Why I Started Writing & How Right Pieces, Wrong Man Came to Be
I started writing nearly a year after my mother’s transition to heaven.
If you’ve experienced the loss of a parent, my heart goes out to you. I always believed I understood grief and considered myself empathetic but losing my mother gave me a completely different perspective. For daughters who shared a close bond with their mothers, it’s one of the most painful, life-altering experiences imaginable.
To say my mother and I were close is an understatement. We weren’t just mother and daughter, and not even merely best friends – we were something deeper. Because friends sometimes fall out, stop speaking, drift apart. The love between my mother and I was (still is) unconditional. Transcendent. We talked multiple times a day, every day. We loved the same things, laughed at the same jokes, and prayed together often. She was my cheerleader, my prayer warrior, my role model, my biggest supporter. I could go on and on.
My Mom has always been my best friend. Everything good that she is, I try to embody everyday.
When she passed, it wasn’t just her absence that broke me, it was how suddenly it all happened. My family takes preventive care seriously. We go to the doctor regularly, we understand medicine, we do everything “right.” But even with access and literacy, nothing could have prepared us for cancer.
Seemingly overnight, my mom went from being healthy to receiving a diagnosis of stage one pancreatic cancer, which quickly escalated to stage four. For anyone familiar with this disease, you know it’s among the most aggressive and unforgiving. My faith told me we’d be the exception but medicine had other plans.
She fought courageously for ten months: through surgery, complications, and treatments that took more from her than I ever thought possible. When she finally returned home to heaven, I was devastated. I would have given anything to spare her that suffering in the first place and keep here here secondly.
In the months that followed, I tried to move forward, to function and just to be “okay.” I thought I was managing until I realized I wasn’t. My grief morphed into depression that I didn’t recognize. It showed up as brain fog, irritability, and an inability to concentrate. Eventually, my own doctor suggested I take a leave of absence from work.
A leave of absence?! I’m a Black woman – we don’t do that. We push through. We’re strong, resilient, unbreakable.
Except… I was breaking.
I had hit a wall, and I knew I needed to stop before it got worse. I couldn’t spend every day crying, and I knew my mom wouldn’t want that either. If she were in my shoes, she would’ve reorganized every closet in the house and called it “therapy.” Cleaning, however, has never been my ministry…so instead, I grabbed my laptop.
I didn’t have a plan, an outline, or even a clear idea. I just wrote. Characters came to life in my head, and I let them speak through my fingers.
Writing gave me peace. It gave me a way to channel my grief into creativity…and through that process, Right Pieces, Wrong Man was born.
When I typed ‘The End,’ I whispered, “Mommy, I wrote a book.”
In my mind, I could see her smiling that familiar smile, shaking her head in amusement, and saying, “Of course you did. Is there anything you can’t do?”
My answer then – and now – is simple: Because of your love, your faith, and your belief in me, Mommy… no. The sky is the limit.
Thank you for everything. I will love you until the end of time and beyond.
