I walked out of the rooms first.

Every room I left taught me something I now hand to you.

The full story is in my upcoming book, The Age of Narcissism. This is its shape.

I · THE FIRST ROOM

I was 22 when the director of a domestic violence program hired me. I had grown up with a controlling, narcissistic stepfather, and I already knew that world from the inside — that knowing is why I was hired. I was there to support women leaving abusive relationships, and I did.

II · THE ROOMS I CHANGED

I went to a predominantly white liberal arts college where professors bullied me and students threw slurs and beer cans. I became a forensic social worker and watched Black and Latino men profiled and sentenced harder than white men for the same acts. Later, I led the anti-racism and restorative-practice work that moved an organization’s leadership and clinical staff past 50% people of color — then left it, knowing what I had built.

Equity and justice have always been my compass. Where they didn’t exist, I was called to create them. That was the education.

III · THE PATTERN I COULDN’T SEE

While I was supporting other women’s freedom, I was picking the same emotionally unavailable man in a different body. Never abusive — just never truly present. I understood systems, I fought for others, and I kept choosing the familiar. Insight didn’t free me. Healing the absent-father wound underneath did.

V · HOMECOMING

My initiation as a Lucumí Priestess of Obatalá was not a technique I picked up. It was a homecoming — to the greatness of my African Ancestors, their ancient traditions, and a way of seeing myself that no system had authored. We were never inferior, as we had been taught to believe. That knowing changed how I heal, and how I support others.

Everything I learned in those rooms now lives in one way of working: the clinical, the sacred, and the body, braided together. The return to Sacred Living is both the practice and the protest.