I was pretty shocked his father never tried to contact me. After about a month or so I called him and he had no problem with it. So Rocky literally moved in for good. I never thought I would be a parent because I never saw myself raising an infant but it became clear that Rocky needed me and I needed him. He became my son, with no formal papers, only the intervention of a higher being.
Terrie racked up dozens of awards and honors, ranging from the Public Relations Society of America Mentoring Award to being named in Woman’s Day as one of the Fifty Women Who Are Changing the World. But the recognition that meant most to her was when she finally met Rocky’s birth mother at his high school graduation. Terrie says they hugged, with Terrie saying, “Thank you for birthing Rocky,” and his mom saying, “Thank you for raising him and taking such good care of him.”
Her world, though, came crashing down in 2005 when she couldn’t get out of bed one day. One day turned into two, three, and then four. Finally, a couple of her girlfriends, concerned that they hadn’t been able to reach Terrie, went to her apartment and found her in a dark room, curled in a ball and unable to get up. They encouraged her to get up, shower, and get ready for an emergency session with a therapist that one of them had managed to secure. The therapist told Terrie that she was in an “emotionally dangerous place” and that she needed to see a psychiatrist immediately. With the therapist’s cell phone number in one hand and an appointment with a psychiatrist for the next day in the other, Terrie’s friends took her home for what she later described as one of the longest nights of her life.
The next day her friends took her to see the psychiatrist, who took her blood pressure, asked lots of questions, and began the long process of trying to find the right mix of medications to treat what she diagnosed as major clinical depression. Terrie says it took a couple of weeks for the medication to kick in and the next six months to admit, with clarity, that she needed help that she could never have admitted to before. As she explained in her book Black Pain:
When I think back on that time, I’m stunned. Here I was, a mental health professional, and I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I was suffering from major clinical depression. I had been too paralyzed by my feelings to recognize the whole range of symptoms. All my energy was going into just functioning, doing the work things I “had to do”; and because I was hiding my feelings, the only guide to my well-being became my own confused perceptions.
Even while Terrie battled to gain control over her depression, she continued to parent Rocky. She helped support him as a co-signer as he worked his way through and eventually graduated from college, and then helped as much as she could while he earned his MBA; he introduced her to the woman he would eventually marry and when she went to the wedding, out of respect for his birth mother she stood proudly but quietly on the side; and now she once again stands proudly, but this time as “grandma” to Rocky’s two children.
Unfortunately, this was not the end of her challenges nor her need to seek help. In 2015, Terrie began forgetting things. For most people of advancing age, that’s no big deal. But it was worrisome for Terrie because she was known for her computer-like memory. She never forgot anything—no one’s name, face, where she met them, how she met them, and why it was important to remember them. Suddenly that skill was gone. She finally admitted to herself that this was beyond the usual aging process and she needed professional help again. While she feared she was developing the dementia that both of her parents were experiencing, it took a year to get the correct diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
According to the Alzheimer Association, mild cognitive impairment is a condition involving problems with cognitive function (mental abilities such as thinking, knowing, and remembering). People with MCI often have difficulties with day-to-day memory, but such problems are not bad enough to be classified as dementia. Currently, the FDA has not approved any drug regimen to effectively treat MCI, and those people diagnosed with it are at increased risk of developing dementia. Some patients, however, will stabilize to the point that there are only mild disruptions to their daily lives. The hope of many is that Terrie will be one of those lucky few.
There is an old saying: “What goes around comes around.” Usually it has a negative connotation, but in this case it’s a good thing. Rocky, the young boy whom Terrie embraced as her own son, now a husband and father, says he will always be her son and she will never have to worry about a roof over her head or enough food to eat. Because she’d opened her heart and home to him, because she’d become a mother even though she would in her words never ever birth a baby, because she’d shown kindness and sincere concern for someone who needed a presence—as do all the kids who become the future of this nation—God put someone in place who would make sure she lives out her days with the courage, grace, and dignity that she has shown her entire life. Maya Angelou once said that a hero is “any person really intent on making this a better place for all people.” Terrie Williams is a hero to more people than she will ever remember.
LESSON FROM A LIONESS: Have the courage to recognize and honor your challenges and your strengths.
Helping others is something Terrie has done effortlessly all her life, but being able to ask for help was not. Even as a trained mental health professional, Terrie was unable to reach out to Rocky or her closest friends until she was in the midst of a crisis. As with any health issue, early intervention is critical. (Links to helpful resources for mental health can be found in the book’s companion website, www.power-ofpresence.com.)
In a handout for Terrie’s first book, The Personal Touch, she laid out her own blueprint for success. The tips she shared were a reflection of her passion to meet life on its own terms. To be able to put her heart into everything so fully takes courage—especially while also being vulnerable to a progressive disease. We can all take her advice on courage, which I think is suited both for the boardroom and for life. I’d like to share some tips—some original by her and some from people she respects.
Power: The mind needs to think it, the heart needs to feel it, and the soul needs to stomach it. It’s what you need to achieve it.
Face the truth of who you are—the good side and the crazy-as-hell side.
