Jada Smith Quotes

We don't back off obstacles and tough situations, we use them to make us stronger.

We all think there is a formula, but as long as we love our children, that's really the only solid thing I know that works across the board.

My belief is that every woman is worthy, a walking treasure, and deserves to live her life as the heroine of her own story.

Just because someone stumbles and loses their way doesn’t mean they are lost forever.

Hippos are the very definition of Disney cute. There is no way you could look at a big, fat, squishy, huggable hippo and not think, "Id she could talk like a human, she would sound just like Jada Pinkett Smith and be oh so sassy." You would totally name her Sassy-baskets, and she would be your tutu-wearing, ballet-dancing, strut-walking pal for life. Just you and Sassy-baskets against the world!

Look closely at the present you are constructing; it should look like the future you are dreaming. —ALICE WALKER

The War on Men Through the Degradation of Woman” - "How is man to recognize his full self, his full power through the eye’s of an incomplete woman? The woman who has been stripped of Goddess recognition and diminished to a big ass and full breast for physical comfort only. The woman who has been silenced so she may forget her spiritual essence because her words stir too much thought outside of the pleasure space. The woman who has been diminished to covering all that rots inside of her with weaves and red bottom shoes. I am sure the men, who restructured our societies from cultures that honored woman, had no idea of the outcome. They had no idea that eventually, even men would render themselves empty and longing for meaning, depth and connection. There is a deep sadness when I witness a man that can’t recognize the emptiness he feels when he objectifies himself as a bank and truly believes he can buy love with things and status. It is painful to witness the betrayal when a woman takes him up on that offer. He doesn’t recognize that the [creation] of a half woman has contributed to his repressed anger and frustration of feeling he is not enough. He then may love no woman or keep many half women as his prize. He doesn’t recognize that it’s his submersion in the imbalanced warrior culture, where violence is the means of getting respect and power, as the reason he can break the face of the woman who bore him 4 four children. When woman is lost, so is man. The truth is, woman is the window to a man’s heart and a man’s heart is the gateway to his soul. Power and control will NEVER out weigh love. May we all find our way.

Nobody gets out of life alive.

I’m willing to let go of whatever is gripping my heart and mind, and whatever is blocking my kindness and compassion.

When I go in search of the origins of my broken heart, it is this sense of not being a priority to the two people who gave me life that creates a fracture in my feeling of worth.

I think as women, we have to stop being scared to be the women we want to be and we have to raise our daughters to be the women they want to be — not the women we think they should be.

But how can we understand a significant other’s perspective if: (a) we don’t have the experience, maturity, or desire to identify differences; and (b) we lack the ability to recognize there is no right or wrong (except in situations where abuse is evident)? Often, with the inevitable misunderstandings and even heartbreaks that come along with most serious relationships, we forget that our opinions, priorities, and needs aren’t better than our partner’s, they are just different.

It’s not about NOT being scared when you need to move past fear. It’s about finding the courage to freaking do it anyway, even if you don’t think you can.

A woman who is starved for her real soul-life may look ‘cleaned up and combed’ on the outside, but on the inside she is filled with dozens of pleading hands and empty mouths.

Ricki, your man’s Jada Pinkett Smith-ing again.

In 1973, his refusal of an Oscar was perceived as the ultimate insult to the moviegoing public by an eccentric egotist. Yet, forty-five years later, during the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, Jada Pinkett Smith found affirmation for her own decision to boycott the Oscars by watching a clip of Sacheen Littlefeather refusing Brando’s award. Today, calling out Hollywood’s racism is no longer an extremist act. In the 1960s, Brando’s protests against racial segregation and discrimination—he was arrested at least once—were condemned by some as needlessly provocative. Now, in the era of Black Lives Matter, they seem the very least someone in Brando’s position could have done during that period of widespread injustice.

