Public Relations Expert Terrie M. Williams Shares Her Story and
Lifts the Veil on Depression in the Black Community
A
Keeping Family First Exclusive Interview by Anita
S. Lane
What Celebrities
are Saying...
Terrie M. William's story is truly inspirational. She is a social worker by training who became a successful public relations pro, inscribed her prominence as an author of the successful business and inspirational story, and has now emerged as an advocate for youth and those who battle depression.
Stepping out in faith, Terrie launched the Terrie Williams Agency in 1988—a company that would become one of the country’s most successful public relations and communications firms—and through the years has handled the biggest names in entertainment, sports, business, and politics from Miles Davis, Eddie Murphy and Johnnie L. Cochran to Essence Communications Partners, HBO and Time Warner.
Terrie is the author of three successful books and the founder of The Stay Strong Foundation, a national non-profit designed to educate and encourage American youth.
Terrie’s newest book, "Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We’re Not Hurting," tells the untold story of depression among African-Americans as well as Terrie’s tale of her own chronic and crippling depression—a revealing narrative she shared in the June 2005 issue of ESSENCE magazine.
Today Terrie works tirelessly to reach out to individuals who have suffered or are now suffering. Terrie is a woman on fire.
Keeping Family First is honored to have Terrie M. Williams with us today.
Click "Play" to listen to the Audio version of this interview...
Welcome to the 3rd Anniversary issue of Keeping Family First Online Magazine. Today we're honored to have with us Terrie M. Williams. Founder of one of the most successful PR firms in America, the Terrie Williams Agency has represented top names in entertainment, sports, business and politics, such as Eddie Murphy, Miles Davis, Johnny Cochran and Stephen King.
Terrie is the author of the profound new book, "Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We're Not Hurting." And she is with us to discuss a topic that I think will revolutionize the Back community.
KFF:
Terrie, thank you so much for joining us today.
T.M.W.: I am so happy to be here with you, Anita
KFF: Your book, Black Pain, is incredibly profound, yet it hasn't come without an intense price for you personally. Can you tell us a little bit about your personal journey that led you to write the book?
T.M.W.: Well, I, like many people…move at lighting speed and haven't dealt with all of my childhood issues, emotional wounds and scars that we carry—and pain that we inherit naturally from our parents—and then the day-to-day slights that we experience, but are moving too quickly to ever really process. And when we don't process those things, sometimes the mask that we wear everyday—that game face that we wear every day—cracks, because we're not giving enough attention to ourselves.
And I'm someone who has lived with depression over half my life. I started this amazing business about 18 years ago and I was giving my everything to the business and really, really not taking care of Terrie—not putting the oxygen mask over my own mouth first.
So what happened to me three years ago, was that for about nine months I was suffering from a very, very severe bout of clinical depression. It was the darkest episode that I had ever had in my life. For about nine months I could barely get out of the bed. I would wake up in the morning with a very, very, very crippling anxiety and would take every last amount of energy that I had to start the day: To shower, to do basic things and I would really lie there for maybe an hour or two in the morning literally in a ball, in tears with the sheets over my face, just not wanting to face the day. I ate excessively, I slept excessively, and I was highly irritable.
I'm actually a clinical social worker by training, so I'm one who is supposed to know the symptoms in other people, and I just didn't see it coming. But I still, as do many of us, we still get up and move toward our day. I still ran a business. I still went out and did speaking engagements, but all this was at great cost to me.
It wasn't until some loved ones really came to my rescue to help me to get to the right therapist—a psychiatrist who then diagnosed me with clinical depression. And this is not for everyone, but I needed medication, which I'm still on right now, to really just help stabilize me so that I could see a therapist and talk about my issues and so that I could get through my workday. And so that was what was the beginning for me. And I decided— well, it was really decided for me—I sometimes would wonder when people would say that God told them to do something, and I just remember very, very clearly, Anita, one day hearing God's voice saying that "You have to share your story."
