Such a Journey: My Path to Righteousness

By Dorothy Manning

Dorothy takes us on an epic journey of a small-town girl persevering through various trials and tribulations to achieve God's purpose in her life. After surviving a broken home; physical, mental, and verbal abuse; divorce; death of her children; and near-death experiences, the pastor reveals how she overcame adversities, rediscovered joy, and found her purpose. She learned, a believer puts God first more than anything else, and His cultivation is a lifelong process. Through all her adversities, Dorothy rose like a phoenix. Each chapter is filled with palpable stories that will touch your inner soul with empathy and compassion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662484346

Book preview

cover.jpg

Such a Journey

My Path to Righteousness

Dorothy Manning

Copyright © 2022 Dorothy Manning

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-8433-9 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8434-6 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Individuals Who Shared This Journey with Me

About the Author

My life has always been an open book, chapters of different journeys that have defined the woman that I have become.

—Dr. Dorothy Manning

Introduction

Today, I am enjoying my retirement from the Detroit Police Department. I served the department for twenty-five years as a civil servant rising in the ranks from street patrol to sergeant and the mayor's security team. Although I am retired from the force, still I work as a matriarch, a motivational speaker, an assistant pastor at Christ Temple Baptist Church, and a dean at a local college. Life has taught me that the different ingredients for happiness and success required faith in God, discipline, endurance, perseverance, and resilience. The paradox of success is failure is inevitable to achieve aspirations and goals. My failures reveals weakness and aspects of my character that needed to be developed and refined to endure the road to success.

My autobiography is a chronological story of my life since childhood to present. I share the difficult path I traveled of enduring trials and tribulations and achieving goals. I visited the depths of my mind and rediscovered ominous places where memories and stories were stored or suppressed that are my personal revelations and testimonies to share with others. I want others to understand that goals and adversity are tied together. To achieve one, you must experience the other. Every race I ran, I started at a start line, the beginning point, and I stayed on the track to cross the finish line. Strength is not given to the swift but to the ones who can endure.

Today, I am a beacon of faith. I acknowledge God before my feet hit the floor in the morning and before my head hit the pillow at night. I keep Him first in every decision no matter how big or small.

I reflect on my life and begin penning eminent moments and stop intermittently to thank God for providing His mercy and grace throughout my life. The memories cause me to pause and recount the numerous high and low pivotal moments of my life. I momentarily rest my pen at different times and thoughts about how I was spared the clutches of death or despair overwhelm me. Then, I reflect on how God provided me a way when I did not see a way.

Chapter 1

My Path Began

I was in the kitchen, as a young girl, watching my grandmother cook breakfast. She was boiling water to make coffee. The teakettle started whistling, and steam filled the room. The pressure from the heat applied to the water caused the transformation to steam. The steam expanded and found a way to the atmosphere through the small hole in the kettle. It reminded me when my friend made me angry, and I suppressed that anger. But my emotions continued building up just like the water in the teakettle. Eventually, my anger exploded, and I told her off. I blew off some steam. Holding in any kind of emotion could be harmful because all of that pinned up emotion will eventually come out and usually in unintentional ways.

It was me, but I started noticing some pressure in my family. My grandmother's behavior toward my mother had changed. She treated her differently. At times, she was very curt with my mother. I learned years later that she never accepted her daughter-in-law. My mother was unaware of the resentment at the time. I was a teenager when I learned the full ramification of my grandmother's resentment toward my mother. It had great historical significance in African American culture. During slavery, there were two types of slaves, house, and field. The house negro worked in the plantation owner's home due to one requirement, their biracial skin tone. A fairer skin tone created a fallible sense of trust and safety for the plantation owner. The darker skin negro worked in the cotton or tobacco fields.

Skin tone determined the intrinsic hierarchy of slaves. This psychological brainwashing was one of many that slave owners used to keep slaves separated and disliking each other. In some respect, this kind of brainwashing along with many others still exist today and permeates the Black culture. My grandmother had a penchant for fair skin women even though my grandmother, herself, was not of fair skin. She respected my mother out of respect for her son but emotionally resented her. My grandmother was a victim of flawed beliefs of her race and culture.

