Women Who Shine

By Tracey Watts Cirino

In this special edition of Women Who Shine, Tracey Watts Cirino lights up the pages with her inspiring story. Tracey is an award-winning entrepreneur,

5-Time #1 International Bestselling Author, speaker, business success coach, podcast host, thought l

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beyond Common Inc.
• Release date: Oct 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781961364059

Tracey Watts Cirino

Dominic's version of Mommy's Bio: I wrote this bio for my kind, loving, and beautiful mother. Tracey Watts Cirino is a, # 1 International Bestseller selling Author. Her books include Beyond Common: 12 Essentials for Success in Life and in the Workplace, Woman Who Shine, and Women Who Dream. She stands on stage and coaches and trains lots of people who love her work. She is really great at helping others see what is great about themselves. She helps them make a bunch of money and get their business technology in order and I always hear her talking about doing things that make you look and feel your best. She has worked her whole life trying to be the best she can be after going through a painful childhood. She knew if she ever became a mom, she was going to work hard to make sure her kids felt loved and appreciated just for being them. I have to say, she is really doing the most amazingly, wonderful job! She is the best and I love her with all my heart. ?

Book preview

(FRONTCOVER)_Women_Shine_Tracey_Cirino.jpg

First Edition

Copyright © 2021 Kate Butler Books

www.katebutlerbooks.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by an information storage and retrieval system—except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper or on the Web—without permission in writing from the publisher.

Design by Melissa Williams Design

mwbookdesign.com

This book is dedicated to you. We see you, we feel you, we relate to you, and we connect with you, because . . . we are you. At the core we are more alike than we are different. We are beings of light and love who deeply desire to make a positive influence on the world with our unique type of brilliance. The pages of this book promise to fill you with the wisdom, insights, and inspiration that will align you further with your soul’s path. Our hope is that the vulnerability and authenticity of these stories will remind you deeply of who you are and inspire you to rise up and shine your light in the world.

It is your time. It is our time. It is time.

Foreword: The Facade of I’m Okay

Taja V. Simpson

Dear Women Who Shine,

I grew up in Louisiana during the era of the brown paper bag test. This test was a colorist discriminatory practice where a person’s skin tone is compared to the color of a brown paper bag to determine which privileges they could have. Lighter-skinned people were afforded more social and economic advantages than darker-skinned people. As a child, and obviously darker than a brown paper bag, I wasn’t allowed in certain homes, I couldn’t play with some of the kids down my street, and I was bullied daily, all because of my skin tone. It was the culture of my everyday surroundings and the mindset of that time. It was normal. Everywhere I went, I would get teased and bullied for being dark-skinned. I was the butt of all jokes, You dark this, or You black that. Being a dark-skinned young child during that time was tough to navigate. I always felt less than because of the amount of melanin in my skin.

I was 4 or 5 years old when I first began to understand the differences and it started with my sister. She was beautiful, super smart, athletic and to me could do anything. And yes, she was light-skinned. I became acutely aware I wasn’t on her same level when I would see my aunt for family gatherings a few times a year. She was a big personality, very loud and the center of attention in every room she walked in. She didn’t seem to like me and gave me the nickname that would ultimately tarnish my self-esteem. She called me Ugly Thang. I can recall her voice when she’d yell for me, come here ugly thaaaaang. As if being called Ugly wasn’t enough, the way she would allow the vibrato in her voice to linger in the air when she said THAAAAAANG, would break me, every time. I remember spending summers at my Grandmother’s house and there was a really long drive-way. My aunt would pull in and blow her horn and everyone would go out to greet her and help her unload the car. All I ever wanted to receive was her love so I would try to be first hoping that maybe she’d give me a hug this time. I’d grab her around her waist and without her touching me back she would look at me, laugh and say, Move ugly thang, get over there. She’d then extend her arms to my sister and say with a smile, Come here my Albino baby! I would stand there looking at them, and then looking back at myself and wondering why God made me like this. Why did he make me in such a way that would automatically make people dislike me? Why would my appearance make my aunt dislike me? I would cry and cry. My parents would try to make her stop, but that never worked, if anything, it made it worse. My aunt gave everyone nicknames, but the one she gave me was so demeaning it made me feel less of a person. She would proudly call my sister her "Albino Baby’’ and it was clear she was her favorite. She showered her with gifts and it was very apparent she loved her more than me. Her care and affection toward my sister really showed me there was love in her to give, but she chose not to give any to me. I would try to be strong, but the more I saw her the more she made me devalue myself. As a result, I never felt like I was enough.

