Hectic. That is what life is. All of us could say that about our lives at some point I gather is the truth. After listening to Jay tell me that I should write my book (and agreeing with him), I should let my readers know my origin racially, I set out with visions of fame in my head.
See, that was my first error. Oh, the potential was there and still is for me to be well-known and even famous. That was not to be the reason for the coming forth of Moroni Saw me. The book did not start off with the name Moroni Saw Me. It did not start off with any inkling that I would lose a family member, my child.
It started off with me wanting to let the world know that I am Black and I am also LDS. Look at what I went through. My purpose was to write all those White people in Utah, who also happen to be Mormon, and let them know how little old Black me faired in the LDS culture. It was pathetic, to say the least. I, however, needed to start somewhere.
I had no plans to use my daughter's death as a path to fame. It was too crippling to endure the reality of it, but it was a defining moment of my life. After talking to Jay, my counselor, about the possibility of turning my memoir into a therapeutic tool to deal with Zipporah, my little angel's tragic death, I decided to put it at the tail end of the book. Yeah, I was just going to sum up my already written book with a chapter about "oh yeah, my daughter died."!
It did not work. I could not fit it in. Thank God I had the sense to change the book to be more of what it is now than to publish what I had. Once I put the story about what happened to my baby in the book, it turned into my therapy on dealing with grief. Oh, it was still a memoir, to speak. I focused it on how God helped me deal with all the grief in my life through the ministrations of many good people--culminating with the Restored Gospel being the one real saving grace. And it was.
See, that was my first error. Oh, the potential was there and still is for me to be well-known and even famous. That was not to be the reason for the coming forth of Moroni Saw me. The book did not start off with the name Moroni Saw Me. It did not start off with any inkling that I would lose a family member, my child.
It started off with me wanting to let the world know that I am Black and I am also LDS. Look at what I went through. My purpose was to write all those White people in Utah, who also happen to be Mormon, and let them know how little old Black me faired in the LDS culture. It was pathetic, to say the least. I, however, needed to start somewhere.
I had no plans to use my daughter's death as a path to fame. It was too crippling to endure the reality of it, but it was a defining moment of my life. After talking to Jay, my counselor, about the possibility of turning my memoir into a therapeutic tool to deal with Zipporah, my little angel's tragic death, I decided to put it at the tail end of the book. Yeah, I was just going to sum up my already written book with a chapter about "oh yeah, my daughter died."!
It did not work. I could not fit it in. Thank God I had the sense to change the book to be more of what it is now than to publish what I had. Once I put the story about what happened to my baby in the book, it turned into my therapy on dealing with grief. Oh, it was still a memoir, to speak. I focused it on how God helped me deal with all the grief in my life through the ministrations of many good people--culminating with the Restored Gospel being the one real saving grace. And it was.
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