Rock Your Confidence: Kiffany Dugger
MEET KIFFANY
I love when people ask me where I’m from; it provides the opportunity for an interesting response. I was raised in Batesville, MS until the age of 10. I moved to Detroit, MI to live with my mother. So, when people ask I jokingly say I’m from DetroitSippi. lol!
Growing up in two very different environments has shaped and molded me. At this moment in my life, I am living my God given purpose. I absolutely love writing and empowering people to change the way they see themselves. I am an author of three books; The Green Eyed Butterfly, Twisted Truth and my latest non-fiction title, “Change the Way You See Yourself.” But most important I am an empowered survivor!
Unfortunately, I wasn’t always able to see myself as worthy of achieving greatness. I grew up repulsed by own reflection, I have suffered with depression since the age of 19 and for most of my life there was a loud voice living inside my soul convincing me I was worthless. When I was ten years old, I was told I was too skinny to be pretty. When I was twelve years old, I was told I was an unwanted bastard. When I was thirteen, I was spit on and told I was weak and I would never break free from my abuser.
One day while at choir practice an insecure girl told me I was “Bougie” and “fake” only because I was articulate and could hold a conversation that didn’t include “naw” and “yeah”. When I was in high school, I had a teacher question my intelligence. When I was in college, I had a professor tell me I was enrolled in the wrong school, because I lacked the tenacity of my classmates and I was an average student. So throughout my journey, I learned that being authentically me was not acceptable in the world I lived in until one day I had enough of feeling like I wasn’t enough.
HER STORY
One of the most emotionally debilitating experiences in my life occurred when I was a child. I was repeatedly sexually abused by someone I call Victim. A few years ago I was struggling with forgiving Victim. At the time I was working with children that had been psychically, sexually and emotionally abused. So naturally, the memories of abuse that I’d suppressed came flooding down like a Tsunami I was consumed by shame and hate. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I cried if someone looked at me, I was a wreck.
One Sunday, I was sitting in church, preparing to take Communion. The choir was singing a song by Donnie McClurkin called “Just For Me.” The lyrics to the song are,“Well, the Cross will always represent the love God had for me/When the Lord of glory, Heaven sent gave all on Calvary/Just for me, just for me; Jesus came and did it just for me.” Sitting in the sanctuary, surrounded by the Holy Spirit and inhaling the fragrance of God’s presence, I could not help but picture Jesus nailed to the cross, suffering a gruesome death. I thought about the moment when Jesus was stretched out on the cross with nails in his body and a crown of thorns pressed into his flesh and he uttered the words “Father forgive them…” At that moment I realized the power and freedom of forgiveness. For this Man to ask for forgiveness for those who crucified him was remarkable. I had to step out of the cloak of shame and hatred that I wore and step into the blessings that forgiveness revealed.
I realized that my unwillingness to forgive was like a loaded bullet traveling through my body; it was destroying everything in its path. The shame, pain, hatred, and resentment toward my abuser and myself was causing physical and emotional damage in every area of my life. Once the spirit of unforgiveness enters the body, like a vacuum it is sucked up into our emotional cavity and travels through our body, changing direction day after day. This change in direction typically happens at a slow rate, creating shockwaves affecting our physical and emotional health, destroying our families, and suffocating our hopes and dreams. I knew God’s plans for me and my pain was causing me to be disobedient; the cost of disobedience was far more than I was willing to pay.
THE LESSON
Once I was able to identify that moment in my life that changed the way I saw myself, it was like the flood gates had opened. God revealed other areas of my life that were in dire need of healing. I prayed and asked Him to forgive me for filling my body with rancid emotional trash that I’d collected over the years. I knew I needed to cleanse myself of all the things and people that caused me to see myself as unworthy of living my true purpose. So, I created a plan to what I like to call “empty my emotional trashcan.”
Our “emotional trashcan” is that internal space where we store our fear, insecurity, pain, abuse, depression, failure, etc. Eventually, our trashcans overflow and clutter our lives with negativity. I knew the healing would not be a quick fix. I had to put in some work, so I treated myself just like I was one of the fiction novels I’d been writing. So, I created an outline that included an action plan, a communication plan, long and short-tem goals, and clear objects for my journey. I desperately needed to meet the woman that was buried underneath all the debris life had thrown on top of her. Once I peeled back the layers and got down to the root of who I am at my core, I began to see myself as fearfully and wonderfully made. I began to see myself as God sees me.
BE INSPIRED
Honestly, my story is no different than anyone else. But, my process is revolutionary. My process included a mental detox that stretched me farther than I thought I could have ever gone. Healing involves commitment, meticulous labor, sacrifice, and rebirth. My hope is to inspire the hopeless. I want to empower that person who thinks freedom is impossible, healing is beyond their reach, and freedom is a luxury they cannot afford. My story will inspire others to turn their trash into a testimony.
Kiffany Dugger, Author
Change the Way You See Yourself!
Website: www.kiffanydugger.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiffanydugger/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authenticallykiffany/