writer. author. personal development

I still remember the small 3-bedroom, 1-bathroom house. How each room was laid out; the above ground pool next to the large grapefruit tree, with the small canal that ran out to the bayou behind it.  I am the oldest of three. My sister is 6 years younger than me, my brother is 8 years younger than me. I came from a middle-class family. We didn’t have everything but we had what we needed. We grew up in the same small house on 82nd Avenue, we didn’t move around. My dad travelled a lot for work and my mom eventually went back to work after being a stay at home mom. Today, my parents have been together for over 40 years.

It was the end of November, a balmy, humid day in Florida. Which is kind of ironic for how my life would change. Just three weeks earlier I was sitting on cloud nine.  All the work I had done for the previous 3 ½ years had paid off. I received my acceptance letter to my dream school, along with a full academic scholarship. I had received all my Senior accolades and was on the path I had planned for myself. 

Three weeks later, on that late November day in Florida, my entire world changed. I stared blankly at a positive pregnancy test. I was 6 months from graduating in the top 10 of my class; had sent in my acceptance to Emerson University in Boston, to major in communications, and was excited about what my future held. 

With a positive pregnancy test in hand, I laid on the wood, four poster bed that was my grandmothers, for what seemed like forever, figuring out what the hell happened, how the hell I was going to move forward and what my future would look like with a baby. I had just turned 17 the month before. I was just a kid myself; with my whole life ahead of me. 

One decision had changed the entire course of my life, and my future. A decision that I could not undo, a decision that I would hate myself for the rest of my life for making. Or so I thought. After the reality of what this test showed me, and lots of writing of my thoughts, I decided that I could not let this bad decision control my entire life. There was still so much to live for.  I had to take responsibility for my actions; I had to do what I could for me and my future. And this no longer just included me. I was now responsible for the human being growing inside me. 

That was over 20 years ago. 

20 years later, I am finally writing the book I wanted to write. But as we know, and as you’ll experience (if you haven’t already), life happens, shit happens. The things we want to do are often put on hold and reserved for a later date. They aren’t forgotten, we just don’t realize the importance of them until much later in life. We all have a story to tell. We all have something to say. This is my way of sharing my story (part of it anyways), and sharing what I have to say. 

What I have had to say has stayed with me, the thoughts and ideas that were never put on hold, they stayed at the forefront, growing and festering. Just getting them out there to people was put on hold.