Writer Leslie Lee Sanders has a vivid memory of a profound life event when she was 7.

Lying in her mother’s bed in a very dark room, listening to a conversation in another room, she had a sense of peace wash over her, then…

“Suddenly, I was floating near the ceiling looking down at my sleeping body,” she said (or rather, wrote). “Is that me?”

That, of course, was just the beginning of events that some will find strange or scary, others unbelievabl,e but for Sanders, they were pointers along the path to a deeper understanding of a life lived fulfilling her purpose, to a life lived fully.

In Sanders’ book, “Ready to Listen? A Spiritual Self-Help Memoir,” she discusses her journey while helping readers uncover their dreams and discover deeper meaning in their lives. 

“‘Ready to Listen’ is about empowering and encouraging people who are feeling a little discouraged or unheard or limited, unbelieved, discarded or don’t have a voice,” Sanders said. “At the end of the day, after you read the book, you find yourself empowered to make change in your life or inspired to do something that you were afraid to do before, that’s the purpose.”

This is not about traditional Christianity and traditional church teachings. Rather, she uses words like, “signs, symbols and synchronicities.” It’s part of what is central to Sanders’ message of empowerment.

“A lot of people don’t realize that they have the power to make change in their lives or to make the life they want to live, that they have this ability,” she said. “A lot of people allow — especially, like, marginalized groups — they allow others to keep them in a box and keep them feeling powerless and not even realizing it’s the mask that we put on that society or others placed on us in order for us to feel part of a community or to fit in.”

Masks and how damaging they can be are an important theme in this book.

“The masks are the things that we wear on us to be presented to the world and to be accepted,” she said. “For instance, if we want to be accepted in our society, since we are a patriarchal society, a lot of it is we have to be a masculine man or women have to be able to cook or girls wear pink and boys wear blue. When we live by that ideology we’re living under someone else’s idea.”

This is not Sanders’ first book, though it is her first nonfiction book. The impetus to write it came after the most recent presidential election, when she took a year to reflect on her life.

“I did a lot of self-reflection spiritually,” she said. “I understood that there was a lot going on around me that was trying to lead me, (using) signs, symbols and synchronicities.”

The year was profitable, not in terms of cash but personally,  though it was not easy.

“I figured out who I was,” she said. “It was a lot of work, a lot of digging, a lot of realization, a lot of pain I had to go through, a lot of my past and childhood, a lot I had to go through to realize who I was instead of being who everyone wanted me to be.”

That’s when she knew she had to share it with others who feel like she felt.

Interestingly, Sanders is a fan of horror and she has published several horror stories, a genre she has been interested in since she was very young.

“My love of horror came from the stories my mom used to tell me,” she said. “I realized it’s a lot like the parables in the Bible that she would push onto me. At the time I really didn’t understand what religion was and how, in my opinion, it’s a means of control.”

Most important to Sanders is empowerment. As a Black woman she understands all too well the limits society places on women of color, so it’s very important to her that people understand they don’t have to live less. Her life is an example of this because although she lives comfortably now, there was a time when she was a young, single mother with mouths to feed but very little money to accomplish that.

“What I do find to be empowering is that I turned that pain, that trauma, that heartache, that struggle into success,” she said. “I want to make sure other people know that they have that ability too.” 

“Ready to Listen? A Spiritual Self-Help Memoir,” by Leslie Lee Sanders
COST:  $12.95/paperback from major retailers