​My life is a project that continues to evolve. I can’t quite say that I am a finished product, but I can say that I’ve been in production mode for quite some time. I’m far from being in a sustained mode or having things all figured out, but the deliverance of each milestone makes me even stronger for the one that comes next.
 
In my blog titled, Life In Its Rawest Form, I gave the definition of #raw – “These experiences were raw in the fact that they were in the barest, most explicit form. Nothing was there to sugar coat them or protect me from the brutal reality or its true ugliness.”
 
As a young girl, I felt compelled to write about events taking place in my life. I didn’t understand why these things were happening to me. I had no one to confide in, so writing them down became a form of therapy, as I attempted to make sense of what was happening to me and around me. Even though these events were raw and uncut, writing helped me to see a way out. By writing things down, I was seeing things in a different light. I was able to reflect more on things that had occurred, and create a plan for a better outcome. As I reflected, I understood better that I was not immoral due to the impure events that were taking place.
 
As I grew older, I had a choice on whether I would continue to perpetuate those raw and uncut experiences or put an end to them and create well defined, purposeful ones; I chose the latter.  Although I’m no finished product, I’m not in the same place as when I started.
 
What happens to you does not define you!
 
Flip your RAW circumstances and you will win the WAR!

I titled this book Life in Its Rawest Form because that’s the life I was dealt. Raw, uncut, unpolished, and peeled to the core. I don’t claim this was either good or bad, but how I played my cards is, perhaps, the more important story.
Nothing came easy and everything was a struggle…
 
I used to think the saying, “Everything happens for a reason,” was just a cliché and had no substance. I no longer think this way. I believe the saying now, because I’ve learned that life has its own agenda and that people aren’t given the option to choose whether to be a part of it or not. My agenda of endless turmoil spanned 35-plus years before I learned this important fact. Although my agenda was no different from others’, but, somehow, it made me different from others I knew.
 
I’ve stated in past blogs that there are millions of people who faced similar oppression and adversity as I did growing up. What makes me different from some of those people is that I chose to use my experiences as lessons.
 
Poverty is one of the main root causes for the oppression and adversity I experienced in my upbringing. It lead to many poor choices made by my parents and most people in the community in which we lived. Poverty influenced a lot of unhealthy behavior that my siblings and I were a direct impact of. Even though their impoverished thinking and behavior inflicted so much pain, struggle, and harm upon us, I had to numb myself to these circumstances and use them as a way out – out of this vicious cycle that keeps getting passed down from generation to generation.
 
My #Life story consists of an agenda with a purpose. I share the brutal reality of what life was for me as a child, youth, and young adult so that I can be the narrator of how my story ends.
 
What can you do today to change your narrative? Life will continue to come at you. Learn to face it head on and make the most of it!