Defining Moments
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| Writing My Voice
In Novemember 2012, I left the Star Restaurant permenately, and went into retail. The Holiday came and I spent them with my best friends, Suandra and Lucky. The end of 2012 is now upon me with so much that has occurred in this past year. I reflect upon 2012, as defining moments, impacting my life in every corner of existence. Life experiences that I am sure shall not be forgotten in the coming years. My friends keep asking when my next book will be completed. An answer that escapes me presently as life seems to be a series of ocean currents and I am the surfer. Honestly, I had hoped that I would be completed with this memoir by the end of this year. Its already December. The grieving process of this year has taken me to the core of who I am both emotionally and spiritually. It was hard for me to look back at a woman that I loved and relive our memories and the flashbacks of my past. Do you really ever know a person? Everyone in their life at some point has lost someone that they were connected with. This could have been a parent, child, animal companion, friend, spouse, or romantic relationship. The temptation that I encountered during this process was my own denial of the grieving . Life never promised to be easy, only worth it. I have discovered that working through grief and sorrow is an internal and intentional process. The process must be something that you want to go through in order to grow. Many people just deal with it by shoving it on the back burner and move on. This type of acceptance only leads to an emotional dam. When a trigger occurs, the dam breaks creating a flood that can drown one’s soul. Accepting it, and owning it is very key to the healing process. Are there adjustments to the loss? YES. When you grieve for the loss of loss, it is not just about the loss of that person in our life. The loss of love is about the loss of what our life could have been. I grieved the loss of a dream with Danielle. In my perception I lost the ability to say I am married with this wonderful woman. The process of us being together, the adventures, the moments we cried, the moments of intimacy and the ideal of wow I found my forever. Once that realization sat in, I realized I was lost. Was the ideology that I had once embraced truly lost? There were days that missing Danielle was painful. The most painful was finding out that she was cheating on me, moved on and lied out of PITY. She never expected me to find out the truth. She thought she held power over me by promising me hope. This was a controlling personality so that if she did not succeed in her current love all she had to do was come back. She would most likely play on my emotional attachment that I needed her to validate my existence. There is however a reality. What do I deserve? It was a matter of finding my positive inner voice to find myself worth. I knew intuitively that I needed to return to my soul roots of who I am. The very passion for my life lied within my writing, my poetry, my books, and the podcasts that I was developing. The creativity allowed me to feel the breath of spirit. I was not ready per say to fully embrace the totality of my spirituality. Some part of my heartfelt hurt and betrayed. That was a negative inner voice in me taunting me that I was not enough. I felt abandoned by physical love. This served as a reminder of the past that I was grieving. The daunting question of why haunted my very essence, my ego and my construct of reality. It is only natural question to ask why when a traumatic event occurs changing our reality. I knew in my soul, the very depths of my being that spirit did not abandon me or betray me. It was the physical hurt speaking through my heart. Writing allowed me to go inside of myself and to begin the healing process. Writing served as that retreat where I was not hurt. I was loved because through my writing I could create emotion, worlds of beauty. I kept thinking what to write next. I rememeber in June of 2012 that I had no inspiration to finish the book series, Black Panther Rising. I tried to write the next books in the series. I could not. I have the entire outline for the series of books. I even have the completed illustrations. All I could hear was Danielle’s voice of how she was my dragon, my hero in love. It was hard to be a hero when you kill the very heart of the one you love or claim to love. I tried on several occasions to write the books in the series. It felt like salt being poured on an open wound. I remember I ran a contest on Facebook in late 2011 and the question was “Who is the soul mate of the panther?” I remember Danielle calling me and telling me, “I am your soul mate..Your dragon and we fly in the skies together.” The entire book series of Black Panther Rising was based on this great love story between two women. How could I write it now when the very thing that said was love was filled with lies and deceit? The night was chilly. I could not sleep. I was very distraught. I was very emotional. I was trying to understand the reality that was presented to me. Some part of me could not understand what just happened. I began thinking of Sara my sister and then it hit me. The dandelion - we use to play a game with the dandelion flower. Sarah would tell me, “No one knows we exist or that we are being hurt. We need to blow on the seeds of the dandelion because maybe the universe will hear our prayers and someday we will be rescued.”
