by Terrence J
Dedication
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO LISA AND JAIME
Contents
Dedication
Introduction
Author’s Note
Prologue
1 Courage & Sacrifice
2 Love & Acceptance
3 Vision & Fearlessness
4 Hustle & Ambition
5 The Importance of Learning
6 Loyalty
7 Dreams & Perseverance
8 Putting Others First
9 Patience & Humility
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Photographic Insert
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
Thank you for picking up my book. I am very proud of it—though for a long time I wrestled with the very idea of writing a book at all. Sure, there are plenty of books out there by people who are my age, or even younger. Many of them have amazing stories of accomplishments to share, or have triumphed over terrible circumstances. I applaud those guys. But me, I feel like I am just getting started. What advice or guidance could I have to share? What about my stories makes them special? I haven’t done enough yet, in my life, to write a memoir. I’ve been blessed with many amazing opportunities. I’ve worked hard, and played hard along the way. But a book? Give me a few more years and then we’ll talk.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the biggest gift I have in my life is the love and guidance of my family, and at the center of that, my mother. As I have learned after volunteering at the Boys & Girls Club over the years, there are many young men and women who have not had the benefit of a strong family unit the way I have. I feel my life, so far, has been led by a series of relatively good choices—first made by my mom when I was young, and then by me using the tools she gave me to guide my life. I knew that writing a book would allow me to share her wisdom with others—and to tell some of my own stories, showing how her guidance has always been the thing that I relied on most.
In these pages, you will meet a girl named Tiffany, who represents a few young ladies and men whom I have mentored throughout my years of volunteering. Certain identifying details have been changed to protect them. With Tiffany’s story as the guide, I can pay it forward, as they say. Just as my mom relied on the examples her own mother set, I hope this book will inspire others to make good choices in their own lives.
I hope you will enjoy the stories in this book. For all the Tiffanys out there, I hope this book will give you some hope. For those of you who have followed my journey, thank you for supporting me, and I hope you find this book as entertaining to read as I found it to write.
And most of all, for my mom: Thanks for shaping me into the man I am.
Prologue
When my phone rang late one August night, my first reaction was to let it go to voice mail because I didn’t recognize the number. I was jet-lagged, my neck was stiff, and my throat had that scratchy, about-to-get-sick feeling that inevitably sets in after a cross-country flight. I’d just landed in Los Angeles from New York and I had a long day of meetings and auditions ahead. It was 2:30 A.M. in L.A. (5:30 A.M. back home), an awkward time either way, and not usually a time associated with any good news. I needed to be on my A game, and the last thing I wanted was a distracting phone conversation. I really needed those last few hours of sleep, so of course I let the phone go to voice mail the first time. I was going to let it go to voice mail the second time, too, but when I went to hit “decline,” my phone, which has a mind of its own, as always, answered the call instead.
To my surprise, the voice on the other end belonged to a teenage girl. I initially wanted to go into my broken Spanish accent and act like they had the wrong number. But after a few seconds, I realized who was calling: It was Tiffany.
I met Tiffany at the New York City chapter of the Boys & Girls Club of America. I’d been going up there once a month since I moved to New York City to host 106 & Park, on BET. I went there to mentor kids in crisis. The idea of the Boys & Girls Club is pretty simple: They aim to provide kids in need with a safe place to hang out and consistent relationships with stable adults. The hope is that with this kind of support they can find both the positive outlook and the opportunities they need to make something of themselves. It’s a great organization that’s been helping kids for more than a hundred years. I was happy to be involved.
Tiffany had shown up at the Boys & Girls Club about six months earlier. She was seventeen years old, a smart, funny girl with an eye to her own future, but as is often the case, her family situation was not ideal. She was born in Atlanta, but her mom died when she was little, and her dad left a few years after that. As a preteen, she was sent to New York City to be raised by her grandmother. Her grandmother is super-religious, overprotective, and crazy strict, so of course they fought a lot—especially about Tiffany’s boyfriend, Sean, a high school dropout with a juvenile rap sheet for petty theft. Usual story.
Tiffany was intellectually curious, and we initially connected over our mutual love of fashion. She would always comment on the outfits she saw me wear on 106 & Park—letting me know if she approved or if my outfit was a “fail.” She had no problem saying what she thought—and more times than not, she was right. She usually carried a black-and-gold laptop in her bag, and was always busy sketching, drawing, or looking at fashion blogs.
We shared a love of books, too. The first time she came to the center, I told Tiffany about my favorite of all time, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. She read it within a few days and came back, excited to tell me how much she liked it. We had a long, in-depth conversation about the journey of Santiago and chasing your own personal legend—your dream for your life. She told me about her own dream, of being a fashion designer, like her heroes Kimora Lee Simmons and Tracy Reese. She’d read an article about Daymond John, the businessman who started FUBU and took the fashion world by storm. She wanted to be like them, and I saw a lot of myself in her focus, ambition, and life goals.
