Daughters Of Destiny reaches a loving heart to all women to enable each to find her true destiny.
Daughters of Destiny
Every Monday night at Savannah's newly founded Daughters of Destiny Center, founder Miriam Center rings a chime, leads a group of women in prayer, and recites a text intended to strengthen women's self image and general sense of empowerment.
Recently at such a meeting she read a passage from Melody Beattie's Journey to the Heart, encouraging women to exercise greater self-love.
"Women are afraid of loving themselves," says Center. "They're so used to being caretakers that they don't even realize that they have the right to love themselves. That's why they're so co-dependent and want somebody else to give them the love."
Center's quest to help women live more fulfilling lives began in the late 1980s, when at the age of 50 she got in her car and drove solo from Savannah to California. The move was part of a major spiritual rebirth that included the dissolution of a 30-year marriage and closing her successful real estate company.
Although she had lost her oldest son, she raised two others to adulthood and recently become a grandmother, but felt her life remained incomplete. With the establishment of Daughters of Destiny in Los Angeles, she found the missing piece to the puzzle of her existence.
"Although I didn't know it at the time, I was making a life passage which would encompass all women in transition," Center says. "Wouldn't it be nice, I thought, if there was a network for women assisting each other, when their families were unwilling, or were unable to hear and help them."
The powerful significance of what she had stumbled upon became more evident as she interacted with different women in diverse, yet similar, situations. The first Daughters of Destiny meeting was held in the home of a former nightclub performer who had abandoned her career to marry a Hollywood executive, become a mother, then developed agoraphobia (fear of the outdoors).
Another woman had been a college professor who unexpectedly lost her job and became suicidal. Upon joining Center's group, she regained enough self esteem to file and win a suit against her former employer for several million dollars.
As the meetings continued, transferring to Center's home, the issues they addressed expanded until Center found herself confronting battered wives, sexually abused daughters, victims of gender discrimination, women addicts, and others whose lives had been somehow derailed.
The platform provided by Daughters of Destiny, in Center's terms, could help these women heal their wounded souls. In doing so, they could then heal, or more greatly fulfill, their individual lives.
In 1998, she moved from Los Angeles to Atlanta, where she established another branch of Daughters of Destiny.
Five years later, her spiritual journey brought her back to Savannah. She again started holding meetings in her home.
The location for the meetings changed after Center acquired a small house at 12 E. 41st Street and opened its doors to the public in April. In addition to the weekly Monday night meetings, Daughters of Destiny hosts and promotes women artists, and participates in the monthly First Friday open hoses with the Starland Dairy group.
Center also takes her message of hope and renewal once a week to those undergoing treatment at the Drug Rehabilitation Center.
One artist who has already benefited from the center is Brenda Massie-Yates, who recently relocated to Savannah from New York and set up a studio in the facility.
"I wasn't sure how I was going to go about pursuing my art here," says Massie-Yates, "so this worked out perfectly for me."
While she hopes to see Daughters of Destiny spread to different cities and communities, for the time being Center is content to see the nonprofit organization continue developing in Savannah.
"This is my church, the Church for Women," she says. "I'm a church lady (laughs)."
For more information on Daughters of Destiny, call 663-0894.
Aberjhani is co-author of the award-winning Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance and author of I Made My Boy Out of Poetry.
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