I remember the day we were locked outside in the dog kennels. We had a marble and we pretended that there was another one when Sara dug up a marble. She looked at me, smiling, “Look the ground gave us a marble. You were right.” I looked at her wondering what this young child meant. “You told me to just believe. I believed another one would appear and it did”
Sarah’s innocence of life taught me about faith even in the darkest of times. I began writing Letters to the Universe, Ashes of the heart. The last part of the title with the ashes symbolized how I was burnt. I changed the title has changed to Letters to the Universe, Hearts Rising. Hearts rising symbolizes how I have emerged. In many ways this memoir became a catharsis for me. This memoir opened my eyes to patterns of behavior not only in myself however the relationship that I had shared with Danielle. A reality hit me. I really found myself. Once again the book title changed to Letters of a woman found. The burning questions that my friends once asked about Danielle’s weird behavior began to haunt me. The answers became so clear as a lightning bolt opening up the heavens. The questions of:
There were many red flags. My brother from Australia even began questioning her without my knowledge. Danielle ignored him. NOW the answers were clear. She was playing a game. I did not want to see the answers at the time. Everyone that tried to warn me I went to war with. I told my friends at the time that they needed to believe that not everyone was evil or manipulative. I did not want to see that I was not the only one she was having a relationship with. I was a fieldtrip from her real girlfriend. I did see this because I needed the relationship to validate that I was worthy of love. I needed the permission to be who I am. This is a common theme among people and women that have had dysfunctional pasts or failed relationships. They will stay in a current dysfunctional relationship because it validates who they are. Now understanding this I had to learn to heal. Danielle was the lesson I needed to learn to grieve my past, to let go of the sorrow I carried. It was time to grow, to heal and expand. I needed to diversify and expand. I needed to detox. I got the message loud and clear. It was over. I meant nothing to her. If I had meant something, even a half of a percent she would have called and apologized when I found out the truth. I needed to reinvent myself. That is a good one. Where do I begin? I needed a plan. I began looking at what I want to do in my life and not what others expected me to do. One thing was for sure. I could not continue to stay at home wondering if Danielle would return. Danielle even lied about being friends. Once I had released the videos of how ONE VOICE was started and how she helped me in my passion I was blocked, deleted and denounced by her. I was seen as a parasite that proclaimed to her girlfriend that I was the only one in love. Never mind that she stood in front of the gay and lesbian chamber and other business owners at a meeting and professed how she was in love with me. Never mind she cried the night I gave her a ring and she fell to the ground saying how I was her wife. My first step was forgiveness. The process of forgiveness was very difficult especially when I was hurt so badly and left to think I was the one at fault. I remembered that the Navajo believe that there is power in words. The first thing was to forgive myself for allowing Danielle to hurt me. I did give Danielle power over me to validate my existence. Now I knew that. I forgave myself. Oh how I wept that day as I prayed to spirit. I asked spirit to forgive me for being so angry. I sent a text message to all those that knew about the situation. It read: “On this day, I forgive myself for allowing Danielle to hurt me. I forgive Danielle for lying to me and leaving. I ask of you my friends that you forgive the person. The behavior was dishonorable. However I ask that you join me and forgive Danielle and do not hold ill will. It is the right thing to do.” Do you ever wonder why they say “To forgive is divine?” There is a Bible prayer that tells us "…and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." One does not have to do this in person per say. If you are willing to forgive, this burden will be released. You will be set free from that negative emotion of hatred and anger. It’s hard. I will tell you first hand that its hard. At the end of the day it’s about honor. I have seen great evil and atrocities as a child. I have seen death, rape, torture and people who were misguided by the power of abuse. I would like to think and still hold to this day that perhaps Danielle was playing a game and suddenly realized she was in love and backed away. That is just a small illusion within my heart that she was true. Danielle did teach me that I could love another person. Danielle did teach me how to love intimately. Danielle taught me things intimately that I will never forget. She was the lesson I had to learn. To forgive Danielle would allow me to let her go to what she wanted, another person that was not me. Now was the time to move on. I really dislike the concept of