So I was on a panel on C-Span and it was about the whole issue of HIV in our community, and I happened to mention that we don't speak about our pain, that we as individuals and as a community, we're in such deep crises that our pain is really everywhere we turn, but we don't ever really speak about it. We don't know what to name it. We don't really know what it looks like, what it feels like, nor what it sounds like.
As a result, I was asked by the then editor-in-chief of Essence, Diane Weathers, if I would share my story. I said yes. The piece came out in 2005 and I’ve received over 10,000 letters and emails from people just thanking me for the courage to share my story and telling me that—and this was what really surprised me— that people thought that someone in “my position,” someone who was accomplished and worked with all of these celebrities, how or why could I fall prey to depression. But depression knows no barriers. It affects anyone and everyone no matter who you are or what you have, because it’s about a lot of internal things in us.
And so that’s what began the journey for me to share this story. Because best friends didn’t know, family members didn’t know, but individuals who were struggling with depression told me. And for the most part, it’s very difficult to start, I think for any of us, to start the conversation.
During the whole time that I was in such agony I lied to my parents and my sister. No one really knew. It’s like you don’t even know where to begin. You know something is wrong or maybe you think something is wrong, you don’t really know, but then it’s like the pain is so deep you don’t even know how to begin to explain how much pain you’re in.
And so we lie, you know. If you work for an employer, then you can’t say, “I couldn’t get up today,” so we just start to tell lies, and it gets progressively worse. So I knew that I had to speak on depression because I literally see us dying everywhere we turn.
KFF: Well, your book is so honest. It’s both honest and refreshing. And when you look at the statistics, the stereotypes, the music and the movies, a lot of us are honestly wondering, you know, what’s going on? But your book shows us a lot of the acting out—which was so insightful for me—we see is actually a symptom of depression.
T.M.W.: Exactly, Anita. You hit the nail right on the head. That’s what I hoped. My hope is that when you read this book that you will never again see yourself or anybody that you know. It’s the lack of awareness that’s a part of what’s crippling us as a community.
KFF: It gives you so much more compassion. It’s changed me already and I’m looking at everyone saying oh, my goodness, we’re hurting. That’s what’s wrong. We’re not mean, we’re hurting.
T.M.W.: Anita, you’re so right. And that’s the show too, because we’re quick to say—and it’s such a stigma in our community. Universally, depression is an issue, I think, that white people are much more comfortable wearing the label saying oh, I mean they will tell you “I can’t go to this because I’m going to see my therapist,” or they will tell you that they’re on X Y and Z antidepressant, but we would rather tell somebody that we have a relative in jail or on drugs before we will speak about any kind of mental illness--which can be treated just like anything else that we have to bear.
Like you said, if we’re quick to say that somebody is mean or evil, we need to understand there is a reason. And because many of us don’t have, fair access to health care, we run to emergency rooms and hospitals at the last minute because something is wrong, because we can’t afford preventative health care. Then the other thing is so there’s the stigma, so if you go to see a psychiatrist or a social worker or a therapist it means you’re crazy.
I’m very fortunate to be in a position that if I’m very, very stressed and I have kinks and pains in my body, in my neck, that I can go for a massage. But there are many people who don’t have the ability to do that, or a manicure or a pedicure or a physician, something that can alleviate stress. So because people don’t, the masses don’t have that.
Literally, people are walking around like pressure cookers. So if you say something or you do something, then the person explodes--and it has nothing to do with that person. It has nothing to do with that particular moment. It’s because of stuff that doesn’t get talked about or healed. That’s why we have this acting out. When you don’t talk about your stuff, then you self-medicate through drugs, alcohol, promiscuous sex, which is why HIV and AIDS is such an issue in our community, we gamble, we work 24/7, we shop when we don’t have any money, all because we’re not talking about our stuff.
KFF: And it seems as though the problem is systemic. I mean, you go all the way back to slavery and it seems as though this is a legacy of pain that’s passed down.
