Hard Conversations: Book 1: Breadcrumbs to the Past

By BJ Communicates

"Hard Conversations: Book 1 Breadcrumbs to the Past" is a collection of short stories detailing the lives of five urban people who are standing at the intersection of their past and their potential. To change the trajectory of their futures, they must reconcile the long-ignored dysfunction of their past with the building aspirations of their present. These reconciliations can only begin by delving into their life experiences and having long overdue conversations with the people who hurt them the most.

Sometimes it's the conversations not had that do the most damage to the people in our lives. Sensing that something is still off in the lives that they have built, the characters in this book must address long buried secrets or continue living in the uncomfortable matrix they created. Only they can decide what their future will bring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098380960

Book preview

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The events, people, and stories of this book are completely fictional. Any similarity, likeness, or comparison to real people, places, and/or events is purely coincidental and not intentionally created by the author or publisher.

This book is an original work of The Brand & Believe Group.

Copyright © BJ Communicates, 2021.

The Brand & Believe Group supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing The Brand & Believe Group to continue to publish books for every reader.The events, people, and stories of this book are completely fictional. Any similarity, likeness, or comparison to real people, places, and/or events is purely coincidental and not intentionally created by the author or publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-09838-095-3 (printed)

ISBN: 978-1-09838-096-0 (eBook)

Contents

Dedication

A Word from the Author

I Don’t Know Her

No More Sunday Dinners

Angel Dust and Guitars

Another Life

Broken Silence

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my wife and children who have given me the freedom to become all that God wants me to be. As my wife, you have helped me to articulate my story time and time again. You have made me free to process my pain and heal while still loving me the same. You have been my biggest supporter and saw greatness in me even when I was a broke college student; thank you. You are my best friend, and I love you endlessly.

Boys, it is my honor to be your dad. You challenge me to keep growing in grace and being an example of what it means to be a man of God. Even though one of you is in heaven now, you are still a part of my story. The story of your birth and death has helped people across the nation. You will forever be my firstborn son and I am so happy that you are mine. Bran, you are daddy’s prince, and each day, I will try to give you the wisdom and love that I know you will need for your life. I am so proud of you. I know as I tell you my life experiences, both good and bad, that I am giving you vital information to help you along the way. I love you son!!

A Word from the Author

I wrote this book of short stories because I felt compelled to tell all of our stories in a creative way. Though the characters and situations are fictitious, they are theoretically the stories of millions of people of color in our nation. We often live under the cloud of the teachings of yesteryears to hide our pain and move on with our lives, but how can we move on when the pain is so heavy that it crushes our ankles and contorts our spines until our knees buckle into submission? As urban people of faith, we often reduce our greatness to what we can accomplish for God, when our true and lasting assignment is in what we become for God. A part of our becoming is locked in our willingness to not simply survive our pain, as if it was an illness or unexpected car crash that left us crippled for a time, but also be completely healed from it. Sometimes that healing takes years or decades, but that healing is possible.

Our gifting often becomes our prison. I wrote this book to pull down the mask on our experience in the hopes that it compels us to confront our learned ability to whitewash our pain with our talent and giftings. We are often taught that the greatest value that we bring to the world is solely present in what we do, what we earn, or how well we play. In reality, our greatest value is in the stories that we can articulate to those we influence once we have reached the other side of trauma. Trauma that tries to silence our voice, trauma that causes a part of us to die in the fight, and trauma that threatens us to stay silent after our experience with it because we should just be grateful to make it to the other side.

These stories will help you locate yourself. The person that God placed on the earth to accomplish something great but also the you that has had to try to survive and thrive in the midst of the sifting of the enemy. Whether man or woman, life happens to us all. Life happens from the time we enter the world until we get the second date after the dash. We can’t stop or avoid bad things, but we also can’t afford not to fully process, articulate, and heal from them. My hope is that God will use these stories as a mirror that reveals to you the places that He is waiting and willing to heal if you are willing to deal. You are not alone, your story does matter, and your life can be better. It starts with viewing your significance from the inside out, and then having the conversation.

Often these conversations are painful, peppered with emotional retelling of traumas that have been etched in our souls. These conversations aren’t for polite pruning, they are for down-in-the-dirt root pulling truth. These may include raised voices or opening of the floodgates of long damned up tears; let them flow so that you can heal. These conversations are the type that prune the soil of your future; leaving everything bare, also for something new to grow. These conversations clear the board of the records of wrongs we have been calculating for years and give those involved the opportunity to become crystal clear in their behavior; it has its effect on them, and they take the opportunity to change with the new knowledge they have been given. These talks dethrone the lie that we have told ourselves about people; the lie that, without us telling them, they are somehow already aware of how their actions have affected us. In the midst of these conversations, it’s time to let go of being right so that we can be repaired. Clearing the emotional and historical air is a necessary step toward moving out of the cycle that you’re in, and into the promised land you were designed for.

I Don’t Know Her

Our mothers teach us how to exist in relationships.

The first words I heard out of his mouth were that I was fired. After working for this company for three years, I was being fired for insubordination and creating a hostile work environment. I had proven to be a great worker, but my manager went on and on about my attitude being a problem for him, my coworkers, and the clients that I assisted on a continual basis. It was funny to me that while my work always spoke for itself, somehow how I handled situations wasn’t up to par with the company’s standards. Sure, like everyone else, I had room for improvements, but I didn’t agree that my words or actions should have led to this serious and, for me, life altering decision. The last encounter that I had with Mary wasn’t hostile in my opinion; it was necessary to let her know where I stood. I didn’t curse her out, I didn’t make her cry, and I didn’t call her out of her name. I simply let Mary know where I stood and how I would appreciate her watching how she spoke to me because I was not a child.

Mary was an older white woman that had been at the firm over twenty years. She often seemed to be the favorite, if you asked me. For the past three years, I had watched her getting invited to meetings and be the go-to person for projects that I believed were deserved by others. She seemed to be the boss when the boss was not around. Whether anyone asked her to take charge or not, it appeared like she would see it as her duty to make sure everyone was doing their job. Meddling Mary became her nickname because it felt like no matter the conversation or work assignment, she felt the need to be in the know regardless of whether it involved what she did for the firm or not. Mary had been offered a supervisory position several times over her time at the company but always turned them down because she said that she didn’t want to deal with the stress of having to oversee people. Her refusal of responsibility could have fooled me, considering that she always had an opinion of someone else’s work.

My firm was a great place to work. It was a consulting firm that had been in existence for almost forty years and had a great reputation in the city. Getting an interview was an honor but getting hired was nearly impossible. I had managed to accomplish both three years ago. I walked into my interview after an hour-long prayer session in the car. I, at twenty-five, nailed an interview for junior executive position and had become one of the four blacks, and the only man,