This idea of not being enough was reinforced because I was as dark as I was. Certain people couldn’t be friends with me because I was darker than the brown paper bag. I didn’t pass the test. If you’re darker than this, you can’t come in. If you’re darker than this, you can’t play. If you’re darker than this, you have to go home. Ultimately what you’re hearing as a child is, If you’re darker than this, you are no good. If you’re darker than this, you have no value. This is what the test was saying to me. I was surrounded by it, but it was the norm, the culture, the time.

Every night I would sit in the tub and pray to God. I would say, God, could you just make me a little lighter? Maybe the shade in between my knuckles, because when you look at the skin tone in between your knuckles they are lighter. So I’m not asking for a lot, just a little bit lighter Lord, that way it won’t be as drastic and no one would notice. Then maybe my aunt would love me and people would like me. As a young child that was my exact prayer, I would say it all the time, really thinking and believing it would solve things. But, it never happened. My tub became my only safe zone. There I didn’t have to hear insults from my sister, my aunt, my neighborhood, my school, my city. This was my secure haven. Outside of that bathroom, I lived in a façade, but in reality, those words were killing me on the inside.

My parents were also born and raised in Louisiana and were products of their environment. They experienced racism, segregation, colorism and worked really hard to give my siblings and I a great upbringing. We grew up as part of the middle class with a built-in pool in the backyard and a basketball court in the front driveway. We were the house all the kids wanted to come to. We allowed everyone over our house, you didn’t have to pass a color test to get in. The one thing my parents didn’t play about was school and they only allowed friends over if those friends were doing their best and making good grades. We were all honor roll and banner roll students because of it. My parents were the most supportive in everything we did. If we played a sport, they were either the coach, manager or attendee as they cheered us on the entire game. They were definitely our biggest cheerleaders. They gave me all the love and support I needed. They poured verbal affection into me, using phrases like You’re beautiful, of course you’re good enough, and You can do anything. It was really hard to believe their words when the world around me was saying something vastly different. It was like the people vs. my parents. Whenever they would tell me I was beautiful, I would say, you have to say that, you’re my parents. It was hard for me to believe that about myself when only two people in the world were telling me I was good enough and beautiful, but the environment and everyone else around me would say the total opposite. I was an offspring of our environment and this is how the dichotomy of my paradigm started to develop. The world around me was conditioning me to believe one thing, but my parents conditioned me to believe something else.

In junior high school my self-esteem was so low that it was under my shoe. Even as I began to develop friendships and have more relationships, I still had to deal with bullying all the time. One day, I decided to share with my mom what was happening at school and she started to teach me come backs, which are things to say back to a bully to get them to leave you alone. I learned you can’t just sit there and take it, you have to verbally come back at them and as the bully sees that their taunts aren’t affecting you they will eventually leave you alone. When someone would call me a black this or a black that, she told me to say, I may be black, but I’m beautiful or Yep, and I’m beautiful! When my mom first taught me to say these things I said, No one is going to believe that. She would say, if you believe it, they will. If you say it with confidence, I promise you, they will leave you alone. Just try it. You’re mama’s chocolate star, you’re destined for greatness!

I went to school the next day and I felt armored and ready. I even practiced how I would say it. Sure enough when we were at recess, the bullying started and I just kept saying, with confidence, I may be black, but I’m beautiful. Then I’d say, Yep, and I’m beautiful. Those were the only two bullets I had in my verbal gun so I simply used it over and over and over again. And you know what? Eventually it stopped! I learned that bullies are attracted to fear so the less fearful I was, the more they would leave me alone. It started to seem like I was developing confidence when really I was learning to cope with the skin I was in. While learning those comebacks, I also learned to hide anything that drew attention to me. I learned how to wear certain clothes and how to pose in photos that would hide my butt, because I would get teased so much about it. I stopped wearing bright colors, I stopped wearing bright lip gloss, and I learned to stay under the radar so nothing about me stood out. I couldn’t show up in my true value or true worthiness because the world had shown me that wasn’t safe. At the time, I thought I was properly dealing with things, but I was actually pushing down all my insecurities and covering them up with I’m Okay, Everything’s cool. I noticed the popular kids weren’t bullied so I shifted my focus. I played every sport my schedule would allow, basketball, softball, volleyball, cheerleading and track. The more of a success I was, the more popular I became and the bullying eventually stopped. I masked all my feelings in sports and lived in the facade of I’m Okay. The facade was so good I actually started to believe it myself.

