This is the day that broke my family, and nothing has been the same since. The day my little brother, Dakota, passed away. I remember it as if it was yesterday. It was 10:30 pm, and I was dropping my dad’s car off at his

We had not long celebrated Mel’s 30th birthday. No one would expect the news we were about to receive. Mel had a lump on her breast that she found when she was 20 years old. She went to 6 different GPs who told her she

Resilience of A Brave Sailor  As Ghanaians, there is this expectation to have hard skin against emotional, psychological, and mental challenges, especially after dwelling in the midst of daily hardship and surviving.  So, in an attempt to protect this resilience that we are expected to

I grew up with a physically abusive alcoholic father. This caused me a lot of anger and confusion about how to process my emotions. In 2000, my father died, and I thought I was free; boy, was I wrong. I started using alcohol as a

I spent twenty-five years in a highly physically, spiritually, sexually, emotionally, and verbally abusive religious cult. The abuse started at age nine. Dec 27, 2004, will always be a date in my life that represents courage, hope, strength, and resilience. That day is forever memorialized

I was pregnant with my last child (son). I was at risk of losing him. I had high blood pressure, I had placenta Pre-via, and I was overweight. I was at work doing inventory. And we were about to get robbed. My son’s father was

The diary of a stupid new girl. It was my sixth elementary school in five years in three different Southern California towns by the age of 9. I’m not sure how I wound up in this one, but I knew I felt differently about it,

I remember the first day of school like it was yesterday.  I was only five years old, but my birthday was in December, so I was one of the youngest in my class. Our house was just a ten-block walk from the school, but it

After losing my mother to breast cancer when I was 20, I grew up expecting to get cancer eventually. It did finally happen, but not in the way I anticipated. I learned resilience from an early age. My parents were teachers; my grandparents were Holocaust

As far back as I can remember, being a mother was always my heart’s deepest desire. I may not have realized it then, but from an early age, I started making big life decisions based on the unquestioned belief that I would someday have a