Finding Grace

My first edition of Finding Grace was published in 2014. It was, and is, my memoir of a challenging and adventurous psychological journey, during which the shock of sudden and traumatic recall memories occurred. With the help of dance, the stimulation of living in a foreign country, psychotherapy, and my luck in finding behavioral optometry, or vision therapy, I managed to handle the disruption to my life from recall memories and my resultant inability to read.

The rewards for this long and successful trip were discovering the true story about my life and reuniting with Grace, the kind and loving Black woman who cared for me in my early years. My mother had become severely depressed from her disappointment at my birth. I had been a third daughter, not the son she had imagined me to be. Her despondency turned into physical abuse, which my father pretended not to see.

Grace meant everything to me, but I was told to "forget" her when she left to get married just before my fifth birthday. By the age of six, I had shut down all memories of Grace and any events from my early life, as well as every emotion except fear. Any letters, cards, or presents that might have kept me connected to the woman who had called me "Mah Baby," were blocked by Grace's promises to my jealous mother to "let Anne forget you."

Unconsciously, I did not forget her. The choices I made throughout my life led me back to Grace and her friends, and to my roots in the Black culture.