DARE TO DREAM BIG

(Article published in HWW April 2007)

by Rita Redwin

When HOW…WHEN…WHERE first heard about Rita Redwin, she was staying at the Salvation Army’s Bushwick Family Residence in Brooklyn. Her caseworker Evelyn Rosario told us "You should hear her sing. She has the most amazing, wonderful voice." Now with her own apartment, she has a lot to sing about.

When I came up from Baltimore, I was a messed up young lady. I had finished three years of college and I was a nursing technician. But after both my parents died and I had to fend for myself and my son, it kind of fell apart.

My father, who’d molested me from the time I was 11, had a stroke and I had to take care of him. He asked me for forgiveness on his death bed. My mother was taking care of my son while I worked the 3-11 pm shift at the hospital. One day I came home and found her dead, she’d had a heart attack, alone in the house with my son.

I was then what they call a functioning addict. I could keep my house clean. I could work. But I couldn’t keep the same job for more than a year.

It was my drug addiction that brought me to New York eight years ago. I came to a ministry called the Brooklyn Victory Church. We used to walk all over the city selling Peanuts and M&Ms to keep our ministry open and to help ourselves and others get off drugs.

After leaving the ministry, I lived with friends for a while, than moved into the Bushwick shelter where I stayed for a year. My husband left me while I was there. My son went through his changes as a teenager. But my caseworker Evelyn Rosario was always there to keep me encouraged. There were a lot of young ladies at Bushwick and I felt my role was to encourage them. I would see sadness on their faces. I would talk to them and I would sing until I saw the sadness turn into a smile.

My son is in Prospect Heights High School of Music and Theater and he’s writing music.

It’s time for me to come out now. I want to sing professionally. When I get rich and die I want to be remembered as a woman who had a lot to give.

Here’s my message to others. Dare to dream big. And don’t give up on your dreams.