Hi, I’m Cheryl!

I grew up with one unmistakable rule — what happens in this house stays in this house.

As a young child, I survived sexual abuse by my grandfather — the man who raised me as his own daughter and was supposed to be my protector. I was also groomed and sexually assaulted by a family friend, who is the birth father of my daughter. By thirteen, I was pregnant. I delivered her alone in a hospital room and testified in a courtroom against him. Not one person stood unconditionally in my corner for any of it.

I survived anyway.

For years I carried what I had been taught to keep hidden. But silence was never the whole story. Underneath it was determination. Underneath it was faith. And underneath it was a girl who would eventually find her way to education, to healing, and to her voice.

That journey led me to a degree from UC Berkeley as a young mother, and — more than twenty years later — a master's degree that proved my growth never stopped. It led me to leading my community as President of the Cal Black Alumni Association, and to raising two daughters — both college educated, both building lives of their own. It has taken me from Bali to Cartagena to Ethiopia and back, to a life I once could not have imagined for myself.

That journey — from silence to purpose — is not just the title of my memoir. It is the architecture of my life.

Today I move through the world with one driving conviction: to be for others what I did not have. That is why I write. That is why I speak. That is why I show up — in every room, for every person who has ever survived something they were never supposed to talk about.

My debut memoir, Still Standing: From Silence to Purpose, took eight years to write — not because the words were hard to find, but because I had to heal before I could speak them. It is finished, and available to order now.

Silence was never my shelter. It was where I disappeared.

I continue to learn it is okay to take up space — not shrivel up. If my story gives you permission to do the same, then it has done its job.