We are at the tail end of Black History Month, and I wish to celebrate by spotlighting the work of an extraordinary woman, Regina Louise, who is a true artistic force to be reckoned with. She is the author of two memoirs about her experience traveling through over 30 foster homes in her youth and emerging triumphantly on the other side. Her story has recently been adapted as a Lifetime movie that is viewable on Amazon Prime.
After living in over 30 foster homes and overcoming dangerous withdrawals from inaccurately prescribed drugs, Regina Louise took charge of her life. After missing many years of formal education and labeled 'below-average or marginal at best,' Regina's optimism and perseverance has helped her become a clear definition of resilience.
Author of the bestselling memoir Somebody's Someone, Regina's story has been featured on NPR's All things Considered, The Tavis Smiley Show and The CBS Early Show.
She is a leadership coach in human services, a Hoffman Process teaching candidate, and the winner of an Adoption Excellence Award from the Administration for Children and Families. She is also a trauma-informed trainer who advocates on behalf of foster youth and their emotional permanency. She lives in Northern California.
In her most recent memoir, Someone Has Led This Child to Believe, Regina tells the true story of overcoming neglect in the US foster-care system. Drawing on her experience as one of society's abandoned children, she recounts how she emerged from the cruel, unjust system, not only to survive, but to flourish.
This unflinching, unforgettable account has been adapted as a Lifetime movie, “I am Somebody's Child,” which can be viewed on Amazon Prime.
KARIN GUTMAN: It's Black History Month and you recently attended the NAACP Image Awards. Can you tell us about it?
REGINA LOUISE: Every year the NAACP Image Awards recognizes a film and literature and music that has been created to highlight the gifts and contributions of those of us of African American ancestry and identity. And my movie, I Am Somebody's Child, was nominated for Best Director and therefore the director invited me as her guest. So, I accepted.
KARIN: Nice!
REGINA: There are two events. One on Friday, which is a dinner and then one on Saturday, which is televised. The one on Saturday has all the mega stars—the Morgan Freeman’s, the Angela Bassette’s, the Jamie Fox’s, the Rihanna’s and Tiffany Haddish’s, and on and on.
Native Son won in the category of Best Director. As far as I'm concerned, when you're black in America, whoever wins is a win for all of us. So, it's a beautiful thing no matter how you cut it, because the work I do, have done, and hope to continue to do, isn't about me necessarily as much as it is about those who are historically underrepresented and those who are voiceless or marginalized. For me to know that the movie—no matter what the nomination is—has legs now, means a lot.
KARIN: I know the movie is largely based on your second book, Someone Has Led This Child to Believe. Can you tell us about the story?
REGINA: It was my master's thesis for graduate school. It is written in collage because to say that all the memories I have are 100% accurate, is pushing it. I wanted my memoir structurally to mimic memory—fragmented, nonlinear, with these collage-like moments. I think that the movie should have been a miniseries because it's such a vast story. In my book I jumped from 19 years old to 40, covering some of the most tumultuous years of my life.
KARIN: For people who are not familiar with your story, it might help to also share more about your first book, Somebody’s Someone.
REGINA: Somebody’s Someone is a story about my younger self being left in the care of my mother's foster, or kinship, family members. They were not of my ilk. We didn't jive. Our souls were not compatible. So, as a result of the abuse, I decided, I have to get out of here. I won't make it out alive if I stay. So, it's about my leaving, my activating agency at 11-years-old and leaving the situation for a better situation, not knowing what better was. But I knew it had to be an upshot from being beaten, neglected, and constantly shamed. It's a heroine's journey of taking my life into my own hands and manifesting my destiny and meeting up with a woman who wanted to be my mother, but wasn't allowed to because of racial differences during the '70s.
Then the second book, Someone Led This Child to Believe, picks up where the first leaves off. The ending of the second book rectifies the ending of the first book.
KARIN: I believe all of our stories contribute to a broader conversation that's happening in the world. How do you see your books, your stories, contributing to this conversation about race specifically?