T.M.W.: Yes, it is.
KFF: Talk about how this legacy is passed down.
T.M.W.: Well, sometimes it’s so hard to even know where to begin, but talking about what slavery was like, being torn away from loved one, being sold, all of what was the experience of slavery, sharecroppers who worked their behind off 24/7 and had to give everything to the plantation owner, and that was what you had to do. You didn’t have anywhere to go with that. You had to suck it up and continue to do.
There are so many things about what we had to do to survive that naturally gets passed on and never get spoken about, which is why I was saying that we don’t understand the impact of inheriting our parent’s pain. They pass on, and we do the same.
Everybody is passing on this legacy of pain. And so at some point the cycle has got to stop. We have got to talk about it, get it out and deal with it.
And even at this moment I’m working with a really, really fine psychiatrist whom I’ve dealt with before in my life. I’m 53 now, but the sister that I’m working with now is helping me get through some very, very deep-rooted stuff that has really emotionally crippled me. And it’s both painful and a blessing to learn what some of those childhood experiences were that have impacted me, so that I can try to release it instead of holding it in with weight, extra weight or whatever.
So the point is to get us to share our stories with each other so that we understand. You know, I just read something about the trauma of the holocaust, the survivors as well. All of these things in our environment that we’re not able to deal with, we pass that on and keep passing it on, and that’s why we are at this point in our life where we are—its devastating. And then you hear people say things like oh, you know, it’s going to control us, no, we are, as you said, hurt, angry sad and have nowhere to go with it.
KFF: Well, you mentioned we inherent our parent’s pain and I want to lead towards the discussion of how Black pain is distinct from the pain other races experience. I’m thinking about the access to mental health care or the taboo against mental health care. If we don’t have—if we’re not dealing with the pain as maybe some other races are, if they have access or it’s less taboo to deal with it, then we keep inheriting. We’ve got a whole lot of generations of inherited pain to deal with from slavery which is only, for some of us, like myself, five generations away. It’s not that much time.
T.M.W.: You’re absolutely right about that.
KFF: So let’s talk about that pain, our pain being distinct from maybe
some other cultures.
T.M.W.: I think it is distinct, really on every single level. It’s challenging to be a person of color in this country because that’s what people see first. You know, there was a very interesting article that I read a couple years ago. This particular article is about how Black men have to quietly combat stereotypes. And they interviewed a range of men, many in corporate America. They spoke about how one, if you wear locks, that that makes people look at you a certain kind of way. Or if you’re a big, tall Black man with a booming voice, you tend to speak softer so as to not intimidate. You smile extra, you stand differently so as to not intimidate.
Oh, and don’t be a regular looking brother who gets on the elevator or walks past a white woman with a pocketbook and you see how the person reacts to you. And I was speaking to a brother who works at the New York Times who said to me that when he has his yoga mat under his arm, it makes him feel as if he’s a more acceptable Black man.
And then that made me think about that if I’m flagging a taxi in New York City, its late at night, I have short hair. If I have a baseball cap on, I will take it off, hoping that my earrings are really visible; and if I have a New York Times in my hand, I’m going to flag the taxi with that New York Times because then maybe they’ll say there’s one with a New York Times. Maybe that one is okay.
The fact that we have to make those shifts has a very, very profound impact on our psyche and we don’t even realize it. We think that its rolling off our backs, when in fact it’s being internalized and then we take it out on other people.
Then our educational systems are inferior, and then you look at the fact that in poor neighborhoods all we have are fast food places, so we're eating foods that do not nourish our bodies, and that's why obesity is everywhere.
KFF: Right. We don’t have the grocery stores with fresh fruit and vegetables within walking distance.
T.M.W.: Right. So those are the other factors that impact on the way we experience pain. We don’t have the cushions that others do. And I’m not minimizing other people’s pain, I’m just simply saying that it is a far more difficult experience for us in America
KFF: Let me backtrack. If you can, define depression in layman’s terms, or maybe clinical depression. I know you mentioned two different types.
