Letters to Carol - An Extraordinary Memoir-Self Help Presentation - From Blob to Beauty Queen; From High Living to Living on the Street -A Review and Discussion and Featuring Complementary Music Videos!

Dear Carol, Let’s go back a little in time. Your grandmother had died. Madea lived in Watts. By this time, she told neighbors she was moving and not to tell your father she was moving to Scottsdale City. Dane was still traumatized over your grandmother’s death. This is when Madea placed the burden on him to father his own brothers and sisters, which was a huge mistake, because the monster Dane allowed him later to perpetrate familiar child abuse tragedies on his own kids, later in life. Carol, because you are such a nice person, subliminally, you understood the pressures Madea placed on your brother, Dane. You knew more after Dane married Perry. She defended his heavy abuse of his siblings. That is why you wrongfully believed tolerance was love again. Notwithstanding, and on top of the pain you endured at home, at school it was worse. Following tortuous hours of “Girls Punishment” with your neck cracking, your body tired, and after hours of abuse, you had to straighten up to go to school for more abuse. It’s important to state that at eleven-years old, a child is not mature enough to know what compounded abuses can do to the maturation of a growing child’s mind. This is why the child internalizes dangerous emotions that can ruin a child’s emotional maturity, much later, in life. This is another reason why by the time you were in your mid-sixties, your inability to find and or handle housing matters had a lot to do with the interruptions of your now fragile emotional stability, which began a huge pile-up from 1955-2023. In 1966 you were in the Black schools, like Mark Twain and Ralph Bunche, where it was normal to be a dark-skinned child. When Madea moved to Scottsdale City in 1966, your dark skin was not accepted by the white kids in Scottsdale City. 

Carol, by the time you entered Junior High School, you were dealing with the pain of an enlarged heart, Post Traumatic Depression, abuse by your brother, Madea and a sister that hated you. It was the end of three-years of being called, “The Blob.” You were tired mentally. You have now stored over a decade of abuse in your emotional cache. The personalities are tired. We have all waited decades for you to be ready to tell your “real” story. To that end, we are all proud of you. At home, things worsened when Madea called you lazy. Getting up to do household chores was dangerously killing you. One day on the track at Garey High School, where you attended for three years, you ran the track. This occurred late in the afternoon. The football field where the Vikings practiced was empty. On that unusual eve you collapsed. As a child without guidance or love, you took care of yourself. You lay on that track, with horrific pain in your chest. On that ground, you prayed to heaven for your grandmother. You knew at any moment you could die, but this was to you another challenge you had to get through. You lay where one of your personalities showed you how to breathe. There, you clutched your heart, not knowing what a dangerous situation you were in. All you knew was there was a lot of chest pain. You laid on the tarmac of the racetrack until the pain subsided, having no clue that your heart was attacking. Later, at home you performed your household chores, including washing walls in the house on Fowler Avenue. You tired easily, but you washed the walls anyway. You did not have support from family to even tell one soul you had a heart attack. A few weeks later, when the school district ordered a physical, their medical staff wrote Madea a shocking letter. In it they told her you had an enlarged heart. Back then, instead of Madea checking all this out with emergency doctors, she continued to ignore the matter not caring about the outcome. “You have an enlarged heart,” she said to you one day when you were sixteen. Giving you this information, did not include following up. In fact, Madea simply waited for you to die. If you can’t accept this information about Madea, your end-of-life maturity will be heavily compromised, Carol. You are not writing this all down for brownie points, or to impress anyone. This is being said correctly now because this is your life. This is a moment of clarity, which will in turn, save us from being on those cold/hot streets, again. We must get this all out. You must cry. You must embrace this pain with the knowledge you never afforded yourself to engage longer than a fly before. I love you, Carol. I know this is hard for you. If Madea thought so little of you to not take care of your mental or physical health; then why would she care about your having an enlarged heart? I am sorry that you are crying. Cry. You must cry to release these feelings from your wreckage of memories of the past. These are the things about your upbringing you refused to face in the past years. You are facing these issues now. This is the most important information of your life. We hated being on the cold streets not knowing how we got there. This information is being given to you, through me, by God. Moreover, Madea was more vicious towards you than you are willing to talk about Carol. What mother allows her older son to daily punish and molest a child with a life-threatening medical condition? It’s time to purge the pain Carol, please ask God to forgive your demons, Carol. You must see Madea for what she was; instead of what you wanted her to be. Carol, this is a must. When people criticize you…When they say leave it in the past, surge forward. This is your life. You are already being freed, as you tell your story through me. Here is where the truth will not be a stranger. Here is where nothing will hide. All human beings deserve to be heard. Listeners will be educated. History will be informed, while this time potential publishers will know the real you. I want them to know that Carol Denise Mitchell is an honest, amazing, smart, beautiful woman, who is at last owning the rights to her safety. Carol deserves love. Carol is for the first time becoming whole. Carol’s story is one of sheer survival!

