Sexty: Grown Folks Business, Hard Work, and Healthy!

By Sunyra E.

The information about the book is not available as of this time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669809586

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Copyright © 2022 by Sunyra E.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version

(Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic

Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/08/2022

Xlibris

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Contents

96

TWO MARRIAGES

ONE DIVORCE

FOUR CHILDREN

82

DIVORCED

NO CHILDREN

80

TWO MARRIAGES

ONE DIVORCE

EIGHT CHILDREN

78

TWICE MARRIED

ONCE WIDOWED

FIVE CHILDREN

76

WIDOWED

FIVE CHILDREN

76

SINGLE

TWO—POSSIBLY THREE—CHILDREN

76

DIVORCED

TWO CHILDREN

72

TWICE DIVORCED

ONE CHILD

70

DIVORCED

ONE CHILD

68

WIDOW

THREE CHILDREN

68

MARRIED

FOUR CHILDREN

67

DIVORCED

SEVEN CHILDREN

66

WIDOWER

TWO CHILDREN

65

MARRIED

FOUR CHILDREN

63

DIVORCED

THREE CHILDREN

60

MARRIED

ONE CHILD

60

DIVORCED

THREE CHILDREN

60

MARRIED

SIX CHILDREN

60

WIDOWED

TWO CHILDREN

58

WIDOW

THREE CHILDREN

58

MARRIED

TWO CHILDREN

58

MARRIED

FOUR CHILDREN

58

WIDOW

ONE CHILD

57

MARRIED

TWO CHILDREN

56

WIDOWER

THREE CHILDREN

55

DIVORCED

ONE CHILD

55

SEPARATED

TWO CHILDREN

54

MARRIED

TWO CHILDREN

52

MARRIED

NO CHILDREN

51

MARRIED

FOUR CHILDREN

50

SINGLE

ELEVEN CHILDREN

I want to acknowledge and thank the two women who inspired this work. Their open candidness sparked my need to follow through on our intriguing conversation about the feelings we have regarding our worth in relations: Ms. Judy Frazier and Mrs. Karyn Riggins.

This book is dedicated to the memories of my oldest and dearest friends . . . Mr. Jimmy Lamar Haynes and Ms. Linda Jean Gray. Thank you for years of pure love and friendship, and may you both rest in peace!

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Plans fall apart so better ideas and projects can emerge and take form. We all must encounter uncomfortable circumstances and paths to reach greater insight for more beautiful adventures.

A storm aims to destroy old nonviable debris and produces a clean slate by which new, more robust development becomes the outcome. People come into our lives to plant seeds that affect our lives either positively or chaotically. We are responsible for the seeds we plant; inevitably, those seeds grow in our lives.

Trauma, drama, ups and downs show up in our lives to teach us how to take control, become resilient, and emerge with greater knowledge and more dynamic power.

A setback is not a sit-still/down-forever event. Setbacks are temporary holding patterns designed to help us reevaluate significant events or projects in our lives. They prevent us from investing too much energy, too much money, too much time, only to learn the investment would cost us more than we had to give in the long run.

If we experience pain, it doesn’t come to consume or destroy us; it arrives as a wake-up call to remind us that life is all about choices, trial and error. Pain pushes us to overcome, squelch, and conquer our inner fears.

Failed attempts are not our eternal identities; instead, they are practice sessions for finding the right combination of angles to build better projects (that which is within us concerning our respective lives).

Compromise is in no shape, form, or fashion a castration if approached with sincerity. It is a combination of mutual sharing, joint expectations, an ongoing acknowledgment of differences and agreements. Compromise requires us to be willing to fuse ideas to reach safer and healthier platforms of expression.

Forgiveness is an essential requirement of gaining true happiness. Very few people ever achieve satisfaction because we cannot forgive: Mama, Daddy, sister, brother, the so-called best friend (at age twelve, sixteen, and so on and so on), and, most importantly, ourselves.

When we cannot face the possibility of losing a relationship, good or bad, unhealthy is born, breeds, and hides here!

Are you aware that facing our fears is accomplished only by forgiving our transgressions, transgressors, and ourselves?

Do you understand that forgiveness does not automatically yield reconciliation?

You can arrive at the end of a relationship, forgive the transgression and choose not to continue the relationship in any capacity to regain or gain your inner peace and tranquility.

Outside of the Creator, no source or force can create happiness in or for you. We create and build our happiness independent of others. We can share our happiness with others, but we cannot blame others if we are not happy.

Life is a rehearsal embodied with blunders, fumbles, and falls from which we can recover. The mind, the eyes, and the heart function as the audiovisual components and capture every element of the various scenes of our lives, and yes, some scenes are archived because we couldn’t appreciate the frame. Life’s unique essence is what we envision and create for positive outcomes with realistic achievement goals.

So why be disappointed or regretful when we have the power to live healthy, happy lives?

All we have to do is commit to doing the hard work in the beginning.

So let’s take a walk and talk about what it means to be SEXTY.

This book is a culmination of men’s and women’s triumphs and disappointments. It is a sharing of heartache, heartbreak, disillusionment, and discovery. This book exposes the most painful and personal journeys traveled to reach safe places and open doors to life, as it should be.

