The Diary of A Curly-Haired Woman: A Metaphor of My Life's Twists and Turns, Maybe Even Yours

By Julia James

Life was an endless series of train wrecks for Julia, with only brief moments of escape.

The Diary of A Curly-Haired Woman tells the story of Julia James, who endured a brutal, egregious childhood, teenhood, and young adulthood. She suffered homelessness, abandonment, and countless betrayals.

Through

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manuscripts LLC
• Release date: Oct 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889268062

Julia James

Julia is a witty author, educator, and artist who lives in Texas with her amazing husband. She loves Jesus, family, investing in others, alliteration, life, energy, and telling her story to change the dynamics of a culture of tabu. Julia has two non-profits, Victorious Victory Victorias Foundation and Thrive & Grow Productions Inc., and is the CEO of Thrive & Groe Academy, LLC.As an example of what's possible when one overcomes, she offers consultancy, and coaching, via her courses, membership site, and speaking to share her story about her life's curly twists and turns.Julia has been in the field of education since 2008. Since then, she saw the need for services towards developing the family, children, and community.She discovered that training and services, family engagement, and community support were inevitable in developing a holistic child. Out of this need, she birthed "Thrive & GROE (Greatness Represented on Earth) Academy," LLC, in 2017. As a thought leader, she provides training, education, coaching, and solutions for individuals, organizations, and families. The mission and vision are to foster self-awareness of the tools needed for the transformational shifts necessary for thriving and growing into a growth mindset for healing.Julia has a bachelor's degree in Education from the University of Houston and became a certified teacher in 2012. In education, Julia has successfully led and advanced academic growth as an English Teacher, School Administrator, Campus Coordinator, and Regional Director of Operations in both private and independent school districts at Houston ISD, Spring ISD, Phalen Leadership Academy, and KIPP Charter Schools. She plans to continue using her writing to advocate for those who have experienced loss and homelessness because of abuse. She supports and speaks up for those screaming voices pleading to be heard. The Diary of A Curly-Haired Woman is poetically written and sung for today's generation. Raising awareness on topics most want to sweep under the rug. It is time for healing. She is available for speaking engagements: [e-mail].

Book preview

The Diary of

a Curly‐Haired

Woman

A Metaphor of My Life’s Twists and Turns, Maybe Even Yours

A Memoir

Julia James

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2023 Julia James

All rights reserved.

The Diary of a Curly‐Haired Woman

A Metaphor of My Life’s Twists and Turns, Maybe Even Yours

ISBN:

979-8-88926-935-9    Paperback

979-8-88926-806-2    Ebook

Library of Congress Control Number:

2023915050

Dévouement

I dedicate this to my Heavenly Father, who has given me a purpose and hope and has kept me all these years. To my husband, who has loved me deeply and has remained constant even after I showed him all my scars. To my mother, whose strength is an amazing testament to sheer grace, compassion, and love. To my family, who shared the growing up journey and knows how God will carry you through. And to all those amazing mystical guides, community members, shoulders, prayers, and encouragers along the way. Thank you for being so amazing.

I also dedicate this book to anyone hurting or crying out for more. There is hope and healing available. I am a testimony that if I came through life’s pain, so can you.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Featuring

Julia – Me

Victoria – My Mother

Mary – My Elder Sister

Helen – My Baby Sister

Charlie – My Dad

Charlie Jr. – My Brother

Tina – Mom’s Old Friend

Uncle B. – My Dad’s Brother

Matty – My Eldest Brother

Tracy – Dad’s First Wife

David – Friend

Sue – My Aunt on Mom’s Side

Grandma Susan – Mom’s Mom

Uncle Michael – Mom’s Brother

Grandpa Mason – Mom’s Biological Father

Mom’s Stepfather – Grandma Susan’s Second Husband

The Good Guy – Family Friend

Deli-on – My Eldest Sister

PROLOGUE

Putting a stop to the darkness of debilitating mental anguish, and the lies you tell yourself, in the inner world called You.

Coming to terms with fear, trouble, disenchantment, abuse, homelessness, illiteracy, domestic violence, dysfunction, self-resentment, family issues, and atrocities.

Silencing the not knowing, the denial, and inner resentment through the confrontation of life’s coils, braided locks, and turns.

Life’s roads of curly twists swirl with surrealism, lingering day after day. The memories trying to haunt me, bubbling up to assault me, and bullying me to have their way.

