What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger

I was an accident but not a mistake. As a young a teenager, my mother fooled around with a neighborhood boy and their dalliance produced a child. As I typed that word “dalliance,” I thought about the vocabulary, language proficiency and communication skills that propelled me from poverty to prosperity. Reflecting on my early beginnings gives me a reason to thank my mother for her strength and sacrifices.

She gave me life at a time when having an “illegitimate” child was a disgrace that stained the girl and brought shame to the unwed mother’s family. She also made a decision to be a responsible parent. That meant getting a job and figuring out how to provide for us. My father and his family rejected me but on my mother’s side, it was all love and nurturing.

We lived in Detroit in a comfortable home along with an assortment of relatives. As my Auntie LaLa was teaching my cousin to read, I was an infant, learning by osmosis. I was three years old when my family first realized that I could read and comprehend written material. I started school at age four. With my family bragging about how smart I was and my teachers gushing over me, I felt so special. Looking back I see how approval from supportive adults, at home and in school, helped to build my self-esteem and changed my life trajectory.

Something in my soul had always yearned for the love of my father and not having his acceptance, left me wounded, hurt and vulnerable. Academic excellence was my salvation. It was the right thing for the wrong reasons. Basically, I was an insecure child, who used excellence to get hugs. This became a pattern for me and over the years I have come to appreciate the complexity of my life. Those hugs that I earned through excellence as a child, morphed into grown up rewards as I maintained excellence throughout my career as a television news anchor, corporate communications executive and business owner.

Born into a ghetto environment with the cards stacked against me, my mother has always been my ace in the hole. She is now elderly with health challenges. Yet, I am blessed to still have her in my life. I am also blessed to have had my husband with me for three decades.

Fate connected us in New Orleans, where I had gone to work as a TV journalist. I remember the exact date we met - October 11, 1985 with vivid detail. It was a busy night with a packed house, yet we were in an imaginary bubble—talking, laughing and connecting heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul. We married two years later and I quit the news business to become a full time wife. Eventually, I jumped back into the work world but this time, as a business owner. We blended our respective skills and built a powerhouse public relations agency specializing in tourism, special events, project management, media services and film production.

We left New Orleans in 2004 and moved to Alabama where I worked for the City of Birmingham on a wide array of projects involving public policy, grass roots constituency, inter-governmental relations, communications, special projects and media issues.

One year after we settled into our new life, a beast named Hurricane Katrina roared into New Orleans, impacting thousands of our former neighbors. So August 2005 is a date we will never forget. Earlier that year we had bought a historic house in Tuskegee, which we renovated and furnished. At this point, we had two homes, a wonderful lifestyle in Birmingham and compassion for anybody from New Orleans.

We opened our hearts and wallets to many people who had lost everything. We even offered our Tuskegee home to a person for temporary shelter, which lasted three years. We were gracious for that long because we were waiting for Divine Spirit to free us before asking our guest to leave. After the person moved out, we loved the fresh energy in our home, which soon became even sweeter when our grandchild came to live with us.

By this time, I was working in Montgomery as the Communications Director for the Senate President Pro Tem. And then life pulled the rug out from under our family. My mother had a heart attack and could no longer live alone. We decided to send our grandchild to her father to enable me to become my mother's full time caregiver. At first, I was depressed. Gradually my attitude changed and life became a series of tender moments that make my heart smile.

I have come to see that there are no accidents. Everything has a purpose and as the old folks say, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger."