This book and all life tragedies have all played a part in someone else life displayed by Wanda herself -as a young child to an adult. I was stuck in old behaviors I did not know exist within, not knowing how to rid them rather reflecting on what I have known to be a lie about myself. All my obstacles were my life. I am smarter than my actions. Born a writer, writer of bad things, writer of the forge and writer of my life.

Échantillon de lecture

Prologue

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

-Benjamin Spock

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

-Bernard Baruch

Instead, God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing what the world considers important.

-1 Corinthians 1:27-28

I am getting older, and life is getting shorter. I do not have too much time to live, so, I want the remainder to be my best-with intention and without regrets. I want my children and grandchildren to see me as a real person, not just a mother and grandmother. For safekeeping, I want to leave them with my thoughts, memories, fears, dreams, the history of who I am, and who my people are. But most of all, I want to pass what I have learned on to my children and grandchildren.

What matters most is speaking up, being generous, and inhabiting this life creating a new one. I want to explore what living really means. I hope to leave my loved ones with an instruction manual to guide them as they live their lives without me. This manual is not about where to buy groceries. Throughout this work, I will imitate how to treat people and themselves, how to love, what to stand up for, and what to care about. Time only seems to matter when it is running out. I always desired for my children to have the best, I just did not know it required more than giving material gifts.

My hustling cost me dearly. I did not have a clue that trying to be like my father and imitating people who have the best of both worlds. My father who I love dearly I tried hard to be like him in so many ways. As a young girl my father use to give me expensive jewelry, clothes, money and all that made me feel good. I realize most boys would like to be like their fathers, yet I was a little girl. I did not feel safe growing up as a little girl. I did not know my dad was committing crimes to care for his family. In all that we do for our children invest in their education ability and charisma. Sometimes I believe I was destined to have my life torn apart because it seemed like everything, I tried to do I end up failing at it. I desperately wanted people to recognize me. However, I did not know that recognition only comes from God. Instead, I of spending my youth as the person God wanted me to be I sat behind bars. I gained some wealth but lost something more precious in the process. I was not there for my children. I gave them much parenting as I could through visits, mail, phone calls and furloughs none of those could ever be enough. I see what I saw when my dad was out or in prison. We shared the same things in common. Little girls do not phantom anything at the age of five and six years old to determine anything of this nature. I know I was a inquisitee who always ask a lot of questions. They had better make sense to me as a child or else it would be hard for me to understand it if it looked a different way to me and more questions followed. This is how kids are especially smart kids. They always have questions for you. The more I perpetuated the consequences of my actions the more they haunted me. I created schemes and I was paid yet I paid with my life.

Whenever I used someone, I earned money and that was not good, nothing good comes from using anyone. My greatest fear was that I would fail my children. I believed hustling would keep my family comfortable. I was going in the wrong direction. I am now a survivor committed to change. My story permeates my past lifestyle.

To read without reflecting is like