Put on Your Crown Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2010 by Queen Latifah, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  www.twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  First eBook Edition: May 2010

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56471-7

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to all those who have been a blessing to me. Especially my mom and dad, and my partner Shakim. May these words be a blessing to someone else.

  Thank you Karen Thomas, my editor, for your patience and dedication, and Carol Mann, my literary agent, for bringing all the pieces together. LaWanda “LB” Black, my amazing assistant, for staying on the case and making sure I met my deadlines, and, finally, Samantha Marshall, for helping me bring my words to life in this book.

  CONTENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER 1: Success

  CHAPTER 2: Beauty

  CHAPTER 3: Money

  CHAPTER 4: Love

  CHAPTER 5: Fear

  CHAPTER 6: Loss

  CHAPTER 7: Strength

  CHAPTER 8: Joy

  INTRODUCTION

  I’ll be honest with you. Before I started writing this book, I didn’t have a clue about what direction to take. I knew I wanted to say something to girls and women that would help them build their self-confidence and bring out their inner queens. There seems to be an epidemic of lousy self-esteem in this country, especially among young women, and it concerns me deeply. We ladies have stopped putting ourselves first, and I wanted to share something with you that would help you feel empowered and make you recognize the individual and innate beauty that is you.

  But whatever I said in this book, I wanted it to be authentic. I wanted to give you a piece of me from my heart, not some formulaic celebrity advice manual. You deserve better. Besides, I’m no psychologist or self-help guru. I never set out to be anyone’s role model. That’s too much responsibility for any flawed human being to carry. I can’t tell you what to do. Who am I to lay down a bunch of rules? Where would I even start?

  Then, just as my deadline was looming and my publisher was dogging me for a first draft, I attended a luncheon for female executives in the beauty industry. I found myself in a room full of confident and beautiful women. Seated near me were senior executives from Christian Dior, Estée Lauder, and Space NK. They were there to honor Esi Eggleston Bracey, the new vice president of global cosmetics for CoverGirl. This woman is impressive. She has a degree in engineering from Dartmouth College. She was Procter & Gamble’s first African-American general manager. And at thirty-eight, she’s also a glamazon with a standout look that’s all her own. Her makeup was flawless, and she wore her hair cropped short, curly, and platinum blond, like a crown. As she got up to give her acceptance speech, I was curious to hear what this accomplished beauty queen had to say.

  Her speech was peppered with interesting quotes, stories, and metaphors. But one thing stood out to me. Esi explained how her life was just a series of moments. We live from one moment to the next like heartbeats, she said, but every now and then there are moments that stop you, where you know everything is going to change.

  That was it. Moments! I’ve packed a lot of living into my forty years, and that’s exactly what I have to share with you—those moments when everything, present and future, changed for me. All those experiences that taught me something about how to live, love, and feel like a real queen.

  Moments are all we really have in life, but they come and go so fast that most of the time we aren’t even aware of what’s happening to us. We’re so busy worrying about the past or scheming to make our next move that half the time our moments—our lives—pass us by. We’re too distracted to allow ourselves just to be and appreciate all the little joys that come our way.

  I am truly a “live by the moment” kind of girl. The Sinatra song I recorded on my album Trav’lin’ Light, “I’m Gonna Live Till I Die,” is my anthem. I always try to take a big bite out of life and savor every flavor. “Before my number’s up I’m gonna fill my cup…”

  We can’t get these moments back once they’re gone, but we can choose to live them full out. We need to pay more attention to the present and what it has to teach us, because every so often you’re going to have a moment that hits you so hard, it is truly life-stopping. I don’t mean just life-changing. I mean life as you’ve always known it stops. You pause for a minute, taking in that feeling or truth the moment brings. It’s like the wind gets knocked out of you for a second and there’s this sudden feeling of recognition. Maybe your heart skips a beat, or your spine straightens, or the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Or maybe you just feel more awake somehow. But from that point on everything changes, either by just a few degrees or by a full 180.

  That moment, whether it’s something wonderful, like the sudden realization that you’re in love with somebody, or something terrible, like the news that you’ve just gone broke, will shape the rest of your life. Every following moment you live and action you take will be a by-product of the insights you gained and the hurt or the joy you felt. And you’ll have a choice to make in how you respond: It can tear you down, or you can choose to see and hear what that moment has to tell you, learn from it, and decide where you go from there.

  When that life-stopping event happens, it can bring real clarity to a situation. It’s like the queen inside us is speaking the truth, and we’d be wise to listen. Good or bad, that moment is a gift, because it’s a chance for our inner voice to cut through all the noise and tell us what we really need to hear. We can choose to ignore it and go on being victims, letting life’s circumstances play us and push us this way and that. Or we can put on our crowns and fill our cups with the best that life has to offer.

