I was constantly told this as I was growing up. If my life were a book, it would be the foreshadowing of things yet to come, a future yet to be. It is now an intergenerational, contemporary truth be told yet for my sons to behold as I can now speak those same words, which I shall not although true. Your beliefs of yourself is based on a future that has foundations built upon the words and actions of those you look up to. Some brain hardwiring will determine how you internalize the words whether positive or negative. It’s similar to the story of the 2 boys that had a drug abusing father, 1 turned out to be chemically dependent and the other rather successful in life. When asked why they turned out the way they did, the chemically dependent son said, “I watched my father.” and the successful son said, “I watched my father.” It is a series of choices and the recognition of opportunities that aid in either case. I did fulfill the future of being chemically dependent and having friends die and go to prison. I think of other things I was told that shaped me. I was always told I would go to college at the same time I was made to feel inferior. Conflicting statements when coupled with my friends are going to “die and go to prison” prophecy set the tone for how I will eventually live my life. As my story of Rezidivism goes on, you will see that although I speak of specific events, it's more like a series of events that further deepened the need for me to live out the lies I was told at the same time I would ignore the truths.
I was young when my friends started to die. I was nowhere near emotionally prepared for it, then again is anybody? The grief is devastating, even as I think about it today, there is still a pain in my heart. I got out of prison in 2012 and started working with the old men that do ceremonies. Funerals being one, I helped bury over 15 of my friends and others that I grew up with due to overdose or violence. I can’t remember when my friends started dying, maybe we were all dying together and some of us just happened to live through it.
I see my sons and daughters with their friends. I wonder if they are going to have to experience that same thing. At that age you can never picture it happening. They are all so full of life.
I am passing on a new future for my boys. I hope to reach more of you all to help me in my endeavor. I realize that raising my boys is a community event. They are going to absorb the truths and lies that come their way and process it with their own mixture of emotional ingredients.
I ask for your help in raising my boys, and will do my very best to help raise yours. We need to distribute an alternative truth about what their futures can be like. The prophecy shall be given a new narrative. Although my friends have died and went to prison, my boys’ friends will be alive and free, free to love life, free to be bright.
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