The Worst Part…

The worst part of telling your story as a survivor would have to be holding the guilt of hurting people you love, regardless of what they have done to you.

Knowing there is a cause and effect for everything.

Knowing that even standing your ground and shining your light will burn some of the people you once held closest to your heart because they were your mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, sister, brother, cousin, aunt, uncle, husband, wife, in-laws, best friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, and so on and so forth.

Guilt.

Because regardless of whether you deserve justice, it can still pain you to the depths of your heart, soul, and mind.

Especially when you are a survivor who raised children apart from the parents who signed their rights over because they couldn’t help but show their true colors.

I raised our children to understand trauma and how it can be passed down through a lineage. That regardless of what trauma exists in their bloodline, they can still heal.

Relationships can happen when people stand in integrity, discernment, and accountability. When they have the hard talks and are willing to understand each other.

I taught them not to hate where they came from, regardless of the dark.

I taught them about the two wolves and the different theories about which one you feed.

My theory?

Sometimes you need to feed both so they become allies.

Yes, some of the traits passed down from both sides can be nasty and vile. But channeled correctly?

They can make a hell of a warrior in the garden.

I told them they are the best parts of both lines they came from.

Understand that being a fighter comes from both sides, so it runs strong in you. What matters is the intent behind it.

Always lead with love in your heart.

Embrace the dark from your lineage and learn from it. Use those lessons as survival skills because this can be an ugly world. Defend yourself when necessary, but never draw first blood.

Yes, you come from lines containing thieves, gamblers, drug users, hustlers, liars, manipulators, sexual predators, fighters, food hoarders, and more.

Extract something from those “evil deeds.”

Understand the lineage.

Understand how your ancestors survived.

That does NOT mean excusing their behavior.

It means extracting the lessons and using that knowledge for discernment and profiling so you don’t have to repeat the same patterns.

Came from card dealers and a family line that gambled their lives away?

Don’t lose your head to greed.

Make decisions about your cards with a clear head.

Learn the other players.

Pay attention to cues.

See where I am going with this?

Then…

To my point.

There is a saying survivors hear often.

I have heard it myself.

“You will ruin their life.”

From what I experienced, and through how I raised our children, I developed a core belief that has never changed from the time I came into this world until today:

Families can heal.

Peace can happen.

But only where there is accountability.

Where family listens to each other instead of casting out the one who spoke the uncomfortable truth.

But girls can dream.

Free will.

People make their choices.

One of my hardest lessons has been learning that some people would rather die than admit their wrongdoing, no matter the cost to themselves or, especially, to others.

People have to want help in order to actually receive it.

So don’t waste your life trying to force help onto people who don’t want it.

As a survivor raising children connected to people I had to survive—and adopting another child as well—I understood cause and effect intimately.

I knew telling the truth could hurt people I loved.

And I didn’t want to hurt anyone.

But then there is that grit welling up inside.

Knowing the sacrifices you have to make.

Thinking about the handful of people who abandoned you, hurt you, banished you, molested you, raped you, beat you, left you in a pool of your own blood, raged when you weren’t in the mood, sexualized you, betrayed you, lied about you, alienated you, or metaphorically hung you on the cross for their sins.

Back to sacrificing.

Loving them while knowing you have to leave them behind.

Let them go.

Open that throat chakra.

Embrace your inner power.

Stand back up.

And with “speak your truth with your whole damn chest, them motherfuckers don’t deserve no rest, your story is yours to tell, evil people can rot in hell” playing through your head on the way back to your feet…

You speak.

For every child who will grow up and choose what is familiar, just like I did.

For every woman who suffered like I did and somehow kept her integrity and heart intact while still fighting for her voice to be heard.

For the men who became the way they did partly because of what was done to them—and who need to know they can, in fact, have feelings and be heard too.

For the survivors who continue to get back up.

Fighters themselves, born from the families and lineages they came from.

Can’t take the hood out.

Can’t take the fight out.

Can’t take the country out.

Can’t take the trash out.

Gutter rat.

River rat.

We are where we came from.

Honor that.

Respect that.

Know the lines to cross and the lines not to cross.

Use what you came from when you have to.

Because there is knowledge in it.

Especially among the ones who learned to alchemize it.

The ones who choose to love regardless.

The ones who choose to heal.

There is this strange pull toward one another.

And sometimes an outrage starts building because you realize you have to keep fighting.

Because if you stop, maybe someone else stops too.

Maybe they stop fighting to get back up.

Because once you’ve lived through enough, you know that while something is happening to you, somewhere it is happening to someone else too.

You can almost feel it in your bones.

The cries of the others.

The pain.

The defeat.

The disappointment.

The heart-wrenching break.

I have tried to understand this about myself—why I feel like I can feel it, and why sometimes I simply know what I am feeling.

I came to my own conclusion.

In some of those beatings, the pain and proximity to death brought me close to what I think of as the other side.

The place where everything feels connected.

I also think those experiences opened something in me that later allowed me to help transition people through the dying process.

Hence becoming a Death Doula.

I wouldn’t recommend being “activated,” if you will, this way.

Actually, I am trying to help create ways for other people to learn without having to experience what I did.

Experiencing people close to me passing.

Working in a funeral home.

Watching grieving families and how they interact.

Feeling the presence of the deceased living through the people grieving them.

Understanding that this is one of the ways we remain alive:

In the hearts of others.

I know I’m losing some of you.

That’s alright.

I’m trying to explain the pull I feel to finally voice what I kept buried.

To join the others speaking.

And maybe more will follow.

I’m made for a demographic.

I’m not made for everybody.

Some survivors struggle to fit into conventional spaces because of where we came from.

Regardless of how healed we become, regardless of how many years separate us from our past, sometimes sitting in anger management with a group of perpetrators can strangely feel like home.

Yeah.

I’m sure that’s hard to understand.

But it’s almost like you can finally breathe.

Relax into old mannerisms.

Old speech.

Be hard in a crowd like that without somebody clutching their pearls.

And still be understood.

Still be heard.

This is why I walk the path aiming to help perpetrators.

Because, deep down, something about that environment feels familiar.

Because I know I can speak assertively there.

I can understand old ways of communicating without necessarily endorsing them.

I want to help provide a space where perpetrators who genuinely want to change can heal—the kind of space I hoped and prayed my own perpetrators would someday find.

Because the truth is, and I have said it before and will continue saying it:

I loved all of my perpetrators.

Love did not erase what they did.

Love did not make it acceptable.

Love did not require me to lie for them.

Love did not require me to sacrifice myself to protect them from accountability.

And love couldn’t make them change.

That last one took me a long time to understand.

You can’t save everyone.

Regardless of who they are to you.

At some point, you have to keep moving forward.

Cause and effect.

Laws have to change.

Courts have to change.

Systems have to change.

Services have to change.

And ultimately?

People have to choose to change.

So…

Heal Out Loud.

Inspire others.

Lead with love.

Fight with the strength of your ancestors.

Understand and honor that much of your ancestors’ strength came from surviving.

Alchemize it.

Bring light to the dark.

Integrate it.

Feed both wolves. Understand your yin and yang. Make them allies.

Stand in it.