The Wealth of My Mother's Wisdom: The Lessons That Made My Life Rich

by Terrence J

  At school, Mom was popular, charismatic, and athletic—she took dance classes and ran on the track team. At her high school, Springfield High, there were constant gang fights, even kids getting killed, but she kept her head down and focused. It was her last year of high school, and she was planning to be the first person in her family to graduate from college. She was set to attend Hunter in the fall.

  Then she fell in love. My biological father was the first man she’d ever seriously dated. The fact that he was nearly ten years older than she was made her think he was mature, a real man, regardless of the fact that he was a small-time drug dealer. Within the year, she was pregnant.

  Maybe another girl would have taken a different route—a lot of girls her age got abortions—and there were definitely people in her life who told her, “You don’t have to go through with this.” But my mom was raised religious, and despite her guilt about her situation, it was never a debate for her whether or not she was going to have me. She was going to be a mother.

  And that’s when her boyfriend showed his true colors, and bailed out on her.

  My mom had had very limited contact with his family—and clearly, they didn’t want to support a child. And the bigger my mom got, the less he was around, too. Finally, he was a no-show for my birth.

  She was really frightened. As she told me, “All of a sudden, it was, ‘This is the person I got involved with? My first love? Unfortunately, he is a man-child. He was clearly not responsible enough to take care of his responsibilities.’” And that was it for Mom. She decided that if he wasn’t going to step up to the plate to help her when I was born, then she needed to move on and totally cut him out of her life—and mine. She wasn’t going to sue him for child support, wasn’t going to try to get him to do his share of the parenting, wasn’t going to waste a second thinking about him. It would be as if he never existed at all.

  This was an instrumental decision for my mom; a decision that, before I was old enough to understand it, would have a big influence on who I would become as a man. I’ve witnessed, over the years, how people in relationships sometimes hold on and fight for people or things that aren’t worth fighting for. But what my mom’s decision taught me later in life was that if a person lets you know who they really are, through their actions, believe them.

  My mom’s situation was unique, of course—I’m not saying it’s always a good idea to cut a father out of a kid’s life, or that child support isn’t important. Raising a child on your own—I can only imagine—is one of the hardest things in the world to do. But in this particular circumstance, my mom looked at the situation and asked herself, “What’s the better use of my time and energy? Chasing down a man who doesn’t want to be here? Trying to fix a person who doesn’t want to be fixed? Trying to make him a more mature person, so he can be a father to my son?” She realized that trying to continue the relationship with my biological father would be like raising two children. Having him involved in her son’s upbringing, even financially, would only hinder her growth and mine.

  The courageous decision that my mom made to just move on gave her freedom and independence. Instead of fighting with my biological father and spending her energy going to court, throwing bricks through his window, or cursing him out for not doing what she wanted him to do, she shifted her energy in a more positive direction. She turned her focus on to me, and her own personal progress.

  Knowing that my mom had made this decision gave me all kinds of perspective on my own life. Sometimes you just hit a dead end—with a relationship, a job, a friendship, a career path. And if you feel like the situation isn’t making you a better person, isn’t making you stronger, isn’t leading you down the path that would make your heart and God happy, why fight it? You’re swimming against the current. And sometimes you just have to look down at things from a bird’s-eye view to see what’s best for you. It’s better to let go of what you know isn’t working and find a healthier path.

  My mom had a very strong sense of independence, which is one of the traits that I’m most happy to have inherited from her. Over the course of your lifetime, people come and go: friendships, relationships, coworkers, even people you trust. You meet people that help and inspire you, and others that let you down and betray you. But no matter whom my mom encountered, she never let the actions of other people dictate her life or take her off her path. And from the day I was born, Mom never allowed anyone into her circle who might take her away from the task at hand: me.

  This is what she told me about the day she met me:

  When I had you, the first thing I remember is that we locked eyes. And I knew I belonged to you and you belonged to me. I saw that you had green eyes and beautiful skin, and jet-black hair. Then I opened up the blanket and made sure you had all your fingers and toes. Once I had that assurance, I breathed a sigh of relief and thought, It’s all good.

  At this, Tiffany began to get teary again. But it seemed like a good kind of teary—and I could see that she was excited about the idea of having a little pal of her own. She got a faraway, dreamy look on her face, as if she was imagining the fantasy life that my mom and I must have lived, the one that she might be able to live, too. “So how did she work out the whole college thing with a baby?” she asked.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t. The hard truth is that my birth changed all of Mom’s plans. She’d already started her liberal arts degree at Hunter College when I was born, but it very quickly became clear that raising a child on her own while going to school wasn’t going to work. These were the days before online classes, the Internet, and a lot of the tools that are available today. So she dropped out of college, went on public assistance, and stayed home with me until I could talk. (As she told me, “I wanted you to be able to tell me what was going on, if something happened at day care.” Mom was always very protective, and practical!)

