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Memories are immortal. They’re deathless and precise. They have the power of giving you joy and perspective in hard times. Or, they can strangle you. Define you in a way that’s based more in other people’s tucked-up perceptions than truth.
It is a powerful memory because it was the first time my spirit and heart were broken.
“Why are you trying to heal her? I think she was pretty tough. She survived.”
The final stretch to finding me would be allowing that eight-year-old girl in, actively inviting her into every moment of my current existence to experience the joy she so longed for, letting her taste what it means to feel truly alive. The destination is finding a home for her. A place of peace where the past does not envelop the Viola of NOW, where I have ownership of my story.
I learned from writer Joseph Campbell that a hero is someone born into a world where they don’t fit in. They are then summoned on a call to an adventure that they are reluctant to take. What is the adventure? A revolutionary transformation of self. The final goal is to find the elixir. The magic potion that is the answer to unlocking HER. Then she comes “home” to this ordinary life transformed and shares her story of survival with others.
It was radical acceptance of my existence without apology and with ownership.
Man, I’d rather go ten rounds with Mike Tyson than face some inner truths that have lain dormant. Hell, at least with Mike, I can throw the fight. But this inner battle, this inner fight I couldn’t throw.
I love staring at my mom. I take in every detail of her face, hands, skin.
One of the beauties of getting older is really getting to know a parent.
wanted to be aware of my Achilles heel. I believed awareness was what would release my blessings. I had no idea the mammoth task I was asking the universe.
There are decades of suppressed secrets, trauma, lost dreams and hopes. It was easier to live under that veil and put on a mask than to slay them.
Abuse elicits so many memories of trauma that embed themselves into behavior that is hard to shake. It could be something that happened forty years ago, but it remains alive, present.
The purpose of Furies was to make the person accountable for their wrongdoing, even their part in generational curses.
“He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear with almost any ‘how.’” —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
But in my mind, no one cares about the conditions in which the unwanted live. You’re invisible, a blame factor that allows the more advantaged to be let off the hook from your misery.
There is an emotional abandonment that comes with poverty and being Black. The weight of generational trauma and having to fight for your basic needs doesn’t leave room for anything else. You just believe you’re the leftovers.
The potency and power of tradition is deep.
Success pales in comparison to healing.
How do I get to the mountaintop without legs? But we constantly push it with kids now and when you’re a poor kid growing up with trauma, no one is equipping you with tools to do “better,” to “make a life.”
couldn’t tell them that my mom is more than what you’re seeing.
Your first instinct when you love a child is to protect her from the pain of the world . . . and life. The most excruciating revelation is when you realize you can’t. To be human is not to be God. What that man was allowed to do is destroy souls.
“May you live long enough to know why you were born.” —CHEROKEE BIRTH BLESSING
I can clearly see the Lord’s face, staring at me, taking me in and saying, “You never thanked me for creating you as YOU.”
hard head makes a soft ass.” That means some lessons you have to learn the hard way.
“Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.” —RAY BRADBURY
“It’s futile to ask why. Instead ask yourself, ‘What did I learn from this?’”
“The same time you’re laughing hysterically, your life is falling apart.” It is the definition of living.
I realized my joy is not just attached to artistic fulfillment, but life fulfillment.
Death, adulthood, responsibilities. All the stuff I never studied in school and no one talks about.
Jealousy is the cruelest of emotions. The part that makes it cruel is its lack of ownership.
I’ve gotta clean things up before I can invite anyone into my life to love me.”
“You just give God your list.
“Fame is a vapor. Popularity is an accident. Riches takes wings. And only one thing remains . . . CHARACTER.” —HORACE GREELEY
know for sure what we dwell on is what we become.”
My biggest discovery was that you can literally re-create your life. You can redefine it. You don’t have to live in the past. I found that not only did I have fight in me, I had love. By the time we clicked, I had had enough therapy and enough friendship and enough beautiful moments in my life to know what love is and what I wanted my life to feel and look like. When I got on my knees and I prayed to God for Julius, I wasn’t just praying for a man. I was praying for a life that I was not taught to live, but for something that I had to learn. That’s what Julius represented.
Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a different past. They tell you successful therapy is when you have the big discovery that your parents did the best they could with what they were given.
“Getting married is like a dying of one’s self. It is a big deal.”
I love authentic, ballsy women who are unapologetic about who they are.
I remember seeing an episode of Golden Girls where Bea Arthur, who plays Dorothy, responds to a question from Rose, played by Betty White. “What do you want in your next husband?” asked Rose. And Dorothy says, “I want someone to grow old with.” That’s what most people don’t want. They want the young. They want the cute. When you get older, you change. You change physically. You change emotionally and a whole other area of life rears its head. Your body slows down, retirement; death becomes all too real. A lot of people are not in it for the long haul. They’re not in it for the changes the life
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The purpose of life is to live it.
“You can either leave something for people or you can leave something in people.” —ANNE LAMONT