There is no judgment on these pages, just an opportunity for each reader to understand that they may have encountered these same and similar circumstances once, twice, or more without any direction to not repeat the cycle.

I hope I have captured tools that will assist just one person in their search. I want all of us to know how to dig deep enough to find our true selves.

After reading this work, I hope someone might find it helpful enough to pass along to others to help them begin the process of self-healing.

No person can fix another; that is a personal task, but as friends, partners, and lovers, we can assist each other and engage in a healing process that becomes infectious.

I want us all to be healthy, so let’s begin our journey through the stages of Sexty!

96

TWO MARRIAGES

ONE DIVORCE

FOUR CHILDREN

Psalms 18:22

Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the LORD.

In 1943 I moved to Chicago and was drafted into the United States Army. Upon completing basic training, I returned home for fourteen days, and I got married. My first marriage ended because it just wasn’t beneficial to or rewarding for either of us.

As we walked to the courthouse, I turned to her and asked, Are you sure you want to do this? This is your last opportunity to change your mind.

She stopped walking and stood there for a moment. It appeared she was running the question through her mind one last time, and then she responded: Yes, I’m sure this is the best thing for us.

And so we continued walking until we reached the courthouse, and we completed our mission.

She and I were married seven or eight years, and I never neglected or shirked my responsibilities to her or our children; this was still my family. She was my partner, as we were the parents of these children, and we had to work together.

I had to learn how to trust, and yes, I learned by trial and much error. I was too stubborn to catch the lesson on the first go around, and thus I had to repeat portions of the training several times. Once I learned, I found I gained knowledge that would sustain me for a lifetime.

A few years later, I remarried. She and I had two children as well, and we’ve remained together for sixty-two years. A man is groomed and guided to become a husband and shepherd through his marriage. I was taught the most significant elements of manhood by women, especially these two women.

Black men were not relevant once outside their communities, so our identities were ego formed. None of us guys ever really knew what it meant to be in relationships. We just assumed it meant getting with a girl you liked for a day or being with a girl you were attracted to for a few days; that was about as long-termed as we could imagine.

Back then, the only nurturing I received was handed to me by my grandmother, and I recall those times as being stolen moments. She was the only person I can remember who mentioned the concept of love to me. She hammered into my head daily that nobody was ever going to give me anything and that I had to figure out a way to provide for myself.

You can’t imagine what it was like being a teenager or a young man growing up in the 1940s. The luxury of having stationary positive role models did not exist. The images I saw and mimicked were Sneaky Preachers, Hustlers, Pimps, and my relatives; and some of them were the very people I just mentioned. I learned early about survival . . . how to get as much as possible as quickly as I could . . . however, I could get it and move on.

The U.S. Army drafted me, but I didn’t want to be there, and I was AWOL for a while. I had several duty stations such as Fort Sheridan, Japan, Manila, Gafu, Ishashima, and Alabama. Oakland, California, was my last duty station, but I couldn’t tell you how I traveled to get from one assignment to the next.

I can’t tell you the date of my discharge. What I can tell you is that I was glad as hell when I got out.

I drove Chicago taxicabs and 18-wheelers for about eight years, and then on October 1, 1957, I became a Chicago police officer, and I remained there until March 15, 1990. For the better part of my life, I worked two jobs. I worked two jobs so I could support two families equally. My children from my former marriage enjoyed life just as my children from my new marriage; they were my kids, so I worked for them.

I have never been a bully or hotheaded, but even today, I am stubborn. When I was wrong; and sometimes I was way off the mark and had to do some long, hard soul searching, eventually, I apologized in my around about way. This approach had a great deal to do with my first marriage ending in divorce

As sophisticated as I thought myself to be, I wasn’t an effective communicator, at least not in my relationships at home with my spouse. Now on the job, I was on the ball; some of those same street lessons I learned in the forties were the cornerstones of my successes. In my personal life, I had a lot to learn.

My acknowledgment of being a grown man and having required responsibility came after my eldest children were born. Through them I learned how to communicate, but it took a while for me to master. I developed an interactive relationship with them, and with each new day, I gained better relating skills that proved beneficial as I grew older.

I was patient with them, and I wasn’t as stubborn with them (when they were children). I listened attentively and helped with their problems and issues by teaching them to stay calm and rational. I taught them to dissect every problem and develop a systematic plan of correction. In other words, I taught them to take their time, never to rush, and have realistic goals.

As I drilled those lessons into them, those very words taught me how to reach my wife and express myself. Now in no way am I trying to make you think I was Mr. Right all the time, but I wasn’t Mr. Wrong Dog either. I wasn’t sloppy with my undercover adventures. And let me be clear: no matter how good you think you are with what you do outside the home, your so-called undercover activities are never secret for long; and if you think them to be, you are an idiot.

I wasn’t a bad-looking guy. I was somewhat of a smooth operator, and some even referred to me as Mr. Smoke!—meaning smoke-and-mirrors smooth. I had a roaming eye, which meant my thoughts were not whole. You can read between the lines and understand what I am saying here.

In 2000, I was seventy-five years old, and if I’m honest, I was beginning to understand the true essence of life and the role I had