REGINA: There are many conversations going on. Where am I in that conversation? I am in the conversation from the point of view that there are hundreds of thousands of young black girls in the foster care system. There are more children in foster care than there are in the general population of America. Let me say it this way… the conversation that I am narrating is about the overrepresentation of young girls in foster care and how they are continually being left behind.
The equity gap between foster youth or young black girls and their contemporaries is staggering. They're so behind, and the opportunity to be given a hand-up is not happening. They are a forgotten about demographic. Period.
I believe that my attempt—although a feeble one at best—has been to shake it up, to open the national narrative around it. I don't know if I've been successful at that. In terms of African American History Month, Cynthia Erivo, who played Harriet in the film, received an Oscar nomination as well as the NAACP nomination for the song “Stand Up.” I think we could all stand to learn from the words of that song. "I'm going to stand up, take my people with me, together we are going to a brand-new home."
Even though this song is about a time in the past, it's not. It's actually about the time right now; because if it weren't, there would be no need for the NAACP because there would be equity amongst all races and we both know that that's not true.
The bridge is so brilliant: “I believe it's my responsibility to turn my face to the sun and with a weight on my shoulder.”
That is so apropos for today… for people to take the weight, take the mantle of displaced children on their shoulders and, opposed to a bullet in the gun, take the intellectual pursuit of equality and justice for all. Use the Declaration of Independence to arm ourselves with what it means to close the gap on access, with respect to children in foster care and all disenfranchised children.
Black History Month for me is most effective when it is all encompassing. I love it when it's not just about the celebrities and stars, but also about those of us who are out there hustling day and night. Last year I canvased 47,000 miles on Amtrak across the country on behalf of unwanted children. That's real.
And I can say that I championed the movie for 17 years. Not for it to be about a white woman loving or saving a girl. It is really about agency. Perseverance. Sure, I had somebody model for me what love was. But what's most interesting is how I was able to scale that. How I was able to multiply that woman's kindness and generosity throughout my life. That to me is the definition of triumph of the spirit—to believe what is possible against all indictments.
To me that's what ties all the work I do to black history; not just this month, but every day, every trip I take, every time I say yes, I'm doing it on behalf of black children that are disremembered and unaccounted for. The ones that don't have a voice, the ones that could never in a million years afford to luxuriate in a lot of the successes that many of us have acquired. My work is to represent that.
KARIN: It can be challenging to talk about race. How can someone move beyond fear or hesitation and enter the conversation?
REGINA: It's to ask those questions that are relevant to my subjectivity. What is it like to be black in America? What is it like to be you? What has it been like to feel you constantly have to make a way where there isn't one? It's all about bedside manners to me, that we all do our best to recognize our biases and then to compassionately try and relax them so that we can make room for that “other person” to be in their their-ness and to allow that to just be.
KARIN: Let’s talk about your new book, for which you just landed a publishing deal. Congratulations! I know it’s a new kind of format for you. Can you talk about it?
REGINA: It's a set of strategies, actually. Strategies that I got by bootstrapping. I consider myself a straight up bootstrapper, and I consider myself a straight up, kick-ass kind of girl. I do what needs to be done by force or extreme effort. That to me is kick-ass. That’s what I had to be. It wasn't an option. Now I've chosen it as a superpower. Kickass!
So, I have a book full of strategies and activities and actionable steps that I'm offering people in a way that will hopefully encourage them to move past injunctions that moor them in ineffectiveness or unhappiness. I think one of the virtues of my not being “parented” is that I have been my own savior. Isn't that what Adele said: "This time I'll be greater, I'll be my own savior." I know that quite well.
I know the dance of what it means to save myself again and again and again and to resurrect myself again and again and again. I never had the luxury of being moored in depression. I saw very recently… there was something online where someone creatively unpacked depression, to rephrase it as, “I pressed on.” Within depression is I pressed on, and I'm actually going to use that. How do you transmute, how do you transform depression? How does anybody do that? I didn't have the luxury to be depressed. I could only press on.
To learn more about Regina, visit her website.
