‘oh, it happened to me’, or the whole if and I should have. That doesn’t get it …ifs and should haves. Like the saying goes, if I coulda, woulda, shoulda, what would I do? Go with the flow. You have to move on … You have to move on. I could wish that something didn’t happen, but it was already on my path from when I was in my mother’s home. Can I handle it? I got to in order to be who I was made to be. Sure, there’s going to be pain, but there’s no ‘why me?’, why not me? It is a rough road and there’s going to be a rougher road, challenges. That’s what life is; it’s a challenge … every day. I look forward to challenges, especially what I just went through. That was a challenge and I saw my growth through that. My growth of faith and believing that Center has me and my soul has all the answers. Whatever you want to know, all you gotta do is listen within. All of the answers are inside of us. You don’ have to run around, asking this one and this one. People may have suggestions, but they may not be the suggestions for you. Those are their suggestions, but when you just get quiet and listen, not to your head, because that’s the wrong place to listen. Listen to breath. Breath has some strong words, some strong, solid, low words. Once you get that understanding—life fulfillment … there’s no end. It may not be what you expect, it’s just what it is. I am.”

How has it felt to share these feelings and experiences with me today?

“It felt good. It felt freeing and just to know that I’m not the only one. In the beginning, when we first started, I thought to myself, oh my God, I hope this doesn’t hurt anyone’s feelings; that’s what I thought at first. It happened and it’s true. It’s not true just in my sight, I can look at it now. I didn’t exaggerate it. I don’t care who judges me because I lived these things, and there’s going to be more, but I’m ready because I’m not doing it by myself. I’m not who you see. I am not these clothes. Wow …if a person could just see me now. They’d have to put their shades on. Yep, I feel like it doesn’t matter, because this helped me. This has helped me. It doesn’t matter who believes it. I have lots of stories, but that one … that was the bottomless pit where everything started falling off the sides of the pit, all the rocks and boulders, the sand and dirt, so much fell. That was it, and I thought it was all this other stuff, but that’s where my bottom began. It began because it was so much deeper. The depths never ended and that’s what opened the bottom of the world. That’s when all the anger and revenge came out, but it all worked for the good, and that’s true. It may not feel good but, in the long run, when you look at it, it’s for the best.”

#abuse #trauma #addiction #homelessness #prison #recovery #healing #journey #mentalhealth

1 note · View note