Ida LaVerne Blackwell has spent well over half her life in the Newtown community where she and her husband, Calvin, have lived quietly, raised four children — two each from prior marriages — made a wonderful life for themselves, and, more recently, welcomed their four grandchildren.

While she spent a great part of her life helping others, particularly the hundreds of parents and children whose lives she touched while working at the Connecticut Department of Children and Families, it took a pandemic for Blackwell to settle down and look inward at the story of her own sometimes troubled life and decidedly insecure sense of self.

Those reflections resulted in her first book, a relatively short and easy to read memoir she entitled My Truths, My Triumphs, My God.

“Life for me has been a remarkable journey, filled with abuse, anger, sadness, and low self esteem,” Blackwell states in a release promoting the recently released book. “However, my resiliency, perseverance, and trust in God have made me the strong woman that I am today. My memoir is proof that the many LaVernes can survive, achieve, and become someone important who can give love and receive love.”

Ultimately, Blackwell concludes, “This is a book about healing.”

A graduate of Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Blackwell cultivated a lifelong practice of communicating and sometimes reckoning with her God, having achieved a certificate of completion in evangelicalism and counseling, as well as other religious certificates. She is an ordained deacon, teaches New Disciples classes, serves as an usher, and is president of the Silver Saints Ministry as a longtime affiliate with the Messiah Baptist Church of Bridgeport.

During her free time, Blackwell said she enjoys cooking, baking, and entertaining family and friends, as well as traveling with family and friends. She generally describes herself as one who loves to laugh and make others laugh.

During a brief chat with The Newtown Bee, Blackwell talked a lot about the fulfilling life that inspired her to add “author” to her list of accomplishments. But she confided that some of her earliest soul searching and communicating with God transpired in prayer and letters she wrote by hand when she was feeling particularly sad or angry, or when she found her own faith was being challenged.

Letters To God

The child of a military career officer, some of her earliest recollections were of accompanying her dad to church when they lived in France.

“I remember asking my father if I was only allowed to pray in church, or at night before bedtime, and he assured me I could pray anywhere and any time,” Blackwell said. “That not only led me to pray whenever I felt it was right, and even during my period of bad behavior I went up to my room and was writing letters to God.”

As she alluded to, her childhood foundation of faith was not enough to deter her from the bad decisions she began making as a teen, which led her to be expelled from high school at 16.

“I was just out of control, and was running with the wrong people,” she recalled. “I just wanted to misbehave and do all those things that led me down the wrong path.”

Things got so bad that she left her New Jersey home, relocating to the Virginia home of a favorite aunt and uncle. But an open-ended escape from home, filled with hanging out and enjoying a permanent vacation, was short-lived, as her uncle demanded she immediately get a job to help support herself, which only lasted a short time.

Blackwell said it was that time when she experienced her own first epiphany.

“That next job was working at a rehab facility. And I had to leave the house at 5 am to catch the bus, so I realized that wasn’t for me either,” Blackwell said. Then a friend from New Jersey enticed Blackwell to return north, where the two would attempt to complete nursing school together.

With no high school diploma and a history of bad behavior, however, Blackwell was unable to qualify for nursing training, she explained. Instead, she was given the opportunity to complete high school.

A Second Chance

“I was so grateful I was given this one chance, so I completed my diploma with straight A’s — I didn’t miss one class and graduated. But instead of going to nursing school, I got married and had two babies,” she said. “The marriage did not work out, and when I met my current husband, I moved with my two girls and his son and daughter to Newtown.”

One of the biggest truths Blackwell realized over the course of her life was that she is a valuable person, despite her own personal misgivings.

“Even though I had been rejected, kicked out of school, and endured a lot of troubles, it led me to triumph — and to know and appreciate the person I am today,” she said. “I started realizing in my 20s, and with the acceptance I found in my second marriage, I began to discover the person I really was. I also had the encouragement of friends, including one I’ve known since grade school. We still keep in touch and visit whenever I can.”

Even in retirement, with all she continues to do with her church, she has served as a conservator for several elderly people as an appointee of the probate court, and continues to do so. She has also gently offered support and advice to countless younger people, as well.

“I would tell people I saw who were facing their own troubles that they could make it. I’d tell them they don’t have to stay where they are,” she said, “there is hope.

“I was there, look at me, know... there is hope. A lot of the friends I was involved with in my high school days didn’t make it out.”

Copies of My Truths, My Triumphs, My God (ISBN 9781733812061) can be purchased on amazon.com and b&n.com, and at other booksellers. The book is distributed by Pathway Book Service and Ingram Book Company.