  For a while, we lived with my grandma, but by the time Mom was nineteen and I was one, we were living on our own. She got a job working at the World Trade Center as a secretary/receptionist.

  Life for us back then was really stripped down. She woke up and went to work, then came straight home and took care of me. That’s the full extent of it. We had one television in the house, and a record player, where she played Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye tracks, all those great hits of the seventies and eighties. Outside of her job, Mom was 100 percent focused on me. Weekends were about taking me to the park, or the zoo, or riding a train to the beach—just the two of us.

  In a way, it was a simpler time to be a single mom—there weren’t so many distractions that could take you away from your kid in the eighties. I work with young parents all the time at the Boys & Girls Club, and I see that they are constantly on their phones or laptops, checking Instagram and Mobli and Twitter and Facebook. They’re going to nightclubs, going on trips—there are just so many things to do that are tempting, that distract you from the often-difficult grind of raising a kid. That’s surely got to be a challenge for any teen mom today, but in my mom’s day, life wasn’t as crowded with all of these kinds of distractions.

  But that doesn’t mean it was easy. I can’t imagine what those first few years were like for her, having missed her chance to experience the world, attend college, and have adult relationships. Now, she was all alone with a baby. There she was, a black teenager in drug-ravaged Queens, not even old enough to vote, and trying to figure out how to raise a kid all by herself.

  I admire my mother so much for the choices she made during this time in our lives. I think back to when I was seventeen: I was still incredibly wild and reckless. Even now, at age thirty, I don’t know if I have the maturity to raise a baby. My best friend just had a beautiful daughter, and I’m still terrified to hold her because I don’t want to break her! The idea of being in charge of another human being’s life? It scares me to death. Having a child requires not just responsibility and patience, it also requires a tremendous amount of courage, no matter how old you
are, but especially when you’re that young.

  But here’s the thing. My mom’s courage had a really profound effect on me. You’ve got to have courage if you’re going to take any risks in life—it’s something that lets you expand beyond the box that you’re born in to, to really grow as a person. And my mom taught me by example; she showed some serious bravery from the start. My mom tells me that, from day one of having me, she kept telling herself, I can do this: I can raise a son and be successful at doing it, and that mind-set carried her through all the challenges to come. I am incredibly grateful.

  Being in a creative industry—like acting, or being a fashion designer—means that you are constantly putting yourself and your work out in front of people to be judged, and you have to be courageous every day. Every time I walk into an audition to face a panel of agents, directors, and managers—everyone looking at me, waiting for me to make a mistake—I’m putting myself on the line. If I were to go into these situations without confidence, I’d never get hired. I’d never be successful. But I inherited my mother’s mind-set of I can do this; nothing is going to stop me. Her courage stands as a constant inspiration. If she could raise a newborn into a man—and there’s nothing harder than that—then there is nothing holding me back from going for all the things I want in life, no matter how difficult they seem. When I walk into that room, I am never afraid, thanks to her.

  We fell silent for a little bit. Tiffany fiddled with the hem of her skirt, running her fingers along the stitches. “Sounds like your mom had it tough. It’s hard to imagine you ever being on welfare,” she said. “But your mom gave birth to you way back in the day, right? I’m kidding, but seriously, times have changed. I bet it’s easier now for a single mom to have it all. You can have a kid and go to college and have a job and go out partying with your girlfriends on the weekends. Right?” Tiffany looked at me, seeking reassurance.

  Growing up, my mom always told me that when you decide to have a baby, you have to come to terms with the fact that your life isn’t just your own anymore. You have to make sure that someone else is healthy, protected, and safe. It’s a sacrifice, and one of the reasons my mom was so dedicated to raising me right was that she understood that sacrifice and was fully committed to it. She understood her own priorities. Sometimes that selfishness that we all have as teens—selfishness that is completely normal, and that I have suffered from myself—has to be jettisoned for the greater good of your child.

  When you’re a parent, every decision you make—the friends you hang with, the people you date, the job and the hours you take on, the choice to drink or smoke or hang out late or surround yourself with violence, the movies that you watch around your kids, the music you listen to—creates the world that shapes your child. My mom’s number one priority was protecting me, always, no matter how hard the decision was. For her the question was always, “Is this a good environment for my child? Is this a good person to have hanging around my child?” It didn’t matter if it was a friend, her mom, or her brother; I always, always came first.

  I look back and I realize how hard my mom was always working on my behalf. Those first few years we were inseparable. She would literally strap me to her back and take me everywhere she went. To the beach, to the Laundromat, to the grocery store, to the park, just to do errands: Whatever she had to do, I was always with her. Part of this was out of necessity—she couldn’t afford and didn’t trust babysitters—but part of it was her desire to expose me to the world. She wanted me to experience everything. As I grew up, she gave me swimming lessons, enrolled me in after-school programs, encouraged me to try sports, showed me as much of New York City as she could. Instead of letting me play video games or watch movies while she relaxed, she constantly read books to me. The things she’d never had growing up? She gave them to me when she could. The things she missed out on in her own life? She gladly gave them up so I could have more. Maybe I wasn’t headed to private school, or mastering the piano at a young age, but considering that I was growing up in one of the most dangerous cities in the country at the time, Mom really created the best environment for me that she could.