But when meaning dictates form and the light of a new brightest dawn breaks through, you’ll find a better, more empowered, enlightened you.

When meaning wants to dictate form, your best defense is to sit there, smile, observe, or say hi.

I am pushing back braids, knots, and entangled entrapments of the world in Me, and remembering the act of overcoming is a function of becoming.

So, let’s light a match in the dark places, yielding to the flames that are the consuming fire, whose purpose is for putting ablaze all that is needing to be done away with by a refiner’s fire.

Let’s set the a fine-tuning temperature. Let us commit to being refined and say hello to the new you.

NAMES AND GAMES: LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION

Shh, she’ll hear you.

Friend, you shh! No, she won’t.

Just sit down. I’ll go and get the rest of those knuckleheads banging on the door and tell ’em to come in.

I am Fear! Nice to meet you. You know Julia and I are longtime friends.

Oh, okay. I am Trouble. I caused all this.

Both laugh in utter joy and excitement as they think Julia has been played.

She’s ‘really’ going to talk about her life and her diary. I am going to send in a few more dark friends to torment her like I did her family, says Fear.

My sister Love is ushering everyone in, saying, You’re welcome. You saw the sign out front. Come in and sit, stand, or take a front-row seat. But are you sure? I am not. You might not have the stomach to hold all that is held within the next moments. It is good. It is going to get real, really fast. So, I will ask you again. Are you sure you wanna stay?

You saw the sign outside: TRUTH SEEKERS ONLY!

Julia, get on with it already! a young lady cries out from the audience.

Shh, her reading is starting.

Julia doesn’t recognize all the characters sitting in the audience, although they have been there with her all along, like bodyguards protecting her every move. Their names are Victory, Overcoming, Freedom, and Love. Fear, Doubt, and Unbelief think they have not been detected. But the time to expose the darkness with Light is now.

Let’s see what lies ahead.

Action.

MEMOIR

inner workings of a story imperfectly remembered, to be told

by the one recalling it, hoping all that’s remembered is sufficient

part imagination, part memory, part history

to pepper and salt in what is left.

SOBER UP

Energy begets energy, and life begets life. So goes the flow of our days, nights, and our ways. Have we gotten so far off the beaten path we lost sight of it? Chasing eternity and the Tower of Babel? While all along the course has been made clear, daily, like rose‐colored glasses on your eyes. Who said you can’t fly a kite to see above the clouds? Who said you can’t come up higher to see above the forest? Fires? They are always around you, sometimes unnecessarily even.

Time to sober up. Your life and mine have meaning.

I have learned, when we choose to ignore what we know or when we do not take the time to grow, we blur our blessed paths. Maybe because our life lessons took us to school, and this happens when we do not pass the class.

December 19, 2020, 6:38 a.m.

Dear Diary,

Sober Up.

I wrote this chapter for you. I don’t know who you are but I normally would have addressed other chapters as if pulling a page from my own diary. Today, as I awoke to the sound of a phone call, I realized I had been pulled out from a dream. In the dream I saw someone who appeared lifeless, all casually dressed up. Her face was looking at the concrete part of the sidewalk in the street, and as I stood there looking, I saw what appeared to be my book, this book, The Diary of a Curly-Haired Woman.

Now, I confess I am bothered by this. My book was placed, or dropped, or something else on the concrete. What is more unsettling is that I waited. I had a prophecy to write this book and thought what you are reading now would be the last chapter. I was able to see the last chapter for this and knew it was to address you. The gained awareness of someone’s life appearing affected possibly because I did not act sooner. I am keenly aware now.

Yes, you. This book is two years past its release date and the thought that I woke up to see lifelessness wasn’t okay. In fact, dear diary, I heard, Don’t wait. Stop procrastinating with your gift or it can be like a dream and hope deferred.

I am sitting here in my bathtub, imagining everything would have been alright if I had only finished this book on time. Maybe she would have been spared if she had read this: Don’t quit, you matter, you’re not invisible, and you have a great future.

I speak life, to you and me. To everyone who reads this, may you live and receive life. Will you agree?

See, for me, speaking is about releasing the word that births and unlocks life and freedom in you from the word of life. He is a person.

AWARENESS

January 7, 2021, 5:07 a.m.

