Severely depressed, emotionally tired, and physically drained from fighting the struggles of living and surviving in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the Bronx, Asetta feeling limited, helpless, and hopeless of a way out, plans to commit suicide after dropping her classes at community college one-week shy of her twenty-fifth birthday. It is there her advisor suggests she speak to the school counselor where she reveals her motives and is sent the same day to the Zucker hill Behavioral center. There in the confinements of the walls in her room Asetta experiences a spiritual epiphany that ignites her true love passion for writing again. finding faith, strength, and forgiveness within self, Asetta regains the will to live purposely and passionately again by following her forgotten dreams of becoming a great writer. Asetta instills positive words of encouragement, motivation, and self-awareness to wake up, give back negative thoughts and ideas that have hindered you, and fight for your goals, dreams, and aspirations.
EXCERPT:
“Hello.” The specialist said as she pulled out her paper work.
I searched the floor again, that overwhelming feeling returning as I twirled my fingers and crossed my feet.
I am being judged, were the thoughts that were filling up the hallways in my mind. Clipboards and paper work meant trapping and tracking my thoughts, emotions, behaviors in her certified files. I was leaving paper trails, and paper trails meant I signed a binding contract to names and conditions that labeled and categorized me into bondage I could never escape from. Into bondage that I did not want to define me. This experience would stick and follow me no matter where I went. – The Bindings in the Bondage
“I am a pusher. I was always pushing but never satisfied or happy. I was always searching for something more because my heart desired and believed that there was more. My mind couldn’t see or understand what my heart wanted because I was operating and maneuvering through life with thoughts that were not mine, labels that did not belong to me. I suffered tremendously because of this. It’s okay though, because the beauty of suffering and pain is that I am not alone. Pain and suffering is relatable, the common ground for uncommon people.”
– The Bindings in the Bondage
Hello there, my name, is Asetta Ramsey and I am on a journey to become the best Asetta God has called me to be. I am a true Inspirer, poet, aspiring author and publisher of SOBronX Books LLC, a house that takes the focal point of pain in one’s life, turns it into passion, and creates a purpose that serves to heal you and help others throughout the process.
Born and raised in the mean streets of the Bronx, New York, my neighborhood built in me character, spunk, but most importantly an everlasting love for a borough full of broken people. In 2015 feeling limited, helpless, and deprived of a way-out of poverty and happiness, I planned to commit suicide one-week shy of my twenty-fifth birthday. I was sent to the Zucker hill Behavioral center, where I was diagnosed with bipolar depression. In that center God reunited me with my true love passion for writing again. Finding faith, strength, and forgiveness within myself, I regained the will to live purposely and passionately again by following my lost and forgotten dreams of becoming a great writer. I wrote and completed by January 2017 my first non- fiction self-published book titled The Bindings in the Bondage where I hope to instill positive words of encouragement, motivation, and self-awareness to people to wake up, give back negative thoughts and labels that hinder you from becoming the person you l you want to be. I also wrote this book to help people change their perspective on how they operate in their own lives.
I boldly believe that bipolar depression does not define me. I don’t suffer from a chemical imbalance in my brain, but a generational curse of negative thoughts and feelings, a poverty and broken mindset that God allowed me to break so that I can help others get set free from. My purpose is to help others by encouraging healing to hearts through my story. I share my story fearlessly because while I went through my trials and tribulations physically, mentally, emotionally, God allowed me to evolve spiritually. I personally know what it feels like to lose your mind and go insane trying to move to the ways of the world, hitting nothing but rock bottoms multiple times over. I also know that once you hit those rock bottom’s, there’s nowhere else to go but up. My purpose is greater than me. I am a blue print designed and created by God to intercede into people’s lives. I started with no formula or strategy but a vision. To uplift, motivate, and urge people to wake up who’ve been dead, sleeping, and lost for too long. To fire up people to make conscious decisions through teaching and speaking engagements, and to push them to take authority over their own lives. To declare to live and come out of agreement with everything people, your friends or family have ever said you were, are, or ever will be.
Get to know Asetta:
WHO ARE YOU?
I am a 27-year-old black woman who refuses to accept that because of the limitations of my upbringing, my environment, life circumstances or because of any struggles mentally, physically, and emotionally I will fail at achieving happiness. I will not settle and I will not give up on myself. I will not compromise my dreams, my happiness, the woman I want to be in the future because of the place or position I am in right now. I was once searching for my definition of happiness. God showed me that all I had to do to be free to happiness, was to free my heart by following what I had been hiding in it despite who it pleased, satisfied, or displeased.
I no longer am afraid to embrace the real me. I dream big, far, wide, and outrageous. I will keep my head in the clouds and my eyes to the sky. I was born to shine, to be great, and to enjoy the success that comes with pursuing my happiness. I was born to be more than my situations, hardships, and circumstances. I repeat, I was born to shine lol. I knew from 8-years-old that I was destined for greatness. I am smart, courageous, and beautiful. I am a fighter, a pusher, I persevere. I am diligent, funny, serious, messy, and I like order all at the same time. I am a boss in the making. I am a daughter, a princess to the highest. I am authentic, unapologetically me and I could not have been made any more perfect than who I am today.
WHY DID YOU WRITE THIS BOOK?
I wrote this book because I know that I am not the only person who has suffered with some form of depression, negative aspect about life, or themselves. I wrote this book because I took back my power back once I embraced and overcame my weaknesses. I don’t wish what happened to me for anyone to go through and if I could save someone who was at the point of giving up on themselves, considering death maybe, I believe this book would help speak life and hope into them.
