he dreamer, the talker, the imaginative child, and the future leader were never separate people. They were all the same person becoming who I was meant to be.
I was born into unconventional abundance. Not the kind measured in dollars, possessions, or status, but the kind that fills a home with laughter, love, and belonging. I grew up in Lawnside, New Jersey, a historically Black town with a remarkable legacy. It was a place where freedom's footsteps could still be felt, a community rooted in the history of the Underground Railroad and the courage of those who risked everything to claim their humanity. Long before I understood the significance of that history, I knew I belonged to something larger than myself. I was one of eight children, growing up with seven siblings in a home that was always alive with movement, noise, and love. At the center of that world stood my father. His love became the bedrock of my life. It was steady, strong, and unquestionable. It was the kind of love that told a child she mattered long before she had accomplished anything. My father made me feel safe in the world. As if that wasn't enough, his oldest brother added another layer of protection and encouragement. My uncle poured love and praise into me and my two sisters. He saw us, celebrated us, and reminded us of our worth. Looking back, I realize what an incredible gift that was. To be loved by one devoted father is a blessing. To have an uncle who reinforced that love was extraordinary. My mother created a different kind of foundation. She was an avid reader and filled our home with books. The shelves held voices that reflected our history, our struggle, and our humanity. Richard Wright and James Baldwin were among her favorites. Before I ever understood literary criticism or social commentary, I understood that books mattered. Stories mattered. Words mattered. |
My childhood was what a child's life should be. Every need was met. There was laughter around every corner. We invented games when we had no toys. The house was rarely quiet. Relatives flowed in and out. With my mother's twelve brothers and sisters came an army of cousins. I had thirty-four first cousins, and many of them felt more like siblings than extended family. Our home was full. Full of people. Full of stories. Full of joy.
Then life happened. The kind of life that arrives uninvited and changes everything. My father died. In an instant, the man who had anchored our family was gone. My mother suddenly found herself raising eight children alone, all under the age of eighteen. She had no driver's license. She had never learned to balance a checkbook. There were little savings to fall back on. She was left carrying burdens she had never expected to carry by herself. Loss changed the atmosphere of our home, but it also changed me. From kindergarten through much of my childhood, I escaped into education. School became my refuge. Learning became my sanctuary. Every child needs somewhere to go when life becomes too painful. My escape was my imagination. I buried myself in books, ideas, dreams, and possibilities. While other children may have escaped into games or television, I escaped into my mind. I built worlds there. I imagined futures there. I found safety there. The reality around me was often too painful to face directly, so I created a space inside my head where I lived much of the time. It made me happy. It drove my mother crazy. She often accused me of daydreaming. In her eyes, I spent too much time fantasizing and not enough time paying attention to what was happening around me. One day, frustrated beyond measure, she yelled at me to take off my rose-colored glasses and come back to reality. What she could not fully see then was that those rose-colored glasses were my armor. They protected me. They allowed me to believe in possibility when circumstances suggested otherwise. They allowed me to hope. No matter what came at me, I felt safe inside the world I had created. And life kept coming. Our house caught fire. The losses continued. My father died. My favorite uncle died. People sometimes made fun of our family because we lived near a cemetery. What they did not understand was that the cemetery wasn't something frightening to us. It was sacred ground. My grandparents were buried there. Members of our family rested there. Now my father was there. My beloved uncle was there too. The place that others mocked was, for me, a place that held the people I loved most. I learned early that grief is complicated. Loss doesn't arrive once and leave. It visits again and again, often when least expected. It changes shape as we grow. Yet through every challenge, I carried something powerful with me. The love of my father. The encouragement of my uncle. The wisdom of my mother. The history of Lawnside. The stories in those books. The dreams behind those rose-colored glasses. What once looked like escape was actually resilience. What looked like fantasizing was survival. What looked like denial was hope. |
As I grew older, I came to understand that leaning into my full self did not mean abandoning the dreamer within me. It meant embracing every part of who I was. The grieving daughter. The curious student. The imaginative child. The woman shaped by both love and loss. My story is not just about hardship. It is about what carried me through hardship. It is about being rooted deeply enough in love that even tragedy could not uproot me. It is about discovering that the very traits others questioned—my imagination, my optimism, my tendency to see possibility where others saw obstacles—became my greatest strengths.
