Strength of Silk (eBook)

Living a Life of Grace & Gratitude

Lakysha Laing (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
146 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-1903-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Can you imagine your twin sister was killed before you got a chance to know her, you struggled to feel like you belong because of the circumstances of being placed in foster care? What about going through life just trying to survive and your life got turned upside down due to breast cancer, only to be at a place in your life that you are grateful to just be alive? Lakysha gives you a glimpse into her life, what she was thinking and how she was able to be at a place of grace & gratitude with the life God has blessed her with.

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Are you allowing the experiences of your childhood trauma hold you hostage to living a life free of that trauma as an adult? Have life's circumstances have you questioning your purpose? Have you ever questioned why God would allow you to go through the things you are going through? Have you ever wondered how someone going through unbelievable & unimaginable experiences can display an armor of faith and perseverance? These questions are the same questions Lakysha had to ask herself over and over as her life unfolded before her eyes. When presented with many life-changing experiences, she tells her story of triumphs and strong faith. Lakysha will share with you a glimpse into a life that almost wasn't, a life that started with tragedy, that progressed to a life of intentionality, and continues with a life of ups & downs, yet she remained positive, faithful, and grateful for a life where she continuously gives herself the grace to continue. If you are looking for a book that shares a story of someone who didn't let how her life started dictate how her life turned out, this is the book for you.

Textauszug

My Early Years as an Adopted Child

My name at birth is Lakysha Moore. That is the name I was born with, but it is not the name that I would keep.

After the death of my twin sister, my brother and I were placed in foster care.  Fortunately for us, my brother and I were able to stay together because of the traumatic events with the death of my twin; they did not want to separate us. We did not know what happened to my older sister left in Queens that day; it was as if she disappeared forever.  The only recollection that I have was a visit from my mother when I was 6 years old.  She was dressed in blue jeans, a white V-neck blouse, and black slide-on shoes. Her toenails were painted with red chipped nail polish, and she struggled to make eye contact with me. There was someone with her, and I would later find out that it was a representative from the Foster Care agency, who was responsible for making sure the visit took place. She doted on my brother but couldn’t bring herself to look at me for longer than a few seconds. Guilt, I imagine.  On this day, I remembered it like it was yesterday. She looked at me that final time and said, “You are so beautiful; you look just like your sister, and I am so sorry.” With that, she turned around, walked out the door, and that was the last time I saw her, and that was in 1979. 

It was at that moment that I believe I began holding on to every memory I had. Some good memories and some not so good, but I would remember them all. I suppressed a lot of these memories over the years, but they are there waiting to come to the surface. This book only touches on a few.

In the early ’80s growing up in Brooklyn, NY, in “Bed Stuy – Do or Die”, you learned very quickly to fend for yourself and figure it out.  As a New “Yawker”…lol…people from other places always told me that’s how I sounded when I pronounced New York…and as a foster child to parents that were in their 60’s, you also had to fight a lot.  I love New York and was proud to rep my block. Washington Ave was the block to be on, and 500 was the building to be at. So many children lived in the building; there was always a yearning to go outside and play.  It was never a dull moment at 500. My parents had 4 children of their own. They were grown adults living in the same building or not that far away.  My parents were foster parents to many children in their lifetime and by the time my brother and I came to live with them, there were already 3 other boy children in the home.  I was the only girl in a household with 4 boys and a family of 12.  I didn’t have a sister that was my age, so I relied on the friendships I built at school or the building I lived in. 

Outside of the home, I got teased a lot. I had a lazy eye from the age of 3-6 years old.  My left eye wandered, and it was hard to tell if I was looking you in the eye or not.  Until my operation, I would often be asked, “are you looking at me” or “look this way, oh that’s right, you can’t” or “look at this, oh never mind, you wouldn’t be able to look straight anyway”.  After the operation, I had to wear a patch, so I was called a pirate, a one-eyed fool, or a host of other names designed to bring me down. 

My hair remained in cornrows throughout my childhood; 3 down the right side and 3 down the left side.  As a matter of fact, I carry a photo in my wallet of the only picture I have at the age of 5 with this very style, wherever I go.  It is a picture of me in a Christmas-colored red turtleneck with 3 cornrows down the right and left sides of my head. See below. I keep it in my wallet as a reminder of who I was then and who I am now. I am still the kindhearted little girl with a smile on my face who loves to take pictures.  I don’t have a lot of pictures of my childhood, so the ones that I find or are given to me I keep. I only have 2 pictures of myself during my childhood: one at 5 years old and one at 13 years old. I never show the photo at 13 years old because it is a painful reminder of the bullying I experienced. The picture is with me in glasses, very tightly curled hair, and a not-so-flattering pose that I was often teased about. I go to this picture when I want to remind myself that I am beautiful and that the ugly duckling that I was as an early teen was just a glimpse into the beautiful princess that I am today. 

