“Spirit gets what Spirit wants, so you might as well listen,” she said, sitting on the bed across from me. Her first book, When the Heart Speaks, Listen: Discovering Inner Wisdom (2019), recalls the conversations she had with her old and new hearts as she prepared for surgery. When she received a new heart in 1995, she says she heard, “Your inner life is where the action is. That is where the healing occurs.” In 2005 she had a kidney transplant, and in 2006 a heart valve replacement. Theologian and psychologist Chanequa Walker-Barnes, who worked with Lerita on several occasions, wrote, “Lerita was a quiet soul who made a huge imprint on people who encountered her.