My dad's sharecropping business was doing very well. He saved enough money and decided to relocate from Tunica, Mississippi, to Brinkley, Arkansas. He wanted to expand his opportunities away from poverty-stricken Mississippi. Brinkley was less than one hundred miles from Tunica but a stark difference in the atmosphere. We lived in a nice area in a small quaint house. My siblings and I met some of the kids our age in the neighborhood. Life was great from a kid's perspective.

The atmosphere in the house immediately changed from happiness and security to a questionable future for our family. Arguments and doors slamming were constant. I would stay up beyond my bedtime waiting for my mom to come home safely, and when she got home, she and dad would argue about where she had been. And he smelled cigarettes and liquor. The arguments took a toll on me and my siblings. There were many mornings we would leave for school feeling tired from sleepless nights of listening to our parents arguing. At the time, I did not fully understand their problems or let alone the conflicting feelings and pressures that I was experiencing.

I was convinced that my siblings and I were the reason my mother would leave home and spend time with friends instead of spending quality time with us. The responsibility was overwhelming for her. And she could not perceive the task at the time, or she just did not like us. I do not know with certainty, but I just felt like it was my fault. My mother's drinking escalated and became so bad that she could not attend to our basic needs anymore because she was always drinking. My father became so distraught and was at his wits end. He provided for his family and spent quality time with his family, and his wife did not consider the quality homelife he provided and would rather have fun at juke joints. My parent's marriage became tumultuous, and eventually they amicably separated. I was watching my life unravel before my eyes. At this age trying to understand or wrap my mind around my parents' problems was beyond me, and all of it made me feel guilty.

My dad made the hard decision to relocate to Memphis, Tennessee, without our mother. This was one of the most ironic situations I experienced. My dad and his identical twin met two sisters and dated them for a while, and eventually, both couples married. My dad remained in Arkansas, and his twin moved to Memphis to start new beginnings. After some time in Arkansas, it was time to move with my mom's sister and my dad's twin brother. This was our third relocation. I had a feeling that this would not be the last time we moved.

As we traveled Interstate 40 East to Memphis, my younger sister and brother cried for a while, and sometimes they cried themselves to sleep, laying their heads on my arm. I kept thinking about all my friends whom I would never see again, my favorite teachers, and the store clerk that allowed me to slide when I was pennies short for an item. The bright aspect of the move was that we would get to see and play with our cousins. It had been a while since I last saw them.

Memphis was very much different from Brinkley. The city was hugely different from the country. Memphis was bigger, and there were a lot more people, particularly Black people. Even though Memphis is a southern city, it did not feel like the south. Neighbors and people in general were very friendly just like people were in Brinkley. That is one of the best southern characteristics that exist today. We had a great family support system of aunts, uncles, and cousins who were our age. My siblings and I adjusted well at our new school. Things were great until I noticed something odd or rather, someone odd.

I remember seeing a lady talking to my dad a few times when we lived in Brinkley. I did not think much of it because there was nothing unusual that caught my attention. However, when I saw this woman in Memphis, now it was unusual. I began to wonder if she was the cause of my father separating from my mother. Was she part of the problems that caused dissension in our home? Did my father gravitate to her in a time of need when my mother was out having fun with friends drinking and smoking cigarettes? From that point on, I watched her closely. Then, that ultimate day arrived when my dad introduced the mystery lady to us. Now I know she was special to my dad.

I was almost six years of age at the time when I formally met my dad's friend. She seemed okay. My brother and I noticed that she really liked our father. After dad introduced her to us, she felt comfortable with spending more time with him even more than we spent with dad. We concluded that she was our father's new girlfriend, although she was never introduced to us with that title. She had one child, a son. He was older than us, three years older than me. He spent a lot of time with my brothers and cousins. He always looked at me in a weird or uncomfortable way. He made