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I have read several books by Carol Denise Mitchell but none like her latest. Nor have I read a similar book by any other author.  It is, quite simply, unbelievable and  extraordinary, yet, for many, it may be quite confusing. Carol has chosen to declare this a fiction book; however, in my opinion, this is a disservice to potential readers. Carol is protecting herself legally--for she has self-taught about employment discrimination, civil rights, et.al.--by claiming fiction. I, on the other hand, believe she should be broadcasting the truth of her life and what she is, even now, still dealing with. For, as some of you know, I, too, am also dealing with and trying to write my own story... So, if your early life was full of pain, confusion, hate, abuse, or other negative things that can happen to any one of us... I highly recommend you spend some time reading Letters to Carol..." For believe me, as you finish reading, crying for words shared in this book, you will know you are reading Truth...

And the way she presents her story is through the voice of one of her inner selves, who still remembers what happened, and guides today's Carol through each and every single incident where she was abused in some way... is the extraordinary part. Letters to Carol is Carol writing the book, but as if it were dictated by another individual... That part deep inside Carol where all of those memories that she could not confront ever again, had been pushed so deep that, physically, and of course, mentally, she had chosen to live and move forward.

Until that day, maybe she snapped, maybe her body could no longer handle the pressure and...collapsed. Some of you may recall this is what happened to me when the first thing that happened was that I could not stop crying... Only by reading books was I able to escape... One of those books was Whatever Happened to Suzy? Reading this story by Carol was the first of many of those who share childhood pain through their writing...

For me, I found parts of me inside her memoir story... Other readers might also find parts of you, or others in your life. What do I mean? Well, think about how you might represent yourself at your job, as opposed to how you are with a close friend, or better yet, in a crowd. I know that I "put on a face" not literally but figuratively, in each of those scenarios. On the job, I put on my face of a professional, dedicated to doing my job from the first step into my office. I rarely stop for breaks, rather sipping tea while I continue to work. And, most of the time, expecting much the same from others... Get the idea? Most of us have ways to act in different life situations. While Carol calls these different personalities, diagnosing herself, "One day, inside my bedroom closet, I developed dissociative identity disorder, better known as Multiple Personality Disorder. I began hugging myself, promising to develop protective mechanisms to help me deal with daily trauma.  

Now I knew exactly what she meant. In fact, I have used one of the oldest affirmative statements known from the time of Socrates, as my guiding mantra, as I've gone through specific time periods, or traumatic experiences with an inner eye that watched, and remembered... In fact, Carol begins with a first statement of her learned life realization : “No two lives are the same, such is the spice of life!” --CD Mitchell

Also at the beginning of her book, she includes a note that I might have written, from my perspective, if I were to write a book with a dedication: I dedicate this book to anyone that loves the power of God. Many individuals have relied on the love within to get along in life. You are special, you are somebody. We all need to discover the sanctuary within our souls to rest, to be good to others, and more importantly, be good to ourselves. Your health is your wealth, your success is imminent!

Now in my life, I was early involved with the church and quickly learned about the Holy Trinity: God, The Son and the Holy Spirit. I honed in on God as Father since my early father was killed in a mine accident while my mother was carrying me. It was easy to see that I still had a Heavenly Father, who made it clear to me to remember:

All I had to do is know that I know that I know that if I am still then God is there with me... 

He is the Great I Am!

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Before I go any further with the book content itself, I want to use a present day illustration of what happened to Carol... Have you noticed that many Far Right political people will repeat over and over and repeat again and again, things that we KNOW are lies. Yet some of us have learned from the study of psychology and other communication processes, that, for many people, if you hear the same thing over and over and over, you will possibly come to actually believe and accept it as truth, even though you can do the research and discover that it is a lie--but you're still not totally convinced because you've heard it pounded into your mind day after day after day?!

