Yesterday was a monumental day. The death of Tina Turner was felt everywhere and by most people of a certain age (re: those that remember when MTV showed music videos). And while I’m sure there will be many hot takes in the coming days, I decided to focus on the lessons I have gleaned from her life as someone trying to figure it out for her own.
So, I wrote today’s newsletter in the form of Summer Brennan’s Five Things Essay.
I had written another piece that was supposed to be sent yesterday but I decided to write this instead. I hope I have done some justice to her memory. This was a quick turn around for me. I haven’t written on deadline in many years so may apologies for the lack of polish.
1.
On her terms.
Those are the words that come to mind when I think of Tina Turner. On her effin terms or not at all.
I am not going to pretend I was her biggest fan. I knew her biggest fan and I have several text messages out to him to make sure he’s okay today. But I recognize a survivor when I see one. I recognize someone who knows that surviving depends on a couple of things and that it first starts with the self.
2.
The movie, What’s Love Got to do With It, is known for that infamous limousine scene where Ike, played by Lawrence Fishburne, is beating the living life force out of Tina, played by Angela Bassett. And she’s giving it right back to him.
But the scene I remember the most, the one that stayed with me through out the years was when she found Buddhism and her chant drowned the stereo in the other room not matter how loud the volume was.
There were two things from that scene that stood out and that I learned — narratively that was the moment where we as the audience understood that this was a new woman emerging. Stronger inside and THAN out. That makes the limousine scene a payoff. The second thing that stood out was that she had found something and did something her way.
The typical survivor story is that you survive the incident. You run, you get out, you find safe harbor. But the true story found within a survivor story really is how you thrived after. How you found the thing that anchored you into your wholeness. She found Buddhism. She found peace in the middle of turmoil. She became the eye of the storm she lived in.
As black women, this is not what we do. We are in the storm, raging against it, being pushed back against the fence and fighting against the Gale force winds like it was our jobs. But Ms. Turner, this black woman, on her own terms, found the peace that was her birthright. Past Ike, past Nutbush, past racism and mysogony, and whatever other bullshit. This is where life truly beings, not when one steps into the eye of the storm but when one can find freedom within it.
3.
A hard life means two things — you are either going to let the world swallow you or you’re going to fight like hell.
Tina Turner fought like hell. But the fight wasn’t always physical.
There little tougher than forgiving someone who has wronged deeply you. And she forgave her abuser, true. But she also forgave her mother.
And since forgiveness begins with the self, she forgave herself first. Maybe that is the first step? Maybe that is the only step?
4.
There really are no qualifications in becoming an ancestor, no matter what the internet says. It’s not years after death or what you did in your life. An ancestor is someone who was living that is now not. Also you have to be related to them. I mean, that’s obvious.
But I’d like to think that those who pass on to the land of the ancestors, even if not related, can be placed on a communal altar. That we can begin our days talking to the ancestors and learning from their stories, like a guide for the living. While we are not given a handbook to life, we are given legacies, inheritances, stories that are passed down so that we know, so that we grow roots, so that we are never blown away in a storm. So that we know how to find the eye of a hurricane. So that we learn the definition of freedom.
5.
In her own words, on her own terms, here is a lesson from the newest ancestor. Let it begin our schooling, our path, our way on our terms.
“People think my life has been tough, but I think it's been a wonderful journey. The older you get, the more you realize it's not what happened, it's how you deal with it,"
-Tina Turner, Nov. 1939 - May 2023