Chapter 1 Where I Was Planted

This where my story begins.

Not where I was born... but where I was planted.

I wasn’t born hard.

I was born in Oakland, California, in 1994 at Summit Hospital—the same city where the Black Panthers were founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton. Power lived in that soil. So did pain.

Growing up, I was quiet…

the kind of quiet people overlook.

The kind that sits in the corner watching everything, feeling everything, but saying nothing.

Before life got loud—before chaos had a name and a face—I was just a little girl who loved simple things.

I loved music.

I hated Barbie dolls.

Every day after school, I’d put my headphones on and hum to “25 Reasons” by Nivea. I didn’t even know what love was yet… I just wanted to feel it.

I collected rocks too—smooth ones, shiny ones, ones with colors that reminded me there was still something soft in the world. Jade was my favorite. It felt like protection… even though I didn’t understand why I needed it.

Back then, I missed my mom more than anything. My dad would put me into counseling thinking something was wrong

with me but all I ever wanted was to be happy.

My parents never saw eye to eye when it came to me and my brother, and that tension lived in everything.

My grandmother’s house sat on 72nd and Rudsdale in East Oakland. It was the place everybody came to—the only place that felt halfway steady. She had been in that house since my father was five years old. It held history… but it didn’t always feel like home.

My dad was strict. Mean, even.

As a child, I didn’t understand him—so I hated him.

He called himself an entrepreneur.

He told us never to work for “the white man.”

At one point, he followed Islam—selling bean pies and beliefs that took away things like Christmas and birthdays. Holidays, to him, weren’t ours to celebrate.

So, we didn’t.

No parties.

No candles.

Just another day.

But he taught us how to hustle early.

We sold incense and oils on the BART trains.

We ran car washes.

Sometimes, he’d take all our toys and clothes and sell them at the flea market.

At 3 a.m., we’d be packed into a U-Haul, half asleep, waiting in line at the Coliseum for a spot. And once we set up, he’d shout like everything depended on it:

“$1! $5! $10! Everything must go!”

Looking back… my dad was something else.

He controlled everything—the house, the people in it, even the energy in the air.

He was a pimp.

An alcoholic.

He sold weed. Cars. Whatever moved.

But as a child, I didn’t see labels.

I just saw survival.

Women came and went like seasons. None of them stayed long enough to show me what a woman was supposed to be. No one taught me softness. No one showed me safety.

Just movement.

Just chaos.

My mom… she worked. Hard.

Construction, caregiving, bartending—anything to keep going. She even helped build parts of San Francisco and emeryville. But over time, stress and alcohol started to take their toll.

from abuse stress and my dad dealings.

And we never stayed in one place long enough for me to call anything home.

We moved from house to house, city to city… like we were running from something that never stopped chasing us.

Sometimes, we were.

CPS.

New walls.

New rooms.

New faces.

Same feeling.

Uncertainty.

Fear.

Silence.

I have seven siblings—but even that wasn’t simple. Only two of us shared the same mother and father—me and my youngest brother. The rest of us were connected, but not in a way that felt whole.

We weren’t a family.

We were pieces.

Scattered. Surviving.

There were nights I stayed awake, listening instead of sleeping.

Learning the language of survival.

The tone of a voice.

The sound of footsteps.

The shift in the air before something went wrong.

You learn fast when you have to.

You grow up without anyone reminding you that you’re still a child.

And my dad…

he didn’t love me.

At least not in a way I could feel.

When he looked at me, he saw my mother—and whatever anger came with her. I wasn’t someone to protect.

I was someone to take things out on.

The beatings didn’t always need a reason.

Sometimes, existing the wrong way was enough.

So I stopped trying to be seen.

But pain doesn’t stay quiet forever.

By the time I was 12, something in me had already started to break…

—or maybe it was finally waking up.

I didn’t want to stay somewhere I felt unwanted, unsafe, and invisible.

So I started running.

Not always with a plan.

Not always knowing where I’d go.

Just knowing I couldn’t stay.

I thought leaving would feel like freedom.

I didn’t know yet… it would lead me somewhere darker.

That’s the thing about being a product of your environment—

Sometimes you don’t realize it’s shaping you

until you’re already living it.

And by then…

I was already being pulled into a world

I was never supposed to enter.

This was only the beginning...

what came next changed everything. Continue to Chapter 2