On the outside I was good. I was a leader in my school and an honor student. I was learning to stand up for myself. I thought I’d gotten over those ‘not enough’ insecurities until one day when I was with one of my friends who lived down the street from me. A lady came up and said, Ya’ll look so much alike, ya’ll could be twins. People always thought we were related because we resembled one another and this was a statement we got all the time, but on this day my friend said, yeah, but she’s darker than me. I’m not THAT dark. This shook me. I can remember this moment so vividly.

I realized two things that day. First, I learned just how my friend felt about me. I also learned that it was a big deal to her that she was a couple of shades lighter than me. She wasn’t THAT dark. This shifted my awareness and I would stay out of the sun as much as possible. If I was outside too long I would hear a little voice in my head telling me to reapply sunscreen so I wouldn’t get darker. I would wear long sleeve shirts so my arms wouldn’t tan, I would dismiss going to the beach because it was just an open space of sunlight and there was nowhere to hide. I would always say, The sun is the one thing in the world that doesn’t discriminate. This became yet another coping mechanism of what I would do to make sure I wasn’t getting darker.

I stayed the course and I excelled in all of the sports I participated in. I even added dancer to the long list of extracurricular activities. I excelled so much in school that I was able to finish a year early. I skipped my junior year and graduated high school at 16. There was something bubbling up inside of me with these big dreams I had for myself, but they didn’t match my beliefs, my passions, or my deepest wants. I thought I had it all figured out, but there were little situational reminders that would sneak up on me to let me know that I still wasn’t enough. I can recall being at my best friend’s house, laughing and joking with everyone having a great time. I left the room to go to the bathroom and when I walked out one of her sister’s friends came up to me and asked earnestly, how do you feel, are you okay? That was a peculiar question to me at the time, but I was in great spirits and I replied, Yes, I’m great, why? She said, Well, you’re the only dark-skinned person here and I didn’t know if you were uncomfortable. It was like a ton of books slapped me in the face. I was shocked. I was in a safe place, my best friend’s house, where I was never made to feel less than, but here I am defending my skin tone again. After a long pause I looked at her and said, I actually hadn’t noticed that until right now, but I’m good. She walked away and I just stood there in my feelings trying to mask how that made me feel, but there I was, yet again reminded of being too dark. dark-skinned women have always been last in the demographic poll. There’s white women at the top, all other races in between and when you get to black women, that is usually broken down from light to dark. So if I’m at the bottom how could I ever expect to gain any type of success?

I had no idea this was something others even thought about. I walked away from that moment while adding it to the long list of things I have to carry around about myself. It brought me back to being a young girl and self-identifying in this hierarchy of the world. After that experience I couldn’t walk into a room and not notice how I stood out. You can’t unknow something like that. Now every time I went anywhere I became more and more aware of it. I’m the only dark-skinned person in the room and I wonder how that makes everyone else feel?

Then came the normal compliments like You’re pretty for a dark-skinned girl. It seemed awkward to say and I would often respond with a thank you? It seemed like every guy I ever spoke to on the phone said, You’re the first dark-skinned girl I’ve EVER been on the phone with or I’ve always said if you ever see me with a darkie, know that she has to be the baddest chick walking. So I guess I should be happy right? I’m your first, I’m the girl you thought never existed. I was the exception to the rule. I was always told the criteria for a dark-skinned girl is a lot higher than a light-skinned girl. If a guy decided to date me I had to be damn near perfect. Where I’m from, if you’re light-skinned with what’s considered good hair or light colored eyes you were idolized. Dating men from the south, men of that mentality, of that culture, and of that speech, always made me feel not quite good enough. As I was working on myself to get over the mindset that was ingrained in me through the environment I grew up in, men who still thought like that would stand out so much that I would quickly remove myself from that situation. However, when I moved out of Louisiana and started to meet men and women from the east coast or midwest, I would notice how proud they were to be black and proud to be a dark-skinned man or woman. I’d never seen that before in my life. The first time I was complimented on my nose and lips I thought, you love my what? The nose and lips I’ve been teased about my entire life? I couldn’t believe it. I had been discriminated against so much that I decided to take on the mantra love sees no color and would date inside and outside of my race. I always focused on the heart and soul of a person, the intelligence of a person because that’s what really matters and that’s what was attractive to me. Plus I never wanted to make anyone feel how I once felt.

