Pregnant with purpose, being delivered into my destiny. Pt.1

Part 1

I am a life-long student of Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Brene Brown, and Bishop T.D. Jakes. In the last year or so, I have found another spiritual teacher, Pastor James Teague of The Uproar Church. If I’m honest, it is more than being a student. When they speak, or I read their books, it is like they are speaking directly to me. I would say they speak to my soul, the very nature of who I am. Their words excite, encourage, and move me toward action. In many cases, their words lead me to prayer and meditation, where I experience the Creator.

So why are we here? Why am I doing this now? Well, I’ve had a bit of writer’s block lately. You see, I struggled with how to introduce myself authentically online through EvolvingTowardExcellence.com - ETE. The reason for my writer’s block dawned on me while on a midweek service at The Uproar Church. Pastor James said that I have to show you my scars. I have to talk about the pain, the situations that made me the person I am today. That is a terrifying thing, but I also realized that it’s the very thing preventing the real me to show through ETE authentically. It’s the reason I can’t get off the starting blocks. In that midweek service, Pastor James said, “Fear is bondage, and the only way to be free is to talk about it.” I have to use my platform to talk about my “stuff.” What Pastor James said made me start thinking about what I have learned from Dr. Brene Brown about shame and vulnerability. Dr. Brene Brown is awesome at illustrating that being vulnerable is real strength, that courage is when you are actively in the ring getting dirty, not standing on the sidelines of life talking about others in the ring. I was letting fear stop me and have been for years. I’m getting in the ring now!

I think people who know me personally would agree that I like to share. I am a big talker, y’all. I believe in open and honest communication. I am open to being vulnerable with people I meet because I’m hoping something from my life can help someone in their lives. I mean, it gives me JOY! My problem is when you share online, you don’t get to control the conversation. It scared me to think about what others might say about me without explaining situations away. So instead of continuing to cower in fear, I am bossing up and sharing my pain, my insecurities, and showing you my scars, good, bad, or indifferent.

Another reason why this is something I have procrastinated and downright resisted is that my story is my story. My story is also the story of my family. It’s complicated because my story touches their story. I love my family, despite what has happened in the past, and I am very protective of them. I recognize the things that have happened in my past had to happen. I had to walk through the fire. I had to become malleable to be shaped by God. I had to feel set apart to come to know, seek, and wait on God’s voice and lean on that for strength and direction instead of listening to others. I am not resentful or upset about my childhood. I am deeply appreciative of all my parents provided. My intent is not to cast anyone in a bad light. This is me coming face to face with my own feelings of inadequacy, rejection, and shame. This is me climbing in the ring and fighting for my freedom, knowing I am coming out victorious and free! I’ve split my story into a series of posts to share with you over the next few days. I am going to tell you this was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Thinking over your life is one thing. To see it on the page is quite different. You see your insecurities, you see your trauma, you see your patterns. The situations that you blamed others for in the past come full circle, and you can see you indeed were culpable. This experience also confirmed my purpose, something I had been running from for years, which made every moment worth it.

I am so grateful you are taking the time to read this, to get to know me. Are you ready? Let’s start this journey y’all! 

I’ve always felt I have the spirit of a seeker. I can recall having thoughts of who the Creator is, my mortality, and why I was here as far back as I can remember. I attended Catholic schools and was raised in a Baptist church in Philadelphia. The combination of these fed the thirst I had for God. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to paint the picture that I was an angel. I wasn’t, and you will see that. But I did have and asked tons of questions about religion and faith. I would regularly pepper the priest and nuns that taught me and the religious leaders in my church with the questions I had. I often didn’t get answers, which frustrated me and led me to more questions. I always felt a closeness to the Creator. I talked to God the way I talked to friends. I knew the Creator was close and watched over me, even when I wasn’t watching over myself and living recklessly. 

