M.R. WEBB's Page

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About Me:

MY STORY

I am a bastard.

I was born into poverty, birthed into violence, and delivered into the struggle for survival. I spent my formative years growing up in Brooklyn, New York. When my mother had me she was a young, unmarried, 20 year-old, no high school diploma, unemployed and on welfare. My father was 19 years-old; at the time of my birth he was on an all inclusive vacation, courtesy of the New York State Department of Correctional Services. He was staying in a two-man prison cell on Riker’s Island for nearly killing a man.

As a 34 year-old professional today, I often wonder what my life would have been like if my father had been physically present during those crucial years when my mother and I really needed him. I think about the direction that my life might have taken if my father had not been emotionally absent once he finally decided to be physically present. I wonder if I would have endured less hungry nights and enjoyed more happy mornings if he had been there to support our family financially and kiss my forehead before I went to bed.

I can only speculate now, but I think that I would have indeed become a different person if there had been a real name to fill that empty space on my birth certificate and a “real man” in my life. I think that I would have been a more outgoing child. I would have been a less withdrawn teenager. I would be a more expressive, affectionate, and loving person today.

I recently experienced two life changing events. First, I received a very disturbing phone call from a family member seeking my advice on how to legally force my 15 year-old niece to return home with her newborn daughter. She had run away from her mother’s home in the middle of a brutally cold winter to live with the 21 year-old father at his mother’s one-bedroom apartment. Secondly, while walking on the sidewalk one afternoon, a car lost control, drove onto the curb, hit me, and nearly took my life. I laid on the stretcher with emergency personnel feverishly working on me and struggled to think of any of my accomplishments that would benefit my newborn niece if I died.

I promised myself that if I lived through that ordeal I would record the words in this book for her and all of the other women that it might help.

This is not just another book. This is a conversation that must become part of our national discourse. In fact, given the direction in which our children, our neighborhoods, our society, and our world seems to be headed in, it’s more important than ever that we have this conversation today.

It was only God’s grace that allowed me to escape the pitfalls of drugs and street violence, earn a Bachelor of Science Degree from a top ranking university, and then go on to obtain my Juris Doctor of Law Degree. Today, I’m a senior executive at a business consulting firm. However, despite my fortune, this is a conversation that I, as a 34 year-old, bastard child of a single mother, feel I must have with every girl, young lady, and woman who is willing to listen.

I owe them these words and thoughts.

Website:

http://www.babiesbybums.com

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