I grew up in the Caribbean as the middle child to a single mother of seven children. I grew up in church and was also active in church activities including a member of the church choir; even participating in singing competitions around the island.

I write this narrative in a fictional format and elements of the events and experiences are based on my recollection. My recollections come from my reflections and notes I have compiled throughout the experiences. My experience in this narrative mirrors the perspectives and experiences of others in the story. I have changed the names of the characters in this story to protect the health and safety of all involved.

I was born on the majestic Caribbean island of Dominica on a beautiful summer day. I was born a sunshine baby. The moon was waxing crescent, and the sun was the brightest in the heavens at the time of my birth. My mother said it was a bright white yellow sun that day. It was not very hot she said, but it was bright. She said I was born with a full head of very thick and tight jet-black curly hair that would glisten in the sun after she polished it with homemade castor oil. I remember other villagers would take notice and volunteer to take me to their house where they would braid my hair before taking me back home. It seems like I spent weekends with a lot of people in the village, not because my mother needed a babysitter, but rather a lot of people wanted would ask my mother to take me and she would without hesitation.

My mother didn’t seem to put up a lot of resistance to sending me because I don’t believe she felt I would be in danger. After all my village was a small community where we all knew of each other. She may have also exhibited some level of naivety that people had good intentions. My mother was a very trusting woman until she no longer could trust them. I followed that same pattern of thinking throughout my life. The danger is the amount of time it would take to identify the darkness to disband from it.

During the course of my development I rarely heard the word “spiritual or spirituality” uses on a consistent basis in my home or community. However, I have heard the word spirt used to refer to two different things, the holy spirit and evil spirits. Theoretically I understand the difference, in practice, I lacked understanding. Those ignorance to the realm of spirit as a parallel universe remained present in my life all into my 50s.

My ignorance to the existence of spirit as a parallel universe was also the cause of many of my trials and tribulations throughout my life. I remember watching my mother struggle with taking care of us. It was hard. I spent the early stages of my life from the age of three to the age of seven with my grandmother in the capital city of Roseau. My grandmother was my mother’s mother and had other children after my mother including those she had while she was in Rosea. I also lived with them in the home with my grandmother. My academic experience started while I was in Roseau at the Saint Martin primary school.

In the summer of 1979, I visited my mother and other siblings like I did every summer. Hurricane David hit Dominica that summer. I never went back to Roseau. While I was in Roseau, I remember life was good for my mom, she was working at the banana plant and was doing well. I remember my mother baked me a cake and give me my favorite soft drink for my birthday. She would also bake lots of pastries, cakes and other delicacies during Christmas for us every year. It continued when she could throughout my childhood.

My mother struggled to find work and so she struggled to take care of us. There were times when I was much younger and started school in Marigot, my mother would buy one book and cut it in half and share it with myself and a sibling. She did it with the other siblings as well. There were days I went to school without food and without shoes on my feet. There were days I was fed by the community or go without if I could not find something on my own. I saw my mother weep in feelings of helplessness about her children’s well-being. I saw and felt love from my mother I will cherish for the rest of my life. She was not perfect, but because I witnessed some of her struggles and her love.

As I panorama over my childhood and what I witnessed growing up with my mother I can see a series of events, even the ones that involved that now gives me a different meaning. As a reiteration to what I mentioned earlier, throughout the course of my life, the terms spirits, spirituality, spiritual attack, spiritual abuse or spiritual warfare was not a part of my home culture. Thus, my mother dated a man who had a laxed relationship with the Rastafarian movement and mentioned the word spiritual sporadically. Even then I did not make the connection to the word that I do today.

Today I understand now some of the circumstances which plagued my mother towards the end of her life. Her struggle to fine work after the loss of her job after the hurricane. Her challenges with finding true love from a partner. Her inability to escape the poverty mindset which plagued her life even after migrating the US. I watched my mother encounter loss, after, loss, after loss. Whether it was with blessings and opportunities afforded to her children to her own losses.

Since her death I tried reconnecting with God, by reading the bible and praying more. This initiative came when I was at the darkest stages of my grief, I looked for my mother for answers as to how to cope and remember something she would say to me repeatedly; pray. This one word I took for granted when she was alive because I would always respond that God was not real. Over the course of my life, the experiences I have had, the things I have learned, and the new knowledge that came as a result of my expanded intellectual toolkit allowed me to see the world around me in more colors as opposed to the black and white (sometimes gray) lens I had been indoctrinated to see through.

I downloaded the bible app which allowed me to listen to the bible as opposed to reading it. I enjoy this app because it also allows me to highlight and light the verses that I felt were important to me. I listened to the entire bible except for the book of Revelations because I wasn’t in the state of mind to receive the information’s the chapter reveals. As I continued to seek enlightenment, I was recommended two books to read: Kingdom, Spiritual Laws and Principles, by Frequency Revelators, and The Deliverance from Demonic Covenants and Curses By Rev. James Solomon. Those two books in addition to the bible were the beginning of the change that helped to catapult me to where I am today.

As I read the Kingdom, Spiritual Laws and Principles I found myself reflecting on the challenges I witnessed my mother having and the ones that plagues my life and saw the similarities it shook me. Then after it was after reading The Deliverance from Demonic Covenants and Curses, I understood the true meaning of generational curses. Not only because I read it, but because I realized, I was living through it. In the Kingdom, Spiritual Laws and Principles, the writer listed the 7 principles of God. Though I connected with all seven, the ones that I resonated with the most were mentalism, Cause and Effect and Polarity. Those three principals were important when I understood the parts of Cause and Effect that create blockages and limitations in another person’s life.

I now understand that my life can be manifested in only two ways; one I manifest for myself based on the things I dream about or focus on and the actions I take in life. On the other hand, if I am not spiritually aware, a different life experience can be manifested for me by someone else. I now understand that to be spiritually aware or awoken, means that I can discern whether my current reality is a manifestation of my dreams and aspirations and not the manifestation of an external force. I now understand that for most of my life, lack of divine interventions, spiritual knowledge and understanding, or brightness of my inner light, the brightness of my star, the importance of my purpose, the power of my blind faith; I was spiritually blind to Gods love, protection and healing. It is also at the time spiritual warfare is the most effective.