Oddball: A Memoir on Resilience

By Diana Navarro M.S.

As much as she honors other people's stories, in this memoir, Diana Navarro adds to the mosaic of life stories that make up the human sojourn here on earth. Particularly because of her oddities and the way she uses them every day, and because of the resilience she was endowed with. She creatively deals with adversity and chronic pain via consciously choosing self-care. After reaching what she thought her breaking point, she experienced The Dark Night of the Soul. With this came her spiritual awakening that stripped her from whatever she thought was her identity.

 

In this memoir she is not assuming you have a physical house, a car (or that you drive), a specific level of education, are married, have children, are able-bodied and have full use of all your senses, are female, male, of a certain age group, or religious. I am sharing with the universal you that breathes, needs to eat and sleep, requires shelter, feels and has the ability to think. As someone who rarely sees herself in popular non-fiction, self-help, inspirational, or motivational books, she wanted to ensure I speak to you whether you are an oddball or not.

 

What you are about to read is a memoir about using the power of beauty as self-care to gain resilience. She also includes quotes to remind us how humans from all walks of life express themselves about sometimes inexplicable human experiences.

 

She is sure most of the people in her life will be taken by surprise by what she is sharing. Born and raised in the South Bronx, She is a survivor of various physical and emotional traumas and violence. She spent so much time in emergency survival mode that the injuries turned into chronic and permanent damage and pain. In other words, she was declared permanently disabled in 2004. However she has survived and has much to share. Did what rescues others save her? No.

• Religion didn't save her.
• Being in New York City of the United States didn't save her.
• Higher Education didn't save her.
• Using her gender and sexuality didn't save her, nor did she know how to do that.
• Birthing children didn't save her and therefore she chose not to bear children.
• The right person or system to help her when she was molested, assaulted, experienced domestic violence, poverty or the woes of a being a women or ethnic minority didn't save her.
• Traditional relationships didn't save her.
• The Law of Attraction and magical thinking didn't save her.
• Logic and science didn't save me.
• No trendy self-improvement movement saved her.

What saved her? Making the choice from the level of the soul and declaring her sovereignty. Resilience and the use of conventional and unconventional methods to keep her life-force going has saved her. She is a self-verified human. This did not happen suddenly. During the time she was in survival mode, she directed all her energy into trying to serve and heal the world. That is what she was conditioned to do and one of the biggest mistakes of her life. That also created an environment where she attracted people who were all too happy to take advantage of her naïve attempts to be a helper and healer.

 

She learned healing and progress is not linear. Challenges will appear, seemingly out of nowhere, and this is when the inner strength, that is, the resilience of the soul, must shine through. This is not an overnight success story. This is a "moment to moment I am alive, how do I thrive regardless of anything good or bad," she is experiencing. The care of you leads to the best version of you. Share her journey, philosophy and opportunity to declare your right to freedom despite adversities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diana Navarro M.S.
• Release date: Jan 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781075715181

Diana Navarro M.S.

Diana Navarro, M.S., is a natural Psychic Empath who provides a new brand of compassionate but honest, raw, and humorous Writings, Bio-Individual Sleep/Dream Coaching, Personal and Interior Design Services, and Commentary. Her passion is to provide information on sleep and design spaces for restoration. She is the author of Your Sleep Sweet Spot: Why Sleep and Dreams are Not an Option You Can Find Your Unique Ritual and Schedule, Oddball: A Memoir on Resilience, Oddball: A Guide on Resilience, You’re Not Crazy, It’s Paranormal! Oddball: A Memoir on Resilience, and Guide Heartbreak: Know Why and Heal and host of the Podcast Design Your Life with Beauty, her blog Design Your Life Info Center, and creator of various writing journals. Her background is a culmination of decades of crisis counseling, crisis intervention, academic advising, intuitive/psychic consulting, and research. She has a Bachelor's in General Psychology, Master of Science Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and studied three years at the Doctoral level researching Environmental Psychology. She has knowledge of space and energy due to her own spiritual awakening, extensive research and study of Feng Shui, certification in Interior Design, and certification in Small Business Development. Diana is a natural at bringing joy, light, and inspiration into her work and event hosting, speaking engagements, broadcasts, artistic performances, consultations, and writings. In addition to thousands of personal and celebrity clients, she also worked with corporate clients that include Estee Lauder, Time-Warner, Macy's, Progressive Insurance, and Skanska Construction Group. Diana Navarro grew up in the South Bronx. She endured and overcame extreme adverse environments of domestic violence and rape, witnessed countless violent occurrences, and was declared permanently disabled. Diana had decades to master converting adversity into resilience and turning potential victimhood into victor-hood. She was born an Empath and uses her empathic abilities to heal and help others come back to wholeness.

