TARAJI P. HENSON

There is something left in the wake of hard work employing the laws of attraction to become the essence of who you are supposed to be in a cruel world of Western business. The hardness of character it takes to affix hard paradigms into softness cannot be anything but cruel. Trying to fit the strong aspects of African womanhood around a watered down African connection to life within the Western laws of acquisition leaves a hardness in the eyes because of the compromises. That hardness is hard to gaze upon if your main objection to the struggles of achievement is the work ethic you must employ to rise out of the doldrums of being just a Black woman.


It takes a great deal of spiritual work to rise out of the active paradigms of the phenomenon of the consciousness called Black American. The Elders celebrate them and you. Without embodying the work of become a working Hollywood actress those of your people who are healers, and magic workers hold you in our ceremonies while you work in the light to translate stories for the uninitiated, the uniformed, and the fearful amongst us. The work is in your eyes. The square of your shoulders talks about strength and a relationship with powers, and the cut of your hair tells a story of grace, and challenge.

How do you balance the lowest common denominators within Black American culture with the high spirituality, often dormant within the souls of Black folk, without compromising your inate sense of the delicate flower? How do you maintain a core commitment and emotional ties to the Black community that loves you and believes they understand you? Being Taraji P. Henson means something very deep. Its elegance and depth is hidden in the open. It is your name. It is the insistence upon the use of your whole name with one inkling of privacy behind the P that speaks so clearly, to the Elders, about the essence of the warrior-priestess craft of old women ancestors who hid secrets within their tired breasts as they lifted life into their descendants with prayers, slight-of-hand tricks of magic and manipulation.

It is difficult holding a torch, a gift, a responsibility, and working to embody the Sacred Feminine, but try you must, do you must do, and be you must be. Taraji P. Henson you are not alone. These are my words. I am a Keeper of Stories, a Grandfather-Teacher, the first born of my parents, Herbert L., and Constance B. Woods, father of four, grandfather of five, wife of one. I am Gregory E. Woods named Dawn Wolf of the Absaroka, the Muskogee, and the African people.