Unashamed of the Shame: My Life, My Story, My Experiences

By Tallulah Bulger

Unashamed of the Shame: My Life, My Story, My Experiences is for people that have and/or is/has been broken, abused, ashamed, cast aside, homeless, unashamed, pretty and not so pretty, and lastly, at their lowest in life and didn't see a way out but knew there would be a way out one day. When readers read this book, they will be able to relate with something in it, if not all of it. It was prophesized to me that I would write a book one day when I was sitting at home looking out the window down my driveway and the phone rang and I picked it up. Prophet Manassel was just talking and prophesizing to me and the second to last thing was "You will write that book."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645691334

Book preview

The Reason for Watching Siblings

I believe the reason for watching was to make sure they wouldn’t get on drugs or do drugs while she was away from her house, especially Bruce Speigner and Jesse Speigner. The reason was because my dad had told the family before he died to not get on this drug that is coming out and you will not be able to get off it.

Jerome Speigner was already on the road driving 18-wheelers. I also believe he was married to Daisy Davis at the time. They were together for some years but soon divorced. Now he’s married to Sonjia Thomas. She never really liked my mother because of some accusations that she heard about my brother. She thought my mom was the one pushing Jerome to talk to other women because they did not get along.

In 1986, I started kindergarten, and I did not want to leave my mommy. I can truly say that I did not want to go to school. I was attached to my mother because every time we went somewhere, I would hold on to her dress’s tail. I mean, who does that? My mom was my everything. My mother, who has always had a big heart, she decides to let her daughter-in-law move in, Carla Cotton Speigner, Jesse’s wife at the time, and their two kids. We were more than overcrowded living in a three-bedroom one-bath. But hey, we managed somehow. My mom was so smart that she taught Carla, who was very shy, how to speak up and out. She taught her how to clean, cook, and take care of her kids. My mom was also close to Jesse. Although he had his struggles like us all, she was very close to him and Carla. Carla had it good with my mom because she didn’t work, she was a stay-at-home mom. My mom was always straight up and spoke her mind. So there were times she came home from work, and if her house wasn’t clean, everybody was going to die. But seriously, everyone got cussed out even if it was at midnight. We had to get up and listen to the chastisement she gave us all. I was the baby, so I don’t know what I did to clean up. I’m thinking I was right under Mommy, watching them as usual. But hey, I was the baby, and Mom and I were tight to death. So as I went to school, I had a hard time adjusting to listening to somebody else, especially a mean teacher.

My First-Grade Experience

My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Abney, was nothing like my kindergarten teacher. I always felt as if she did not like me. Due to me feeling that way about her, it was hard for me to do my work in her class. In addition, I had a hard time retaining the information the teacher taught, and I felt like she wanted to fail me all along. Whenever she did help me, she would raise her voice at me, and that really got the best of me. I always felt that only my mom could talk to me like that. So of course, I thought she was mean. So when she would ask me a question, I never would answer. The thing that was so mysterious was that I would talk everywhere else but in Mrs. Abney’s class. This was when my family and Mrs. Abney discovered I was shy. We all figured we got it from both sides of my family because they all had the same shortcomings, in which is untrue because when I went to college and heard about the IQ and personality tests, it has been proven that shyness is not hereditary. I think it is more like a lack of self-esteem and confidence. I did grow out of it enough to speak publicly; however, I still have some par praxes from time to time. There were times I would not public speak at all. However, I eventually grew out of it after my first-grade year.

My mom and Mrs. Abney decided to hold me back this year. I honestly knew that I would get held back when I asked my next-door neighbor, Lenice Caver, my best friend at the time, for help on a test, and the teacher caught us, and she was fire mad. We were best friends, and all we knew is that we wanted to help each other on this test. From the conversation after we got caught, I said, Well, I will have to do first grade again. Mrs. Abney told my mother, and that was even worse. My mother felt like something would turn up like that because I wasn’t understanding the material, plus I felt bad because I thought Mrs. Abney was mean to me although I was not understanding the material or perhaps her teaching style. During this time, I had to watch out for my siblings and then deal with my first-grade teacher. I always said, God, if I can get through first grade, I will never ask for help no time soon, and I pray that my next teacher do not resemble Mrs. Abney.

Dealing with Bullies

I felt like I was always being picked on and talked about due to the way my siblings and I would act. So I would somehow avoid certain people. I had homework, but a lot of times, they felt like I wasn’t going to do any better at school, so they didn’t put too much effort in it. They felt like I was spoiled and didn’t care. It wasn’t that I didn’t care; I just wanted help. I felt like I was not going to get a good grade from Mrs. Abney, so I did not try harder although I tried to make a good grade anyway.

My siblings had homework but still wouldn’t help me with my homework. I felt as if Marsha and Marshelle really didn’t want to help me. But Jesse did help me one time with my math homework, and he was a great tutor. I remember this because I caught on so quick with Jesse’s help. There were other kids that came behind me that had Mrs. Abney’s class, and I heard she passed them, and they were in the special needs class—slow, shy, etc. That was when I knew my instinct did not lie to me: she did not like me. But I felt she liked Lenice all along. I believe my mom told her that she had to fail Lenice too if she failed me, although that was not fair, but it was the right thing to do because my mom did not play games. So then Lenice’s parents got involved, and her mother, Hazella Caver, never did speak to me and mom, especially, for a very long time. Lenice’s mom broke up our friendship, and we eventually stopped visiting each other, and soon we took our issues to school throughout the years as we got older. The weird thing about that was I never had another teacher to treat me this way. My other teachers did not see the shyness at all.

When I was in undergraduate school at Alabama State University in 2013, I was asked to do a presentation that I did not know anything about.