At a time when we are seeing more and more hateful actions due to , politics, social media and television, etc., it is still hard to realize just how cruel one individual can be to another. 

Carol was a smart little girl, but coming from a large, poor family she was overweight. (I know the feeling, but my story was a small not hidden memory)  compared to what happened to Carol which had been pushed down deep, forgotten, but still an unresolved abuse.  We don't know how much she weighed... What we learn is that her teacher gave her the nickname, Blob! And, of course all the kids also called her by that name!!!

Carol had hoped to escape the significant mental and physical abuse that she was given at home. Her mother also belittled her, used hateful words when addressing her...and, possibly, stood by while her brother raped her. We do know her brother raped her, we don't know definitely whether her mother knew about it. The key point that the home environment was full of children and Madea instructed her son to be like their father (a little short of 20 children by her mother) and, given that her mother ridiculed Carol, all of the other children did as well...

During this time period, Carol fortunately found one counselor who worked with her for three years. While her self-esteem was raised, still there was so much happening, that the good never quite overrode the bad that was happening.

For instance, Carol was able to lose weight and became interested in entering a beauty contest. She won Miss Congeniality! Note that I found this a quite affirming thing. Even though she was the only black girl in the contest, it was Carol's personal interactions with everyone which brought about her selection. Take note of the praise that was made in the book when she realized that even with the things in her past, she was still bringing light and good wishes to others...

Too bad she lost her trophy. She had placed it in a paperbag... But, when Carol graduated from school, her mother kicked her out with the few clothes she had and a paperbag that was soon lost in the shuffle of accepting that the only thing she had to sell was her body and she began to prostitute herself. After all, she wasn't a virgin, right?

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But one thing that her counselor had pointed out to her and that she realized herself was that she was a good writer! She wrote her first book, What Happened to Suzy and a new anniversary edition is out now!

She studied hard and became involved in helping individuals with job discrimination, writing another book about what employers don't want us to know! She became well known because of this nonfiction book which was used by employers and employees alike.

It happened to me not long after my official leaving of a long-term career at West Virginia University, when I discovered that I was no longer able to keep my mouth shut, even in sensitive meetings... For Carol, you'll find it was a cumulative experience, much longer than I had...It was years passing as Carol got married, more than once, had children, more than one and had many different jobs beside a significant career as a published writer.

What we do know that is at some point, Carol was homeless and even at that time, none of her family would respond to her need. About that time, I'm sure she began to think, "I don't need you; I don't need anybody!" But that's a lonely existence and scary especially when you are homeless...

When that last straw was broken. Carol had begun to go to counseling and almost immediately, the man who she had gone to for help, promptly took her to a motel and forced sex as part of her treatment... Yeah, right! Carol knew all about that, but, when it happens with a professional to whom you sought help, it creates a response so deep that one can begin to feel that nothing and nobody would ever be trustworthy enough to help me!

While the style of writing is indeed like creating a letter to another person, you will find quite a bit of repetition. Some may see this as what some people do...routinely repeat over and over what they've talked about in the past. This is not that type of repetition. Consider, if you would instead, that one of Carol's grade school abuses was being called "blob" over and over, primarily by white children... As mentioned above, if you are told something day by day, even though it hurts you greatly (or even if it is lies that are not true), there is a tendency for us to believe it "must" be true since it has been said over and over... Breaking the tight bond of abusive language is extremely difficult and you will see that Carol, in trying to move forward without facing her early reality, created a period of so much confusion that it is hard to even consider what exactly is the truth by which you are living.

Fortunately, I would guess from her grandmother who had named her, Carol found a relationship with her Heavenly Father. And, as I read each of the individual letters, I felt that I was reading a God Incident--a book given to Carol Denise by The Holy Spirit. I believe that God through His Son loves all children and grieved for the little girl who was never called by her real name--a child of His... Carol mentions in several videos that she sometimes doesn't know what she is typing--such as the time she needed to share with others about her attempt at suicide. For it is the Holy Spirit that often brings up to us exactly what we need to hear, think about, and possibly act upon. Or perhaps it is both! My above concept of putting on "faces" for different events or people... and a very real awareness that The Holy Spirit has often been using my fingers to write when I allow myself to open to God's Words.

God Bless you Carol

and all the other children hurt by somebody who should be doing just the opposite. I've come to know and love you through this latest book in particular. Thank you for writing it... Many will find themselves in these pages and...find...hope!

Gabbie