Book preview

Part 1:

Chapter 1: Born Into Acute and Chronic Stress and Pain

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant. — Horace

They say we can’t go back in time. But I will take you on a few trips. Let’s take one now. A couple of years before the untimely death of my beloved mother—she was 47 and I was 27 years of age—she wanted to explain to me why I was a miracle. Before I was conceived, she had a desperate fear of becoming pregnant again. The fear was for her life which I was able to verify later finding documentation confirming this after she passed away She was on birth control, but because she was also taking antibiotics, she became pregnant with me anyway. She was terrified consulted her doctor about how to end the pregnancy.

She told me this story various times, and I understood her pain. I never felt angry with her about even considering this decision. I think it is because she loved me so much and I understood her reasons so well. It was 1969 and abortions were illegal so the doctor prescribed a very strong dosage of birth control pills and asked her to go home. The problem would go away. She followed his instructions but after a few weeks, nothing had changed. She was still with child (me). Very distressed, she returned to the doctor and pleaded with him to help her get rid of me. She explained to me that he increased her dosage and said something should occur in a few days. It didn’t, I was still in there insisting on life...and I still don’t know why.

By the next visit, she was desperate and asked what else could be done. He said by this time it was too late and too risky. It seemed she had to go through with this pregnancy. I was born in June of 1970, but I was asleep. It took the doctors quite a while to wake me up, according to my mother. She thought I was perhaps stillborn, oh but I wasn’t. I was in a deep slumber until very rudely awakened into this cold, heavy, noisy world. The bright side was that my mother and the whole family were over the moon that I was a girl and I was very much loved despite the rocky start.

Blissfully Unaware I Was Not Supposed To Be Alive

NATURALLY, I ASKED my mother if she had any regrets having me. She said it was one of the best things that ever happened to her. She always said that having her three children made her life worth living. I asked if I was an easy baby and she said jokingly, I was too easy. What did that mean? I wondered. She explained I slept all the time. She had to wake me up and make sure I was alive. I was healthy in every way except I slept too much. I was the opposite of most babies who cry much of the time. She said I didn’t even cry when I was hungry. That she had to try to force feed me or I’d just sleep. Well, I have to admit, I haven’t changed much in that respect. More on my sleep disorder in the lucid dreaming section.

Once I was bit older I quickly learned I was different the hard way. I was always feeling emotional and physical pain and crying. Crying because it hurt to see others in pain and there was always someone around in pain. As a child, no one took the time to have compassion for my distress. In fact, I was considered a crybaby. This was when I wasn’t sleeping, of course. I also had this trauma of camera flashes. I know it sounds ridiculous and I have yet to do a past-life regression to discover why, but when someone took a photo of me and the flash went off, I would cry uncontrollably.

Additionally, I hated being picked up and spun around, as many parents do with their children. I had and (still have) extreme motion sensitivity and would feel disoriented, nauseous and extremely frightened when spun around, in vehicles, elevators, or anything moving too fast. Needless to say, I don’t enjoy amusement parks. Fortunately, I’m over the camera flash trauma, and as some of my friends joke, I even have a Diana pose I’ve developed for photos.

Back in the ’70s, not many people would use the word sensitive in a positive way. This was torture for me because I didn’t know why I was so different. I also didn’t understand how to reconcile this sensitivity and my resilience to the two abortion attempts, or my boyfriend’s attempt to kill me, or the other ridiculous adversities I’ve experienced.

Chapter 2: The Bronx is Burning My World was Burning

We are born into families and places to clear or create karma and learn life lessons. Do we carry this generation-long issues on or try to resolve them?

