I was living as a young single mom. I was 19 when I was divorced, and my daughter was a year old, and I waited tables here three to four nights a week for several years while I was trying to support myself and my daughter and the day I got that acceptance at Harvard Law School was an unforgettable day.
I didn't plan on being a single mom, but you have to deal with the cards you are dealt the best way you can.
As an actress, I have put myself out there as an independent black woman, a single mom, a go-getter, a hustler who isn't afraid to survive.
A lot of times when people become successful, people don't really understand what they had to do or the sacrifices they made to do that, or they assume that they had money. This is coming from, like, a kid who was broke and lived with roaches and a single mom in Dorchester.
I am a single mom and I'm the breadwinner and I have to work and I have to do these things and that's just the way it is. I don't think my son even knows any different.
I was brought up by a single mom in a poor town in Arkansas and while some aspects of small-town life were really positive - like the fact that everyone there is really sweet and hospitable - there is also this close-minded mentality, and that naturally made me want to rebel.
My mom has always been a huge inspiration. She was a single mom raising two kids in New York. Now that is full-on all the time.
You know, I don't think any mother aims to be a single mom. I didn't wish for that, but it happened.
Hillary Clinton famously talked about how raising a child takes a village. Except our society isn't set up that way. We're organized in nuclear units, and a single mom can ask her friends only so many times for help picking up the kids.
I was growing up with a single mom who'd be at work when I came home from school. So I'd just turn on the TV. I grew up watching old Clint Eastwood westerns. I adopted him as one of my male role models.