Chapter Summary:

This chapter explains the 13 year book cycle from Jan. 1998 to 2012, complete with book titles. It gives an overview of the stages (acts) of my shero’s journey, while comparing the “Heroes” journey to the journey “Auset” goes on in the “Ausarian Drama.”

(See Blog Post for Info Below)

On Jan. 2, 1998, I had a revelation to write a memoir. I had just come off of my first 7 day silent retreat, following the advice of my good friend, actress BarbaraO, who does a silence retreat every year. I never heard of such a thing until then, but it just felt right in my soul, so I did it. Originally, I thought the title for my book was going to be Coming Full Circle: Acknowledging the Self, the Struggle, and the Saving Graces of Love.

There was a lot of things I still didn’t know. Little did I know how astrologically significant my book concept birthing date was and is. Little did I know that the title would morph into what it is today and yet still have a place for all the previous titles within in. Little did I know it would take me on what would be a 13 year journey- to the date! Little did I know that journey included moving from Atlanta, to Arizona, to California, to Pennsylvania, to St. Croix, Virgin Islands and then finally to Mexico. Little did I know it would involve decoding ancient occult knowledge and calendars. Little did I know that the key to meeting the “innerme” was to be transformed by unconditional love for the “enemy,” only to realize It’s All G.O.D. in the first place. And little did I know that Self-Love is THE hardest, yet only pathway leading to the  gates of heaven.

*History of Title Morphing

Little did I know that such a small detail as the day the inspiration came, and all the things that happened after were all destined and meaningful. Little did I know I was getting ready to go on what has been called the “Shero’s Journey”

The Stages/Acts In My Shero’s Journey

Give brief introduction into the Hero’s Journey coined by Joseph Campbell… (all indigenous cultures had this & break down the aspects). From the time of conception of the book, to the actually writing was definitely like a shero’s journey that I would never had expected. Below I categorize the three Acts and compare them to 3 stages of “The Self, The Struggle, and The Saving Graces of Love” and give you an idea…

Act One: (The Self)

* Give an overview of what this part will be like (use titles of the hero’s journey-ordinary world, refusing the call, etc.)

Leaving Atlanta was like:

Shero’s Journey (Auset’s Journey)

Role as Cross Pollinator: DeBorah the Bee

Explain my walking in two worlds+ B & W

Explain need to Understand the other: GSU Studies, I did same with Them

Being in Amexem

Feeling of History in Mexico

False History & Lies and how writing this book here is symbolic

Act/Stage Two: (The Struggle)

* Give an overview of what this part will be like (use titles of the hero’s journey-refusing the call, etc.) Main areas of struggle during this period were in 1) Relationships- Married and Sexually/ Scott/ etc. Active 2) Race Relations- AI, UCS 3) Cultural- Language, History, 3) Career- symbolism of learning new skill as  bookstore and library-teacher and learning new language to learning new way to think about my self worth and ideas around money and starting my business!- free teleseminars, etc. 4) faith around having enough finances

Act/Stage Three: The Saving Graces of Love

* Give an overview of what this part will be like (use titles of the hero’s journey-refusing the call, etc.)

Important Events/Dates for 13 Year Period: 1999-2013

2. Quit Americorps (Good News & Good News)/ MamaO, couldn’t go back to work- The Self

3. Silent Fast on MamaO’s recommendation- The Self

4. Met Kevin and a cresent moon/ learned metaphysics and worked at cultural- The Self

5. Gathering of the Masters- The Self

6. Leave Relationship Meltdown (Isaac/Msrah/Kenny/Aseem/Greg,etc)- The Struggle

7. Moved to Arizona worked my way up to a car and part-time work/ Library/ Co-op/ AI/ UAC?- The Struggle

8. Leave AZ to Cali. Job with Youth and then how I got to UCS/ AHC- The Struggle

9. Racial Tensions at UCS & MLK event Micheal Murphy Alex Grey- The Struggle

10. Gathering of Master’s & meeting Hakim/ Leaving Ca to PA (Vipassana & Black Buddhist Retreat with Homophobia experience)- The Struggle/Saving Graces