Know that you don’t always have the answer. Ask for help.
Remember upon whose shoulders you stand.
Step outside your comfort zone daily and understand that the butterflies inside mean you are taking your game to the next level.
A Mom’s Hug Can Last Long After She Lets Go
I learned that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.
—Nelson Mandela
My divorce from Nikki’s father, Bill, two years after we separated, was contentious over one thing—Nikki. The only thing I asked for was custody, but he contested. At the time, he wasn’t giving me any financial support whatsoever, so I walked into the court fully prepared to fight for my daughter. At the eleventh hour, however, Bill had a change of heart and dropped his petition for custody. We ended up with a no-fault divorce, an agreement that he could see her at any time, and a child support order. As it turned out my real fight that day was with the judge who refused to give me back my maiden name. His rationale was that he didn’t think it would be right for Nikki and me to have two different last names. I couldn’t believe his argument or his audacity, but he was adamant. As I was leaving the courtroom, a clerk tapped me on the shoulder and whispered that if I went to the clerk of a certain judge that afternoon, she was sure that judge would sign the order to change my name. Thank goodness for the court clerk network because, following instructions, by three o’clock I’d become Joy Thomas again. I promised myself I would never give away my name ever again.
On our own, Nikki and I thrived in our new independence. Even though Wes had taken a news job in New York, his parents, sisters, and Rae Carole provided the pride I needed to maintain a real presence for Nikki while advancing at work. I was promoted to public affairs director when he left, and o
ur little department went on to win numerous awards over the next couple of years. Wes and I continued to date on and off, even after he left New York to take a news director’s job in Oakland. Whenever he came to town to visit, Nikki beamed in his presence, and her smile became even broader when we told her that her uncle Wes would soon become her daddy.
The three of us lived in Oakland for a year, and it was magical. For me, it meant cooking my very first Thanksgiving turkey all by myself, going to a tree farm to cut down our own Christmas tree, and sitting in the vineyards in Napa, sipping wine and listening under the grape arbors to stars like Carmen McRae. These were times for us as a couple as well as family time I’d never thought Nikki or I would have. I felt like it was my reward for having the courage to end a bad marriage.
But as sweet as it was for me, for Nikki it was even more wonderful. She quickly became the mascot at Wes’s station as she frequently went to work with him. Oakland loved its young and energetic news personality and Nikki loved being KDIA’s own “Chatty Cathy.” She thrived in childcare and loved the Oakland Zoo and walking around Lake Merritt with us, eating the incredibly fresh fruits and vegetables native to California. Wes’s cousin Virene, her husband Tray, and their daughter, also named Nikki, only a year older than our Nikki, lived just ten minutes from us, and the girls bonded like sisters.
At six years old the only dad Nikki knew that year was Wes. We invited Bill to visit whenever he wanted and offered to bring her back to visit him if he wanted. Wes was totally supportive of making sure Nikki’s relationship with her biological dad remained intact. While Bill never missed a child support payment, aside from a card she received from him on her birthday, Nikki had no communication with Bill the year we lived in Oakland.
Then a call came from WMAL, offering a package deal for Wes to go back east as the evening news anchor and I, as community affairs director. That was a tough decision. We loved our life out west, so our first inclination was to say no. But as we were weighing the offer, we discovered I was pregnant. With a new baby on the way, we both felt the need to be closer to our families on the East Coast, so we accepted.
Once back, Nikki had the benefit of two dads as Bill finally became responsive to our calls. At least twice a month he’d call or pick her up and take her to Chuck E. Cheese or to visit with friends. We made a special effort to reach out to him when Wes and Shani were born so he knew that as our family grew he was not being moved out of his position as Nikki’s birth dad and an extended family member.
All that changed on April 16, 1982.
The day Wes died sent our world into a tailspin, taking me into unimaginable territory. The technical arrangements were one thing—the funeral and the aftermath filled with chores like closing accounts, obtaining the necessary copies of the death certificate, or applying for Social Security benefits for the kids. But filling the void the kids felt without their father was the toughest work. Friends and family were great, especially with the younger two—there wasn’t a circus or Ice Capades or picnic they weren’t invited to. They missed their dad but their tender ages and the activity distractions helped their transitions enormously. But Nikki was now almost ten and her world was shattered. The man she called Daddy had died, and the man she knew as Daddy Bill had once again disappeared.
The last time Nikki had seen or heard from Bill was at Wes’s funeral. He was sitting near the back, and we got a glimpse of him when we were leaving the church. For a fleeting moment I found comfort that he cared enough to be there and thought the gesture bode well for his continued relationship with Nikki. But then he dropped out of her life, and the child support checks stopped the month after Wes died. At a time when I thought he’d step up and become more of a father, Bill became a ghost.
I couldn’t believe he was doing this to Nikki. So giving him the benefit of the doubt, I called. Then Nikki called. No response, and all the while she was asking me about the father who couldn’t be there and the one who could, but wasn’t. It was Bill’s absence, coupled with the death of the father she loved, that was steadily eating away at her self-esteem. I found myself not only grieving for the father she’d lost but also for the little girl who couldn’t understand what she could have done for her life to have changed so drastically, so quickly, so completely. She couldn’t verbalize her feelings, and I wasn’t skilled enough to convince her it wasn’t her fault. We did family therapy for a while, with limited results. I couldn’t get her to talk out her feelings there or when we were home. Telling Nikki we were going to move to New York after her sixth-grade graduation really upset her.