  More and more, women—from young girls to grown-up thirty- and forty-somethings—have gone deaf to what their best instincts are trying to tell them. We’re sleepwalking on some path we think we’re supposed to take. We’re feeling the pressure to be a certain way and not be our true, authentic selves. Too many of us don’t feel we’re good enough. We worry if we don’t have boyfriends or if we’re not married with kids by a certain age. We stress if we haven’t achieved some milestone in our careers or if we haven’t bought a house and mortgaged ourselves up to the hilt like the rest of our friends. We beat ourselves up when we eat too many biscuits and gain five pounds. We put ourselves down and fuss and fret that we don’t look like Halle Berry. Some women, who were beautiful to start with, even put themselves through all kinds of cosmetic procedures to look like their favorite celebrities or supermodels, and the results can be downright frightening.

  What’s with all this self-loathing? I read something the other day that made my heart sick. Females ages sixteen to twenty-four are more vulnerable to partner violence than any other group, almost three times the national average, according to a U.S. Department of Justice survey. Teenage pregnancies are at an all-time high. HIV infection rates have soared, and AIDS is now the leading cause of death among African-American women ages twenty-five to thirty-four, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That tells me young women in th
is country are facing a serious crisis in self-confidence. I believe the government is partly to blame for taking proper sex education out of the classroom, but there’s more to it than that. Abuse and risky sexual behavior happen when you don’t love yourself enough to say no or walk away.

  Our younger sisters have it worst of all. The economy hasn’t been this bad in living memory. You’re leaving college deep in debt and with seemingly slim prospects of finding any job, let alone the career you’d hoped for. The unemployment rate for graduates is sitting at 46 percent and climbing. Man, that’s rough!

  Even though much of this is beyond your control, you probably blame yourself for not getting ahead like you thought you should. You’re scared, and you feel like less than you are. Maybe your fear is making you hurt yourself by acting out. Maybe uncertainty about the future is paralyzing you and keeping you locked in an unhealthy situation. As I travel around the country, visiting schools and talking to kids, I see it all the time. My mother taught art at an urban high school in New Jersey for twenty-five years, and Ms. O, as she’s known round the way, is still very much involved in the lives of her former students. She’s shared some horror stories with me about what some of these girls are living through and doing to themselves. (Ladies, if this describes you, Ms. O and I want to reach through these pages and shake you by the collar. Then give you a hug.)

  Hey, I’ve been there. I’ve lived the full range of low moments from the self-inflicted and stupid to the unspeakably tragic. One in four young girls has been sexually molested or abused in this country, and I was one of those statistics. As a teenager growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Newark, I also made some moves I’m not proud of. Money was tight, and I experimented with stuff that could have taken me right down into the gutter if I’d continued with it. To get to the point of true contentment with who I am, I guess I had to go through a few years of being something other than myself. Living in those dark places taught me to appreciate the light. I learned who I was and grew from these situations, and that gave me the confidence to reject a lifestyle that could have killed me.

  I was blessed to have people around me, like my mother and father, who influenced me and kept me strong enough to pull myself right back up. They taught me how to listen to my inner queen and to God. Moments of unconditional love from family and friends sustained me through the worst periods of my life, even the death of someone I loved deeply. That moment took me so far into the darkness that people were worried I’d never come back. I threw myself into activity so I wouldn’t have to think. But every now and then, my brother’s spirit would break through the noise and speak to me. He wasn’t about to allow me to give up on life, and neither was the rest of my family.

  I couldn’t continue down that dark path because there were too many wonderful moments to come. Curiosity about life kept pushing me forward. From the time I was a child, my mother always said, “You can do anything.” That simple statement stayed with me in good times and bad. I took those words to heart throughout my career. It never mattered what the haters said. I stayed true to who I was and refused to succumb to the stereotypes in the entertainment business.

  My greatest happiness has come from giving myself permission to do me, on my own terms, whether it’s singing on an album, acting in a movie role, hustling for a business deal, or just living my life and soaking up those moments of pure joy that come my way every day. I decided early on that I was going to put on my crown and rule my world by acting right and treating myself like a queen.

  Not everyone is so lucky. Not everyone is surrounded by a nurturing family and positive influences. Maybe your teachers failed you and your parents are struggling too much with their own issues to tell you what you need to hear. Maybe all you’ve got is yourself. So listen up, in case you missed what your own life-stopping moments are trying to tell you. I’m writing this book to tell you that you can do anything! It isn’t easy, but it sure is possible. I’m living proof.

  Like I said, I’m not dispensing any hard and fast rules here. There is no single prescription for happiness or success. Everybody’s different. You have to follow your own life’s path and do what works best for you. Stop looking too much on the outside for affirmation. The trick is to discover who you are and what your passion is early on, then believe in yourself enough to go for it without compromise. Answer to yourself and your God, not to what others expect of you. Be yourself, have faith, and love who you are.

