They were at a soccer game when something shifted.

Ayanna Dowell’s son, Dash, had asked for money for snacks at the concession stand. She pointed him toward the truck, maybe 10 feet away. Before he got there, he turned back around.

“Mama, where did you say to get the money from?”

That moment, Ayanna said, was the one that made it real.

“It’s not just things that he doesn’t want to do,” she said. “This was something he wanted, and he still forgot that quick. I realized, okay, he’s not playing.”

The result of that realization, and years of work that followed, is Dash Gets It Done, a children’s book she self-published in March.

It sold out its first 50 copies at the launch and people are already asking when the next one comes out.

Written in real life

Ayanna has spent nearly two decades in education. She taught in the classroom, then moved into an administrative role overseeing the preschool program, where she spends her days providing support for students and coaching teachers on how to meet kids where they were.

She was doing all of that at work, then she’d come home to Dash and her daughter, Paris. She realized the methods she was using in the classroom might also be methods that would be helpful with follow-through at home.

“I don’t think parents naturally know to do these things. Our instinct is just, ‘Oh my God, why didn’t you do this?!’” she said.

The strategies she landed on were simple and visual. She cleaned Dash’s room the way it should be cleaned, photographed every corner of it – the bed, the dresser, the rug, all of it – and taped the pictures to his wall. When she told him to clean his room, he had a reference point. When he said he was done, she’d ask if it matched the pictures.

She started with one task at a time – make your bed – then she built from there.

“Progress over perfection,” she said. “Just be better than you were yesterday.”

Ayanna realized she and Dash weren’t alone in their struggles, and so she decided to write a book.

When Dash read the pages where his character describes how he feels, he went quiet. She describes a conversation where he told her she’d captured just how he felt.

“I felt like I hit the nail on the head. If that’s how he feels, somebody else may be feeling the same way.”

Honoring her late brother and father

The book had been in her head for years, and the encouragement to get there came from her father, Larry Cobbins.

An artist himself, her father had been asking about the book for years, texting her to check in. He reminded her she had a gift, and told her not to let it go. In 2022, he sent her a message that she saved and eventually included in the book’s pages. Unfortunately, Mr. Cobbins died in July 2024, never having seen it finished.

Dash Gets It Done was inspired by her son, encouraged by her father, and released to reclaim a time of year when she remembers the tragic loss of her brother, Orlandus “Bull” Cobbins.

More than a dozen years later, it’s still difficult. She becomes emotional when talking about the brother who was 13 months younger than her, about him tagging along when she’d spend time with her best friend, Tamika. She had never known life without him, but after he was murdered on Feb. 20 2012, she had to learn.

Bull’s memory is woven into why she does what she does: she hosts an annual community event in his name, brings people together, promotes resources and alternatives to violence.

“A lot of the things I do now are because of that moment,” she said. “I don’t want anybody else to go through it.”

A faith that runs in the family

Running underneath all of it – the book, the parenting strategies, the community work – is a faith Ayanna traces directly to her mother.

Her mother didn’t always use Bible stories to teach, but she always tied life back to Scripture. When Ayanna came home upset that someone was talking about her, her mother didn’t take her side. Instead, she said, “Well, you talk about people.” When bigger lessons were needed, she’d point to Jesus, how people talked about him, and how he just kept doing what he did.

“She would just relate it back to what God says,” Ayanna said. “’I want you to love everybody.’ And I kind of felt like if I didn’t do those things, I was convicted. I do what you’re supposed to do even when nobody’s watching.”

That foundation has been reinforced over the years by Rev. Dexter G. Moragne, senior pastor of St. Luke Missionary Baptist Church in Covington. Ayanna describes him as a spiritual father, someone whose lessons have guided her through some of the hardest moments of her life.

The night after Bull died, she came home and couldn’t sleep. She pulled up notes from Pastor Moragne’s sermons she had saved in her phone and just kept scrolling through them, trying to hold on.

His influence found its way into the book, too. The Sunday before Dash Gets It Done was released, before anyone outside her family knew it was coming, Pastor Moragne preached on Peter. It was the same disciple Dowell had referenced in the book.

“I only knew that the book was coming out,” she said. “I’m like, what in the world?”

She went back and added a passage after that sermon, about God using imperfect people, about seeing strength instead of weakness. She wanted kids to know it. She wanted parents to know it.

“Just because you’re not perfect does not mean that God can’t use you,” she said.

Willing to learn, brave enough to try

The responses she’s heard since Dash Gets It Done has been released have stayed with her. A cousin read it thinking about her adult son and cried, recognizing that this was how he had felt all along. A mother told her that her child wants it read to him every night. Another child’s takeaway, when asked what he learned, was simply: “We need to pray.”

“I wanted adults and kids to read it and get something from it,” she said. “Just to feel like ‘somebody understands me.’”

Dash himself has started to own it. Ayanna overheard him explaining the book to someone recently.

“He said, ‘It’s just kind of like how I overcome my obstacles,’” she said. “I was like, ‘Look at you!’”

A second book is already in the works. Dash asked for it after his basketball team faced an intimidating opponent. It will be called Dash and the Giant. Each book in the series, she said, will connect to a story from the Bible.

That’s how her mother taught her – not always through Bible stories, but always through Scripture, always tying things back to something larger than the moment. Ayanna carries that forward, into the book, into her parenting, into her work.

“I just want to help somebody,” she said. “That’s it. That’s it right there.”

There’s a verse in James that theologians have debated for centuries: faith without works is dead.

For Ayanna, it isn’t a debate, it’s a description of her life.

She didn’t just grieve her brother and pray, she built Bull Day and shows up every year to pull the community together. She didn’t just believe in the book her father kept asking about, she sat down during a snow break and finished it.

“The name of the book is Dash Gets It Done. Not only did Dash get it done, but I got it done too,” she said. “I did it, Daddy. I just wish he was here to actually see it. He would be so proud.”

Dash Gets It Done is available on Amazon: amazon.com/dp/B0GPMXSTMT. For more information about the books, follow the Dash Chronicles on Facebook.