Zenobia was a phenomenal woman, raising two girls in an amazing manner. She was only person that loved my sister and I to BONE!! She loved us unconditionally. U-N-C-O-N-D-I-T-I-O-N-A-L-L-Y! A somewhat lengthy word, carrying a penetrating weight. I learned just how much weight that word carried years later when I had my own children. I ended up making all of those sacrifices that Zenobia made, loving my seeds to bone, as I was subconsciously taught to do while growing up on Chicago’s south side.

Life is supposed to be best teacher. Funny, how lessons that are learned from life aren’t readily understood until years later, isn’t it? Long after teacher has stopped teaching, or has since passed on. We somehow allow our mental selves to rest in a retrospect mode. The switch to light miraculously turns itself on. This is when we mentally go back to time when mentor was telling us “not” to do this or “to do” that. We never paid attention to what was being said at time, never understood, or so we thought. But our subconscious self did. We didn’t want to listen did we? Wanted to defy teacher. Didn’t want to obey given command. The answer is all too clear now ……isn’t it? Crystalline to say least.

Unbeknownst to me during her lengthy battle with cancer, her inevitable demise would somehow create a pathway for me to become aware of my inner self and my environment. So aware to this day, as I sit and put pen to paper, I am continually conscious of my progressions and regressions on a daily or monthly or even a yearly basis. I am aware if I am ambitious enough to “get that job” or being responsible enough to set a concrete example for my children to follow, or making right decision at all times when future of our children are concerned. Oftentimes, we are given no second chances.

As ironic as it was, during my times of emotional depravation, when I felt my body could no longer persevere, when I toyed with idea of suicide versus life, when I literally had no one around me that cared if I lived or died, or when my children and I had to succumb to living in a shelter because my job downsized and I had no family around me to offer housing. During those times, I allowed myself to take that mental journey back in order to regain my strength and move onward. Back to day, to moment, when Zenobia was teaching a particular lesson to me.

The assumptions behind this curriculum are that every child needs to be warned about and prepared for possible dangers of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse because allegedly every child is a potential victim, not only of strangers but of his or her own family.

Increasingly, school authorities instruct teachers to ask children questions about their parents’ behavior and actions toward them at home. The questions amount to asking kids to spy on their parents and report incidents that make them feel “uncomfortable.” Some school authorities use such tales by children to investigate or file charges of child abuse against parents who often did no more than yell at their children or spank them lightly.

In effect, to allegedly protect children, some school authorities now consider all parents as potential abusers, use children to invade parents’ privacy, or make kids afraid of their parents. Often, children are disturbed and emotionally traumatized by insinuations school authorities put into their heads.