11. First time, fighting and living at HI- The Struggle/ Saving Graces

12. Experiences at HI and interchanges (Antropology/ TJ/ Pancha Karma/) The Saving Graces

13. Meeting Scott and Moving to St. Croix- The Saving Graces/ Struggle

14. PLTTA and all my friend and community

15. Flower of Life Travels (Novia Scotia/ Montreal/etc)/ Mexico the first x Beyond Global Divine and World Peace Walkers- The Struggle/Saving Graces

16. Leaving to Mexico on Day of Dead/ ViviGuide Bootcamp and ITTO experience- The Struggle

17. Living in Zoocaloo and New Teaching experience what I learned from 4 yr olds- The Struggle

18. Death of Jamilah & Trip to Carribean (Jamaica, Dominica, etc.)- The Struggle

19. Decision to leave to PE/ Language school and host/ neighbors!/ Paul- The Saving Graces

20. Years in Puerto and teaching/ House sitting and my Heaven- Priya growth- The Saving Graces

21. Getting over fear/ Basketball/ going to Peru and the effects of my 40th   The Saving Graces?

22. Hurricane and revelations in July. (Lessons with Dogs, Time, Love, etc)- The Saving Graces/ The Ordeal

Chapter Summary:

How was it like going to a HBCU?

This chapter shows the culture shock I experienced, my coming of age as a leader and my first heartbreak

* Culture Shock in being seen as attractive

*Giving up my Art in the Name of Revolution (Betrayal of the elders)

Since I was on a b-ball scholarship, it was a constant conflict with my coach and my other involvments. But playing b-ball also gave me balance, while I had foritted/ gave up my art feeling it was more important to enlighten that to write poems (which I’m now glad I’ve come full circle with that) I wasn’t allowed to go too far off because i had to socialize with people not like me 7 days a week it gave me better coping skills

* Jock vs Scholar (Getting along with girls not like me, balance, school and community involvement)

* First experiences with Anger & Jealousy

* Alkebu-lan Sisters

* My Mentors

* Hearing from Spirit: Pluto transiting my 12h with a stellium of planets Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Vesta, Rising Sign as this relates to the heartbreak with Kenny (letters).

* Poem I wrote at 16- Brain dead, mislead, …*

*backdrop of the history of OC-Anahiem police, KKK, and never thought my place of growing up with foster so many tv shows, etc. it certainly wasn’t my experience. Mom didn’t know better by trying to make a place in suburbs. Later, I would see why when visiting LA and you told them you lived in OC they had that strange and sometimes fearful look. Of course, all of that has changed but…

Needless to say, my way of acting out the garat rebel blood running through my viens was pure rebellion. I was not easy before I became conscious I believed in being good at whatever I was involved in if it was stealing, pick pocketing, etc. then I did it well. But then I also had the pressure coming in from my guides and higher self. While I was able to do the do- steal, run my game, whatever, it was at night or the early morning when I was tortured the most for my actions! I remember sitting in bed making deals with God, saying “okay, just give me one more year to do xyz” and I remember crying knowing I no longer could hang with this friend or go to that party, without even knowing why. I just knew. I knew I was different, I knew I had a different life path that I could explain, but just knew it. My person was hard headed, but it was my mother’s actions that tipped the scales to G.O.D’s side. My mother didn’t know how to handle me, until she used reverse psychology. Where some children, one beating would be enough, I was one that you had to reach another way. Whenever my mom went to blows (which was very often) I always figured it was her just tripping. I didn’t get to see myself as the source of her stress and worry as single woman working two jobs to support 4 children etc.. My mom must have prayed for guidance in how to handle me and what she came up with was nothing short of genius (a miracle) for a child like me:

Scenario:

Well, let me go home and get this ass whipping.