To me, the heart of all successful human interactions is we look at each other and we know we’re about to attempt something that is difficult/ impossible. And we look in each other’s eyes, and we shake hands, and we both vow to die before we quit. And that’s what I thought we did. This is such a simple idea to me. The vows are “til death do us part”—God agrees with me. The vow is not to your partner—the vow is to the weakest part of yourself. How could you not quit if that’s one of the options? The reason you say you’re gonna do it or die is because death is what happens when you don’t do it. Your mind is trying to protect you from hard things, to defend you from pain. The problem is, all of your dreams are on the other side of pain and difficulty. So, a mind that tries to seek pleasure and comfort and the easy way inadvertently poisons its dreams—your mind becomes a barrier to your dreams, an internal enemy. If it was easy, everybody would do it. The reason we make vows is because we know we’re about to do a hell walk. You don’t have to vow to do easy things. No one ever said, “I vow to eat every ounce of this crème brulee—I swear to the wide heavens that I will not leave one speck on my plate! And I vow to skip my run tomorrow morning, and I vow to sleep in!” We wouldn’t need to make vows if it was easy. The reason the vows are so extreme—“in sickness and in health, till death do us part”—is because life is so extreme. Nothing else can keep us there. That’s the point of devotion. I’m not against divorce, and I’m not against surrendering in a battle, but it has to be at the end of the battle—not while you’re putting your armor on, not the first scary moment, not the first casualty. In my experience, most people get divorced too soon, before they’ve extracted the lessons that will keep them from doing the exact same things in their next relationships. I’m still not totally sure what I was thinking. Maybe it was pain; maybe it was delirium. Maybe I wasn’t thinking at all. Maybe I didn’t need to think, because I was clear. I could see the North Star through the fog. On February 19, only five days after I received my divorce papers, I called Jada. I hadn’t seen her, or heard from her, in months. The phone seemed to ring forever. Click. “Hello?” “Whatup, Jada. It’s Will.” “Heyyyy!” she said. Her voice seemed to still echo with the magic of our night at the Baked Potato. “How you doin’?” “I’m good. Better now that I’m talkin’ to you.” In hindsight, I probably could have given her a little more context, or warning. “Hey, are you seeing anybody?” I said. Jada hesitated—partly stunned, partly confused. “Um, no. Why?” “Cool, you’re seeing me now,

We agreed that Jada’s happiness had to be her responsibility, and my happiness had to be my responsibility. We were going to seek our distinct, innermost personal joys, and then we were going to return and present ourselves to the relationship and to each other already happy—not coming to each other begging with empty cups, demanding the other person fulfill our needs.

We had concluded that no one can make a person happy. You can make a person smile; you can compose a moment that helps a person to feel good; you can deliver a joke that makes a person laugh; you can create an environment where a person feels safe. We can and must be helpful and kind and loving, but whether a person is happy or not is utterly out of your control. Every person must wage a solitary internal war for their own contentment. We agreed that Jada’s happiness had to be her responsibility, and my happiness had to be my responsibility. We were going to seek our distinct, innermost personal joys, and then we were going to return and present ourselves to the relationship and to each other already happy—not coming to each other begging with empty cups, demanding the other person fulfill our needs. We felt that this vampiric relational model was unfair, unrealistic, destructive—even abusive. To place the responsibility for your happiness on anybody other than yourself is a recipe for misery.

But the heart & soul of our union was then, & is still today, intense, luminescent conversation. Even to the writing of this very sentence, if Jada & I begin a conversation, it is a minimum two-hour endeavor, & it is not uncommon that we talk for five or six hours at a stretch. Our joy of pondering & perusing mysteries of the universe through the mirror of each other’s experience is unbridled ecstasy. Even in the depths of disagreement, there is nothing in this world that either of us more cherished or enjoys than the opportunity to grow & learn from each other through passionate communication.

But the heart and soul of our union was then, and is still today, intense, luminescent conversation. Even to the writing of this very sentence, if Jada and I begin a conversation it is a minimum two-hour endeavor. And it is not uncommon and we talk for five or six hours at a stretch. Our joy of pondering and perusing the mysteries of the universe through the mirror of each other's experience is unbridled ecstasy. Even in the depths of disagreement, there is nothing in this world that either of us more cherishes or enjoys than the opportunity to grow and learn from each other through passionate communication.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart. Jada sent me this quote from Kahlil Gibran and repeated over and over, “What’s true will remain.

When we look back at our journey, we discover the choices we made that shaped the life we are living. We often forget that although many aspects of life are out of our control, our power of choice is not one of them. Behind the many choices we make (unconsciously or consciously) are wounds that can blind us to how we abandon love and kindness, sometimes taking us and others into shadowy tailspins. Unfortunately, when we are immersed in environments full of shadow, it can take a long while to unteach ourselves the methods learned there. But it’s okay. We can make different choices with better outcomes. We can have remorse and we can atone—without forgetting that sometimes we have to live who we’re not in order to know who we are.

No matter how hard it might get. The only way out is the way through.

Part of staying safe was hiding my feminine nature and taking on a more masculine bravado in how I carried myself.