Howard Cosell, the famous sportscaster was known for saying this during the 1977 World Series. The Bronx from the 1970s was a completely different place than it is now. In fact, this borough of New York City has a complex and fascinating history. It was originally called Rananchqua by the Lenape Lenapekoking Native American territory Siwanoy of Wappinger Confederacy and later converted to farmlands by European colonists. It was named The Bronx after Jonas Bronck who, along with other settlers, displaced the Native Americans and established the first settlement circa 1639. Some areas are conserved open spaces including the New York Botanical Garden and Bronx Zoo. People from various ethnic and social-economic backgrounds would come here to this borough specifically to start a new life.

This borough attracted many migrant and immigrant groups. The Bronx experienced a large population boom in the 1800s and 1900s, and particularly after World War I when the subway system was extended from Manhattan. Many were from Europe including Italy, Ireland, French, Polish, and Germany, and a large Jewish population. Due to various factors including Prohibition, the borough saw a huge increase in crime and was known by 1926 for its crime and speakeasies. In the 1930’s many of the Irish, German, and other ethnic groups began to move to other nearby suburbs and states with lower crime rates. This is known as the white flight.

A new wave of migration from Puerto Rico, which is where my parents came from, and of African Americans began in the 1960s and ’70s, specifically in the west and The South Bronx. These two areas were hit with a significant decline in the quality of life. This is where the story of my life takes place in this lifetime.

As an infant, I had no idea I was born in a blighted geographical location. I had no conscious awareness of the violence around me. In fact, I have good early memories of my family: my mom, dad, and two brothers. I know I felt a lot of love. I remember outings to parks, the movies, and the beach, along with festive house parties. I especially remember standing in my crib, trying to hold on, with a TV in front of me, what I know was a show called Star Trek.

What I didn’t know was there was violence in our household. Too much for it to sustain a healthy environment for any of us. That so-called happy life ended and my parents got divorced when I was three years old. Suddenly there was another dad, my stepfather, and I could only see my father on weekends. This was confusing and painful. I felt torn all the time. I was supposed to be nice to this new dad and call him dad but he wasn’t. My real dad was not with us, nor were his financial resources, fun outings, and house parties. I remember that once we had to leave where we were and in a real hurry. Fire! It was first next door, where my grandfather lived, then all the buildings around us and eventually ours too. These were the arson fires of the 1970s. And they killed and left many struggling families homeless.

There are many socio-economic and cultural theories as to why the population increased to an unhealthy level and crime increased dramatically. Social scientists and many historians believe that the renewal projects in The Bronx were partly responsible for making a low-density neighborhood into high-density ones and drastically dislocating many. Because of this, insurance companies and banks began to reduce and eliminate financial services in The South Bronx, which is known as redlining[3].

I remember doing an honors research project in college called The Project in Bronx Studies where several students gathered to learn the history of The Bronx and choose a specific subject matter. While learning the early history, I got so angry discovering that landlords in the south Bronx actively participated in the violent wave of arson that made history. The white flight left many buildings vacant. Some historians blame drug users, criminals, squatters, and the mentally ill for starting fires in these vacant locations.

Others, including researchers, believe landlords began to cash out on these buildings, before they could no longer get insurance payments due to redlining. Additionally, a special type of white color criminal known as the fixer began a very specific type of insurance scam. This was so successful that they were able to hire local gangs to strip the buildings of anything valuable before burning them down, providing a fixer with the fire insurance policy claim.

Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. —William Jennings Bryan

Chapter 3: Fires, Demons, and the End of the World, Oh No!

"We strive for inner peace and calm, but only in the depths of adversity do we know whether or not we have found it." — David McLaughlin

The jarring words of a professor still reverberate through my psyche. Back in my late 20’s, I believed I was a very well adjusted, hardy, resilient, and ambitious professional in the making. Oh, what a naïve little one I was. Despite some really painful and harsh experiences, I worked in tons of diverse jobs since the age of fifteen learning tons of skills. I graduated from high school and college with honors. I then got my Master’s degree and was in a doctoral program, on route to becoming a scholar.

During this time at graduate school, I took a seemingly easy elective course titled Everyday Life to ease my heavy load of responsibilities. It was an interdisciplinary course with a large group of students. The first day, the professor gave a short introduction, a self-explanatory description, and then went around the room asking us all what everyday life was for each of us.