The child with the rose-colored glasses did not need to abandon dreams. I needed to trust them because those dreams helped me survive, ultimately helping me become my full self. As a child, I lived in my imagination, but I also lived through my voice. I talked. Constantly. In grade school, I was the child every teacher knew by name. I finished my assignments quickly and then immediately started talking to everyone around me. I wasn't trying to be disruptive. I was curious. I was social. I wanted to engage. But to the adults around me, I was simply "the talkative child."
More than once, I found myself sitting in the principal's office because I could not stop talking. One year, my talking reached legendary status. My teachers decided that the appropriate punishment was to take away recess. Every day while my classmates ran outside to play, I stayed behind. Recess became the consequence for having too much to say.
Then came the summer. While other children enjoyed hot summer days filled with games, bicycles, and neighborhood adventures, I sat in an upstairs room with no air conditioning, writing sentence after sentence by hand: "I will not talk in class." Page after page. Sheet after sheet. I eventually filled more than a hundred pages. At the time, I saw it as unfair punishment. Looking back, it was simply another example of adults trying to suppress something they did not know how to channel.
When the new school year began, I did something only a determined young dreamer would think to do. I packed the completed pages in my school bag. The teachers would leave me alone in the classroom during recess, assuming I was continuing my punishment. The moment I was unattended, I pulled out several prewritten pages, placed them on my desk, and raced outside to play. When recess ended, a fresh stack of completed pages was waiting. Mrs. Byrd was baffled. How was this child writing all these pages so quickly? For a while, my strategy worked beautifully. Then one day, Mrs. Morales quietly slipped back into the classroom. She caught me. But instead of reprimanding me, she did something that would change my life. She sat down and talked with me. Not at me. With me.
She wanted to know why I talked so much. She asked what I dreamed about. What I wanted to become. Why I had so many pages already written. For perhaps the first time outside of my family, an adult looked beyond the behavior and saw the child. Mrs. Morales recognized something that others had missed. I wasn't a problem to be fixed. I had a voice. And she helped me learn how to use it. Instead of punishing my gift, she nurtured it. She gave me leading roles in assemblies. She challenged me to memorize poems and recite them before the class. She created opportunities for me to speak, perform, and inspire. She taught me that communication was not something to be ashamed of. It was a strength to be developed. What others saw as excessive talking, she recognized as leadership in its earliest form. That lesson stayed with me.
Years later, the same voice that got me sent to the principal's office became the voice that led commercial organizations at GE Healthcare, Roche Diagnostics, and Siemens Healthineers. The gift that once cost me every recess became the skill that allowed me to stand before customers, teams, executives, and communities. And eventually, it became one of the gifts that helped me inspire and build a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving others.
When I look back now, I realize Mrs. Morales gave me much more than a role in a school assembly. She helped me lean into my full self. She taught me that our greatest gifts often arrive disguised as our greatest challenges. Sometimes the very thing the world tells us to quiet down becomes the thing we are meant to amplify. For years, adults tried to teach me not to talk. Mrs. Morales taught me why I should. And that made all the difference.
The child with the rose-colored glasses did not need to abandon dreams. I needed to trust them because those dreams helped me survive, ultimately helping me become my full self. As a child, I lived in my imagination, but I also lived through my voice. I talked. Constantly. In grade school, I was the child every teacher knew by name. I finished my assignments quickly and then immediately started talking to everyone around me. I wasn't trying to be disruptive. I was curious. I was social. I wanted to engage. But to the adults around me, I was simply "the talkative child."
