Youth and coming of age in the latter half of the twentieth century offered countless challenges, exposures, and opportunities. For an African American female born and living in the South, challenges, exposures, and opportunities had a decidedly different perspective than the realities of White contemporaries. Understanding quite early that the playing field was far from level, finding ways to discover one's gifts and abilities, to have ones worth validated became a lifelong quest. And to learn that the validation of ones worth when personally discovered is a liberating reality.
Meeting a litany of hurdles, some self-imposed and a great many incited by the indelible elements of the times, finding ways to circumvent and overcome challenges were integral necessities. Learning to see, absorb, and advance beyond obstacles became lifelong strategies, while finding strength and even joy in the ultimate process.
My Amazing Journey: A Celebration of Seasons and Travelers Along the Way captures the impact that everyday individuals make helping to weave the tapestry of a single life. Gratefully, all along the way were balcony people making seismic contributions, often persons with no point of reference or hope for what could actually be attained. These contributors to activities and experiences that in themselves seemed inconsequential shaped a life to not just survive, but to thrive against the ceaseless barrage of insurmountable odds. In spite of the ever-present realities of injustice, inequity, and racism, hope burst through in unsuspecting ways again and again, daring failure to win.