One student after another began their story. In my every day, I think about finding an epistemological bridge between qualitative and quantitative data collection and how to incorporate that infrastructure into my dissertation committee’s frame of reference ... I took a huge gulp of my extra double shot latte. One student ends, another begins.

I’m a writer and live in the city. I have my cup of tea and stare outside. My window faces the interior of the building where we have some planted trees and a small garden. I think about my writing process and how I will spend the rest of my day meeting friends for lunch and compare our plans for the next week and our writer’s conference... She continued with a few more banal sentences. After a few minutes, it was my turn, Well, I’d like to start by saying that I approach my every day with apprehension.. Being born and raised in The Bronx and working or studying here in Manhattan, I have seen really incredible and painful things. I’ve witnessed two strangers commit suicide a year apart from each other, tragic accidents, and events too frequent to count all over the boroughs. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I wake up with pessimism or expecting bad things. I’ve just seen and experienced more than my share of unpleasant events that make me hyper-aware of myself and my surroundings, and highly experienced in a variety of unexpected situations. I felt quite proud, and made my point that not everyone lived an everyday life of privilege, safety, simplicity, and non-events.

The professor stopped for a second and said to me, That’s because you’ve lived a life that is oppressed. You are an oppressed person.

I remember thinking, What?! What is that supposed to mean? Oppressed? I’m not fucking oppressed! How do you know? You don’t know anything about my history. I was feeling stunned and could not find any way to respond.

There was silence for a few seconds and another student began to talk about his every day, undisturbed by the interaction between the professor and me. He kept speaking but his voice faded away. I just sat there stunned, my face feeling hot and flushed.

Was I oppressed? I was thrust back in time and saw my life happen before me in a flash.

...

There I was, in my mind’s eye, standing in front of kids. A teacher says, We have a new student, let’s welcome Diana to the class. A chorus of children says in unison, Hi Diana! I am shaking and terrified. This scene would be repeated from the first to the 5th grade, going from school to school in the South Bronx as one after another building went up in flames. To this day, I can still smell the soot and post-fire smell. We, my stepfather, mother, and two brothers would go from temporary shelter to temporary shelter, staying with friends and family, and attending one school district after another. We were running away from fire and what seemed like hell. Running right into another one.

During a child’s early development, stability is important. Our constant movement away from danger and inability to find a stable place to live or learn was detrimental. Academics and social researchers along with psychologists confirm this over and over again. Unpredictability creates an incredible amount of stress, particularly for those who are introverted. Although I was too young to understand what was happening around us, I knew there was fear and discomfort.

My family did something many were doing during this time. They sought refuge in their local churches. I discovered an odd statistic years later when I was taking an ethics course in graduate school. The poorer the neighborhood, the more churches in those areas. The churches tend to be Spanish-speaking evangelical storefront churches. This was what I experienced growing up. But the trend has continued well into current times[4].

My mother was already familiar with this religion from her own childhood, but stepped away from it while married to my father. After their divorce and while with my stepfather, they were both born again and she was more committed to the church than ever. Amongst the chaos around us, it felt familiar and safe to her. For me, not so much.

The first thing to go was anything secular. Strange rules were among us now. We were not allowed to watch television because they were gateways to sin. We did have movie night, however, at a little theater called Teatro Puerto Rico where could watch movies like A Thief in the Night over and over again. You can check it out on YouTube if you wish to judge whether a 6 or 7-year-old should be watching this.

Imagine the end of the world is upon us! The Rapture could happen at any second, day or night, and only the righteous will be caught up and saved. While others—most people on earth except the true Pentecostals—will be left behind to experience The Great Tribulation and Armageddon[5]. Looking up at the sky and thinking, this is it, the world is ending and I’m either going to heaven or burn in hell for living in sin and either way— it’s scary shit! Then, nothing happens. The next evening you go to church, again and again, the preacher is warning it could be the end of the world at any second. You wait, look up, shake with fear, and hope you are not a sinner going to hell.

