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From six to seventeen, my living conditions were controlled by the Minnesota Department of Human Services in consort with the state courts. Together, they orchestrated where I lived, what I had access to, and how close I would be to things that should have killed me.
They didn’t protect me—they placed me. Over and over again, I was forced into proximity with danger, then blamed when I tried to escape it. I was labeled a criminal for running away to survive.
I got tired one day. Just one day. And that was enough.
That day, I was overpowered and impregnated by a “community pillar,” someone I never should have been near—someone I was put near in 9th grade year of school. Just fifteen years old. That “proximity” was no coincidence. It was the result of the way DHS had entangled every aspect of my life: my whereabouts, my relationships, my income, my access to anything that might have made me safe.
I had to lean out of an official’s car, threatening the life of the baby and myself, just to get free. Just to make them grant me emancipation. I needed to give that child a chance.
After that, life became hard—but normal. And I was so deeply grateful for that normalcy. I was bubbly. I was optimistic. I got my own apartment right away. I worked full time. I went to school full time. I cared for my children with everything I had.
Then, in the fifth year after that freedom—2003, when I was twenty-one—I became symptomatic with Chiari Malformation. The symptoms made it harder and harder to function, and I couldn’t afford the medical bills. I had no family. No support. No one to carry anything for me. Everything depended on me, and I had to stay well for us to survive.
So I applied for Obamacare. I went to DHS for one purpose: to process a medical insurance application. And in over two decades, they have never—not once—completed that task accurately, completely, or by regulation. But they’ve never left my life, either.
DHS has continued to control my living environment under the guise of providing access to medical treatment, while systematically denying it. They have blocked every path forward. Sabotage has followed every step.
Everything I have accomplished has been because I outsmarted and outlasted the system—not because I was ever helped by it. Everything else has been destroyed.
Still, I fully believe I was destined for greatness by God.
Every single day has been a fight to stay alive.
Twenty-two years of slave.
Greed and bloodline curses, I suppose.
But I will never be broken by the world or anything in it.
I am fully and completely in the favor and possession of God Almighty.
I don’t need any more proof.
Indeed, His grace is sufficient.
And I'm not embarrassed about surviving or discussing a damn thing thrown at me. Those aren't my burdens to bare or secrets to keep because my actions didn't create them—and I'm not a slave meant to carry the mistakes of others like shackles on my limbs, weights around my neck and cages closing my mouth. I live my captive ancestors, made it, I'm extraordinary!
I've come along way and there's yet a way to go. People need to know this is still happening. They need to know what my captive ancestors might have looked like—they need to know they're not the first ones to experience what they're going through. While we are not our ancestors, we fight the same battles because we're up against the same agenda. We may do much better by ending this "pretending" that were not.
They’re trying to kill me. But God, I’m still here.
The State of Minnesota is the problem. Entirely. Unequivocally. One hundred percent.
And I’ve proven that—on every front.
There has never been anything mysterious or complicated about the barriers I’m up against. Not really. What becomes complicated are the details. The overlaps. The tangled networks of harm that have been allowed to grow unchecked while justice—simple, necessary, overdue—has been denied again and again.
But even that isn’t difficult to fix. The solution is simple: deliver the justice. Deliver it in full. Justice that severs the ties I never asked for. Justice that closes the door on old violations and (forced) relationships, so that I'm free to bare my own, private relationship without intrusion—systemic or otherwise. Justice that prosecutes, litigates, resolves—so I can live. Like, take your hands off me. #ProtectBlackWomen
These are man-made problems. They were built with intent, piece by piece, over years. And so they require man-made solutions. No one needs divine power to fix this. They just need integrity. What they don’t need—what they must not have—is control over my path forward.
That belongs to me. That's a Birthright.
I must be the one to decide the shape and pace of the solutions, because this is my life. No one has the right to grip it like property. I am not slave flesh. And just because I don’t need to be controlled like one—just because I’m strong enough to think, resist, and chart my own course—doesn’t make it acceptable for the system to withhold support, punish autonomy, or deny care simply because I won’t be ruled like a mute, blind captive saying yes'sum boss while following strict destruction to destroy and then self-destruct. I don't want to be destructive. I don't want to self-destruct. I want to obediently continue to do what the Holy Spirit leads me to do and I welcome the help of those who respect my birthright boundaries of self-determination (to be led by God, as a Christian.)
I am the only one who knows my whole story and so I am the only one who holds the inside knowledge to get this right. I have lived it. I have survived it. I know exactly where the wires cross, where the exits were sealed, and where the truth is buried. Other people are there to simply do a job and step aside, move along. That's not disrespectful or cold to think that way. It's appropriate, accurate and respectful. That's life, it has boundaries, but my more than forty year experience as a Minnesotan—is a culture that doesn't believe that respect and boundaries extend to me because of the intersectionality of racial classification, gender classification and economic status ("physical disability")
What I need is to be respected. To be honored. Not feared, not suppressed—honored.
The deepest, most persistent problem, all my life, has been this society—Minnesota society—treating me as if that’s impossible. As if being a Black woman makes dignity too much to ask. As if the facts themselves can be dismissed just because I am the one holding them.
And when everyone ignores both you and the truth—when even reality is denied—you’re left with only one option:
You leak the evidence.
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