Quarterly Spring/Summer Magazine Article Section 1: Say YES to your dreams today!

A Dream Deferred

by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

FIRE

by Sacred Walker

[Enjoy FREE Inspiration: An your op-ed piece in honor of channeling your fire]

In April 2004, I asked myself the question in what areas of my life was I not fulfilling my dreams? What areas did I have unexpressed emotion? Who I was about to explode on if they jumped on my nerve one more time? What ignited my fire? The answers were slow to unfold. Still, I knew that I was not fulfilling the fullness of my dreams and I was pissed about it. 

What I thought would be a dream job as the newly appointed Associate Executive Director of a young women lead nonprofit. This became an amazing and complicated learning experience. In many ways they were growing pains. It had become a painful experience of coming in often to an empty office, with employees that often chose not to come into work. I also had a hard time expressing anger, and my subtle hints of requesting that my junior colleagues show up responsibly, was not a forte of mine. ... I was so stuck on the title of being an Associate Executive Director, that I struggled with letting go of the prestige of the "I had finally made it" feeling. I was doing good work, having pioneered a Gay and Straight Alliance in East Flatbush Brooklyn, despite nay sayers testifying it wasn't possible. I clung to that and my daily tasks. I felt extremely alone and unfulfilled, yet my routine kept me safe. I lived in a facade... I didn't want to be the angry black woman, so I stuck it out without complaint. I lived the dream deferred. 

Then one day my priorities shifted. 

[CONTINUED FROM ON-LINE KHHP MAGAZINE: READ MORE BELOW...]

My mother became acutely ill, and I had to meet her in the hospital. The weight of the job being a hostile environment, coupled with my mom's illness, allingside the taking on of the role of now raising my sister while she was hospitalized, shifted my focus. 

Having to take a couple days off to attend to my family ailments, gave me room to feel both the pain in seeing my mom so ill, and feel the pain and rage I had in staying in an environment or where I was either alone working with young women with their own histories of repressed anger everyday. One day, after leaving my mom's bedside, I cried in the street. I called my friend shortly after and asked him to help me move out of my work. I did what I had wanted to do for so long- I quit my job.

As I moved my things out of my hostile work environment with my dear friend, I heard one of the board members. "Let her go. We never needed her anyway. She was just a burden on the organization..." I was wrongly being blamed for the financial problems of the organization. 

Having been raised with the idea that one must never burn bridges, I held my tongue and left. My tongue lashing would wait. Later on having advocated for myself, I got a nice severance package. And by the time the whole dramatic ordeal was over, my mom was out of the hospital and my sister had returned to live with my mom. I shed many a tears for the almost loss of my mom and a few at the loss of the prestigious name associated with the position. I also sighed a breathe of relief having to no longer carry that load. Later, the organization would close after I had been gone, and I would rebirth myself in ways I would have never expected.

So what now, I asked myself. What now? Using my severance pay, I picked up the book, "the artist way" by Julia Cameron, which changed my life. Every day I would do an exercise that put me in touch with my inner child. The fire I felt inside, and the disappointment at turning the other cheek, with Julia's help, opened up the door for my inner child to create out of my shadow. I created art, messy finger paint art. I expressed myself through dance and poetry. In giving myself space to dream again, I gave myself permission to feel again too. 

Over time I started to have strips of images come to me in the form of a story. Stories of my path. Stories of my destiny. One story stuck out and I followed that path. I was suggested an artist residency at the Youth Empowerment Services- LGBT Center, that gave me an outlet for that story called Second Stage.

During my Second Stage Theater Residency I worked alongside other LGBT young adults to create a story about oneaspect of my life thru metaphor. The story birthed over time was of a young woman who was being sexually abused by her father. She had a elder grandmother ancestry who watched over her and helped her run away from home.  This story was called "arise child."

At the end of the residency, I performed my piece in front of a live audience, performing all three characters. If I had stayed at that job that was draining me, my dream of telling my story to bring awareness and healing to community would have never happened. I said yes to my self care after seeing my mom get sick. In saying yes to putting self and family first, God used my creativity in the sharing of my story and witnesses of my peers. My need to be more connected to community was met as we formed a beautiful artistic cohort, in the creation of our pieces.

The weekend after the show, I sat amazed at the piece God and I created. I sat back and thought about the abuse I endured by my mother's former boss, at the age of 8. And wondered what brought thisother version on. And as I was reflecting, images of my dad abusing me as a baby literally arose. It hit me, the story of being abused by my dad wasn't fictional. It was memories I had repressed over the years. It also came to me that the environment that I worked at the organization formerly known as "Sister Outsider" was a part of a larger pattern of not not expressing my anger. It started when I was not developmentally able to ask for help as a baby  and didn't have the verbal ability to tell my mom that my dad was abusing me. It hence continued into my adulthood, when I shut down and became non verbal in the face of criticism or insult. I was still staying quiet and trying to blame my abuser, because over the years I wrongly learned I was responsible for the abuse. This a ha moment was so deep for me, that it still sticks out for me today. It was as if the grandmother in the play I wrote, reached out and called me to arise. 

I successfully pursued much needed support from a therapist and an art therapy support group for survivors. With help over a decade, I am everyday closer to to transforming the rage inside and am reclaiming my relationship to my body, sexuality, art, and even my inner childhood dreams. Because there were dreams that were repressed and memories that were arising, when my mind was ready to go there I did so boldly and with self respect and Love. 

The creation of and the aftermath of "Arise Child" channeled anger into vision. The metaphor and silhouette imagery in the play gave the audience the aesthetic distance to enter into a part of my past that would have been too overwhelming to see head on. And yet, gave me a protective guardian to feel held and supported for what memories were re surfacing to come.

Today I go from student to teacher to visionary. I reduce shame and guilt and own focus and my divine birthright to assert my desires. 

In the vein of my universal story, I call forth that fire energy in the creation of KHHP's 2015 Women's Retreat. I am working with an advisory board to create a safe space to move playfully into our shadow selves, create, get angry, with enough distance through dance, art, play, and spiritual rituals, for improved health and financial abundance. 

The space to dream that you give yourself allows for the integration of the lost parts of the self to come into the new parts of who you are becoming. So whether be it sexual abuse, domestic violence, over spending, etc. these charred moments when explored can give access to deeper forms of self acceptance. And deeper forms of self acceptance can put us in alignment with our visions, especially if surrounded by other sisters believing in your right to manifest and sustain your dreams.

I hope you enjoyed this opinion editorial piece. Like, share, inspire. More to come...