As many other community leaders in the aftermaths of Hurricane Katrina, Angela Sims-Winfrey, a native New Orleanian and lifelong community organizer immediately went into her organizing mode finding and reconnecting family, friends, and colleagues, securing relief resources, participating and organizing meetings and conference calls to actualize strategies to address the human rights violations that occurred in the aftermaths of this country greatest disaster of all times. Living in the diaspora just outside of Atlanta, Angela's "super organizing powers" were constantly on. All while trying to secure her own family, get a little rest, and ward off media-fueled "Katrinacide" stereotypes that seem to shadow her wherever she went. When the new messages cried for "them" to get on with their lives, Angela had to face her own "victimhood" fears and internalized messages of oppression. So many "unpacked boxes" and spaces filled up with "unhealed baggage". Should she stay? Should she go back? Her "family homes" were gone, and the city she called home was pieces of it former self. Where does she go? Then she looks at her reflection in her daughter's eyes. She saw herself as a six year girl. Malaikia was now surrounded by those same unpacked boxes and beginning to internalize multigenerational bags of fear, insecurity, isolation, anxiety, with a conflicted sense of shame and pride. THIS HAS GOT TO STOP NOW! THIS BAGGAGE WAS NOT GOING TO BE PICKED UP BY ANOTHER GENERATION! Livin' Out of Boxes, Lettin' Go of Bags is a Divine Expression of Angela's covenant to heal through her "growing edges" on a spiritually-empowered journey of blessings, real-time lessons, insights, and test of Faith in Action!
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