THE NONLINEAR PATH 12: Fire In The Belly
The Power Tina Turner Created In Having The Courage To Tell Her Story
fire in the belly, n. The emotional stamina and vigor, passion, or inner drive to achieve something, to take action, etc.
A WORD OF CAUTION: This article includes writing on abuse and abandonment. I am adding this for those who may be triggered. Please take care.
Tina Turner passed away this week and I did what we often do when an iconic artist dies….I spent a little time with her work and reflected on its effect on my life.
It was substantial.
But I don’t want to spend time reminiscing about her big hits, 80s hair, post-apocalyptic film roles, and incredible Amazonian stage presence. This is not an article about her career, her music, or her gorgeous legs.
This is about her courage to share her story and its relevance to a young Gen X woman trying to find her power.
The Acid Queen From Nutbush
Growing up throughout the 1970s, as soon as I could form memories, Tina Turner was there. Not in any significant way, she was just part of the tapestry of daily entertainment culture. Music on the radio, performances on TV, and albums in my parent's record collection.
I grew up in the Bay Area of California with young professional creative parents. My father often moonlighted as a professional musician. My mom often sang harmony with him and played guitar on the couch at home. Dad sometimes had band practice in the living room or just plugged in and played himself.
Music was just part of life.
I was often exposed to films like Monterey Pop, Jimi Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire, Janis Joplin screaming “Come On!”, The Who literally tearing things up. I watched as my Dad chuckled at the antics and my reaction to them. He seemed to love sharing it all with me. I loved watching it with him.
At some point, when VCRs were new, we had a Betamax and a copy of the 1975 rock opera Tommy which I proceeded to watch over and over again through the years. I was both shocked and fascinated by Tina’s performance as the Acid Queen. I had no clue early on what any of it meant, but I could tell by the syringe and Tina's crazy facial gyrations that it wasn’t something I was supposed to know much about.
It was a powerful performance, especially by a woman, and it had a lasting impact on me.
I didn’t follow Tina and Ike Turner back then. I remember liking Nutbush City Limits when sifting through the record collection in the house. That was about it.
And when Tina made her solo debut in 1984 with Private Dancer and “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” I was less than enchanted. By then, I was fourteen and done with popular music. I had grown up on too much of it and was developing a taste for edgier rock, metal, punk, and all the new wave synthy stuff coming out. Once MTV hit in 1981 and began showing weird new music from Britain and strange underground places, I sped down that tunnel as fast as I could. I was off Top 40 for good.
In 1993 when the film based on Tina’s autobiography I, Tina, was released, I did not go to see it. By then I was twenty-three and on my own in Portland, a full state away from my family, trying desperately to pull myself out of the trouble I’d gotten into. I didn’t have much time or money to go to the movies.
My roommates and I did manage to scrape together enough to have cable TV, though. That’s where I eventually saw the film “What’s Love Got To Do With It”.
That was the moment I connected with Tina Turner. That was the moment I became a fan.
I connected because she had the courage to open up and tell her story, which ended up being incredibly close to mine (minus all the fame and stuff).
Although the film was the usual altered adaptation of the actual story from her book, it got the point across effectively…so effectively that I still cannot watch it without breaking into a cry session.
I have to give credit to Angela Bassett for her amazing performance, one that she called life-altering. In her last words to Bassett this past year, Turner wrote:
“You never mimicked me. Instead, you reached deep into your soul, found your inner Tina, and showed her to the world. That’s your gift, becoming your character with conviction, truth, dignity, and grace, even when it’s painful, and takes everything you have and more. It’s not just acting, it’s being.”
Through Tina’s willingness to share her story, and Angela’s willingness to go all in and portray it, I was reconnected to my own.
There were so many similarities. We both had been abandoned by at least one biological parent at a very young age. We both had found ourselves in abusive relationships that we would not leave or “abandon” due to our own experiences of abandonment. We both found salvation in the self-reflection and empowerment of Eastern philosophy and Buddhism. We both had to work to build our identities as individuals and independent women, and we both had to make important choices surrounding our names.
