Nationwide — She Had a Whole World Inside Her: What I Want You to Know — A Legacy Journal for Women by Dr. T. Sandi Williams began with a locked metal box. When her mother passed away, her family opened the box she had forbidden her children to touch. Inside was a death certificate for a baby boy, Edward Calvin Johnson, a brother Dr. Williams never knew existed. Her mother, a 1943 graduate of Morris Brown College who came of age under segregation, had carried that grief in silence her entire life.
“I didn’t know what school my mother attended as a little girl, who made her laugh, or what she dreamed about at night,” said Dr. Williams. “Our stories don’t preserve themselves. This journal is the book I wish my mother had left behind, and the gift I’m giving to every woman who still has time.” The journal, which features a foreword by H.E. Ambassador Dr. Erieka Bennett, guides women through 42 prompts across seven chapters of life: the little girl, the teenager, the young woman, the builder, the wounded healer, the wise woman, and the legacy. Each chapter opens with research on how writing about one’s life supports healing. Readers need no writing experience, only the willingness to remember.
Dr. Williams answers the journal’s prompts herself, drawing on a childhood in Harlem’s General Grant Houses. She writes about the day she was ranked last among six girls on a neighborhood bench, and the moment at age 12 when she discovered her family was poor because a neighbor’s photo appeared on the front page of the New York Daily News.
As the holidays approach, the journal is designed to be a gift from daughters and granddaughters to the mothers and grandmothers whose stories they want to keep, and as a gift women give themselves.
About the Author
Dr. T. Sandi Williams is the founder and CEO of A Wealth of Women and A Wealth of Women Ghana, host of The Purple Circle Podcast, and a nonprofit development consultant who has raised millions of dollars for organizations across the United States and Africa. She leads cultural heritage trips to Ghana and earned her doctorate at age 60. Her companion memoir, The Girl on the Bench: What I Remembered When I Finally Wrote It Down, will be released in January 2027.
Book Details:
She Had a Whole World Inside Her
ISBN 979-8-9976780-0-5
Available now on Amazon
For press inquiries, contact Dr. T. Sandi Williams at 215-380-5437 or legacy@drsandiwilliams.com
She is available for interviews, podcasts, readings, and speaking engagements with women’s ministries and community organizations.