I can remember feeling like I was different from my earliest thoughts. I felt like the black sheep of the family. The home I grew up in was beautiful, but it lacked a loving feeling. The relationship between my parents was tense. They are both very strong-willed people. Arguments and loud disagreements were the norm in the home, and peace was an oddity. As for me, I felt like I was the child they had because they had to. My mother had a daughter when she and my father were married. My father had no biological children, but being the good man that he is, he adopted my sister. So, when my parents married, having a child together would seal the deal. At least that is how I felt. I didn’t feel like I was the product of burning love and desire, rather the final detail in an arrangement. I don’t doubt there is love in their marriage. Love is there and is likely the reason why they are still married today. But to me, it seemed like they were staying together so that they could keep their “things” and for the convenience of life. This caused me to feel unwanted for as far back as I can remember. I used to call myself the accessory of my parent’s relationship with my friends. Yup, “I’m the Louis Vuitton bag that completed the look,” I would say, laughing. But this feeling was anything but funny. Being the person I am, I talked to my parents about how this made me feel. My mother responded by saying, “We always told you we loved you. And don’t you remember sitting on your father’s lap?” Even then, this didn’t seem like how a parent would explain wanting a child and demonstrate how they have loved them. The response felt empty, and I thought there should be more to say if the words were intended to prove I was loved. 

Many other stories shared with me would prove how hard it was to care for a child like me. One such story is when my mother considered putting a pillow over my face when I was a newborn because I wouldn’t stop crying. She was suffering from what we know now was postpartum depression and sleep deprivation, and I had colic. She wasn’t receiving the assistance she expected from my father and was working while managing a household. This was the perfect storm to drive her to do the unthinkable. I was quite young when she told me this story. I recall seeing the pain in her face. In my mind’s eye, I could see the image of her collapsing in tears, full of regret for considering such an act as I lay crying in my crib. I felt so bad for her. On another occasion, I was told how I was sick so much that my mother almost lost her job due to taking off to care for me. Again, I felt bad for her. I was saddened that my birth seemed to cause more pain and stress than joy. These stories and situations would later become the chorus in the song that was me. I sympathized with what my mother felt, but I wanted to hug and love on the little girl who heard these things. What I received and believed to be true was that I was trouble from the very start. I heard, “You caused me to have to work so hard and took so much from me. You, you required so much.” That understanding was major because she was used to being a single mother, a good single mother.

I would characterize my relationship with my father as distant. He was a hard-working man who provided for his family. My father worked long hours to provide for us. When he would return home, he was tired. I understand this as an adult, but it wasn’t something I understood as a child. I recall being yelled at for being too loud because he was sleeping and a host of other things. He always seemed upset about something, and as most children assume, I thought I was the cause. He would yell and fuss at me for leaving the lights on in a room I left or for not completely turning the water off in the sink. These are all things that most parents fuss at their children for, but this became the most common way he communicated with me. As an adult, I understand that money was probably pretty tight, and my lack of awareness, coupled with his lack of sleep, caused him to be rather aggressive toward me. All I wanted was to be and feel like Daddy’s little girl, but I didn’t. All of my interactions were not bad or distant from my father. Some of my fondest memories are going to Phillies games, amusement parks, or movies with my dad. He really enjoyed himself and because he was happy and light, I was happy. I enjoyed seeing him happy, but we didn’t talk. There was conversation, but not the type of conversation that showed me who he was and allowed me to show who I was. I didn’t complain. I enjoyed the time we shared together, but we didn’t live at the Phillies game. We didn’t live at an amusement park. So when we returned home, the mood changed, and the distance between him and I grew. He went to his space, and I existed around him, careful not to disturb him.