T.M.W.: If for over a period of say three weeks, if one finds themselves in their everyday living having prolonged sadness or just unexplained crying spells, because that would happen to me a lot, if there are big changes in one’s appetite or your sleeping patterns, you find yourself highly irritable, angry, agitated, you worry a lot, you wake up with knots in your stomach, anxiety; if you feel indifferent, the glass is always half empty instead of half full, loss of energy, unexplained aches and pains, feeling hopeless, guilty, worthless, having a great deal of difficulty concentrating, being indecisive, and some of the things perhaps you used to like to do you don’t like to do them anymore, you withdraw from people, and maybe sometimes you have recurring thoughts of death or suicide.
In my darkest moments I never ever contemplated suicide, but there were many, many days, Anita, that I just didn’t want to be here. If I were on a plane, I would have been fine if it went down, you know.
So the hope is in talking about this that we can start to develop a lifestyle of wellness, you know, exercising. Because for me, it was a combination of talk therapy, it was medication, exercising, and just writing things down in a journal was also a very good way.
I work with a young brother, his name is DaShaun Morris, who reached out to me maybe a year and a half ago. He’s a member of The Bloods. He’s 15 years old, started gang-banging at the age of nine. Mother was suffering from her own pain, she was a crack addict, so she couldn’t mother him. There was no father. He gets shipped out to Phoenix and the situation doesn’t work out too well, his mother keeps saying she’s coming, but she’s unable to get herself together.
So what so many young people who do turn to the streets, they turn to, you know, people who “love you,” but we know that being a member of a gang leads to death or prison. And so one of the things that Jawi (phonetic JAWEE), we call him Jawi, he’s written a book that will be out in April April called War of the Bloods In My Veins, and he talks in unflinching honesty about the pain and the suffering and the trauma that he went through.
I think that many people do not know that gang members suffer from very severe depression, suicidal tendencies, and post traumatic stress disorder. And the way that post traumatic stress disorder shows itself is having very horrific nightmares and you have a particular kind of experience that it takes you back to something that you witnessed or something that you ordered to be done to someone. And so that can only be helped through treatment as well.
Everyone has a story. And what I hope in terms of us being more compassionate towards each other is that, you know, when you interact with someone, to understand that you may not know their story but they have one. And people are not born bad or evil, you know, they’re shaped by those experiences. And so part of what saved him was writing when he was in prison.
So I would just encourage any of your listeners to try to share talking and listening time with a friend. Do exercises that might help you relax, focus, reduce stress. Listening to quiet music and recording thoughts and feelings in a journal, and just in trying to improve diet.
KFF: Right. And get some sleep. I think that’s a key thing.
T.M.W.: You are so right. And that’s one of the things that I’ve learned in this process, that I know what my triggers are, and that is if I do not get enough sleep, I’m waking up the next day, I will be irritable and I will cry for “no reason.” So now I know that I have to get sleep.
If I start to have too much on my plate, being overwhelmed, it literally paralyzes me. So you’re really right about that, understanding that it is important to listen to yourself and your body and how you react to things.
KFF: I want to know if you’ve experienced depression or clinical depression, are you more apt or susceptible or vulnerable to experiencing it again later at a different point in life, or not, necessarily?
T.M.W.: Well, I’m someone who has basically dealt with chronic depression, so that’s been pretty much since, since I was in college. But there are many people—that’s a very good question too—who experience what’s called just episodic depression which can be triggered easily by the death or loss of a loved one, which could be a physical death or a divorce, or a major, major life transition. You know, moving from one place to another, being at a company for X number of years and then suddenly you are terminated.
Any major life transition or any slight shift of something that you are accustomed to and suddenly you don’t have that anymore can very easily send one into, you know, a spiral downward. So it is important to recognize that, okay, this is what’s happening to me. I am actually mourning the loss of what I’ve been doing X number of years, where I’ve been living for the X number of years. That’s a really good question.