But Tiffany was also her own worst enemy, smart but also too naive for her own good. She often hung out with the wrong crowd. She would earn good grades, and then sabotage herself by listening to bad advice from her party-mad friends. And she had a thing for bad boys, like Sean. Her behavior was the typical rebellious teen stuff, especially when you’re living in a city like New York, and I could certainly relate, but it often seemed like she was having a hard time deciding who she truly wanted to be.
I’d been encouraging her to go to college, and she told me about her plan to apply to the Fashion Institute of Technology and a few other colleges that fall. So when I heard her voice on the phone that night, my first thought (after How did she get my number?) was that she needed some advice on her applications. But then I realized how late it was—this wasn’t exactly the time of day to ask for college advice.
“Hi, Terrence? Yeah, hi—I’m kind of freaking out,” I heard her say. “I had to talk to someone. I got your number from Dave, the adviser at the Boys and Girls Club . . .” She laughed, nervously. “It’s not too late, is it?”
I groaned a little, reminding myself to kill Dave later for giving out my number to a seventeen-year-old girl. But if Tiffany was persistent enough to get my digits, there must be a reason she needed to talk to me. I knew I should hear her out.
I rolled over, glanced at the clock. For me, mentoring usually began and ended when I walked through the door of the Boys & Girls Club. I love the organization with all my heart, but I’m no
one’s parent, and I’m especially no one’s parent at one o’clock in the morning. I thought about asking Tiffany to call back tomorrow, but something in her voice made me hesitate. So maybe I’d have bags under my eyes during the meeting the next day. She was clearly upset about something.
“Nope, it’s fine. What’s up?”
“I’m pregnant,” she blurted out. “And I need . . . I don’t know . . . advice?”
I went silent. I don’t even remember what my initial response was—some platitudes along the lines of Wow, how tough, I’m sorry to hear that. I honestly didn’t know how to react: I’m at the age where my college friends are settling down and getting married, so when someone tells me they are pregnant it’s usually great news. But I could tell that Tiffany was shaken up. What could I say to calm her down?
Inside I was thinking, Why me? I can’t offer her good advice. I’m just a never-married single guy. I know nothing about what it’s like to be a pregnant teenage girl. I’m just happy the girl I’m dating isn’t calling me and saying she’s pregnant. The last thing I want to do is have this conversation. Besides, I really need to be fresh for my meeting tomorrow.
By now, Tiffany was crying for real. I felt myself growing frantic: “Have you tried to talk to a teacher, or someone at the center?”
She mumbled something about how she wanted to talk to someone who really understood her.
“Look,” I told her, “I can’t talk now, but we’ll meet when I get back to New York and will figure something out then. Okay?” We agreed to meet up at the center later that week. I figured that by that point I’d have a whole notebook of numbers of counselors who were better equipped to help her than I was.
But that night, I wasn’t able to sleep. I kept thinking about Tiffany’s voice, how emotional she was, how vulnerable and raw. I felt like I’d let her down. Finally, growing frustrated, I turned on the light and began paging through the Think Like a Man script, which I was studying in preparation for my upcoming role. And that’s when it hit me.
I love my mom to death, and we have a really great relationship. But I’m not a mama’s boy, not to any extent. In fact, I hadn’t really known that much about my mom’s past until I got the role of Michael in Think Like a Man—a man who is a mama’s boy. As preparation for the role, I’d spent the last few months “researching” my mom: talking to her about her childhood, getting to know her better, and spending more time with her, one on one, then I ever had. Our relationship had really evolved during these talks, as I’d come to fully appreciate the decisions she’d made in raising me. For the first time, I had real clarity about the inspirational role she’d played in my life.
As I lay there considering Tiffany’s circumstances, I remembered something my mom always says: Nothing happens by coincidence. God is always sending us opportunities to help other people. Yes, I was probably the worst person to give advice about parenting and raising a kid: I have no kids, not even a dog. I may have a huge amount of responsibility at work and to my coworkers, but I still have a lot to learn when it comes to relationships. So I’m the last person to offer any advice about the right time for motherhood. But after spending these last couple of months with my mom and learning so much about the challenges she had faced raising me, I realized I did have one thing to offer Tiffany: my mom’s stories, and my own.
Back when my mom was seventeen, she was faced with the same dilemma: pregnant, unmarried, still in high school. A lot of girls in her situation would have walked away—abortion, adoption, abandonment, you name it. But my mom worked it out, made some tough choices, and gave birth to me. It’s fair to say that everything I have become, all my achievements, I owe to the lessons that I learned from her. She was strong, independent-minded, and courageous from the jump.
I found myself thinking of the child that Tiffany might give birth to in nine months’ time and the impact that she could potentially have on that kid’s life. People talk a lot about the importance of the dynamic between fathers and sons, or mothers and daughters; but what about the connection between mothers and their sons? A great relationship with his mom can change everything for a man. It did for me.