I was tired of feeling less than and I no longer wanted to allow fear to dictate my life. The exterior of me was never going to change so I had to shift what was within myself. I needed to learn to love me, but I actually never worked on self-love. I said these comebacks, but my belief in them didn’t support what I was repeating. That was the opportunity for me to really take a step back and analyze all the damage that had been done. I had to go back to the beginning. Where was that beginning? It was dealing with the paper bag test as a child, and my aunt having a good laugh about a nickname. What I realized was these situations created a belief system inside myself where I actually self-elected into believing that I was not valuable, I was not worthy, and I was not good enough. Intellectually, I also held onto the dichotomy of what my parents had taught me. I am enough, I am worthy, I am capable, I have this dream and it is possible. I knew I needed to dig into the foundation of the problem and yank up the root belief of what I intellectually knew was real. It took me 25 years before I looked in the mirror and accepted what I look like and another 5 to look in the mirror and love what I saw. It was time to retrain my beliefs.

Once I started to work on self-love and a belief in myself, I realized, oh boy, I have some work to do. It was very difficult to retrain my beliefs at first. Primarily due to my profession. Here I was this young woman with very low self-esteem and lots of insecurities and I selected businesses that were all about appearance, modeling & acting. I have dealt with more rejection than one would ever dream of. This definitely affected me in my career. I would go to auditions, get a call back, and go to producer’s sessions, but I would notice a pattern. The girl who always got the part was the lighter skinned woman. I would see the commercial or film/tv role I was up for and it was never another dark-skinned woman in the role. I began to look at breakdowns and say to myself, they won’t cast ME for that, they will cast a light-skinned girl. Are they really going to give the LEAD role to a dark-skinned girl? I would go on so many auditions, but every time the booking would go to the ethnically ambiguous looking girl with the big hair. Don’t get me wrong, these aren’t just my feelings. In 2012 when Kerry Washington booked the lead role in Scandal, that was the first time a black woman had the lead role on a primetime network drama since Diahann Carroll debuted in Julia in 1968. That’s 44 years before a black woman of any shade would obtain that type of role. Women of my type were typically the friend or the maid, but you’re certainly not the beautiful lead that every guy wants in a romantic comedy. So here I am, trying to get work in this industry, all the while living in the skin I’m in and realizing I need to work on myself to overcome what the world is again showing me within my environment, television, movies, magazines, etc. Representation matters. Seeing is believing. Seeing gives hope, it starts the belief and helps to plant the seeds of possibility. It still amazes me that a girl with such low self-esteem ended up as an actor. Yet, if I really sit and think, it makes total sense. Acting is living in a make believe world, which is somewhat like the facade I began to live in as a kid when I told myself I was okay, although I really wasn’t.

The first time I looked in the mirror and said, I am beautiful, I am worthy, I am enough, I burst out crying. I’d never said that to myself in the mirror like that before. This time was different. My intention was different and I was changing my belief. My confidence grew tremendously. I started to really believe what I was saying and that hit me differently. I walked more upright, my head up high, and things really started to shift for me. I’m healing and I feel empowered and happy. I was making strides in my career and I fell head over heels in love with the man of my dreams. When we met it was unlike anything I’d ever imagined. If I had a checklist he would’ve checked all the boxes. He was absolutely wonderful to me. He decided to take me to Hawaii for my birthday and little did I know that wasn’t all he had in store. I can still remember that moment. We were on a cruise. Fireworks were literally going off in the background when he got on his knee and asked me to marry him. I sat there in shock and the first thing I said was, Is this real life? He said, yes, baby, can I have your answer? I said. YES! Everyone around us applauded and it was a beautiful moment. It was a complete fairytale; it was real to me. I could touch it, feel it, it was exactly in my reach.