Tina did all this before me, and far better, but hearing her story created a space for me to confront my own and start the process of healing. If this amazingly powerful woman could go through this and become what she has….then there was hope for me. Tina helped me find power in my pain by sharing hers.
What’s Love Got To Do With Any Of It?
Let me start clearly by saying I did not come from an abusive household. On the contrary, I was raised by the most inspirational mother and a creative adoptive father who gave me the love and stability I needed to get to where I am today. I was, however, abandoned by my biological father, another form of abuse (neglect and rejection) that pushed me unwittingly into an abusive relationship of my own.
By the time I saw the film based on Tina’s life, I was in my mid-twenties, just a few years past my own relationship escape around the age of twenty-one. I, too, had ended up in a relationship with a talented, good-looking artist and musician, one much younger and far less known than Ike Turner. Still enchanting nonetheless, and with many personal problems, including a drinking one and his own issues with being abandoned.
Just like Tina, the abandoned little girl in me took pity, and to save myself I poured everything into saving someone else. Many times I heard the same words from the film…” are you going to leave me like all the rest of them"?” A constant dare to not become like the one who had done that to me so long ago. It was a control tactic to keep me around, to keep him stuck in place and me right along with him. I saw it mirrored back to me so clearly in the film.
And when we tried to leave, the bruises came. Only mine were never on my face…a clear plan to keep things hidden so that no one would “think bad” of him.
I took pity on him, made excuses for him, and tried to make him look better in others’ eyes like Tina did with Ike. I had too much compassion for his pain, which was pretty immense. What I had to learn was that I was covering for my pain by helping him, enabling him to not deal with his. I also had to learn that he was not willing to heal his pain, not willing to change, that he subconsciously wanted to stay in it and would never leave it. And he would do whatever he could to keep me there with him. Just like Ike.
I cut the ties myself, with a good amount of fear and terror, just like Tina.
I was hit with two distinct feelings that night. One, that he was going to do whatever he could to stop my progress forward by trying to ruin the things that gave me independence, namely my job and my friends. Two, that if I did manage to fall asleep that night I might not wake up…at all.
The most powerful moment in the film is undeniably when Tina, in a tailored white suit, escapes from a hotel room after a bad fight with Ike before a show. Bloody and battered, she runs through the lobby and across a busy road (in the true story Tina hid among trash cans) to a Ramada Inn across the street. With 36 cents and a mobil card she did the hardest thing one could do, she asked for help. The scene is emotional and beautifully done. It is the inflection point, a point of giving in, of release. It is the point at which we find our true power….at our weakest.
Mine came on a night I arrived home to our apartment to find him in the kitchen, already drunk, cutting up vegetables with a very large knife. He had a Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde habit of drinking until he swapped personas. Mr. Hyde was now in the house.
I had been out with some coworkers. It was already dark and I had to be to work at 5:30 am. He didn’t like that I was making friends in this new city and that he wasn’t.
His jealousy took over and the yelling and insults started flying faster than usual. There was no physical fight this time, but the threats were growing louder, darker, and more intense. I watched as he twisted his face up in that ugly manner, slurring his words, calling me names, all while chopping food violently, occasionally pointing the knife in my direction. I started to worry…something was different this time.
When I declared that I was going to bed, his anger and control took over. He ripped the clock radio from the socket, the only alarm in the house, and locked it away so that I would have no resources to wake me up for work.
I was then hit with two distinct feelings. One, that he was going to do whatever he could to stop my progress forward by trying to ruin the things that gave me independence, namely my job and my friends. Two, that if I did manage to fall asleep that night I might not wake up….at all.
Between the knife he was waving around and the vintage World War ll rifle he had in the closet (loaded…God, knows why I allowed that in the house), there were some very good reasons to believe this could happen.
That’s when I knew I’d hit my limit… when I was finally in real fear for my life.
No big dramatic film-worthy scene ensued. Instead this was reality… the absolute terror-filled gut realization of what could, and might, actually happen. This is when it all became real for me.
I stayed awake all night.
Seeing the film about Tina Turner’s story further catalyzed my intention forward. I somehow felt connected to a sisterhood through the shared experience. It made me feel less alone, less at fault. It made me determined to heal and to create something bigger than where I came from.
