Eliza Player

Eliza spent many years, slumming it up in New Orleans, heavy lidded with drugs and alcohol until Hurricane Katrina bore down on the city, changing her life forever. She has been in recovery for nearly 20 years now, crediting Hurricane Katrina as the catalyst to kickstart her long and winding process of healing.

She has several memoirs in various stages of the creative process, discussing various poignant stages of her life thus far in the works. Many of her readers ask about the recovery process, which began before Katrina, but blossomed after the events following the storm. Recovery alone is shaping up to be more than one memoir in itself, and all the life that followed in these 20 years may be another handful of memoirs.

After working in Harm Reduction for several years and later returning to the service industry, bartending on both Frenchmen and Bourbon Streets, Eliza Player eventually experienced a powerful spiritual awakening, from the Spirit of New Orleans, as she refers to it. A Spirit of the Universe is another name she uses. This Spirit spoke to her, again, from the depths of darkness, albeit a very different darkness than she shows her audience in her memoir published here.

"Follow the Spirit. Walk the Path," is her latest mantra. After many years of the Spirit's whispers, Eliza, finally heard her calling and knew it was time to listen. Strangely enough, her experiences during Hurricane Katrina rode along on the wings of the whispers, and those memories reside at the heart of her spiritual path. As she began to Follow the Spirit, Walking the Path she is building on the foundation of recovery, healing, and growth, yet bursting forth from a place of complete disenfranchisement, everything in her life has to change- yet again.

She resides in New Orleans once again, often "spirit walking" through her streets and along the imprints of our history and all the lives who have walked these streets long before us, leaving their marks for us to discover. Eliza now goes by the name the Spirit called her- Teaux BeahYa. While the spelling is different, reflecting both her adopted cultures which speak directly with her soul, the pronunciation is much like the name her mother gave her at birth, and sadly, one that was only used when Teaux BeahYa was in trouble. She feared the sound of her full name for nearly 50 years, until the Spirit gently whispered to her with this name.

TeauxBee, as many of her friends call her, is writing profusely about her spiritual journey through New Orleans currently, as well as slowly but surely plugging away on the various memoirs to define her life leading up to being called by the Spirit. Let Teaux BeahYa's Revelations Follow the Spirit, in hopes of showing her audience how she Walks the Path, just as boldly and bravely as she showed her readers how she fought through Katrina, muddling through addiction in her memoir here. As we approach the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, almost all who were deeply touched by her know just how much the storm affected their entire lives. Many of TeauxBee's friends from the memoir are no longer with us, but those who remain credit Katrina with saving our lives. While the rest of the world loves to call us resilient, we prefer to look at it as tough, or lucky, or blessed, or anything but resilient at times. TeauxBee claims to be okay with resilient, as long as Katrina and the Spirit can take the credit.