Free Unbreak My Heart: A Memoir by Toni Braxton

father became the pastor of Mount Tabor, a United Methodist church in Crownsville, Maryland. In the months leading up to his appointment, Dad had already been preaching sermons all over town; my sisters and I were his opening act. By then, my brother, Mikey, had found a way to get out of singing with the family. Once he was in high school, he signed up for a vocational medical program, and that meant he had to work on the weekends. Lucky him.
    The inside of our new church looked exactly like the one in The Color Purple . The sanctuary was small, with two sets of pews lined up on either side of a prominent middle aisle. There was even a little balcony. A couple summers before when my father had visited this church to preach, I remember saying to myself, “This is so cute—I wish my dad could pastor a church like this.” So I was excited when he actually became the minister there. Up in the pulpit, my father looked so respectable in his clergyman’s collar.
    Daddy was a great preacher. There wasn’t a whole lot of shouting or jumping around during his sermons—that wasn’t his style. He was more of a straightforward teacher, a Joel Osteen type whose messages were very informative and inspiring. My mother sometimes spoke in the church, too: She was an evangelist. The Sunday service often ended the way it began—my sisters and I stood to deliver a pitch-perfect version of an old hymn like “Blessed Assurance” or “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
    My experience in Dad’s church was nothing like it had been at Pillar of Truth: I regularly wore pants and lip gloss to school, and long gone were the days when the congregation would gather to cast out demons. And yet even as my parents gradually became more lenient, in some ways, they were still very stern. One night, I fell asleep listening to Rick James—I had hidden the cassette recorder under my pillow. The next morning when my mother noticed the music, she confronted me. “If you keep listening to that devil music, that rock and roll, you’ll mess around and you could die in your sleep next time. You don’t want to go to hell listening to that music.” That scared me. Even now, I don’t listen to music before bedtime.
    As I share this and so many of the other episodes from my childhood, my intention isn’t to shame either one of my parents—it is to finally free myself by standing in my own truth. Healing begins with acknowledgment. I absolutely know that Mommy and Daddy love me. They always have and always will. But here’s what I also know: The people who love us the most can also unintentionally wound us.

CHAPTER 6
Miracle at Amoco
    S inging has always been my Plan A. By the time I graduated from Glen Burnie High School in 1984, my sisters and I were seasoned singers who’d performed at just about every church in our area. I had a solo part here and there, but mostly, I continued to sing with the group and play the piano. Yet more and more, I longed to become a famous soloist. And if that dream didn’t pan out, I had a Plan B: After college, I’d marry a doctor or a senator and become a strong wife. That sounds a little crazy to me now, but at seventeen, it somehow made perfect sense.
    After high school, I stayed with my family and enrolled in community college. As a high school graduation gift, Dad bought me a blue Honda Civic CRX with gold and silver highlights on the sides. I had “TOO CUTE” put onto the license plate because I thought the car was just adorable. I was ecstatic to get my own wheels—if I couldn’t live on my own, at least I could drive myself around.
    During my last year of high school, I’d started dating a guy who was a few years older than me—in a moment, you’ll understand why I’ll simply call him Trevor, which is not his real name. Given the childhood I lived through, I’m sure you can see why just the mention of sex filled me with guilt. It felt like a dirty word. In our house, nice Christian girls kept their