We were not to listen to any music other than Christian music. We could not listen to other religious music including Catholic songs, only Pentecostal ones. We were certainly not to dance unless it was spiritual movement inspired by the Holy Ghost. We were not allowed to have friends outside of the church unless we were trying to save them by bringing them into our church. Growing up Pentecostal was extremely traumatic for me as an empath and female. It was so much worse if you are a woman and everything that was of beauty was a sin. Make-up of any kind was not permitted. Women with short hair were frowned upon. I could not wear pants, only long dresses and skirts with long-sleeve tops that went up to the neck. They didn’t even like women to shave their legs!

I may have been young, but none of this felt right to me. Why were so many things that everyone else did or wore, sinful? Yes, and we’d be reminded six nights a week. And those sinful ones were being influenced by the devil and demons.

We as the faithful ones had to ensure we would not be influenced by demons. We were to follow the rules and not stray. Those who did stray and sin had to confess to their pastor or minister and undergo an exorcism because they were most likely possessed. This meant that we witnessed demonic possessions and exorcisms on a regular basis. Beware of holy [wo]men who are often full of holy shit.

When you are a child you are to listen to adults because they are the wise ones, the ones who know how the world works. While we were getting ready for exorcisms and end the world, with our world in the South Bronx literally burning and fraught with all kinds of crime, there was one more thing I as a little girl experienced that tainted my innocent soul.

Within the church, there was the idea of being a missionary and servant to God. My mother and stepfather had huge plans to do some of this missionary work as far as Africa where all we heard about was how so many people were starving to death. Our responsibility was to save their souls. Our missionary work began within the Bronx, Brooklyn, and upper Manhattan. This was by way of handing out booklets and flyers. Whether it was the on streets or the churches, our job was to recruit members and save their souls by converting them and making them part of our missionary group. This also included my stepfather and mother preaching in the streets with a megaphone and being guest preachers in local churches. Ironically, as strict as the churches were with women, preaching and singing was permitted.

In the unforgiving streets of The South Bronx of the 1970s, I was out there in the hot summer days, standing for hours, selling God. It felt wrong to this little girl. I wanted to play, to see and smell lilies, count clouds and laugh. Instead of playing, as a child should, I was tasked to use my cute little girl charms to save souls from an eternity in hell. I saw and smelled streets littered with garbage instead of lilies. I saw and smelled putrid, black smoke billowing from public buses instead of puffy clouds in the sky. I would shake with fear at night instead of laugh. Instead of saving souls of adults with free will and choice, I wanted to rescue the abandoned dogs and cats who were left behind by these humans in the ruins of the Bronx inferno. Things haven’t changed much, have they? We still abuse, neglect, and abandon animals—something that is beyond the comprehension of anyone who can feel what animals feel; they are sentient.

Almost nightly we would all go to churches, and one by one my two brothers and I would be called up to sing as well as my mother, while my stepfather and sometimes my mother would preach. In essence, we were performing with the purpose of getting a small cash collection from the church. As Christian children, we were to obey our parents, our pastor, and all of our elders. Hence, I was raised to be polite. Very polite. Too polite. So though I didn’t have official etiquette training as you would see in Emily Post’s Etiquette, it was crucial in my upbringing not only be polite, but not to be rude. But that had a very injurious side to it, one I had to learn to reverse much later by learning to use boundaries properly.

These churches with open doors were a beacon to anyone walking or living close by. There was always a welcome mat. However, this was during the time when all kinds of people who were criminals of various degrees, mentally ill, or indigent. Often during any given church service someone would walk in. A member of the church would go over and ask them to enter. Many of these people simply wanted somewhere to go for shelter, food, or heat depending on the time of year. For us members it was a great opportunity to have them convert, be born again, and become part of our growing missionary group.

I am sure my family was not consciously aware of the fact that many were criminals, including sexual offenders. The ministry would often give some of these people, almost always men, food and a place to stay. They would be with us wherever we happened to be staying at the time. These well-meaning acts of mercy along with my instructions to be polite, respect adults by not talking back or being rude, got me very hurt as a little girl. I was touched inappropriately—what is known as frottage: the practice of touching or rubbing against the clothed body of another person in a crowd as a means of obtaining sexual gratification.

I was confused as to what to do because often these men would do it in such a way that no one else would really notice except me. I instinctively