More than once, I found myself sitting in the principal's office because I could not stop talking. One year, my talking reached legendary status. My teachers decided that the appropriate punishment was to take away recess. Every day while my classmates ran outside to play, I stayed behind. Recess became the consequence for having too much to say.
Then came the summer. While other children enjoyed hot summer days filled with games, bicycles, and neighborhood adventures, I sat in an upstairs room with no air conditioning, writing sentence after sentence by hand: "I will not talk in class." Page after page. Sheet after sheet. I eventually filled more than a hundred pages. At the time, I saw it as unfair punishment. Looking back, it was simply another example of adults trying to suppress something they did not know how to channel.
When the new school year began, I did something only a determined young dreamer would think to do. I packed the completed pages in my school bag. The teachers would leave me alone in the classroom during recess, assuming I was continuing my punishment. The moment I was unattended, I pulled out several prewritten pages, placed them on my desk, and raced outside to play. When recess ended, a fresh stack of completed pages was waiting. Mrs. Byrd was baffled. How was this child writing all these pages so quickly? For a while, my strategy worked beautifully. Then one day, Mrs. Morales quietly slipped back into the classroom. She caught me. But instead of reprimanding me, she did something that would change my life. She sat down and talked with me. Not at me. With me.
She wanted to know why I talked so much. She asked what I dreamed about. What I wanted to become. Why I had so many pages already written. For perhaps the first time outside of my family, an adult looked beyond the behavior and saw the child. Mrs. Morales recognized something that others had missed. I wasn't a problem to be fixed. I had a voice. And she helped me learn how to use it. Instead of punishing my gift, she nurtured it. She gave me leading roles in assemblies. She challenged me to memorize poems and recite them before the class. She created opportunities for me to speak, perform, and inspire. She taught me that communication was not something to be ashamed of. It was a strength to be developed. What others saw as excessive talking, she recognized as leadership in its earliest form. That lesson stayed with me.
Years later, the same voice that got me sent to the principal's office became the voice that led commercial organizations at GE Healthcare, Roche Diagnostics, and Siemens Healthineers. The gift that once cost me every recess became the skill that allowed me to stand before customers, teams, executives, and communities. And eventually, it became one of the gifts that helped me inspire and build a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving others.
When I look back now, I realize Mrs. Morales gave me much more than a role in a school assembly. She helped me lean into my full self. She taught me that our greatest gifts often arrive disguised as our greatest challenges. Sometimes the very thing the world tells us to quiet down becomes the thing we are meant to amplify. For years, adults tried to teach me not to talk. Mrs. Morales taught me why I should. And that made all the difference.
Leaning Into My Full Self
As I look back across my life, I can see that every chapter was preparing me for the next one. The little girl growing up in Lawnside, New Jersey, surrounded by family, history, and love, did not know what was ahead. She did not know that she would lose her father too soon. She did not know she would watch her mother struggle to raise eight children alone. She did not know her house would catch fire, that grief would visit her repeatedly, or that one day she would hear the words no one ever wants to hear: "You have cancer." But she was being prepared. The dreamer was being prepared. The talker was being prepared. The imaginative child was being prepared. The future leader was being prepared.
When cancer entered my life, I could have chosen fear. There were certainly moments when fear knocked at the door. Yet I had spent my entire life building something stronger. As a child, I learned to create possibilities when reality was painful. As a student, I learned to seek knowledge when answers were hard to find. As a leader, I learned to remain calm when others were uncertain. As a daughter, I learned the power of unconditional love. As a wife and mother, I learned that people depend on me to keep moving forward. As an advocate and educator, I learned that my experiences are most valuable when they help someone else find hope. The same imagination that once allowed me to escape difficult circumstances now allowed me to envision healing. The same voice that got me sent to the principal's office became the voice that asked questions, challenged assumptions, advocated for myself, and encouraged others. The same resilience that carried me through childhood loss carried me through medical appointments, treatment plans, uncertainty, and recovery. I realized that cancer was part of my story, but it would never be the author of my story. The author was me.
