The Story Behind Journey of a Sister 📖 👀

Leading up to the launch of the SEQUEL (titled Journey of a Brother) I’ll share why I wrote Journey of a Sister, and take you on a behind-the-scenes walk through each ‘Year’ of the story! 👣

You’ll also be able to listen to the audiobooks FREE! 😌🎧

My Inspiration Behind Writing The Book 📖 ✍🏾

I was inspired to start writing the First Edition in 2010, after watching the film Sankofa. It made me realise that my ancestors had been enslaved, and that I was still carrying the trauma they suffered, in my DNA. 🧬

Not only that, I could see the effects Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome was having on my community. For instance, I was an ‘Independent Black Woman’ who didn’t need a man, apart from to have sex and babies with. On the plantations, women were forced to watch their strongest men be stripped, whipped and murdered. This sent them into an emotional state of shock.

Enslaved men had no paternal responsibility for the children they fathered; the children were considered property of the wicked enslavers. The biological father of my two sons did a disappearing act as soon as I told him I was pregnant, both times. He too was carrying ancestral trauma, as were many descendants of ‘studs’.

Men who had been traumatised by their mothers as boys either abused their women, or dated outside of their race. Some women were still beating their children mercilessly, as mothers on the plantations had been taught to, in order to break them down mentally. They were also forced to indoctrinate their children into the Christian religion, to make it easier for the enslavers to turn them into obedient, humble servants. The Christian religion played a big part of the slave trade, and is still being passed down through the Maternal lineage today.

Sexual trauma and suppression of sexual energy is a big problem in our community. I lost my virginity through rape; this was ancestral trauma that had been passed down to me, through my DNA. 🧬

Our community lacked UNITY, and there seemed to be invisible chains holding us back. 🙆🏾‍♂️

The film traumatized me, but I committed to using my natural gifts of writing and art to heal, and to help my people heal. Shortly after, I was inspired to start writing the story. I had already painted my collection Nature’s Art, and written my first poetry collection Seeds of Love. When I started writing the book, I was intuitively guided to use my poetry and art to illustrate the story. 📖✍🏾🎨🖌

The process was easy and spiritual; I would simply go to sleep around 8pm (it was winter), wake up around 4am, and auto-write for two hours; I didn’t have to think about what I was writing, it came through me, rather than from me. After 4 months I’d written 46,000 words, which made up the most beautiful storyline! 🖤

Year One tells many of our stories of being raised in the church, and being taught that sex before marriage is wrong. I struggled with guilty feelings, yet in my 20’s, I developed a personal relationship with my Heavenly Father, despite my weakness of ‘sexual sin’.

I had my two sons ‘out of wedlock’, but that didn’t seem to bother God; by this time, we had developed a beautiful Father/Daughter relationship. I would spend hours of my free time reading my bible, praying in tongues, and sitting in the Silence waiting to hear back from Him. In my naivity I thought “If I’m going to develop a relationship with my Creator, it has to be a two-way conversation!”

Sure enough, God started speaking back to me; just a still, small voice within. The first poems I wrote were simply loving messages that God asked me to write down and share with the world. One of them, titled “Look to Me!” (God’s Reply) features in Year One of the story in its entirety.

When I fell pregnant with my first son, God told me that the same way my mother had me ‘out of wedlock’ and He has a Plan for my life, is the same way He has a plan for my son’s life – that’s how I discovered I was having a boy! Zaviere turns 33 this year, and he’s a Christian – meanwhile, I’ve un-indoctrinated myself from that religion! 🤦🏾‍♀️

Why?

Because in 2001 I began ‘waking up’, and asking God all the QUESTions my church couldn’t answer. One was “How can there be a Heavenly FATHER and SON but no Heavenly MOTHER?”

God directed me to Proverbs 8 which personifies Wisdom as a WOMAN. It said Wisdom was with God in the beginning, and without Wisdom, nothing was created!

That same year, I woke up to find I’d written a fearless letter to God, which I ended by asking for “the Truth!” Parts of it feature in Year One of the story:

I titled my letter ‘The Rebellion‘ and uploaded it to MySpace, saying I was going to be like a modern-day Moses, sent to free my people from mental slavery! This marks the beginning of a 23 year journey of Self-discovery, which I shared through a beautiful Black Love story! This is the letter in its entirety:

The way Suzanne and Charles meet is exactly how I met my Twin Soul in 2001, which triggered my Awakening!

Twin Souls meet to help raise the Collective Consciousness, and we fulfilled our Twin Soul mission through this book! 📖🌠

In Part 1 of my vlog series The Story Behind the Book,I shared more about meeting my Twin Soul:

Subscribe to the channel! 💃🏾

When I was recording the audiobook of Year One (Part 1), for some reason I missed out a very important part; “Why do I have to wait until I die to go to Heaven? “Why can’t I live in HEAVEN on EARTH?“

When you get to the end of this series, you’ll see why this QUESTion is so important!

What did you think of Year One (Part 1)? Leave me a comment below!

Now let’s go behind the scenes of Year One, Part 2! 👀