COURTESY PATRICE GAINES

Patrice Gaines has survived drug addiction and abuse relationships to become an award-winning journalist and author. She is co-founder of the Brown Angel Center in Charlotte, which mentors women inmates at the Mecklenburg County Jail.

Life’s journey reflects the heart’s desire.  

From a military family to drug use to abusive relationships to becoming a mother at 19 to finding solace in writing and an award-winning journalist, Patrice Gaines’ 66 years exhibit a passionate pursuit of life’s most precious moments.  

“I say when I was shooting heroin I was searching for God,” Gaines said. “I think sometimes we too narrowly define what a spiritual path looks like, and so we don’t realize that the young lady who is selling her body on the corner is looking for God, or the young guy who is toting a gun is looking for God.
“I look at my life like if it cut off here this is all people would have thought I was when I actually was all of this. In a way I think my journey has always been about the same, but it’s just manifested differently.”  

From attending community college to taking secretarial courses and creative writing, Gaines wrote for the Washington Post for 16 years. She has written two books “Laughing In the Dark, From Colored Girl to Woman of Color—a Journey from Prison to Power” and “Moments of Grace, Meeting the Challenge to Change.”

“It was inevitable for me, because I stayed on this journey that the journey would begin to look differently, because, really, I wanted my life to look differently,” said Gaines. “As it has looked differently, and as I’ve changed, I’ve begun to call it this spiritual journey. It was only one day that I recognized it was a spiritual journey there then too. No one knew it and [I] didn’t either. I couldn’t voice that. I didn’t have enough knowledge to know that’s what it was.”  

Now a resident of Lake Wylie, South Carolina, Gaines serves as a writer, motivational speaker and an instructor for beginning writers. As a co-founder of The Brown Angel Center in Charlotte, she and co-founder Gaile Dry-Burton provide a monthly workshop to encourage women inmates at the Mecklenburg County Jail to become healthy in all aspects of life.  

“You have to constantly tune into your heart,” Gaines advises. “What’s your heart’s desire—because if your heart’s desire is that you want to write, that you want to be a journalist, then you have to find every way possible to do that. More important than anything, you have to know, is it your heart’s desire? If it isn’t, it’s not going to work. One day, you will be found out. You may be found out by yourself, and yourself will be very disappointed in you, and you’ll change.

“Maybe that’s part of your path, also. I think life is just too short. We don’t think it is when we’re younger. You work for a significant part of that life, and you want it to give you joy. I know there’s always that problem of you have to make the living too, so that is always an issue, but I think if you follow your heart’s desire, a way will be made for you to make money, too.”    

Comments