KFF: Now you discuss—and this is very important for those of us who have children and know children, for that matter, that depression in children is increasing and you say that even suicide among Black boys is skyrocketing.
What’s driving those numbers and how can we be on the lookout for signs of
depression in our children and help them get the help they need
T.M.W.: Well, I would say pretty much the same things that I’ve mentioned. It’s very tough to be a young person in this world today, and one of the ways that I think is important to deal with our young people— because I have a foundation for youth, a Stay Strong Foundation, and our motto is that if we don’t give our kids time, the system will.
And it says it, you know, so very, very clearly that there are just so many young people who are out there floundering. And even if we are well-intentioned parents and provide food, clothing and shelter, it’s got to be time that you spend with your kids so that you know what’s going on with them.
Someone recommended, which I thought was a really great idea, that hopefully assuming that people are able to take family time with their kids when they eat a meal, maybe at dinner, that everyone goes around the table and says—honestly—what a high point and a low point has been for that day. And that way, what’s happening is you get to know what’s going on in the lives of your kids and they get to know what’s going on with you as well. Because it is the accumulation of slight.
Say, for instance, the person has a weight problem, a child has a weight problem. And people are—or, say for instance, a person, say it’s a guy who seems to be afeminate or it’s a girl who seems to be masculine. Well, people call you out of your name, they call you all kinds of horrific names if they think that you’re homosexual, okay? So any number of things, person’s too tall, too skinny, whatever it is, somebody is making fun of them.
When those things are said to you and you don’t acknowledge that it hurt you and that you even need to cry about it, that’s the stuff that builds up inside of you and it’s very difficult to shake and will cause you to deteriorate and/or to commit suicide.
Another part of the issue is that everybody’s walking around with the game face on passing for normal, whatever that is, pretending to be fine. So you think, you’re the only one.
And that’s why we have got to speak our pain so that we know we’re not alone. So many kids take themselves out because they think that they’re alone. So, on the other side is that I would really encourage parents to be honest. Okay, I had a bad day at work, or somebody said something to you that hurt your feelings or—it’s to be honest with kids.
KFF: It’s not just for the kids, it’s for the parents to say their high point and low point, too.
T.M.W.: Its essential. Because adults try to, I think, protect their children because they don’t want them to worry. But when there is something wrong and you don’t acknowledge it and you whisper, they know something. So the point is to be open. And actually, out of the mouths of babes come very interesting and insightful things.
I spoke to about 50 kids over the summer, they were 11 to 16, it was a program that met once every Saturday, I think. And that particular day I woke up, it was on my day off, Sunday, that I really try to do nothing, but I woke up crying and I drove out to the place crying. And I get there and the person who asked me to speak said, “Oh,” you know, “you’re not smiling today.” And I said, “Well, you know, I had a very, very tough day today, but I’ll be fine as soon as you introduce me.”
Whenever I’m introduced, people talk about, you know, having started this business with Eddie and representing Puffy and Russell Simmons, all those folks, right? So when she said that, I said, “Yes, you’ve heard some things that I’ve accomplished, and I am proud of those things, but,” I said, “I’d like to introduce you to another side of me, and that is the one that struggles just like you do.”
Then I told them that I woke up crying and drove out there crying. But I said I’m here today because I made a commitment to be here. And what I also know is that sometimes when my spirit is low, if I do something for somebody else, I’m the one who gets the gift. I know that when I leave out of here that I will feel far better than I did when I came in.
And so what happened was that these kids started speaking things that their leaders who had been with them for several months had never heard before. And there was nothing revolutionary or magic, it was simply an adult saying: I’m just like you. I have just been on the planet a little longer and what I know is that we’ve got to talk about our stuff.
And then they started talking about various things, and one person said, "You know, I hear my parents either arguing or whispering or whatever, and I know something. You may not tell me, but I know something..." And that creates anxiety.