  It’s not like my mom was some kind of saint. But she sacrificed a lot for me. I didn’t understand that at the time—I wouldn’t until much, much later—but I certainly saw her prioritizing my needs ahead of hers. And that taught me a critical lesson about the importance of putting others before yourself. Sure, my mom’s sacrifice give me the stability and the security that I needed to thrive, the safety to explore and grow, but it also demonstrated for me how love is about giving, not selfishness. That understanding helped me grow as a man, and has definitely improved my relationships with friends and girlfriends.

  Here’s the thing about sacrifice: When you do it right, the person you’re doing it for should never know what you gave up for him.

  Let me tell you a story. I once talked to Ryan Seacrest about hosting, and asked him for some advice. He shared with me the advice that Dick Clark had given him. He told me, “People should be able to look at you hosting and think that they can do it, too. They should watch what you’re doing and think it looks easy; that they could just walk off the street and step into your job. That’s how you know you’re a good host. Because it’s a lot harder than people think. You’re balancing what people are saying in your earpiece, looking at scripts, interviewing talent, dealing with the crowd, connecting with the audience, holding your mic, looking at the camera, articulating your speech. It’s a very complicated art form. But if you’re a good host, no one will have any idea that any of that is going on behind the scenes.”

  I think that lesson is very applicable to being a good parent. My mom made raising me look easy. I never looked at her and thought that she was struggling, or that raising me was complicated or challenging for her. She did a good job of shielding me from the difficult emotional side of what she had to do, from the challenges that she was facing every day.

  I’m sure my mother had some really tough times. But she never had any breakdowns in front of me. She never made me feel like I was a burden in her life. I never understood until later how much she was doing for my sake. Because of that, I grew up with a real sense of security. Security and stability, along with love, are the best gifts you can give a child.

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  In Her Own Words: Terrence’s Mom, Lisa, on Parenting & Sacrifice

  If you love your children, you sacrifice for them. As a mom, this was how I lived my life. I may have needed braces, but I didn’t get them until I was in my forties—I made sure Terrence got the braces he needed first, so he could present his smile. I never splurged on clothes or shoes because I wanted to make sure Terrence had supplies for school. It was more important to make sure Terrence had the books he needed.

  I believe we’re at a stage where there’s a lot of selfishness going on in our society. Parents are not there for their children. And “being there” isn’t always about providing material things, either—it’s about being present for the everyday grind. Your children need you there for those days when they come home and have homework that they can’t figure out. There might be that bully in the school that they want to figure out how to handle, or a parent-teacher conference they want you to attend.

  If we are selfish, and unwilling to sacrifice our time and our own desires, our society is going to end up with a lot of broken youth. Young men, especially, are distracted these days—with social media, with Facebook, their lives are disjointed. They are distracted, and our kids are suffering. Kids are crying out for our help, now, and it’s our duty and responsibility to be there for them. Not once a month, but every day. As parents we have to be present. You can’t divide your attention. Your kids need you to be there, to watch them, to see who their friends are. If you aren’t, you miss a lot of moments, and sometimes signs of larger issues.

  My mom is in a nursing home now. And I never forget all the sacrifices she made for me. My mom is old school—she never asked for anything. But I know how
much she protected me growing up. My mom was always on the case, looking out for me, making sure I had the basics. I turned into a strong woman because of her. So now, there’s nothing I wouldn’t get for her. I buy her everything I can afford: I like to say, “What baby wants, baby gets.”

  Sacrifice is about making sure the people you love have what they need to succeed in life, even if you have to go without. Because when they succeed, you succeed. And when they win, you win.

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  Kevin Liles Talks About His Mom

  Kevin Liles is the former president of Def Jam Recordings and executive vice president of the Warner Music Group. An entrepreneur and author, in 2009, Kevin launched his own company, KWL Management, where he has overseen the careers of many stars, including Trey Songz, Nelly, and Big Sean. He’s a mentor and friend, and I am honored he shared this story about his mother with me.

  My mom was seventeen years old when she had me. I don’t think she had any idea what a mom should be, but she had every idea that she wanted my life to be better than hers. When you have a woman who wants to sacrifice herself so you can have a better life, what better mom could there be?

  My biological father fought in Vietnam, came home, and struggled with drugs. My stepfather, whom I call my father, came into our lives when I was two years old. We had one great family. My grandparents took care of us while my parents worked. So growing up, we had love, we had food, we had family; we didn’t have a lot of money, but we experienced a lot of great things.