“I told you I don’t want to move to New York,” Nikki said once again the night before our scheduled departure.
“Sweetie, I didn’t want to move us before your graduation. Now you can have a fresh start in junior high school in New York, your brother can start fresh in first grade, and it won’t matter to Shani. This is the best time for us to go.”
“But what about my friends or my room? And what about Daddy Bill?”
Her friends I got, even missing the room she loved, but I was shocked she even mentioned Bill because she hadn’t seen her biological dad in more than two years. Her outburst finally made me realize, though, that there was a daddy hunger she hadn’t talked about but was clearly feeling.
“We’ll let him know where you are and hopefully he’ll be able to see you up there.” I tried to hide the anger I was feeling because of the anguish he was causing her.
“I love visiting Mama Win and Papa Jim,” she conceded, “but I don’t want to live with them in New York forever. I don’t,” she added emphatically.
“Well, this is best for our family at this point. We’ll do this for now and see what happens.”
Nothing seemed to work for Nikki—not parochial or private school. Finally when she was in eleventh grade I found the Beekman School, a small private school housed in a historic brownstone in New York’s Upper East Side. The classes were intimate, with no more than ten kids each, so Nikki couldn’t get lost in a crowd. But by then, it didn’t matter because she had totally lost interest in learning.
During those tumultuous teen years, I tried everything I could think of to reignite her spark for not only education but also herself and her future. “I hate it here, and I hate you,” was a recurring theme at the end of each argument since moving to New York. I was in the crosshairs of her anger and there were many nights I would go to bed wondering what I was doing wrong and what I needed to do to make things right. I kept asking myself over and over, How can I help her grow into someone I want to be around again? I loved my daughter and it pained me to admit that oftentimes I wondered if I liked her.
Once a happy and content kid, she was now sullen, unmotivated in school or anything educational. She seemed angry all the time and I couldn’t help but wonder if her attitude would have been different if I wasn’t the only parent. I didn’t want to involve my parents because I knew her angry outbursts would overly upset them at their advancing ages. Instead, I walked a fine line with her most times. Everything was a negotiation, and generally I would give in because it was easier not having to deal with her defiance.
Finally one day she blurted out, “You are working all the time so why don’t you let me go and live with Daddy Bill?”
Then it hit me. I had become the trifecta in her sense of abandonment: One parent couldn’t be with her. Another parent didn’t want to be with her. And I wasn’t there for her because I had to work. In her mind, not only wasn’t I present for her, but I was standing between her and the only other chance for a normal life.
School was out in another two weeks, so I called Bill. I told him what was going on with her and that it was time for him to get involved in her life.
“So what are you thinking,” he asked with what sounded like genuine concern.
“She wants to come and live with you. I know this is a huge risk because I haven’t seen or heard from you in years and I don’t know where your head is now. But unless y
ou’ve gone completely over to the dark side or don’t have space for her, she needs to reconnect with you. She has too many unanswered questions about you, questions only you can answer.”
A pregnant pause was broken by a sheepish “Gee, I don’t know.”
“Look,” I said on the heels of his timidity. “You haven’t been there for her for most of her life. You need to step up now.” After all these years of non-communication with him, I had no problem finding the courage to speak up for the daughter he had abandoned.
Still not hearing an affirmative answer, I added an ultimatum. “Either do this now or I file for back child support.” She wasn’t eighteen yet. He knew I’d have a case.
As soon as school let out, I drove Nikki back to Maryland to live with her father for the summer.
Fear once again gripped me. Was I doing the right thing? Was he still into the same bad habits or had he—I so hoped this was the case—moved beyond them? (Surveillance from mutual friends indicated he was doing “okay,” so I wasn’t afraid for her safety.) As angry as she was with me, would she bond with him and want to stay with him beyond the summer? Would he bad-mouth me to her, further confirming her feelings that I was the worst parent ever? Would I lose my firstborn to someone who had abandoned her when she needed him the most? But unlike our ride in the car for the move to New York, Nikki was really talkative. She was tasting victory, and I guess for the first time in a long time she felt in control. As we rode down I-95, I knew these were risks I had to take and I had to have courage to follow through with my decision.
As we arrived at the house he shared with four other guys we knew from our college years, Bill met us on the front steps. He hadn’t changed much—a little gray was peeking through but he was still good-looking and charming. Nikki ran to him as though all those almost seven years of silence didn’t exist. I felt a pang of anger. Nikki could dish out so much disrespect to me after all I’d tried to do, and in walked Bill, like the prodigal son, getting all her love! As he took her bag, though, my anger turned to hope that maybe this would work and that Nikki would finally find contentment and self-worth. She and I hugged goodbye in a really authentic way for the first time in a long time. I headed back to the Bronx.
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