You are so much more than your trauma.

This was real life, brutal and unfair.

A Queen is her own savior. Her magic is quiet, potent and mysterious.

There is no such thing as an overnight success. Everybody who grabs the spotlight probably looks like an overnight success 'cause you ain't know 'em before they got on the scene. Behind each one of those stories is someone who was willing to suffer setbacks and put in the hard work, hoping for a little sprinkle of luck.

We all have traumas in our childhood that can make us overlook the beauty that surrounds us. Oftentimes we believe we have to focus more on the negative events because they created so much pain. Some of us believe holding on to the negative is what protects us from not experiencing that pain again. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Unfortunately, we tend to relive aspects of the negative experiences because we stay stuck, by consciously or unconsciously holding on to the negative thoughts our painful experiences birthed.

When I saw my cousins with their dads, I might have missed having a father who could do daddy stuff with me. But I resolved early that maybe that kind of daddy love just wasn’t meant for me.

found god in myself/and i loved her/i loved her fiercely —NTOZAKE SHANGE

Many of us are born to parents and families who are already in the mix of trying to survive, withstand, move through traumas of their own. Some

do so more easily than others, while most of us, as children, are left caught in the storms of our family’s dysfunction. A lot of us had to feel the brunt of it, which left us feeling unsafe, unwanted, uncared for—unlovable. For many of the adults in our lives, this was not the intention, but this fact remains.

As adults, we no longer have to do that. When we allow the little one

within to heal and understand that we are enough to take care of ourselves, we no longer have to demand and be blameful when others can’t care for us. We realize, through self-care, that we are enough to love ourselves thoroughly.

For two decades, I had been putting on a good face, going with the flow, telling everyone I was okay. Yet underneath, bouts of depression and overwhelming hopelessness had smoldered until they turned into raging hellfire in my

I would later be diagnosed and informed that I suffer from complex trauma with PTSD and dissociation,

On paper,” it all looked grand—I had the beautiful family, the superstar husband, the lavish lifestyle, fame and fortune.

The sweetest part was my kids—Jaden, Willow, and my bonus son, Trey—my three favorite people in the world. They were, hands down, the best thing that ever happened to me.

If I remained the way I was, what good would I be to them anyway? Besides, I told myself, they would be okay. They would have their father, a devoted and great dad. Their being okay, in my mind, depended on me

Many of us, as women, to one degree or another, don’t recognize the insidious ways we are made to feel unworthy.

My belief is that every woman is worthy, a walking treasure, and deserves to live her life as the heroine

of her own story. A woman has a right to her adventures, even if it means courting her shadows as guides to her brightest light. And she has a right to her pitfalls as well as her triumphs, and to the wisdom gained that leads to her self-actualization. When we as women have the courage to find keys to the

treasure chest of ourselves, we find Divine freedom (a freedom that is not whimsical), and with this, our lives are deliberately and unapologetically crafted by our own hands.

Don’t forget the beauty that surrounded you, that fed you and nourished your energy in a way that

helped you get here, to where you are TODAY. Take time to remember the joy that existed so that we can reconnect our inner child to those pleasant moments that fed us the hope we needed, that gave us the strength to make it to this moment. You are so much more than your trauma.

What I find helpful is exploring my memories and feelings with pen and paper. If you find some quiet time today, take an opportunity to write three beautiful memories from your childhood, or simply from your past, that helped you to nourish the beautiful YOU that you are.

Suicidal thoughts were not completely new to me. What was new: I’d begun to think about how to have a fatal accident that wouldn’t look intentional—for the sake of my kids.

doing a good job of making my death appear to be conclusively accidental. As grim as it may sound, the world had become less heavy now that I had a solution, a plan for my own exit, and I was resolved.

Chaos in the midst of chaos isn’t funny, but chaos in the midst of order is. —STEVE MARTIN

As I saunter in with my new extended rattail down to my butt crack, I immediately catch eyes with a new dude across the room who is engaged in a very energetic conversation with one of our classmates. He’s wearing a thick old-school alpaca

sweater and jeans. He has beautiful brown skin with big brown eyes, heavy eyebrows, and a tiny peanut head. The minute I turn and notice him, he’s already staring at me. Me catching his eyes gives him the gumption to walk across the room and come right to me. Boldly, he smiles a big

ole smile, showing off his big ole teeth, and puts out his hand to shake mine. “Hi,” he says, “I’m Tupac.” I am struck by the power of that unusual name. Tupac.