The Very Beginning - Streets of Grace the Book Vol. 1

     I have put pen to paper, and finger tips to keyboard on so many occasions over the past 20 years attempting to tell this story. I would always become choked up when I came to certain events in my life and would tuck my emotional tale (that was not a typo, hopefully you caught that) between my legs and run in the opposite direction. Over the years wisdom has taught me that our lives are not lived for ourselves alone, but for others around us. We connect with people to help build them, or to help build ourselves. I discovered that sometimes the only way to help others find healing and forgiveness, is to tell our very private and personal stories of tragedy and triumph.


     I would rather hide behind the mask of having it all together, but the fact is, I am human, and I have a history of being a hot mess. With the birth of my son, I quickly pulled up my big girl panties and faced the mirror and preached to myself "you will get your emotional shit together so you don't fuck up his life!" I'm sorry if that's a little too blunt for you, but that's the truth, and that's what this new blog is about. If you can't handle the 40 year old truth telling version of me, then you might want to skip on back over to the family blog that I also write, that kindly talks about the musings of my family life at www.andreayjones.blogspot.com, this site here is for dealing with the real, and all those skeletons in the closet that keeps us from finding emotional healing, forgiveness, and peace in life. (Plus if your thinking "do you kiss your mother with that mouth", newsflash, I'm a 40 year old married woman, trust me there are a lot worst things I could be doing with my mouth as I'm enter my sexual peak)


     It's difficult to run from your life, because everywhere you go, there it is, and there you are. So it's more productive to face the fear of dealing with the pain rather than it slowly eating at you for the rest of your life. Over the last 20 years, I've dealt with the tragedies and losses in my childhood and how they affected my life, and I realized that it wasn't fair for me just to benefit from that healing, but others needed to find their own personal healing as well. Whether it was in childhood or adulthood, the process is the same, and it begins with staring at the situation head on.


     In the mornings, I have a routine of blasting ego-tripping rap music that will propel me to world domination. Everyone needs to have a mantra that gets them going everyday, and allows them to focus on not just the tasks at hand, but how they will map their life from A to Z. So I start by listening to T-Pain yelling very loudly in the speakers of my Camaro while I shift gears quickly from 1 to 6 getting on the freeway, telling me that "all I do is win, no matter what!" This allows me to face everything head on, boldly, knowing that if I'm still standing, after taking the blows that I've taken in life, then clearly no matter what, my next move is to win. If you don't have a morning wake-up-and-dominate-the-day routine yet, I highly encourage you to get one immediately.


    While writing this first book in what will be a series (it's just way too much to put in one book, there are 34 streets y'all), I was on a serious emotional roller coaster. I prayed, meditated, cried, ranted, hung out with the girls, had a drank (or three) and eventually got it together. All the while, still working and waking into the office in the morning telling myself "girl, all you do is win, what are you trippin' over?" The opportunity arose for me to contribute a chapter to an anthology that my now editor and literary agent Dr. Beverly Crockett, was working on. She had asked me to write something on a previous project that I just couldn't muster up the creative juices to get going. So when she asked this time, the chapter was already written, I just needed to tweak it and send it over. That published chapter lit a fire for me to get the entire book done, as followers/readers started requesting the full story. As an avid reader, I hate to read something and then have to wait years for the second volume to come out, so I made sure to get it finished immediately. So here we are, a finished book, getting ready to hit the shelves.


     It's easy to read this first book and then look at me crazy! I've actually been a little fearful of that. But know that there are more volumes to follow where I will hopefully have an opportunity to redeem myself, not that I care to, I mean it is a story about my childhood so what if it was a little messed up, I turned out okay...mostly. LOL.I can't give it all away in this first book. Know that if I can pull through all the things you will soon read about, then anyone can pull through anything! We are much more than conquerors. We were made to rule this world! We are at the top of the food chain y'all for a reason....well for one we put ourselves there because I'm sure sharks aren't really thinking about how they shouldn't eat a person because that person is at the top of the food chain and not them....(okay, just a side note...I ramble a lot, but I will try to keep that to a minimum)! So let's act like no matter what, all we do is win!!!


Continue to love and f;ght,
(to understand why I use the ";" symbol instead of the letter "i", Google it!)


Andrea Y. Jones