Ashley Anderson Stern

Raw Sugar Ashley Anderson Stern

I was depressed. I felt alone. I felt conflicted, lost. I didn't really know what else to do. So, I decided to write. Be honest with myself. Be honest with other people. Comfort myself. Confront myself. Face the realist in me and quiet down the idealist. Think from my mind but write from my heart. Take responsibility. Take ownership. Explore the parts of myself I wanted to keep hidden away and not open. Dig deep. Speak my own truth. Open up about the things I cried about, prayed about; what broke me and strengthened me; my fears and my hopes. I wanted to express myself. Be genuine. I read an article once about this woman who visited a slave plantation. The main source of income for the slave masters who owned the land was sugar cane. The woman went on to explain how difficult the process was to actually produce sugar cane during that period of time. This idea intrigued me...the idea that something so sweet came from something so painful, something so hard to process. Part of what makes my ancestry, my people, me, women so beautiful, sweet, is the pain, the hardship, the "difficult processes" that we persevered through. Raw Sugar; The end product is sweet, but the journey to get there is tumultuous.