I grew up in Cabrini-Green, a notorious public housing project in Chicago, Illinois. Gunshots cut through the crisp night air. Metal chains on the playground swings squeaked over and over again. The smell of urine lingered in the hallways. And there was always the fear of getting stuck in an elevator with no on-site maintenance person to get you out. To this day, I still carry a slight fear of elevators. These were my living conditions growing up in a poverty-stricken community.
We knew our neighbors. Not in a borrowing-sugar kind of way. More so in a shared-survival, communal-dismay kind of way. I can’t say I knew everybody the way my older brother did. I was much more sheltered than he was. But I was the only girl. My mama’s “Win,” short for “Winnie,” and my daddy’s “Pooh.” My parents did not have the best relationship with each other, but what they gave me was invaluable: two Black biological parents living together in the projects.
We were the real-life version of Good Times, sans Michael. My brother was more of a J.J.—not just because he was the oldest and just as attention-seeking, but because he was Jonah Jr. And I was the young Black girl with parents who cared about my education and my future. Not to mention, I loved dancing. I was definitely a teeny version of Thelma.
My parents raised me to believe I was born for a special reason. That one day I would see my name in lights. That I would be in the newspaper. The newspaper part happened. I can’t say their ideas about me have fully actualized, but they planted a seed that, to this day, I continue to grow into. I water it. I prune it. I revive it when its leaves start to wither. I never fully allow it to die. I keep reaching for the purpose they instilled in me. I didn’t know it when I was young, but those times when my daddy would put me on the cocktail table and do the bump with me to the gruff sound of Joe Tex would be etched into my soul forever. Subconsciously, being loved by both of my parents in the same household, despite our conditions, gave me a different perspective than some of the people around me. I dug into literature, rhythm, and movement. My thoughts became malleable. Apologies were not that hard. Watching my mother care for my father, even when it was obvious she was not madly in love with him, released me from bitterness whenever love went sour. My parents loved me in a quiet way.
Almost fifty-three years, two divorces, and three adult children later, my life is still wide open. That seed is still growing. What once existed as the hopeful words of two Black parents in a tiny apartment in Cabrini-Green has become the framework of my life.
All of it came from them. Not money. Not privilege. Not perfect circumstances. Just love, belief, and the quiet insistence that I was here for a reason.
That little girl they raised has become my why. Every story I write, every vision I chase, every challenge I survive is connected to the foundation they gave me. The world may have seen the projects. My parents saw possibility.
And because they did, I’ll never waste a day becoming exactly who they told me I am.
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