Climbing in from the window, mom on the bed waiting for me, get up, not saying a word, next day, nothing. Cooking preparing our food, and then it finally hit me. I made total amends with myself.

Although I went to the other extreme of knowing of badness, I put all my energy of doing right (explain how I could relate to Malcolm X- pimp to priest). It took a considerable time for me to consider myself a good person for all the steal and etc. that I used to do. Whenever I tell people this story they never believe me. Miss Goodie Two Shoes, Little Debbie Cakes? No. Yet, I paid my dues my being the ideal student I had one teacher in junior high tell me “You will be a disgrace to BPHS” well wouldn’t you know I’d outdo them all?

Knowledge Found

* It must have been our garret blood, but even though lived in OC, there was a thirst for the truth, a search for identity. This knowledge came way from my older brothers one at a time.

Conscious Brothers

Before going to Cal State Long Beach where the founder of Kwanzaa Mulanga K taught. My brother had sent off about see about a nose job!

After that he was a militant always quoting this and that although everyone in the family would say he was crazy, I was a curious young girl with good deductive reasoning skills. Whatever it was, was in the books he was reading. That opened my head early!

Then my oldest brother (came to US from island senior year and ends up being valedictorian, school speech & went to UCI and was involved in xyz and he brought me to campus sometimes. That let me know it’s possible to go to school and to start organizations-

* Used to steal books from BP Library and walk around with a almanac quoting all the things Blacks invented. When I showed one teacher proof that Mozart was a mulatto with a teacher that was moor, he told me that is just like saying MLK is Italian.

International Black Writers Association

Instead of my mom dragging me everywhere I was the one dragging her everywhere: People like Guy from South CentralSteve Barnes and Octavia Butler, I was the resident child of the group, dragging my mom everywhere!

Vis IBWA found out about Ashra Kwesi as lecture and niavely I gave principle his bio and he came into my class to tell me he couldn’t speak because he went to Harvard and studied history and never heard anything like this.

Later, I would stay in contact with Ashra Kwesi and he predicted that I would do something great. But is wasn’t until college did I realize the depth of the lies told in school. that would come later…

Hoop Dreams

* coaches help to applying for nccu,

* praying for a black coach- prayers did go answered when other coach once said “stop playing that jungle bunny music” I knew it was time to go in prayer.

* He also turned out to be my alley in getting the Black Heritage Club approved and etc..

* issue between being a jock and athlete

Chapter 1 West Indian Roots

My mother is a garat rebel. For those not from the West Indies, that means she is from Antigua and a born rebel who is not afraid to fight for her rights. Her father was from Seaview Farm village and was rumored to have been a Garveyite. For those not familiar with Black Indigenous history, that means he was either a follower or supporter of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the charismatic leader of the largest Pan-African organization in history, the UNIA.

Ironically, my grandfather’s name was David King (King David) and my father, born on the island of Dominica, is named Solomon. I believe there are no mistakes in nature, so when my mother named me Deborah, it must have been written in the stars that I’d have a message to share, just like the prophetess Deborah of the bible.

My grandfather’s first child, my uncle Peter, was one of the first black doctors in Antigua, and it’s rumored that he was poisoned by jealous people with no purpose. (He taught black history, etccc)

Although my uncle was a great man and legend still exists around his life and times, he would have been an inhibiting factor in my mom’s life had she not had the insight and courage to break free like the rebel she truly is. As the last of 10 children and the only girl out of four to get a formal education, she was fortunate enough to attend the prestigeous Antigua Girls High School. This was no small feat because it cost a fortune at the time.

At 21 while working in her brother’s doctor’s office as a secretary, my mom Daisy had big dreams of going to the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica and becoming a registered nurse and being someone important, like her brother. She had already sent in her application and was excitedly waiting to hear back from UWI.  What she wasn’t prepared for was what happened next.

