“I feel like I am a treasure chest full of jewels. God is opening it up and taking the jewels out and each one of the little jewels is a part of my personality.”
The following interview is from the empowering book “Your Sparkle Is Inside of You.”, a book that I created while recreating myself from scratch…
UYL: What does it mean to you to have an inner glow? For you, what does that look like?
S: It’s a self assurance that everything is going to be okay. I feel like I am a treasure chest full of jewels. God is opening it up and taking the jewels out and each one of the little jewels is a part of my personality.
UYL: I love that, it’s beautiful!
S: Diamonds are so beautiful, but they are used in so many different ways. Diamonds are precious, but they are also used to cut, they are put on the ends of blades to cut concrete. I think there is that connection with God and my heart and my soul that there is something strong in here (she taps her chest) and I’m going to keep moving forward. Sometimes I get glimpses of it, that I am going on the right path.
UYL: It’s like glimpses deeper into your treasure chest right?
S: Yes. Sometimes I’ll have dreams or sometimes I’ll have visions. I’ll be driving and I’ll see myself and I’ll be like, “what?” Or I’ll be cleaning the dishes and I feel like God pulls me out and brings me to some place and I’ll look around and it’s like I can see me, and I can see me there but I’m here looking. I don’t know how to explain it but that’s happened this year. So my glow, my sparkle, I’m not sure how to answer that, I have to process that.
UYL: I feel like as women we are sometimes better at seeing the glow in other people than ourselves. But you and I are together because you were glowing.
S: Really?
UYL: Yes! I saw a glow in your face, that’s why I asked you! You got a glow, all the women in this book, this is why they are here. Because they glow.
S: I think that it’s really surrendering to what He has for me.
UYL: Surrendering to your glow.
S: Yes, surrendering to what God has for me and learning to love myself- that’s where my glow is coming from. I am a person. I am so busy helping other people and looking to help other people because my heart hurts when people are hurt. And I want to help rescue them and make them feel better but I need to take time and take care of myself.
UYL: I love that, I love that. How do you take the time to take care of yourself?
S: I’m learning right now. Right now it is exercising, eating right, looking at my positives, what I’m good at. And if I see something bad I say, “Okay, how can I change that? How can I see that differently? How can you make an impact?” If I have a bad attitude how can I help myself or help other people with that bad attitude? I didn’t. I self-reflect, I analyze myself and reflect what I should do the next time. I see how the heaviness caused that reaction or action from other people and see how it made everybody worse. And then I say, “Okay let’s subtract this from that. And let’s add this so that I can change that atmosphere.” The atmosphere not only helps me grow but also the person that I’m involved with grow as well. The atmosphere that I am involved with and how I allow it to be set up is very important.
UYL: That completely makes sense. I believe that as women we have wings. Has there ever been a moment where you lost your wings and how did you find your wings again? Sometimes it could be a moment where you could classify it as “losing your wings,” but really you are just slipping into a different pair – have you ever felt like you have had one of those moments?
S: I have had so many. I think the very first time that I threw my value and my worth out the window was when I got molested. I was trying to save my virginity for marriage and after that I felt that it didn’t matter. I started listening to the lies that my body wasn’t important and those lies tried to bury me in the ground so that I would be irrelevant. And I ended up making bad decisions, sleeping around and being promiscuous.
I was using sex to self medicate, to make myself feel better and to make myself feel loved. That lead to even darker decisions. Bad decisions that could have really given me a bad consequence in life. I went into a deep spiral and became an escort. Eventually the deep spiral landed me at a fork in the road, do you choose life or do you choose death?
UYL: What did that moment, that fork in the road look like?
S: I was in the grocery store in Brooklyn off of Handcock and Fulton. And I remember, “This is your life. What do you want? Your decisions, what you are doing now, are leading to death. But it’s your choice. Or do you want life?
Do you feel like there is more to life? Because right now you are really low, this can’t be it. There’s got to be more. Do you want more?” I said, “Yes, I choose life.” This conversation just came to me, I was with my friend in Brooklyn and we were walking across the street and this is the conversation that was in my mind and in my heart.
UYL: Wow. So I feel like this act that you did for yourself was really self love in the purest of forms.
S: Well I also knew that my life was coming to an end if I didn’t choose appropriately. I heard that there was a fork in the road for me and that I could either choose life, or I could choose death. and we were walking across the street and this is the conversation that was in my mind and in my heart.
UYL: Wow. So I feel like this act that you did for yourself was really self love in the purest of forms.
S: Well I also knew that my life was coming to an end if I didn’t choose appropriately. I heard that there was a fork in the road for me and that I could either choose life, or I could choose death.
UYL: That is amazing. How did you see the love in yourself to choose life? What would you tell someone else who at in this moment in time are reading your story and are at that fork in their life?
S: I saw myself somewhere else, doing something different. I felt that at that time I was just existing but I wasn’t living life. I was just breathing the air to exist and I knew that there was more.
I knew that there was a treasure box in me that needed to open and when it opened the treasure would pour out. There’s more. This isn’t it.
That was the thought that was coming to me, “this isn’t your life.” This is only a phase. This is a pit stop, you are not stuck here. You are going to get back on the bus and you are going to move forward, not stop at a bus stop and this is it. You have to get back on the bus and move forward. I just knew that there was more to life.
I used to have a lot of conversations with God when I was little and those conversations would surface and come back up again and would help minister to me. Does it sound weird that I talk about God? Because He’s my sanity.
I’ve had therapists tell me, “I’m surprised that you’re not on cocaine, I’m surprised that your not dead. What is your vice? What are you hooked on?” I ask them why is that I have to be hooked on something, and they told me that it’s because most people do not come out of my lifestyle and come out on top. And I tell them that Jesus is my pill. He’s life. When I was little I used to read a lot of scripture, I don’t know why? I think I was trying to become a priest but I am a woman! (She laughs).
