Overcoming Shattered Dreams: Ouch! That Hurt!

Carrie A. Mathis, a Black African American woman (described by whites as colored, Negro, Nigger) gives an in-depth narrative account of her stunted growth, during metamorphosis stages of her as an invisible butterfly. The details are simply put by this Meridian, Mississippi native during a period of racially charged civil rights upheaval. Her observations are of multiple traumatizing physical, mental and psychological abuses that she encountered. The documentations are as seen through the eyes of her as a little girl, an adolescent, a young woman and as a middle-aged woman. She found self-determination and strength from God. Her need to grow came in small, slow increments from her significant others and from her life's work beginning with her babysitting jobs at the tender age of nine years old. She progressed to day work. Read on and see the heights that had to be reached.