‘Angelou’s Cry’

A sample from Book 1

 Angelou's Cry
  
 without anger's explode
voicing tornado
 facial's bold cammo
 commenting rage's ammo
  
 slipping in a hole
hardly any dough
 spiritual implode
emotion's unfold
 physically gone cold
  
 then voiced maya angelou
still I rise
  
 a time to decode
 can you take anymore
 weighted heavy load
  
 to yourself you owe
still I rise
 strength quickly to unfold
 leading your journeying road
 back to being gold

(November 25, 2013)—[‘Angelou’s Cry’ was written in 2010.] When you are a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, an educator, and work outside the home—all balled into one, you tend to lose yourself and forget who you are. It’s like you’re drowning and don’t even realize it.

There comes a time when you are forced to put the breaks on and say: Wait a minute, I’m a person, too.I can’t tell you when it will happen to you, but I know when it happened to me. It wasn’t an overnight thing. It took years…a very slow process, a very heart-breaking process. When you’ve spent years making everyone else around you happy and forget that you deserve happiness, too, you actually forget what made you happy in the first place.

I hadn’t fully paid attention to any of Maya Angelou’s work up until 2010, although I read her in college and actually taught some of her work as a teacher. When I read that phrase still I rise, it hit me like a hammer and I wanted to know about her life. All writers take from their own lives when it comes to their art. She is no exception.

Neither am I. When I quit teaching in 2008, I began exploring what was missing from my life and I began reading a lot of self-help books. Hearing that phrase seriously woke something up in me. Still I rise.

I saw that even though I was working on my gift, I wasn’t any where near doing what I was supposed to do. I had let so much stand in my way, and I did it willingly. I wasn’t owning up to my own faults. I had grown weak. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. So, I was letting them hold me back; hence, hurt myself.

There comes a time when you have to retake the control back and take care of yourself. One thing I’ve learned: When you do that, take back the control, those who have had the control over you for so long will retaliate with a vengeance and fight you every single step of the way. That retaliation nearly killed me spiritually. That retaliation made me see truth where I didn’t want to see it.

There were so many times when I just wanted to stop and just forget about it and let things return back to where they were. I kept telling myself that it would be easier and all that pain would go away. But then I’d be returning the control back to those who so badly wanted to keep it and I’d lose myself further in their lie. I fell to prayer, to God, to help me be strong. Anything worthy does not come easy.

If you are at that place, hang in there, don’t give up. You are that important. The devil will fight you. Oh! With vengeance. Hand it over to God. He will give you the strength you need to take back the control over your life.

Still I rise. And you will….

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