An Inspired Chat with Tamika Williams

Tamika Williams shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Good morning Tamika, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? Have any recent moments made you laugh or feel proud?
Recently, I went to essence first and we attended the last night’s concert. It was like a 90s throwback with so many artists from that era. While having the time of my life, I unfolded my leg and when I did so my flip-flop fell off down to the bottom of the bleachers in the Superdome. I had to wait almost 2 hours for them to actually find my shoe. In the meantime, I had to enjoy the concert with one shoe on and one shoe off. It was one of the highlights of our trip.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
So my name is Tamika Williams and I am 43, born and raised in the Washington, DC area. I am the only girl and the only granddaughter on my mother’s side of the family. This made for a very interesting upbringing because I had to learn to be tough early, hanging out with the fellas. I am very family-oriented, and I love to help people who feel unheard be heard. Because of this, I decided to create a village that was supportive of young girls and women in life. Particularly, I created Beautiful As I Am to be for someone else what I had and helped me overcome so many obstacles in my life. The story of my life is full of victory after the storm. This has been a very challenging year for us as we’ve lost two large sponsors, and our budget was depleted. So I have been focusing on new relationships with people simply to just introduce the life-changing work that we are doing at Beautiful As I Am.

Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
That I wasn’t enough. Coming up, I was the girl who was considered to be fat and not pretty. In addition to the fact that I had gotten a lot of trouble as a child and couldn’t seem to get it right, this also played into my mindset of thinking, I was not enough. Not only did I not think it, I was told it on a monthly basis because of my behavior. Which had me believe that I wasn’t enough, and there was no reason to even work to change. This mindset followed me all the way into my current life, and just recently I have been doing the work to train myself to understand that I am enough and that I was created enough.

What have been the defining wounds of your life—and how have you healed them?
Absolutely, as a matter of fact, this past month I wanted to give up. Earlier this year, in February, I lost my mom in the name of my organization, along with sponsors and budget. I did not know how I was going to continue to go on and do this work with so many losses. I got tired of having to struggle and fight for something that I’m doing that is literally changing lives. I felt like and feel like I am always working in a deficit and never being able to have everything we need. It is a struggle to have a nonprofit. It is a struggle to get consistent, committed people to work with you, and it is a struggle to do that when you have seemingly lost everything. But I also understand how important it is for women and young girls to understand that they can overcome any obstacle. When I think of the struggles and how hard it is to get this vision off the ground, I do want to quit, but then I think about all the young girls and women lies. We have touched in some special way throughout the time we have existed, and I tell myself that is enough to keep going.

Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
To me, this is an important truth, we do not have to charge people and arm in a leg to provide them with knowledge on how to improve themselves or to achieve success. I believe we live in a time where people want to charge extra extraordinary amount of money to get sometimes knowledge that one can just find via Google. I look at our community in the olden days and one of the biggest things that made our community strong is that people believed in sharing resources and information. That was the way that the community grew and continue to be successful. In today’s society, we have gotten into a place where we don’t even want to share basic knowledge with others with in our community to ensure that they are successful. It has become about money and how much of it I can achieve. When the reality is if we teach people how to fish then they then can teach their family how to fish and their family could teach their family how to fish and then we will see a community of people thriving and being successful.

Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
As I mentioned earlier, my mom passed this past February and one of the things that we were adamant about was to celebrate her legacy. And something that people consistently said about my mom is that no matter what she would help you. It didn’t matter where you came from or how many mistakes you made she believed everyone deserved help and love and that’s who she was. So I want the same for my life. I want my legacy to be that of a servant someone who brought people together someone who created spaces for the voiceless someone who poured life into those souls that seem forgotten or left to the wayside. I want people to remember that I was a person that believed in overcoming any adversity and obstacles that you face and that I would do any and everything to ensure and help you with that.

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