Three and a half months ago Zenobia Dyson started a company under her pen name “Euphonious7”, meaning ‘Agreeable to the ear, rhythmic and lyrical, like a sweet sounding voice.’ with her husband, Corey Dyson.
Through this company Dyson hopes “to reach people through creative inspirational writing of poetry, motivational, and inspirational speaking.” The mission of the company is “to add a special touch to any occasion where the spoken words shall empower, uplift, motivate, and leave you with a lasting impression.”
Along with running her company, Dyson is also the mother of four, the career advisor for her church, Dominion Apostolic Ministries, is pursuing a bachelor’s degree, and is getting ready to release her first book.
“I never planned to write a book,” she said. “I always said when I was younger, I was going to write a book, but you know you say things but you really don’t believe it.”
She began writing the poems that will appear in her book about two years ago, six months after Dyson joined her church.
“I was just excited (about giving my life to God),” she said. “I just had this fire in me and I wanted to share it with other people.”
She said that this led her to send out a message to all of the women in the church one morning.
“I’m just encouraging them,” she said. “Like ‘Today is Monday, we need to be motivated we need to have a smile on our face. Don’t worry about the stress’ things like that to pump them up.”
After a week of sending out messages and receiving no responses Dyson assumed no one was listening or appreciated her words. She then received a message from one of the ladies asking where her message was.
“One of the ladies responded back to me and said ‘Where’s my 8:30 message? I’m missing my message,’ ’’ she said. “So that motivated me to keep writing, keep writing to these women to keep them inspired.”
Dyson said that the poetry began playing a bigger part because the pastor of her church, Michael Barber, heard about her messaging the women and asked her to write a poem that would be put in the weekly Chronicle.
Dyson said that she saved all of the messages she sent out and after about a year of sending messages and poems to these women she and her husband were looking through them and saw that there were about 40 poems and over 100 messages that she had sent.
She said that they took all of the things she had written and put them in a book supported by scripture. This was done with the purpose of showing people who do not read the Bible how daily life and scripture go hand in hand.
Dyson’s husband submitted her writing to Tate Publishing Company May 7, 2014 and told her that in two weeks they would find out if she was a writer or not.
On May 20, 2014 her husband called her while she was at work and told her that the publishing company had reviewed her writing and liked her work and wanted to publish her book.
“So I ran out of the building into the parking lot,” Dyson said. “I was jumpin’ up and down praising God, tears just flowing through my eyes. I could not believe it.”
Dyson finalized her book about a month ago and will have her first book signing May 9 at St. Mary’s Public Library in Leonardtown at noon.
Her book, Inside of Me, will be released on June 16.
Dyson said that her poetry contains a lot of personal messages about things she was going through.
As a child Dyson was molested and became pregnant at 14 by a family friend through a sexual situation that was forced.
Dyson said that through all of that she became depressed, had low self esteem and felt hopeless. She said that joining her church helped her to be delivered from the depression that had a hold on her for 22 years.
“I just wanna be a living example,” she said. “A living testimony to say ‘Hey, I went through this, and I went through that, but I survived.’”
Dyson calls what she does by helping people being a caver.
“When you’re in a cave and you’re in this dark place, then you become immune to it, you don’t wanna come out because that’s what you’re used to,” she said. “And me, I say I’m the caver because I can walk in this cave and I can walk out of the cave; but when I walk in the cave I’m bringing God with me because He is guiding me, He’s using me as a vessel, and I’m gonna go in there and get you out of there. That’s my whole goal, to get you out of the cave, walk out of that darkness and bring you to the light, which is freedom. ”
Dyson hopes to continue doing what she is doing in the future.
“I just see myself continuing to speak to women,” she said. “I see myself on a bigger platform, in other places around the world just being an evangelist to speak to people. I love poetry, I love inspiring people, I want people to be happy; because I wanted to be happy but I couldn’t find happy in my darkness. So I just see me keep pushing, keep doing the same thing and making it better every time and reaching millions if I can.”
Dyson is currently working on her second book of poems and inspirational messages. In addition to this she is working on a biography, which will be published as her third book.