  I’ve been privileged enough to meet some amazing people and live out some incredible experiences that have opened my mind to possibilities I would never have imagined otherwise. It’s helped me live my life unafraid. I pursue my passions by jumping in headfirst. Sometimes I fail. Occasionally I get distracted. But I never regret trying because I have too much fun on the journey. I have no idea what’s next for me, but I take joy in the fact that there are no limits.

  I’m going to keep it real with you. Yeah, I’ve got wealth, and that eases the way on many levels, but don’t let that be your excuse to dismiss what you read on these next pages. I take pride in being Everywoman. I have down-home values. When I’m at her house, my mom makes me take out the garbage just like everybody else in the family. I surround myself with the people I grew up with—real people—and they keep me grounded. Unless I’ve got something I have to promote for my business, I don’t need to be at every A-list party. I relate more to you than most people I meet in Hollywood. Fame doesn’t impress me. It’s the regular girls and boys who make up my crew.

  On these next pages, I’m going to share with you some of the life-stopping moments that shaped who I am today. Think of this book as an intimate conversation with Latifah, your older sister and friend. I’ve been out in the world, and now I’m coming back to sit with you and tell you about my experiences and let you know what I learned from them. Sometimes it’s me talking, and sometimes it’s other, wiser people speaking through me. I’ll spill all that I can on these pages. I just have one request: Don’t take my stories as blueprints. Instead, treat them as guideposts on your individual path to queendom.

  The rest is up to you. Learning to love yourself is one of the hardest and most important things you’ll ever accomplish in your lifetime. Self-esteem is a real skill that we’ve got to master if we want to blossom into our full, beautiful potential. Whether you are black, white, young, old, glitzy, plain, skinny, thick, shy, or some wild thing, you need to put on your own crown because you, like me, are nothing less than royalty.

  Inside every woman there’s a queen, and you owe it to her and to God to do everything in your power to live your most fulfilled and happy life. Don’t let the moments pass you by. Let your inner queen’s voice come through loud and clear. Be strong, be authentic, be you, and you’ll do her proud.

  Love,

  CHAPTER 1

  Success

  You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

  —WINNIE-THE-POOH

  Looking up at that first mountain summit, more than four thousand feet in the air, I wasn’t sure I could make it. It was at least fifteen miles, and the climb was steep. I’d never done a hike like that before. But there I was, with no choice but to put one foot in front of the other, making sure I didn’t lose the fire trail and go wandering off in the wrong direction, or worse, fall down the side of a cliff. It was seven a.m., I’d been up since five a.m. for a yoga class and a vegan breakfast, and my first thought when I started that trail was, “We’re going over that?!”

  This all started early in September 2001, when I booked myself into a hiking boot camp in Calabasas, California, because I wanted to quit smoking. I picked up the habit when I was fourteen and managed to quit a few times, but smoking has a tendency to creep back into my life, especially when I’m working or stressing. A week in a healthy environment, doing nothing but hiking and yoga, was my way of separating myself from cigarettes and going cold turkey. This retreat was just a house in the middle of the woods. There
were no stores around. There were no phones, except for a pay phone on the wall in case of an emergency. We all slept under the same roof and shared meals at a communal table. It was a place where people came to get back to some healthy living, lose weight, get in touch with nature, whatever it was. I just needed to be in an environment that was free of distractions, where I could focus on something besides my crazy, hectic lifestyle.

  We were expected to hike at least fifteen miles of mountain ranges a day for a week, and that first time out was intense. I was out of shape and breathing hard. But as I continued to walk, I noticed something. I was feeling lighter. My mind was clear of all thought except for the present moment. I didn’t have time to think about all the problems in my life. Or anything else. I was just concentrating on my feet, trying not to trip on a tree root while observing the view, breathing in the cedar-scented air, and enjoying the sights and sounds of the woods. I was back to the primal, the essence of surviving and getting to where I was going.

  Eventually, I made it to the top, and when I looked down at the valley below me and the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean in the distance, I couldn’t believe how far I’d come. I felt so strong and powerful. I was so proud of what I’d accomplished. I did it!

  That night at dinner, the leaders of the hiking group went around the table and asked each of us to share a thought we had from the day. Everyone had a little story to tell or an observation to make. But when they got around to me, the only thing I could think of to say was this:

  “I am stronger than I thought I was.”

  I didn’t know I had it in me. There’s more to all of us than we realize. Life is so much bigger, grander, higher, and wider than we allow ourselves to think. We’re capable of so much more than we allow ourselves to believe. Box some seemingly mousy person into a corner and things will come out of her that you never would have imagined. If you push someone out of her comfort zone, she might perform in a way that she never thought possible.