This weekend, I finished the Introduction to Leadership Program for Landmark Education www.landmarkeducation.com. WOW! The program is a 6 month long leadership and training program. As with all things Landmark I always get so much out of the classes.

 For those of you who are not familiar with Landmark Education, here  is a little background. The first class is called the Forum. The forum is a three day coaching seminar which promises to deliver for you that which you are most interested in. It really is life changing. I completed the forum on February 21, 2010. In a weekend I was able to make things in my life move, that had not moved in the past. The big aha moment came for me when I realized that I had created a "story" about something that happened in my past and allowed that "story" to continuously impact my future.

When I was  about 9 (1977) my family and I moved  from Pasadena, a racially diverse community. To a small town and  an all white community. As one of the only black families in the neighborhood we were often mistreated . Someone in our neighborhood spray painted the garage and the front of the house with the words "Go back to Africa"  "KKK We hate Niger's" That was pretty mortifying. We lived on a busy street and it stayed on the house a couple of days until my parents could have it removed. I remember hating even getting up to go to school,  everyday on the bus someone would shout "Hey look at  Kizzy and Kunta Kinte (they had obviously watched the series Roots by Alex Haley).

 And later when I was in middle school,  I remember walking home from school. The walk was about a two miles and most of it was up a hill. I was having an asthma attack and could hardly breath. As I was walking up the worst part of the hill, a policeman stopped me and asked me what I was doing there. I remember that he barely looked at me. I told him I was on my way home from school but that I was having an asthma attack. He said to me"Oh,  we got  a call that a drunk black lady was walking up the street."   When I told him I was not drunk but was not able to breathe. He coldly looked at me and left. I walked the rest of the way home in tears and still unable to breathe. From that moment forward, I created the story that I did not belong. In fact, the "story" that I did not belong was so real for me that as an adult I could not walk around my upper middle class mostly white neighborhood without anxiety and fears that I would be stopped and asked to prove that I lived in this neighborhood. I always walked with my identification.  I could not rid myself of those thoughts no matter how I rationalized otherwise. It was not  until I took the Forum and I realized  that what  happened (the racisim I experienced) was an incident and did not define who I was, who other white people were(meaning that not every white person that I met was racist) nor did the past define my future. That weekend seminar gave me freedom from that part of my past  the freedom to introduce myself to people that before I would barely even look at as I walked past.

 I have taken about three seminars from Landmark Education all of which have been very powerful in creating transformation in my life and in the lives of people around me. ( I know that sounds like a tall order but I am living proof that the program is life changing).

Now I am in a program that is training me to be a leader. A role that I never fully allowed myself to step into. I would fall back on being a flake because it was easier than taking responsibility for myself and honoring my word.