Journey to Empowerment Read Online Free Page B

weekend was the beginning of my journey to self-love. From that special day forward, whenever self-hatred rears its ugly head, I promptly remind myself, “I’m a queen.” With that affirmation, I hold my head up and face the world as the beautiful black queen that I know I am.
    Life is not an intellectual experience.
    â€”Robin Johnson
    I am limitless power;
    My old perception of
    Restrictions or boundaries
    Are only illusions.
    â€”Ona Brown

Mama Was a Magician
    B Y E DNA O LIVE
    M y mama was a magician. Yes, that had to be it. In my unsophisticated, barely educated and yet-to-be cluttered seven-year-old brain, there was no other logical explanation. It was 1967. And, it was the year I discovered I had a magician for a mother.
    It’s been said that God works in mysterious ways. On that day, I discovered there was something different and special about my mama. This time, God was working through a chest cold. On the wondrous morning that changed my life forever, I woke up and realized I didn’t feel well. So in my most sickly and pitiful voice, I told Mama I had a cold and that I couldn’t possibly go to school.
    I’m the youngest in my family and I always believed this position should’ve come with certain privileges that my older sister didn’t have, such as being catered to when I was sick. But this particular privilege didn’t seem to be in effect today. Instead of my mama saying, “Okay, little one, you can stay home,” my hopes for staying under the covers dissolved when I heard the words, “Well, I can’t stay home, your daddy can’t stay home and your sister can’t stay home, so you’ll just have to go to work with me.”
    â€œGo to work with you?” I thought. “Didn’t you hear me? The baby girl is sick! I need to stay home!”
    But I knew Mama and nothing could change her mind. It never did. So in resentful silence, peppered with the occasional mumble under my breath about how unreasonable my mama was being, I dragged myself through my morning routine. I washed up as I had been taught to, put on my clothes, made my bed, gave my teeth the usual quick brushing, snatched a few tissues out of the box for the trip in the car and headed to work with a magician who happened to have me as a daughter.
    As we pulled into the parking lot, my thoughts were filled with the boredom awaiting me on the second floor in the room belonging to my mama. I coughed my way into the office where Mama signed in every morning. I sighed my way up the stairs to Room 205, the place where I never suspected Mama worked her magic every day. I sniff led myself across the floor and plopped into the chair that matched the desk where, I soon discovered, Mama hid all kinds of secret magician things. And, in her typical fashion, Mama gave me a pencil, some paper and a book and told me to read and write something to keep myself busy and, most importantly, quiet. So I dragged the pencil, the paper and the book across the desk and began to quietly busy myself.
    Early in the day I was so involved in entertaining myself and making sure I coughed at the right intervals, I didn’t notice the magic. Kids came into the room and they seemed so much bigger and older than me. Some of them noticed me sitting at my mama’s desk and asked who I was. Mama told them I was her baby girl and that I was sick today but assured them they were going to do their work as usual. Some of them smiled at me and said “Hi,” and I sneered back. After all, I was sick. Some of them were loud and engrossed in their adolescent whirlwinds. These kids didn’t speak to me at all, but I sneered at them, too. Mostly, I just sat at the desk quiet and bored, with a drippy nose, reading and writing words neatly with my No. 2 pencil on the white paper with blue lines.
    Swinging my legs back and forth from Mama’s wooden chair with the wheels, I wished I were home under the covers. I