Some how, some way my mother came upon a series of correspondences between her brother Peter and UWI. In one correspondence, Peter had written the school saying that their father had recently died and that it would not be a good idea for her sister to attend the University. In another correspondence, the school had replied indicating they understood the situation and that perhaps she could attend at a later time.

After reading this, my mom’s eyes grew as large as watermelons and all she could see was red! She immediately wrote the school back informing them that she was planning to attend asap and she had no idea that her brother had initially written the school. Being the rebel that she is, she retold the story of how she went marching into her brother’s office and right in front of his good friend Lester Bird (who would one day become prime minister of Antigua) demanded that he cough up the money so she could attend the UWI and how dare he try to hold her back.

She loved to tell how after she graduated from UWI, she remembers calling her brother on one of those old fashioned rotary phones, and saying. “This is your sister Daisy and I’m just calling to let you know that I’ve made it!”

If anything could summarize my mother’s personality, resilence and well rebel personality, it would be that event. However, this whole event possibly shaped my mother’s personality more than she counted for. She was always the first to notice how the woman were always being held back and she decided early in life that she wasn’t having any of that. Since then, my mother had a chip on shoulder. As my Uncle James put it, “all you had to do was touch the helm of her garment and she would be ready to go off!” As with all things, everything has it’s pro’s and cons.

Pro’s: (Incorporate Pro’s and Con’s in one sentence or together)

If it wasn’t for her ambition and tenacity, I might not have had the opportunity to leave Antigua and provide the resources I was able to have access to.

If it wasn’t for this rebel personality which gave my mother the courage to leave my father traveling cross country in a car he didn’t even know she had bought, with 4 children and a sister to start a life for herself as a registered nurse say. “You are not going to have all the priviledges of a married man and live like a single man” If it wasn’t for doing the unheard of for a West Indian woman at her time, I might have grown up thinking I had to do anything ANYTHING in order to keep a man.

If it wasn’t for her never dating after she left my father and devoting all her time to getting an education two masters and providing and, I probably never would have had the opportunity to grown up thinking or seeing model that I didn’t need a  man to be happy and to value education like I did.

Yet if I Segway into my mother’s influence….

Three Important Influences of My Mom

My Mom was a Garat Rebel:

Although it was hard raising 3 boys and 1 girl on her own, she did the best she could, even if that meant working 2 jobs and us being latch-key children. (Do the laundry list of events- like the time she, and she, and she….)

She also grew up thinking she was a princess and that her father had his own business, school named after people that looked like her, didn’t know the effect growing up in the OC suburbs would have on my psyche

So when I got called nigger in school, we were told to xyz, and I grew up fighting. I remember their was a older girl bully and my mother would let my brothers come back into the house until she beat her down!

*Not Fitting in- dual culture (was actually a blessing)

While did this instill anger it’s better than being stuck solely in the stage of guilt for being black or denial of my blackness. I wasn’t liked and therefore, I wasn’t a oreo of which I’m thankful for.

Story of Mr. Severin and my mom teaching me balance with rebellion. My first black teacher who worked with my mom to tame me, would tell me years later, that I gave him hives. Yet the spirit of resistance was strong. It’s even what got me expelled from catholic school which I’m so thankful for now.- a list: bit the teachers hand, Mr. Severin would talk to me and picked me up and shaked me

My Mom was a Goal Setter

My best friend Shara remembers my list I wrote of what we’ll do for her visit. I never knew what an influence that would be

Helped me when I’d late co-create things like manifesting a black b-ball coach or a Black Heritage Club on my high school campus which I’ll get into in the next chapter

My Mom Had Three Life Changing Books

Explain mom loved to read & was a roscicur.

Destiny Cycles

Reincarnation Through the Signs

The Psychology of Winning

This is essentially the foundation of everything else that shaped me. A understanding of how cycles work and the importance of our mind in creating our reality. Well, that and my brothers influence growing up in OC