We started planning our lives together. We moved into a beautiful condo while we planned the wedding. On a whim he bought me a convertible BMW and this life was now unlike anything I’d ever dreamed for myself. I was happy, in love, and feeling better than ever about myself. The first few months of this engagement were great and slowly things started to shift. Sometimes he would be really happy and other times really sad. I didn’t think anything abnormal about it as I too would have felt the same way if my business gained or lost thousands of dollars. Then things started to get worse and in the matter of a week, during the Christmas holiday, I looked up and didn’t recognize the man I was living with. It was literally like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde experience. He went on Facebook and started exposing family secrets and he is from a well-known and well to do family. His father tried to get him to take down the posts because the information would definitely ruin the brand and image his father worked so hard to build. I don’t know if what he posted was true or not. All I knew is that he was acting extremely different. I spoke to his father and he kept asking me, What triggered him? What did YOU do to trigger him? I didn’t know what he meant and he began to tell me his son was bi-polar and he was acting that way because he was having an episode. I was in total shock. I literally stood there and held the phone for what felt like forever. So many thoughts ran through my mind. What did this mean for him? How do I help him? What should I do or say? His father wanted me to get his phone and take the posts down, but I was afraid for my life and wouldn’t dare cross him. Whoever he was at the moment, I didn’t want to make him mad so I refused. I spoke to his mother about it and she said to me, He told me, he told you he was bi-polar. I said to her, so the bi-polar man told you he mentioned this to me and you didn’t follow up with me about it? That’s something you talk about in great detail. I need to know how to handle this situation. What should I do? She said, Well, we thought you had given him the balance he needed in this life and we were just so excited to see our son again. I see now that you were just an episode. During this episode, my fiancé decided he no longer wanted a life with me and he moved all of his things out and left.

I’d finally gotten myself to a point where I knew I was worthy of love, but when his father asked if I was the trigger I started asking myself, was this me, did I bring this on myself? Someone who was made to feel less than, called ugly thang, I felt I wasn’t worthy of this love, this condo, this car, this marriage, this relationship and all of the goodness that I thought it was. Was this all a facade too? Who did I think I was that I could have it all?

I was devastated. I got depressed. I stayed on my sofa for months. I couldn’t sleep in the bed we once slept in. I would stay on that sofa and simply watch the days go by. Somehow I had to tell everyone, my family, my bridesmaids, friends that the wedding was off. But I couldn’t talk. Friends were calling to ask about the bridal shower details, but I literally couldn’t utter any words. It took me two weeks to muster up the courage to do that. Instead of having individual conversations with everyone I decided to tell them the same way I asked each of them to be in the wedding. I made a video. I set up my camera and looked into the lens, only this time, instead of a happy moment asking them to be my bridesmaids, I told them how my fiancé had left me. For 18 minutes and 17 seconds I cried my way through, telling them the most disappointing news of my life.

I didn’t know what to do. I called my dad and told him how broken I was and expressed that I didn’t know how to bounce back from this. He said, Taja, we need you. I believe in you and you can do this. I know it seems hard now, but let’s just take it one step at a time and I will be with you every step of the way. Every time I would get low I thought about that moment with my dad and it would get me through. I could hear this very faint voice inside of me saying to get up, you can do it. You can get past this. I was knocked off my new foundation and this was the biggest pain I’d ever experienced. After months of living on my sofa I decided I couldn’t keep doing the same thing and expecting different results, that’s the exact definition of insanity. I started to exclusively focus on me and my personal development. I was on the phone with one of my friends and she told me about a book called, The Wisdom Of Florence Scovel Shinn. I immediately ordered it and started to read it. This book changed my life. It started me on a journey of the self-discovery of gratitude, law of attraction, the power of the spoken word, and intention. I learned about the Game of life and how to use your words as your wands. I stayed consistent and my beliefs started to match my desires and that’s when things would really happen for me. I realized how to really stand in my faith and I now know that belief starts with an in depth feeling. The vibration