You don’t know what you don’t know. I can remember sitting in a salon chair listening to the whispers about a woman getting hair extensions from bald spots on her head, thinking she must be ill. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. My assumption was wrong. Her hair had bald spots because it had been ripped out from the roots by a violent buyer in our local brothel. Even more shocking was this was the fourth time they had been replaced. That is how Xquisite was birthed in my heart.
You can drive by our local brothels and strip clubs and have no concern, form opinions and be unaffected by what is happening inside them. You can see women and youth on the street, inside a middle or high school, someone who serves your meal and assume the façade they desperately attempt to portray, and that everything is ok just like your own life might be.
You don’t know what you don’t know.
I am a firm believer and have experienced that once you become aware of something that tugs at your heart, you must choose what you are to do. Doing nothing is no longer an option, because doing nothing is to look away and feel no empathy or concern, it’s motivated by
selfishness. So, I believe the statement “I didn’t know” now becomes “what can I do.” How can I learn, what can I do to be an answer to a complex and challenging issue in our neighborhoods, our communities, our state, and in society.
Once I became aware, I began to see things most people do not see or recognize. I will never forget sitting down in a beautiful outdoor restaurant waiting for my food to arrive. I saw a woman assaulted right in front of me! Her hands held food she was bringing to a table, and her fellow server who was a man, took his hand and moved from her inner thigh all the way up. The look of shock and fear while her body froze for just a moment while the entire restaurant was oblivious was a gut punch for me. She completed serving her guests and left. I looked for her to see if she was ok and she was gone. I saw her. I saw her being assaulted in public. No one else did, not even the people I was dining with. I had become aware. These types of encounters happen to me often, I recognize a look, the shiver in a jaw, the inability to make eye contact, so many symptoms of a greater trauma.
I have the privilege to see beautiful survivors of trauma. I mean really see them beyond what they have endured, and I get to love them right where they are and allow
them to begin to see there is hope and a future, without judgment or strings attached.
When I hear someone say to me, when they get a glimpse into the atrocities that occur in our neighborhoods, “I never knew” that statement gives me the warmest feeling, because now they get the opportunity to choose what they are going to do with what they have seen. It is indeed my privilege to begin conversations with someone who has been exposed to the truth of something they were completely unaware of and share now you know; how can I help you choose to be a part of the solution.
Our world is driven by good and evil, and evil is often right in front of our eyes, masking itself so well that we don’t see it for what it truly is. I became aware, and I see evil for what it is, stripped down to its destructive core. It is my passion to take the hand of someone ensnared by that evil and help guide them out of the trauma and feel loved unconditionally. When I reflect on Xquisite and the beautiful survivors of trauma we get to serve I am so grateful. I am grateful for being given the opportunity to serve in a space that places value on the Diamonds we walk alongside. Many times it is in the middle of the mess we sit, we laugh, we cry, and we discover next steps together because now, I know!
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