UYL: Well Deborah was a judge in Israel.
S: Yes. I’m not sure how I got into the Bible. I suffered a lot of abuse as a child and I wanted to kill myself. At four years old I put a belt around my neck and I tried to strangle myself. I know how it is to try and strangle yourself. It’s really painful and your head starts hurting really, really bad.
And in those moments God would stop me and have conversations with me. I was four! He would stop me and say, “Let’s talk.” And I thank God for those conversations as a child because they kept me alive. He would talk to me about things in the future. I had nobody. I felt isolated and alienated.
My mom would verbally abuse me. She didn’t know. She didn’t know how words could be so harsh on a young child and I forgive her because I have to take into consideration that she was raised by maids. There is no family connection to a maid, so I’m thinking that there was a disconnect there. And since there was a disconnect there, that’s all she knew.
She didn’t mean too but I internalized her words and wanted to kill myself. I think that’s why I have such a strong relationship to God because I was so close to dying so many times. Who at four years old tries to purposely kill themselves and put a belt around themselves?
UYL: Wow, your purpose must be so darn big. For this sea of diamonds to rush in, your treasure chest must be huge! That’s for sure. That’s a guarantee!
S: I know I have a heart for people that are in pain, and to help them. I notice this because people tell me that I am very empathetic, compassionate, and forgiving.
UYL: Yes you are. What is your advice to someone for forgiving themselves? How do you allow yourself love for yourself love to become your self glow?
S: You try not to be hard on yourself. You have to slow down and you have to think: “Am I ruminating right now right now about my past? Are these positive?” You have to realize that you have self talk and you have to put good in.
I’ve always put in the positives of God, and the reason is because He went through all dimensions and went through death and came back and rose up. We as humans can’t conquer that realm. We can’t just “die and come back”, it doesn’t happen. Because He physically transcended himself I know that He can destroy anything bad that has ever happened in my life and make it all new again.
Kind of like a phoenix. We rise up from our pain and glow, we rise up and fly. Fly through the pain and the old self dying. Was I verbally abused as a child? Yes I was. Did I recognize it? Yes.
My friends would tell me that I needed help so what did I do? I turned to something deeper than me that would fix me. I can’t mentally or physically fix me.
Other human words can minister to me, but what or who is more powerful? What or who can go into my soul and penetrate my soul? Who can? And that’s why I always go to the word of God. Because that soul is connected to your mind, your emotion, and your intellect and your will.
So I want my mind and my emotion to be at peace. Well whose at peace? I want my mind and my soul and my emotion to be free and calm and have happiness and joy and have patience in dealing with other people.
Well who can give me that? Who has already been that way that can transform me. Who? Who has that power and ability? So those things would always reminiscent in my soul and that’s why I always went to the word.
UYL: There’s this quote…I’m not sure I’m going to get it right…but..it’s by Olympia LePoint and it’s something about when she is in fear she asks for the mind of God because when you ask for the mind of God your asking for a space, an energy, a power that extends through the Universe, light, and time and that is the most powerful source that there is.
S: Yes. Because He is alive and he is active.
UYL: Are there any last words that you want women to know about their treasure chest?
S: That it’s there and to uncover it. You are somebody. Allow God to love on you. Allow yourself to heal. You don’t need other men. For me it was men. You don’t need other men to make you feel better.
You don’t have to exchange your virtue for love. It seems like love, but it’s not. It’s only five minutes of pleasure. You think it’s love but it’s not, it’s not exchanging love but it is exchanging your virtue and you don’t need to throw your virtue away.
There is someone out there that is knocking at the door of your heart that has so much love for you. To renew you, to re-grow you, to strengthen you and to show you that there is another way.
UYL: This is more of a personal question for me, but what is love?
S: Love is patience and kindness. So you have to be patient with yourself, with the mistakes that you feel that you are at fault with and be patient with other people.
You have to forgive them because they’re blind, they don’t know. I have to forgive my mom, she didn’t know and she did the best that she could. I have to forgive my mom but I have to forgive her for me, because if I don’t then I’m holding onto extra baggage which will then inflict my soul and my emotions and it will just make me mucky. And when I’m mucky I’m angry and aggravated and I don’t want to carry that in my soul!
UYL: Right! That’s not going to be on our treasure chest.
S: Right! Patience and kindness to yourself. You have to question yourself. “Why are you not kind to yourself. Where did it start?”
Sometimes it could have started as a parent telling you unkind words and you can find yourself playing that reel over and over again. You have to tell yourself, “Stop! That’s not the truth.
The truth about me is that I am beautifully and wonderfully and fearfully made. The truth is what was last shall be first. The truth is that I am above and not beneath. The truth is that our latter days will be better than our earlier days. The truth is the promises.”
I’m in the process of learning self love right now. To not be in denial of who you are. To not shove your pain away and to be like, stop, slow down – yes you went through it. You’re not a victim anymore.
You are here to help people and someone else is going to need you, and only you can understand them because you have experienced it. You have empathy, you have an understanding to come out of that darkness because you are getting pulled out right now.
I would tell someone patience, kindness, listening to your conciseness, and that still small voice as well. Question yourself, is this a righteous feeling? Is this a truthful feeling? Okay, I feel this way but is it really for me or am I listening to someone else’s thoughts and taking them on as mine? Are they wanting me to go down a yellow brick road when God’s like, “No! No! No! I’m over here dude!”
S and I both laugh.
UYL: If you are your own treasure chest, what is the treasure?
S: What God put inside of me.
UYL: Yaaaaass!