I believe that the main reason I am known as the “selfie queen” is that I am always taking photos. Subconsciously, I believe this is because I couldn’t capture moments of my childhood; we couldn’t afford a camera. Additionally, I am very confident in my skin, which took years of self-affirmations, fights, and conscious choices of what I wear. As an adult, I am afraid of missing every moment and not being able to reflect on the memories, so I want to make sure that I capture every moment of my adulthood.

We didn’t have much, but we also didn’t want anything like food or shelter. It might not have been the food I wanted to eat, or the room wasn’t decorated as my friends had in their homes, but it wasn’t bad. It certainly was better than the alternative of being homeless. We lived in a 6 storey, low-income housing apartment building that went through as many landlords as they did tenants. 500 Washington Ave was home. We had roaches, and NY City rats the size of cats, but they were ours and we knew what to expect and how to handle them. The summer months consisted of Italian Ices, cooling off in the summer using the fire hydrant in front of the building, water balloon fights, double-dutch, hopscotch, hide-and-go-seek, tag, and racing each other from the front of the building to the corner and back. We took the train that reeked off urine smells and homeless people, we took the bus where most times the only seat left was by the back door where you got bumped on the arm as people exited, and most days you just walked because it was fun to do, or you didn’t have train or bus fare.

We didn’t have social media or cell phones, so we relied on knocking on someone’s door in the building to talk at the door, sitting on the steps of the floor we lived on to play jacks or talk about a fight we saw at school. We had telephone service in the house with one phone that I had to fight over, and God forbid I was waiting for a call, and my mom was on it. My friends would hear that busy signal until she was good and ready to get off.  By the time she got off, it was time for bed, so I had to wait until the next day to see my friends at school.  

The neighbors looked out for each other and disciplined the children of the building when they got out of line, were disrespectful, or did something they had no business doing.  Parents didn’t blink an eye or make calls to the police or Social Services when this happened because it was a part of what happened, and no one questioned it.  My best friend lived on the 1st floor, and I lived on the 6th floor. When I could go outside, I would make a beeline to her house, and we would do everything together. We would go to the park and get on the swings, walk the neighborhood, or just sit in front of the building on the stoop laughing and having a good time being together.  She had a big family, so there was always something going on. It was fun to be around other girls and I never wanted to go home.

I remember on a hot Saturday in the summer, I was about 8 years old, and my friends and I wanted to play hopscotch after jumping double dutch for a few hours.  Usually, we would make the hopscotch area using white chalk, but today I wanted to use pink chalk that I had taken from the chalkboard at school. I’ve always like bright pretty colors, and when the chalk caught my eye at school, I had to have it so that I could paint the sidewalk. At the end of class, I casually walked past the chalkboard, swiped the pink chalkboard into my hand, and casually walked out. The teacher was none the wiser nor did I believe she would notice.  I didn’t see it as stealing because she had about 10 other pink pieces of chalk and I made sure to take the one that was almost used up.

We had a nosey neighbor who always told us, parents, when we did something we weren’t supposed to as he watched us from the crate he sat on under the tree across the street. I pulled out the piece of pink chalk and he yelled out, “don’t you write on that sidewalk with that chalk”. Under my breath, I said, “shut up and mind your business”, while I looked at him from across the street and rolled my eyes. I dare not say what I was thinking out loud because the consequences would be far worse. I proceeded to sketch out our hopscotch grid and once it was done, my friends and I looked down at it in awe.  The color was bouncing off the concrete and it was such a girly color. We played hopscotch for what felt like hours, but as the day was winding down and we were just about ready to stop our fun for the day, I felt the sting of a switch on my legs. When I looked up, it was a neighbor from the building, who everyone looked to as a mother figure because she welcomes you in her home with no questions. She yelled at me for not listening to the nosey neighbor. He told her that he knows I said something fresh under my breath, even though he didn’t hear it. I ended up with a welt on my left leg that stung for a few days. I ran upstairs and told my mom what happened.  She didn’t defend me and all I got back was, “serve you right, you should have listened.”  I got a beating for being “fresh” and not respecting my elders. Talking back was not tolerated, and not listening to what you are...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.11.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-1903-8 / 1667819038
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-1903-7 / 9781667819037