Dear Diary,

I am sorry for making you wait to hear the words of life and for sitting out there on the sidelines, imagining my vision board with a lost list of pictures and to-dos never acted on.

Yeah, my vision board may be posted where you can see it, but what was the point if you simply did something to feel good about getting the ideas out of your head? Lifelessness. Shaking my head. 

I am not belittling you, or myself for that matter. I am saying I’m awake and asking you what are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about your life? What decisions, ideas, or lives are being withheld from this world because you and I did not act on the call to action?

You know the voice inside you telling you about your potential, cheering you on to do good in the world, and explaining how to live your best life? Isn’t it more important to remember our actions—or the lack thereof—impact those assigned to us?

So, I took a class in college helping me learn how to write. Great! However, if I sat on the talent for ten years now, who’s getting hurt by this? Certainly no one is, right? I mean, I am going to work and being nice to people. I pay my bills and take care of my mom. I know I’ll get to writing one day! It’s on my vision board. Smile!

Is anyone ever really impacted by my decisions?

The people we are meant to impact will not be changed for good or worse if we do not carry out our purpose and walk in our identity. I think we are partly responsible for their lives because we did not touch them the way we could have. We did not help them because we sat on our ideas, got in our own way, and/or didn’t respond and realize the power of our purpose.

It doesn’t matter if I hurt or help, I still have an impact. Again, their destiny could be in our hands because it’s our responsibility to impact change with the talents we have. It’s our responsibility not to waste a diary. Is the world ready to receive what I’m saying here?

Yesterday, I spoke to a lady who asked me, What do you do for your outlet?’’ I said I am a creative artist and I write. Then there was an exchange of dialogue, but the takeaway was in her final words, Oh, I have that on my vision board."

What? I am shaking my head at this point. No one wants to admit they have not completed a thing in life.

This is what it took for me to face my truth. I looked in the mirror and reflected. I took the time to sober up. If I hadn’t taken this time for self‐reflection, I would have been forced to recognize or experience this: the pain of being suffocated by life’s coils would be greater than the sheer, pure joy of simply being relaxed, untangled, full of peace, and untightened.

When we yield to love and accept life has purpose, happiness is sure to follow, and could be like having your hair freshly done or sipping a refreshing, tall, beautiful glass of water even though you might prefer the taste of a fine glass of port. Why fight your purpose?

Did I make the wrong turn? Did I not help enough people along the way? Is my life suffering? Am I doomed? No! Dang! I’m realizing I am responsible for my own happiness, and no one can do it for me. But what about when you are a child? Too late for that narrow road in memory lane. I must reconcile this now. I must understand who is not to be blamed.

Overcome misery with purpose. Face it, reinforce it with a new memory, and rewrite its history. Yield. Catch. Observe. Release.

Sobering up is worth it.

GENE POOL

Gene. I’ll keep it short for genealogy. Why? Best to keep this simple. Besides, I’m a poet. I have a total of six known siblings: four from Mom, two from my dad, and more I have only heard about but am yet to meet.

So, you tell Genes to call me if you meet them before I do, ’cause we have a lot of catching up to look forward to.

My parents were a busy couple of bees begetting bees and that’s all I know. Well, I may be able to shed some light on a few of them, you know, personality-wise. I mention this but I’m not so sure of much past this. Memory can be interesting…

(Genes, funny things they are, right?)

Subname them in little biological worlds that make up chapters in a body, but in this case they are siblings.

About my other siblings, what can I say? Here’s the thing about my memory: I can only reveal as much as I can remember. We are not close. It’s like we are multiple colonies living together, but in separate galaxies which would take light‐years to get to or to grow in relationships or likened biology on a cellular level. The cells all work together, somehow.

The other characters became a part of my genetic makeup because of the role they played in my life.

Here is my faulty attempt at my genetic pool:

MOMMA

Lovely isn’t a word big enough

to define her.

Almond‐sized, bright brown eyes,

the kind that don’t need illuminating to see

they are brown in color.

My Momma.

Fair soft, Caucasian skin,

always somewhere suntanning to get a sun-kissed

glow.

My Momma.

Your hair, thick as thieves,

black, shiny, flowing,

I do not know how you kept from tripping

over it—your crown.

A photo of her and my dad

in a nightclub,

Momma has an afro, a hat sitting next to my dad whose nickname was Pat,

imagine