MOVING ON. The ideology of moving on becomes a paradigm of forgetting the experience and let’s try again. That might provide temporarily comfort. We never move on. We grow and emerge from the ashes of the pain, the soul scar and become a new person. The experiences we endure are the markings of our soul, our being and becomes the defining moments of our character and journeys into our authentic cores. This is the time of reinvention. I found that I was so in love with Danielle that I became dependent on her for my own identity. We have all done that in our relationship to some extent. One will begin to like the music, food, sports and lifestyle habits of our partners because of love for the significant other. You change as the chameleon changes color with its environment. The key lies in knowing your own self. When that dependency is gone one begins to question their path, their reality. The mere thought of starting a new beginning was terrifying to me. I still had insecurity, doubt and stress. My stress lied in what will others think that I had a failed relationship. I then remembered a text a friend sent to me the day I asked my friends to forgive Danielle out of honor. She wrote “That’s bullshit. You treated her like a goddess. You gave her the heavens and Stars. It is her loss that she judged you based on your not having a real family. Her selfishness will cost her the happiness she manifested in you. You did nothing Wrong. She could not handle being loved by such a genuine person.” The time for a “rising phoenix moment” was at hand. My friends to this day hate how Danielle was dishonorable. Out of respect for my wishes they have not confronted her. The very core and fibers of our body holds within it the wisdom of our deepest self. I call this core authentic work. A journey to the deepest part of ourselves. This is where the primal life force exists. Our body and its parts holds the memories of our personal history. This is called somatic markers. The places in our body that feel emotions triggered by movement or events allow us to feel those events. When a traumatic loss occurs the physical body wants to avoid the pain and it runs. Essentially it disconnects and disassociates from the moment as an act of survival. For over 22 years I stuffed the sorrow of my child hood into this box. I had placed walls around the box. I thought that by placing these walls around the box that I had won some marble game. It was never about winning. It was about acceptance. The inner work I was doing lied in the understanding about my feelings. The broken pieces were the little child inside crying in the corner asking, “I am little girl why are you hurting me, raping me. Make the men go away. Why am I being chained. Why can’t I eat food and not the maggots that Was served to me?” When I was a child, the family that tortured me and abused me felt that I did not deserve real food. On several occasions I had to eat spoiled food that had maggots in it. To this day I cannot eat white rice. I have to put pepper or paprika on it to ensure that the rice is not moving. The ability to finally accept what happened became a moment of grace. I never understood what she meant ‘til now. This teacher told me “By Gods grace I lived so that when the time came I would be able to speak for all victims that went through such abuse. That the words I would speak would touch them, allowing them to know that they were not alone. Humanity’s greatest fear is that they were alone.” My inner work was accepting that I could be loved. My outer work now involved creating a new life of celebration. It was scary. There were days that I felt like I was lost. I did not know how to do this action of celebration. I knew that by establishing new friendships, speaking my truth of what happened would open the door ways. I needed to walk step by step and then I would learn to fly as the phoenix. The greatest power I discovered was that I was no longer going to allow people to have power over me with validation. It was at this point That OUTSPokenWYN took on a new journey of Evolution. I felt that women needed to hear that they were not alone going through the various challenges in life. The podcast would become a venue of expression of my experiences, my life and through my experiences, I would open an avenue of communication to other women out there that they are not alone. Today the memoir is called Defining moments. On New Years Eve, Saundra did a releasing ceremony. My best friends had a glimpse of how they impacted my life. I remember one night back in May 2012. Saundra and I were texting messaging each other on a social media forum. Saundra says to me that I should not drink in the healing process because I need to be kind to myself. I went wow, really!!! I immediately put down the amaretto and listened up. I love this example that Saundra tells people about me. It really defines my journey. Saundra compares my journey to that of a rescue animal. In the beginning they are all abused, malnutrition and scared. Saundra says that with love, attention and value that the rescue animal comes to life. That story is me.
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