Cancer did not get to define me. Fear did not get to define me. Loss did not get to define me. Instead, I leaned into the fullness of who I have always been. I am the daughter of a father whose love still anchors my life. I am the child of a mother who filled our home with books and taught me to believe in the power of ideas. I am the niece of an uncle who poured encouragement into me and helped me see my worth. I am the talkative little girl who found a way around punishment because she refused to let her spirit be confined. I am the student Mrs. Morales saw, encouraged, and challenged to use her voice for something greater. I am the woman who would go on to lead commercial organizations at GE Healthcare, Roche Diagnostics, and Siemens Healthineers. I am the leader who learned that success means little unless it lifts others along the way. I am the founder, the advocate, the educator, and the encourager. Most importantly, I am still becoming.
For years, I thought the dreamer, the talker, the imaginative child, and the future leader were separate versions of myself. Now I understand the truth. They were never separate people. They were all the same person becoming who I am. A daughter. A wife. A mother. A survivor. An advocate for others. An educator of people. A woman grounded in faith, strengthened by love, and shaped by every joy and every hardship. And my story is still being written.
Every day brings a new page. Every challenge brings a new lesson. Every opportunity brings a new chance to serve, lead, and inspire. I no longer see my rose-colored glasses as something to remove. They are the lens through which I have always seen possibility, purpose, and hope. They helped me survive. They helped me lead. They helped me heal. And today, they help me continue leaning into my full self. Because this story is not over. I am still living it, still growing, still learning, still dreaming, and still becoming exactly who I was created to be.
When cancer entered my life, I could have chosen fear. There were certainly moments when fear knocked at the door. Yet I had spent my entire life building something stronger. As a child, I learned to create possibilities when reality was painful. As a student, I learned to seek knowledge when answers were hard to find. As a leader, I learned to remain calm when others were uncertain. As a daughter, I learned the power of unconditional love. As a wife and mother, I learned that people depend on me to keep moving forward. As an advocate and educator, I learned that my experiences are most valuable when they help someone else find hope. The same imagination that once allowed me to escape difficult circumstances now allowed me to envision healing. The same voice that got me sent to the principal's office became the voice that asked questions, challenged assumptions, advocated for myself, and encouraged others. The same resilience that carried me through childhood loss carried me through medical appointments, treatment plans, uncertainty, and recovery. I realized that cancer was part of my story, but it would never be the author of my story. The author was me.
Cancer did not get to define me. Fear did not get to define me. Loss did not get to define me. Instead, I leaned into the fullness of who I have always been. I am the daughter of a father whose love still anchors my life. I am the child of a mother who filled our home with books and taught me to believe in the power of ideas. I am the niece of an uncle who poured encouragement into me and helped me see my worth. I am the talkative little girl who found a way around punishment because she refused to let her spirit be confined. I am the student Mrs. Morales saw, encouraged, and challenged to use her voice for something greater. I am the woman who would go on to lead commercial organizations at GE Healthcare, Roche Diagnostics, and Siemens Healthineers. I am the leader who learned that success means little unless it lifts others along the way. I am the founder, the advocate, the educator, and the encourager. Most importantly, I am still becoming.
For years, I thought the dreamer, the talker, the imaginative child, and the future leader were separate versions of myself. Now I understand the truth. They were never separate people. They were all the same person becoming who I am. A daughter. A wife. A mother. A survivor. An advocate for others. An educator of people. A woman grounded in faith, strengthened by love, and shaped by every joy and every hardship. And my story is still being written.
Every day brings a new page. Every challenge brings a new lesson. Every opportunity brings a new chance to serve, lead, and inspire. I no longer see my rose-colored glasses as something to remove. They are the lens through which I have always seen possibility, purpose, and hope. They helped me survive. They helped me lead. They helped me heal. And today, they help me continue leaning into my full self. Because this story is not over. I am still living it, still growing, still learning, still dreaming, and still becoming exactly who I was created to be.