By Shirley Hawkins
Contributing Writer
Award-winning journalist, novelist and playwright Yvonne J. Medley has been writing since she was in the fourth grade.
Her credentials include writing for the Washington Times, the Washington Post, People magazine, Gospel Today, and the Urban Sentinel to name a few.
Medley is a recipient of a Maryland Governor’s Citation for her work in prison programs and her novels “God in Wingtip Shoes” and “Jubi Stone: Saved by the Vine” are popular sellers. Medley’s novella “The Prison Plumb Line” was adapted for the stage and also is performed in prisons.
She also is the creator of the Life Journeys Writing Workshop series, and Literary Therapy, which is designed to positively impact life, academic skills and mental health that paves the way to positive-and-therapeutic creative efforts.
Medley’s “Jubi Stone Saved by the Vine,” which she turned into a novel, is loosely based on her life story that intertwines parts of her own life with fictional occurrences.
“I had written a short story about a 19-year-old girl who was raped at 14, drug addicted and has a pimp for a boyfriend.”
Medley said that the response to “Jubi” has been phenomenal.
“I got a lot of feedback because the book is very detailed,” she said. “When you read the book, it’s a safe place to have a serious conversation about sex, community, the church and about how a love relationship Is supposed to be. You can have a discussion about the book and feel safe.
“A lot of the libraries around the country were placing “Jubi” in the young adult/teen section because it was popular with teenagers who identified with the 19-year-old main character.”
As a teen, Medley herself had experienced her own personal trauma. She was 14 when she and her family visited a carnival.
When her mother and sister left her alone to order hot dogs, a young man approached Medley and struck up a conversation.
He said, “Hi, you’re pretty. What’s your name?”
“I thought he was about my age,” Medley recalls. “but later I found out that he was really 20 years old. What I did not realize at the time was that he was a predator.
“He asked for my phone number and I gave it to him,” she continued. “I was excited that a boy had taken an interest in me. We talked on the phone for about a month.
“Then he asked to come over and visit me at my house. I asked my mother if I could have boy company and she didn’t answer. My mother was a nurse who worked 12-hour shifts at night, so I thought it would be OK to invite him to my home.”
Medley said the man was astonished when he found out that her mother wasn’t home and that they were totally alone.
“He started playing the piano,” Medley said. “Then he grabbed me and twisted my arm. I tried to fight him off but he wrestled me to the living room floor. He ended up raping me.”
After the sexual assault, the man hastily left. The man was never caught.
“I didn’t even know his real name,” Medley said.
The incident left Medley with overwhelming feelings of shame.
“I was the one who had invited him in, so how could I tell anybody?” she said. “All I knew was that sex was supposed to be saved for marriage.
“Then I realized that something was growing inside of me. I didn’t know anything about pregnancy,” she added. “All I knew was that I wanted to be dead and I felt I needed to kill the baby and myself. I threw myself down the stairs a couple of times trying to kill myself and the baby but all I got were bruises.
“I tried to hide the baby. I wore buttoned-up coats at school so no one could detect that I was pregnant. One day my water broke and I started bleeding. The blood would not stop flowing and I couldn’t clean it up. I just gave up and lay down on my bedroom floor.
“My mother came home and saw the mess and surprisingly, she went to bed. What I didn’t know was that she had had a similar experience in her teens that must have triggered trauma in her.
“I experienced a whole night of labor pains and I did not know what was happening. Then this baby started to come and I yelled for my mother and she called an ambulance. The ambulance took us to the same hospital where my mom worked. She was fearful and embarrassed for me.
“The doctor was nasty to me and the nurse was not kind. The baby was a stillborn.The doctor said, ‘Well, what did you think was going to happen?”
“My mom didn’t say anything — but I could see the pain in her face.The same kind of thing happened to her in her teens. She was mourning the child she had lost.”
Although her childhood was traumatic, Medley grew up to become an accomplished journalist writing for numerous publications.
Aware that writers need guidance and support to get their manuscript published, Medley founded the Life Journey Writer’s Guild in 2007 after a scammer promised to edit her collection of short stories but absconded with $200 instead.
“I tracked her down to Bangor, Maine and told her that she almost killed my dream,” said Medley, who feels that the incident was supposed to happen. “I think God wanted me to shield other budding writers from shysters by starting the group.”
A member of a prison ministry for 30 years, Medley showcased her playwriting skills by writing “The Prison Plumb Line,” about female prisoners who discover their untapped talents which was performed at The Charles County Detention Center in Maryland.
“It’s a traveling play, so it can be performed anywhere in the country,” said Medley, who will be in Los Angeles in July to pitch a screenplay, entitled “The Number Hole.”
“Nobody has the power to keep a piece of paper and a pencil away from you,” Medley said. “Nobody can stop you from writing. You get your power back when you write and it’s empowering. It can translate from the page to your life.”
Shirley Hawkins is a freelance reporter for Wave Newspapers. She can be reached at metropressnews@gmail.com.
