Meet Tanisha Tate

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tanisha Tate a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tanisha, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
My Story is big, but my Triumph is bigger. I like to say since birth I’ve been fighting for my life. Being born premature alone came with its challenge but the challenges after that no one could have prepared me for. Resiliency is such a funny word when you feel like you’re constantly fighting to prove you deserve this life or your life has quality meaning. At least that’s how I used to think. I didn’t understand the true meaning of resilience until 2023. Some could say my entire life proved resilient. When I was seven, I was hit by a car going 50 mph. At that time, you would think my initial reaction would be panic over the pain I would feel after shooting up more than 6ft off the ground hitting hot concrete. No, it was fear that my mom would not buy me stockings. Moral of this story is that my family passed down generations of hurt and the idea that expressing emotions made you weak. So much so that I couldn’t focus on physical pain but fear that I would get in trouble for ripping my stockings. Now fast forward, I’ve faced many obstacles where I braved the fact that everything was okay while behind closed doors, I was fighting for myself. I have been verbally and emotionally abused, I’ve been belittled, I’ve been passed over, I’ve experienced life health scares, depression, and so forth. So, when asked where my resiliency comes from? I’ll respond that it comes from not wanting to be “her” again. It comes from releasing fear and accepting gratitude for overcoming and peace for understanding.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
The Black Woman Phenomenon sets out to increase confidence among young women and girls through raising emotional intelligence and awareness. It not easy being a black woman with emotions in society today, and especially awareness of those emotions. BWP was specifically crafted and developed to not only increase awareness but to showcase that healing is a lifestyle and confidence is a quality to own not acquire. I accomplish this task by using my experiences whether personal or professional to provide insight to the evolution of emotional intelligence. What sets BWP apart is the delivery and how I set out to achieve this goal. I offer workshops, etiquette classes for young ladies, monthly empowerment groups, trainings for black women in business, guided journals, apparel and more. I’m cultivating a lifestyle of awareness and “Minding My Black Woman Joy” while learning and teaching. BWP is more than a brand is a way of life, its safe space and community for women of color to embrace, express, and own conviction in everything they set out to do. When you’ve been constantly undermined, belittled, looked over, or even used as the “affirmative action” doll you eventually learn to stand on your value and boundaries and raise your awareness enough to become the woman you desire to be not the woman the world has deemed you to be based on history and color.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
In self-evaluating I will say the three most important qualities that were most impactful to me were confidence, gratitude, and grace. Confidence is not a skill to acquire it’s a quality to own. Owning your confidence with purpose places you in rooms you would have never thought to be in. Gratitude extended outward provides insights. Gratitude extended inward provides acceptance. Being in a mindset of gratitude creates space for one to accept themselves in every phase they may enter. It’s the holy grail to reaping what you sow but being mindful that what you have is more than what others have yet to see. Being grateful for your present builds space for abundance. You can’t manifest more until you’ve appreciated what you have. Which leads to grace, Grace is the power of patience and peace combined. Grace is what one gives themselves when they understand we can’t control the uncontrollable, but we can provide grace for transformation to take place. The advice I would provide is shift when you need to, everything is not mean to go with you and you aren’t meant to take everything. Don’t take the trip and miss the journey.

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
When I am feeling overwhelmed, I utilize grounding techniques to keep me present but to remain calm through the process. For me great grounding techniques come in the practice of Mindfulness. Taking five minutes to pay attention to what I am feeling from head to toe, internally and externally. Acknowledging the root of it and allowing myself to feel through it. The next technique I use is the 54321-method using my sense to identify what I smell, hear, see, touch, and can taste. These two methods redirect my mind and release what’s taking up space that should not,

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