KFF: Exactly. That makes sense.
T.M.W.: So I think that we have to, share with kids what our victories are, but we have to start to share with them our challenges as well, so that they have a better understanding of what it takes to just be on this planet. We’ve got to let them see our failures and our hard times as well.
KFF: That’s so great. You know, we all know that incarceration for Black men is just phenomenal, but what we don’t necessarily know is the real impact incarceration has on depression in Black men as well as the consequences for the Black family. And I thought this was very insightful. Can you elaborate on that?
T.M.W.: Well, let’s first start with the fact that prisons are now warehouses for people who are mentally ill. Once again, there’s not the kind of treatment out there for us and no means to really get help. We commit crimes because we can’t get jobs, we’re undereducated; just a host of reasons. And so we do things that land us in prison. So that’s the first thing.
And there are kids early on who get caught up in the criminal justice system who are merely young people who have issues, attention deficit disorder. And actually, once a kid is labeled as having ADD or, you know, if they’re labeled that, that’s the first foot in the grave or prison. Because they end up never really getting the help that they really need. And somebody—and there might be a perfectly bright young person who is just in an environment that is difficult to learn in.
Part of what’s been wonderful about hip hop is that it’s a means of learning when the traditional means don’t work, but it’s simply that the person needs a different—has to learn a different way. But given the inferior educational system for us, that’s what happens. We get labeled.
The prison industry is a multibillion dollar industry. They’re just building bigger and bigger prisons for our kids and they look at, so that they can determine how many prisons to be building, the industry as a whole, they start looking at, especially Black boys in ages third and fourth grade, and they predict, predict how many prisons they need to build.
KFF: This is unbelievable. I mean, based on what you said in terms of the profound impact of incarceration, my thinking is as though we need to avoid the criminal justice system at all cost. I mean, like we absolutely have to avoid it?
T.M.W.: But we can’t, because we’re not getting the help. That’s when we’re not getting the help that we need early on. Yes, of course we do, but if we continue to have babies having babies who are not emotionally and mentally stable themselves, they have more kids who are also unstable, and so the pattern continues. That’s the legacy.
KFF: Right.
T.M.W.: So that’s why it’s incumbent upon those of us who have the ways and means to do what we can, to take a young person under our wings. Because they will never hope, dreams or aspire to anything unless we take them under our wings. And this young man Jawi that I was sharing with you that has a book coming out, when he wrote to me, what I love about him is that whenever we go places to speak or do things, he brings several of the young Bloods with him.
Now, he has not been banging for years, and actually he was in college. And it was his gang activity—pros were looking at him in terms of football, but it was his gang activity that derailed college career. A very, very, very bright young man, just never really had a chance.
Susan Taylor, who is the editorial director at Essence, was having a reception at her home, 200 Black Women, and I said I would like to bring two of these young men who are Bloods, very special and gifted young men. And she didn’t bat an eyelid. But I know that there are a lot of people out there who would never knowingly look at or talk to a Blood because they would think that they were better than that person.
So they come and get an opportunity—so two different worlds come together that they can learn about each other. And so as a result of that, there’s the speaking engagement.
And then we went to Atlanta to the National Book Club Conference and Terrie Macmillan was a friend and she was there and she heard them speak and then she gave, you know, wrote a check so that they could make money by speaking and not have to turn to the streets, you know.
So everyone has to do what they can. Take a young person or someone who is recently out of jail, take them places and show them how to be--how to be socially. I remember once taking a professional football player to an event once. I was standing talking to someone and he walks over and I introduced him. And so she says, "Hello," and then he turns his back. And so I said to him, "You know, why did you turn your back?" And he said "Oh, I didn’t want to eavesdrop on your conversation." So it was not knowing that when you go to social events, the whole point is to meet and talk to people. It is something that we would take for granted. Because I was stunned, I’m thinking, "How rude can he be?" But he didn’t know.
