Legacy Warrior is a memoir about my childhood in Berkeley in the 1960’s, my years as a young adult in Peoples Temple during the ‘70’s, and the decades since my return from Guyana in 1979 as a survivor of the Jonestown tragedy. Looking back almost 40 years later, I see many experiences, insights, and lessons from the journey that I can share.
The human journey lives through each of us uniquely in the experiences that we each breathe life into, and we each reflect a facet of a larger numinous and often mysterious unfolding. There is a way in which your story is my story and my story is also yours.
Legacy Warrior emphasizes that in each moment we are at the intersection of all that has preceded us and all of what lies ahead. In each moment we are poised on the outermost edges of life’s unfolding, to hold the power in that moment to make a conscious choice about how we will proceed.
In this memoir I share range of my experiences from devotion, dedication and blind faith, to shame, blame, guilt, and despair, all destructive forces and festering wounds in the flesh of life when they are not tempered by discernment and deep personal inner knowing.
Rather than being stuck in a place of diminishment, I found that through the radical ownership of all aspects of my past – both negative and positive – I became inspired to proceed powerfully, armed with dignity, enthusiasm, and a sense of purpose. This memoir explores not only details of the struggles, but more importantly, how I finally began to know just how much I matter, just how much each person matters and the way each person belongs in this grand scheme called life.
Providing an exciting view of lineage, and a fresh perspective on legacy, I explain how we can all stand as victors and conscious creators, rather than victims of our circumstances. Hidden gifts lay beneath the surface, and deep within the challenges of loss, and it is in the receiving of these gifts that unexpected inspiration for powerfully moving forward can be ignited within us. I invite you to join me on the path of the Legacy Warrior.
(Jordan Vilchez was in Georgetown, Guyana on November 18, 1978, but her sisters and nephews died in Jonestown. Her other article in this edition of the jonestown report is A Trip I Thought I Would Never Take. Her earlier articles may be found here. She can be reached at jordanvilchez@gmail.com. Her Visionary Life and Legacy website is here.)