I was an intelligent child, but that wasn’t always reflected in my grades. I prioritized talking and communication, something that would come to serve me well in my adult years but was frowned upon by my teachers. The fact that I wasn’t an excellent student seemed to really upset my father. The reason for his anger was probably because he was spending what should have been his “fun/vacation” money on my tuition. I hated getting report cards. The whole process seemed odd to me. I didn’t like that someone was putting a letter grade on what I knew. I knew the letter grade didn’t match what I learned or my intelligence. Instead, it was a reflection of my effort, which could improve but stood in the way of my socializing and daydreaming. To say, bringing report cards home was stressful is an understatement. I could count on my father giving me the same speech with every bad grade received, which was anything less than a B. The speech wasn’t reserved for report card times either. He would say, “You spend about an hour in each class each day. Your only job is to sit there and learn, and the best you could get is this grade. So you must be stupid or retarded.” He would pause as if he expected me to respond. These words broke me. I thought I was smart, I asked lots of questions, and I liked to think about and solve tough problems. But maybe I wasn’t smart. My own father thought I was either stupid or retarded, and I wasn’t a straight-A student. I believed his words and let go of the truths I knew about my intelligence. I let go of the fact that I had to be smart because I learned to read pretty easily shortly after turning four. And I could remember anything if I paid attention to, heard, or read it at least once. More importantly, I had a thirst for learning matched or exceeded by my willingness to commit to and work for something I wanted. I would carry the doubt about my intelligence with me until I reached my late twenties. I learned the true recipe for success is not just intelligence. The recipe is being prepared, working harder than anyone in the room, accepting and learning from your mistakes, and pushing yourself to demonstrate grit and resilience in a way that would confuse most people.

How I thought I was perceived in the house became what I thought I was. As I approached my teenage years, I started to seek love, attention, and acceptance from people outside of my home. It was the late 1980’s, and my social life was my church, Mt. Zion Baptist Church of Germantown. I was at the church four or more times a week, including the weekends. The group of young people was my tribe at that time, so it should not be a shock that my first boyfriend would be someone in that church group. I was in the 7th grade when my first relationship started, and this relationship would last until I went to college. Let’s call him the Intro. The Intro was only a few years older than me, but much more experienced than I was. I felt that he was the first person to really see me. I felt special and selected. Other girls wanted his attention, but I was the one he selected, or at least this is what I told myself. It took my parents some time to realize how much influence this relationship had over me. My mother would be furious to find us alone in places in the church but never talked to me about how she felt about my relationship with the Intro. I imagine she was embarrassed. As a mother, I assume she was attempting to safeguard me from what people in the church would say about me. Instead, I was met with screaming, harsh talk, and severe punishments. This strained an already fragile relationship. She started to limit the contact that I had with him on the phone and at the church. The more she tried, the more I found ways to connect with him. I felt she was trying to take away the one person in the world I could be myself with. The Intro was giving me love, acceptance, and attention without requiring anything. I had never experienced that. I knew my parents loved me because they fed me, kept me in good schools. But it seemed like receiving love and affection was transactional. I had to be good and get in no trouble, be thriving in every area of my life to receive love. I rarely thrived in all areas at the same time, so it was an unattainable goal. My mother told me all the Intro wanted to do was to have sex with me and that he didn’t want me. Hearing her say this confirmed the poor image I had of myself. What I heard was, “He doesn’t want you. No one really wants you. He just wants to have sex with you. And you are stupid if you don’t see this.” The rejection and neglect I felt in those early years would lay the foundation for a series of bad relationships throughout my life.

I admit understanding the reasoning behind my emotions is something that I wouldn’t fully understand for years. My logic and the ability to sequentially map out a series of events and make clear decisions have been with me forever. I decided that I would not let anything stop me from receiving what I thought was love, attention, and acceptance. I found myself fighting to be loved by him, which was, in essence, a fight against my mother. This created a less than desirable atmosphere in my home. My feelings for the Intro grew. I don’t have to tell you that she saw him like a bug that needed to be exterminated, and my father really disliked him. The feelings that my parents had for the Intro drove me closer to him. I recall wanting him more because I felt my parents were trying to keep me from him. As I look at this now, I see that I needed someone to talk to. I needed someone who cared for me to show me who I was. I needed someone to show me who the Creator saw me as, and who I could become. I needed someone to see I was beautiful and convince me I was deserving of love. I needed someone to see that I was pregnant with purpose and possibility. I needed someone to see what I couldn’t see for myself and convince me that God wanted more for me. Someone willing to stay and invest time with me until I believed it for myself. Instead, I felt alone, and I wanted to do whatever I could to hold on to what I felt the Intro gave me. 

I will pick up with part two soon.

Keep evolving toward excellence!!