The next morning I went to work and dug up the courage to ask a coworker for help. I stayed with her for a few days while I made a plan to go get my things and move out.
It took a few more years to shake him off completely, but this inflection point became a catalyst. It pushed me to start training in martial arts, study Buddhism and Taoism, and find a healthier community of people.
Seeing the film about Tina Turner’s story further catalyzed my intention forward. I somehow felt connected to a sisterhood through the shared experience. It made me feel less alone, less at fault. It made me determined to heal and to create something bigger than where I came from.
I read every self-help book I could find, joined therapy groups, studied philosophy, healing, and business, and quit any type of drugs or drinking. I even stopped dating for a few years to work on myself, to find out who I was without the crutch of someone else.
It led me to get my black belt, go back to school for two degrees, and find my way into the professional design world. It prepared me to become a good mother, start my own business, and keep moving forward even in the face of sheer terror.
What’s In A Name? Only What You Make Of It.
Tina left her marriage and her professional life with nothing. She gave up any claim to money, creative rights, and royalties. She kept her name. Ike fought for years to get it back. He even wrote a book about it in 1999 called Takin’ Back My Name.
He had given her that name but Tina was the one who made it something. Her name was her. She created its value and she knew what she could do with it. She then set out to start over, at 44, an age considered well past prime in the music industry. And she proved herself, to herself, and everyone else.
I had my name issues, too. By the time I was 6 years old, I had had three different versions of my full name. Identity has been tough for me to tackle.
At birth, I was given my biological father’s last name (although my parents were never married…a fact I wouldn’t learn until I was 25). He had given me my original middle name, Aquaria. I don’t think my mom was that into it. She changed it after they split up to his mother’s name, my Italian grandmother Marie.
Then, a few months before my 6th birthday, I was adopted by my new Dad and given his last name of Rose.
Sometime in my late twenties, I made the decision that I would never change my name again, not in a marriage or for any reason. I was starting to own my story, and my name was the key to that story.
To me, keeping my name has been a symbol of personal identity and freedom. In her divorce, Tina chose just one thing: freedom.
“She saw that if the Turner name was a property right she could win and use into the future—indeed, she trademarked the name in 1978—that was all she needed. Her determination, talent, and resilience would take care of the rest.” -Greg Bordelon, Bloomberg Law
Your Story Is Your Fire
We are in an interesting era right now, one where we have an overabundance of sharing, but a real lack of true connection. Social media and marketing have created a world saturated with image-consciousness and idealized storytelling. To balance, there is a hunger for raw honesty and truth in a way that has never before been acceptable. We want to hear each other’s stories. They help. They help us feel connected, less weird, and not alone. They inspire us as we turn inward and learn more about ourselves.
We are navigating this new world, trying to understand our place in it and what meaning our lives can have now. Our personal stories are gold. They are our fire and source of true power. They are worth sharing but it takes courage to be vulnerable, to show weakness. That’s why sharing our weaknesses has such power.
But make no mistake, this isn’t showing weakness for weakness’ sake. In martial arts, you never tell your opponent that you are terrified, injured, or don’t know what you’re doing before you step onto the floor for a fight. You tell yourself, and you become honest with yourself and your expectations. Then you step up with courage and do what you can. You figure it out, you fail fast and publicly. And you learn. Then you talk about it afterward and you find out then that your opponent was just as terrified as you. And you learn from each other.
I am so inspired and grateful for Tina Turner having the courage to share her story. She will never know how much it helped me, but I do. That’s all that matters.
“How do we say farewell to a woman who owned her pain and trauma and used it as a means to help change the world?” Bassett wrote on Instagram on Wednesday. “Through her courage in telling her story … her determination to carve out a space in rock and roll for herself and for others who look like her, Tina Turner showed others who lived in fear what a beautiful future filled with love, compassion, and freedom should look like.” - Rachel Pannett, The Washington Post
Wow Michelle, I can’t believe that in all the years knowing you, I never knew this story. Thank you for sharing that. Very powerful!
thanks michelle.