You are tired of going from one situation to the next, looking uncomfortable, out of place, and on edge, feeling the need to run 
and hide for fear 
of a childhood discussion coming up 
involving someone’s wealth and privilege.
It’s not your fault your experiences don’t matter.
But if any anything, the more you hide, the deeper and more intense the shame is, and the more your true self, culture, community, and experiences are trying to catch up to you.
You are working hard to hide in the shadows, in the background of every situation that you are in. Either that or lie about what really went down.
Running doesn’t seem to be working. But neither does lying because it isn’t congruent with your identity as a daughter of the King 
. But, what else can you do?
Your experiences in general as a black woman don’t matter. You have to do something.
If you can just find the right formula to make people forget your struggle to get by with the basics, you would be on the right track.
You are putting everything on the line: your family, your faith, your values, and Identity to prove that your childhood fits into the ideal situation that upper class white society has created.
If you’re worn out from hiding and pretending, and end up losing your entire blackness in the end, it will be worth it. At least you will have your needs met. You will finally belong.
The irony of the situation is that the harder you work to erase your family, culture, experiences, financial struggles, and sense of community, the more depressed, hopeless, and lost you become.
You have hid and lied 
for so long, you are literally in an existential crisis. If God created us for a life of freedom and abundance, this couldn’t be what it looks like.
Running and hiding from your true identity and experiences makes those experiences and identities run after you. God created us out of love. And in that love, he gave us freedom: freedom to conceal, or freedom to reveal and heal.
Trying to hide from who you really are only intensifies the desire for the real you to burst forward, and come running after you, which in turn, places you in bondage. But guess what? You are in bondage to yourself.
God is the God of all creation and revelation and has no respect of persons.
Your childhood matters. Your struggles matter. Your family matters. Your community experience matters. Your culture and socioeconomic status matters. The same God who created every other unique individual that exists on this earth is the same God that created you as a black woman, with or without struggles.
Lying and Running away from your identity creates inner turmoil and in turn, an existential crisis, which develops into a state of “lostness” in general.
You must know and live in the truth to be truly free. That is why your efforts to run and hide are not working.
First, you have to identify the root issues of unworthiness, shame, and white supremacy.
Then, everything that needs to happen in order for you to walk in your true identity, authenticity, and freedom as a black woman who experienced childhood struggles, and even more importantly, struggles as a child of God, will fall in place.
In My Blackness you go deep, and get to the root of the matter. You grow because you are away from the surface (comfort zone).
You deal with some hard, but necessary truths of growing up in poverty and struggle. And at the same time, you feel the love of culture, food, family, Jesus, and community.
How do you begin to walk in this new level of freedom?
Buy the book 
here then download the discussion questions 
at thevalleyofgrace.com/books.
Discover how this unique approach in poetry and short story form can complement your healing journey.
Move into a new chapter of reclamation and worthiness by joining other black women to form a healing circle.
My Blackness…Helping black women reveal, reclaim, and embrace the unique identity, culture, socioeconomic status, and community of their childhood so they can be free.