VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Felicia:
I have like one good memory of my mom, where we didn’t say nothing. We was dancing. But that’s like the most intimate moment that I do have in…

Felicia:
My mom, she kind of lived a pretty fast life. She knew that I needed to not be with her. When you’re like pushing a pull between like a kid and trying to be an adult at the same time, but not knowing you’re taking adult roles, it’s kind of like hardship on you, when you’re kind of expected to do a lot of things, like, all right, am I going to eat today, or am I going to let my little brother eat instead? Do I walk to get to the grocery store, or do I have to grab the food out of the garbage, because I don’t have money?

Felicia:
Me and my brother’s home by ourselves all the time. At an early age, I had to understand responsibilities more than maybe the average kid would know. I don’t see my mom this weekend. Well, I haven’t seen her in a month. It’s been a year. A year’s been three. A year’s been five.

Felicia:
I always say my mom’s like a dream. It was just kind of like losing something that I knew I wasn’t going to get back.

Felicia:
My best friend at the time, we went to the same school, and she switched schools, and I’m like, “How am I going to see you anymore? I don’t know what I’m going to do.” And she was like, “Well, there’s this church I go to, and it’s Shepherd Community.” Every day throughout the week, I was at Shepherd. Every day, they had something for us to do, with the best thing about Shepherd was that I was with people who shared similar things. It was something that we could share together that, you know, if we felt like we had to say something, somebody was there to support that. Somebody was there to listen. And it was just like a home, you know, like… I’m sorry, a little emotional, but I think it’s important to have those types of things, because… It’s like going down memory lane.

Felicia:
Community, right? Like community is so important, and Shepherds needed in the sense that I had somewhere to go. I didn’t like going home and being by myself. Like I would want to be the last one to go home, because if I had to go home first, then I would just go home to an empty house, and who wants to do that?

Felicia:
There is so much opportunity in having a place that you can make shift yourself in many ways, and Shepherd provided a makeshift world for me where I can be around like-mind people and also have the opportunity to grow in that.

Felicia:
I think Shepherd came at me at such a thought-provoking age where making certain decisions was always going to be the challenge. I always say my mom was like a sacrifice, in that I could have been the same person with her and that the person that you’re talking to today would not be the same person if I had another route to go.

Felicia:
I can say this. I can definitely say this. The city needs love, and Shepherd provides love.