WHAT IS YOUR VISION?
I hope to encourage, inspire, and motivate women especially of color like me to wake up and fight for their dreams. To strive to be that awesome woman the inner girl in them once aspired to be. It doesn’t matter that you come from a struggling background. You are more than the obstacles that limit you. Give back those labels from people, places, and experiences that have branded you to fall short of self-fulfilling exuberance and the characteristics of who God called you to be. Happiness is real and attainable. If you change your perspective and step out of your own personal view point of it, you can change your life.
WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT?
The Bindings in the Bondage is a true story about me and my experience with death and life. It’s a story about a Bronx girl who planned to commit suicide because I was feeling bound to a lifestyle mentally, physically, emotionally, that I did not want. I could not come to grips with my life amounting to nothing, to just existing in a world that I once thought I could fly in. I was searching for freedom in happiness, but my surroundings, my circumstances, the thoughts in my mind were enslaving me. I ended up being admitted to a mental institution for college students. In there I realized that what I thought about myself in there and what I actually saw didn’t 100% add up to me. I thought according to race Indian and Asians were the smartest kids, and they are brilliant to me still, don’t get me wrong, but I was now amongst these brilliant people. There were no barriers. I questioned what that meant about who I was and the third day of my stay I ended up getting saved in there. God reunited me with him and my passion. Writing saved my life. God taught me a lesson and that was to give back labels, thoughts, ideas, and negative names because they did not belong to me. Anything that spoke against my character, God told me to give it back because I was not born crazy, not good enough, a failure, ugly, immature, depressed, etc. Those things were taught to me by people I either feared, loved, or respected. I was also an enabler of my own self-sabotage. God helped me realize that anything worth fighting for that is good for me, is worth unlearning what is bad for me. The moment I declared to change my perspective and take back power over my life, was the day that I decided to pursue a writing career. When I got out God was like
“Okay beloved what do you want to do now that your free?” I was like
“Lord I don’t want anyone to go through what I just went through and since you out here showing me the real you, I want to teach and help people and be the real me, so I’m going to write a book.” Two years later we are here!!!!
WHAT WAS YOUR HARDEST SCENE TO WRITE?
The hardest scene for me to write was chapter 1 the breaking point in my life and chapter two titled dreams vs. reality where I talk about the birth of writing in me and the pain that it was extracted from. Writing about the moments that lead up to me wanting to die and the passing away of my aunt was really hard to get through because I literally had to relive those moments so that I could write about it in perfect detail. It took me months, about five to be exact, just to finish it. It took about a whole month just to read it because I kept crying. I realized in that month that the more I kept reading it over and over again, I became stronger until I was able to read it not in sadness but in joy. It didn’t hurt to read those two chapters like it used to.
DID YOU EVER CONSIDER WRITING UNDER A PSEUDONYM?
Yes, lol. I originally was fearful to tell my story because I was acknowledging that I was in a mental institution. No one knew that I was there except for five people and even out of those five, one knew because I needed her to help me secure my job. Overall, being in a mental institution was a shameful thing to talk about because I knew that I was going to be automatically associated with crazy. As I began to write and by the time I finished the book, I realized that the word crazy and the root of what it meant I did not identify with. I wasn’t mad, insane, lunatic, or deranged. I was just lost and broken. I was different when it came to handling stressors in my life. Some people can handle stress well, others like me get overwhelmed in it, but that does not take away or add to the essence of who Asetta Shakurah Ramsey is at the end of the day. So, I realized that if I was going to tell my story and help other women like me I had to embrace my weaknesses. Nobody is always strong 24 hours a day, 365 days in the year. It’s impossible. We all have weaknesses, and instead of hiding it, I chose to showcase it. It was in shining the light on my insecurities, fears, the things I was ashamed of, that I began to turn those weaknesses into strength. I stopped thinking about what people would say, I just thought about how coming clean felt.
DOES YOUR FAMILY SUPPORT YOUR CAREER AS A WRITER?
My Madre and my Grandmama on my father’s side have been my biggest supporters of my career as a writer, since day 1. My mom always encouraged me to be a teacher. To teach through writing. My grandmother always declared me a poet or speaker period, she calls me her Maya Angelou. The two of them never stop giving me words of encouragement even when I no longer seen my dreams as attainable. My mom would always try to steer me in the direction of my dreams. For example, when I decided to go to school for nursing, my mom would say that it was good that I picked this career because I love to help people.
She would then add in:
“And who knows, in your free time you can still write books on the side.”
My grandmother would just flat out ask me,
“what’s going on with the writing, you stopped and I know that’s why you don’t come around here no more, cause you know I’m gon ask you, so what’s up?”
I laugh because my grandmother wouldn’t take no for answer. My immediate family supports me, a couple in my extended family but to be honest, the real support comes from within. My dad and my ex- boyfriend helped me get to a conference that I knew I had to be at in Chicago called the Millions Conference sponsored by Tiffany Montgomery. Chicago changed my life and catapulted me into finishing my book. After Chicago, it was all God and me. I placed my last dollars into investing into my career, my future and when I didn’t know where my next dollar was coming from, God took care of me. I had money in my account that when I did the calculations it should have been gone. People came up to me with money that they said they owed me, that I had not thought of. Checks that I had forgotten about. I have people and know that they support my vision, but no has supported me like God myself when putting effort and hard work into the process.
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