Dreams Come True Through Laughter
TERRI
TIFFANY HADDISH
COLE
Just last week, I was running around the Tonight Show Studio taking pictures with the likes of Jay Leno and Sarah Silverman. This is something I thought would be impossible—me being the oldest of five kids from South Central L.A., having a schizophrenic mom, going into foster care, and not knowing how to fit in. How could I ever be making my Dreams come true?
LCSW
RACHEL P. GOLDSTEIN
I don’t start the cyber part of my day until I have meditated, consumed green juice, and exercised. Sunday is a no-tech day. Rachel Goldstein: What inspires you most?
Terri Cole: Being a witness and a catalyst for clients to embrace their pure potential and create happy, meaning-filled lives.
RG: Do you spend time away from the internet? If so, where and what do you spend your time doing?
TC: Loving deeply makes me vulnerable to feeling loss deeply.
TC: I don’t start the cyber part of my day until I have meditated, consumed green juice (that Vic usually makes), and exercised. Sunday is a no-tech day. We split our time between the New York Berkshires and the East Village in Manhattan. If we are in the country, we hike, snowshoe, do yoga, spend time with my sisters and my mother, cook the bounty from Vic’s organic garden, and read. If we are in the city, we walk, spend time with friends, cook, and exercise.
RG: Where do you see yourself in five years?
RG: What do you do to stay balanced? Mind, body, and spirit?
TC: I see myself continuing to empower people to expand their idea of what is possible through writing, speaking, and media. I see Vic and I spending a few months a year traveling around the country visiting our ever-growing blended family. I see myself rocking a hardcore daily yoga practice with an incredibly flexible, healthy body.
TC: Every day I meditate, do an energy routine that my friend Lara Licharowicz created, and use Emotional Freedom Technique (The Tapping Solution) to stay balanced. Four times as week, I do a combination of yoga, Intensati, and Zumba. I have mentors, am in therapy myself, and have incredible friendships that I count on to keep me sane. I also put a high priority on having fun while doing everything.
RG: What makes you happy?
TC: Being anywhere and doing just about anything with my husband, Victor. RG: What makes you vulnerable?
RG: How would you guide the youth of today in hopes of providing a platform of love and honesty?
TC: I would challenge them to think for themselves, look within, find a mentor, be kind, and volunteer their time. TERRICOLE.COM 56 ORIGINMAGAZINE.COM
RG: When you go to sleep at night, do you feel accomplished that you are making a difference in the world? Tell us about what makes you smile most.
TC: I have no doubt I am making a difference, as I see my clients and students transform their lives. Like many conscious people, I want to do more and reach more people who are in emotional pain. My awesome blended family makes me smile most. Fifteen years ago, I married a widower with three sons. I don’t use the word “step” because there is no step between us. Creating my family with Vic and the boys remains the single most important defining experience of my life. RG: What is your guiltiest pleasure?
TC: My subscription to People magazine just might be my guiltiest pleasure.
When I was nine, my mother was involved in a really bad car accident that my siblings and I should have been in. Thanks to me getting my mom to give me some responsibility, we were not in the car. I told her, “Let me babysit. I can make hot dogs, rice, eggs, and all kinds of food for us kids. You can go to work and not have to worry about us.” With a menu like that, all she had to worry about was our lack of fiber. She worked the night shift, so most of the time I spent babysitting, my siblings would be asleep. Off my mom went, to work, trusting me with the kids. I was so proud then. Three days went by and my mom did not come home from her job at the post office. You can imagine the stress. I was nine years old. I started to worry. We were running out of food; as the one in charge, my sisters and brothers were really working my last nerve. My mom eventually came home, after having had an accident and going through the windshield of her car, but she was never my mom again, and I was no longer a kid. My relationship with my mother deteriorated as the physical and verbal abuse escalated. By the time I was 13 it got really bad. We were split up and put in foster homes. After being shuffled around, we all got to live with Grandma. I kept getting into trouble at school. The social worker finally got tired of coming to my school and said, “Tiffany, you have two choices this summer...you can go to the Laugh Factory Comedy Camp or you can go to psychiatric therapy.” I was like, “Which one has drugs?” She didn’t give in to my joking around. I decided to go to comedy camp. The Laugh Factory gave me a voice and an outlet for my pain. I would not realize how much I needed comedy until many years later. If I could talk to the me I was fifteen years ago, I would say, “Tiffany, keep doing what you are doing and be yourself, no matter what they say. You will hit some hard times but if you just believe in you, so will everybody else.”
My awesome blended family makes me smile most. Fifteen years ago, I married a widower with three sons. I don’t use the word “step” because there is no step between us. TWITTER: @TIFFANYHADDISH ORIGINMAGAZINE.COM 57