It’s amazing how much my mom did in her life, on my behalf. Even though, as a seventeen-year-old single mom with relatively little help, all the chips were stacked against her, she was able to provide an incredible amount of support for me. I’ve had some amazing opportunities, from being the first in my family to graduate from college, to starring in movies that grossed more than $100 million worldwide; from being a young African American male on television every day as a host, to interviewing President Obama—and all of them are due very much in part to the work ethic my mom instilled in me. Because of her belief in me, because of her careful grooming, I had been blessed with a very rich life, full of both financial and personal success that I could hardly believe. But even more important than the money was the way Mom’s lessons enriched my spirit, my emotions, and my relationship with God.
Maybe sharing my mom’s stories with Tiffany would help her through her crisis, even offer her some encouragement about motherhood. No, I didn’t have specific parenting advice to offer, but I could certainly provide a shoulder to cry on. And considering that, in Think Like a Man, I was set to play a character dating a single mother raising a young boy, it also felt like an omen.
These are the stories Tiffany and I shared over the following months. My hope was that my mom’s stories would inspire not just Tiffany, but other people as well—in the same way that my mom inspired and shaped me.
1
My Mother’s Words of Wisdom About Courage & Sacrifice
We met at the Boys & Girls Club last night. I got there ten minutes early, but Tiffany was already waiting for me in the lobby, wearing her usual stylish outfit. When she spied me coming through the door, she jumped up and ran over and started talking my ear off. At first, I was tentative about what to say—was she still trying to decide whether or not to have the baby? While I’m certainly glad my mom chose to have me, abortion is a personal decision and I didn’t want to be asked my opinion about that. But I quickly figured out from the way Tiffany was talking about “this baby” that she had already decided to go ahead with the pregnancy.
In fact, she soon began to tell me about the storybook life she was envisioning for her future. “I figure, I’ll go to college and learn fashion design while Sean gets a job and supports us, and maybe my grandma will watch the baby while I’m studying. And then when the kid’s old enough to start school I can start my own clothing company or open a store or something. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?” She looked at me for affirmation.
“Not at all,” I said, though I wasn’t sure how realistic it was. “Is Sean on board?”
Sean knew about the pregnancy, she said. At first he had freaked out a little bit (“Scratch that—more like, a lot”), but he had offered to step up to the plate. “I mean, he’s not exactly a contributing member of society at the moment,” she said, laughing, but only a little. “But he’s pretty smart, believe it or not. He says he’ll get a job. And his mom is actually really excited to be a grandma.”
“That’s great.”
“It is. It’s gonna be great.” And then, out of the blue, she was crying. When she calmed down a little, she wiped her nose on the sleeve of her shirt and said, “You must think I’m a total fool. A pregnant teenage girl—what a cliché. Like an episode of 16 and Pregnant or something.”
“You’re not the first teenage girl this has happened to. You’re not even the first teenage girl I’ve known that has been in this situation.”
“Honestly?” she whispered. “I’m scared shitless.”
And that seemed as good a time as any to start telling her about my mother.
MY MOM, LISA, WAS seventeen years old when she found out she was pregnant with me. It was the early eighties, in Jamaica, Queens, New York City, and the beginning of one of the worst periods in the city’s history. New York was totally different
then from what it’s like today. Broadway and 42nd Street were wall-to-wall peep shows. People were struggling financially; homelessness was becoming a real problem; and racial tension was high. Homicide rates were already three times higher than they are today, and they hadn’t even peaked yet.
And then there were the drugs. Jamaica, Queens, had it as bad if not worse than any other neighborhood. By 1982, the crack epidemic was in full swing. Nancy Reagan was telling America to Just Say No, but in Jamaica, Queens, the epicenter of the epidemic, most everyone was saying yes. Here, the drug dealers were king: Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff and his nephew, Gerald “Prince” Miller; Lorenzo “Fat Cat” Nichols and Howard “Pappy” Mason. The “Supreme Team” gang headquartered their drug operations (which, at its peak, sold $250,000 of crack a day) out of the Baisley Park housing project, not far from where my mom grew up with her mother Helen, brother Clarence, and her grandma Nana.
Where Mom lived during high school wasn’t so bad—her neighborhood was mostly families living in small houses racked up next to each other—but the area surrounding her apartment was getting worse by the day. Gangs were slowly taking over the streets. In some areas you could get shot just walking down to the corner store. Graffiti covered the subways, the buildings. Derelict buildings were being used as crack dens and whorehouses. Crime was so bad that people would post signs in their cars saying “No Radio,” in hopes that crack addicts wouldn’t break the car windows yet again, looking for anything they could turn into drug money.
It was a tough neighborhood to live in, to say the least, but my mom was doing her best. In bad times, she was a good girl—raised Baptist, a good student, a Girl Scout. Her divorced mom struggled to support the family working as a dietician at hospitals—at times, my mom and her siblings shared a bed, because money was too tight and their apartment was too small for separate bedrooms—but my grandma kept tight reins on my mom. She was a latchkey kid, but my grandma had her on a strict schedule of church, chores, and school: When my mom wasn’t studying, she was usually cooking meals or shoveling snow or wheeling the laundry down to the local Laundromat. She didn’t go spend the night at friends’ houses. She wasn’t even allowed to visit girlfriends if my grandma knew there would be brothers hanging around. She was very sheltered, and very protected.