So, if we really want to break the cycle, it’s taking somebody who needs help, taking them places and teaching them the most basic of things. And then as I said, we get the gift. There’s so many things that I don’t know that I get from people that I’m the one who’s supposedly helping, you know.
KFF: That’s right. You talk about the spiritual hospital, and I want to bring that up, because you know in many instances the church can really, really help us to address mental health issues, but at the same time you mention in your book that it can also mask or even allow symptoms of mental illness. And so we need to—because obviously, many of is are in church, but the majority of us are still hurting. And you mention that the church is not always all we need.
T.M.W.: I sometimes share with people I believe that God gives us direction and puts certain people in our life. I believe it was my God who led me to the right therapist, you know, and who gave me advice and counsel that helped me to come up out of the deep anguish that I was in. And I just think that, you know, to just say that depression is the devil in you and pray it away, I think is very harmful to us as a people. Because there are a myriad of things that one needs to do, and I think that more churches and pastors and ministers, ministerial staff, need to recognize their limitations, and that people really, really do need talk therapy. They just do. Somebody who is skilled at helping to point out things to you and to help to heal.
And there’s so—and the other thing, too, is that people put ministers on pedestals. No one should be on a pedestal at all because everyone is human and frail in dealing with their own stuff. So we make a big mistake by putting people on pedestals like that.
KFF: So if we witness the signs of depression in ourselves from reading your book, from listening to this conversation, what should our first step be?
T.M.W.: It’s to try to find someone to talk to. If there’s, you know, a community mental health center, to find out if whether or not one could go there as a client or a patient or to ask, you know, in one’s church if there is a name of a counselor or something but there are many community health centers in communities. So it’s trying to identify that. But it’s also stepping out of your comfort zone and daring to share a part of yourself with someone else.
I know that in the book Tupac’s sister is someone who suffers from depression and she was saying that it was a woman who was talking about her stuff and what she was going through, and then she heard the similarity and symptoms and said, “That sounds like me.” And then she went to her own doctor. And so it’s the power, the very tiniest element of your story can have a very, very profound impact on somebody else’s
life.
KFF: I know individuals who have had a personal experience trying to find the right therapist--and not giving up before you find someone you can identify with is important. If you go to the first person and realize, "Oh, they do not hear me," then you may give up.
T.M.W.: Thank you for that, Anita, you’re absolutely right. I say to people when they feel like giving up on finding the right man or woman or even a therapist, is that when you go to find a pair of shoes, you might try on ten pairs before you find a pair that fits. So it’s the way that we should live our lives, to not give up. But too many of us say oh, I went to one once, and that was it. But that you have to really listen to your voice and to respond.
I was talking with the wife of a professional athlete who had received this recommendation from the league office, and she knew something was wrong, but kind of sort of needed the conversation that we had to help her be more assertive about it. And in one of her emails she said: "There’s no way that I should know that this therapist has X number of sisters..." and—I was stunned, stunned at all the stuff that she knew about this woman.
And I said she’s not the right person, you know. So you have to shop as carefully for that as anything else and to not give up on the process. And even sometimes if medication is required, a lot of times it takes time to get the right one. You know, for me, there were three different ones that I tried before I found something that worked.
KFF: Well, this is tremendous. Your book has been awesome. It’s hot off the press and I want everyone to read it because I think it definitely truly will revolutionize our community and it can make tremendous stride in helping us to become more whole and be more honest with ourselves so that we can become whole. So thank you so much for writing the book, bearing your soul and the souls of others in there. It has tons of testimonies, you know.
TMW
: Well, thank you so much for the opportunity. It is my hope that we will, as one of the subtexts of the title is, “Real Talk For When There’s Nowhere to Go But Up...” go up. You know, there’s nowhere else for us to go but up.
KFF: Right.
T.M.W.: Thank you so very, very much and for all the work you do to uplift our community.
KFF: Thank you Terrie, and I wish you all the best in all of your endeavors.
