MEMPHIS, TN – Growing up in Clarksdale, MS., was a harrowing experience for Princess Washington, who was caught up in a vortex of trauma that swirled all around her. But she refused to succumb to it.
The struggle was real, though. After Washington’s grandmother rescued her grandchildren from her crack-addicted daughter and her son’s dangerous impulses, Washington would soon grapple with adolescence.
At 17, she birthed a baby. Insisting that she graduates high school, one of her uncles and his wife offered to raise her daughter during the week. On weekends, Washington would take the reins.
Motherhood was now Washington’s new reality. While she didn’t want her daughter to suffer from ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences, she longed to be a doting mother. But anger was welling up in her.
At school, for example, she was often bullied. But then she yielded to a dare one day and stabbed a girl in the head with a pencil. The assault got her suspended from school and branded a troublemaker.
“I got suspended a few times from school,” she said. “And I’d taken a knife to school.”
Meanwhile, Washington’s uncle and aunt were still raising her daughter. Uneasy with the arrangement, she said, “Here I am following in my mother’s footsteps, where somebody else is raising my child.”
After Washington graduated high school, she assumed her daughter would be returned. But that didn’t happen. She said, “My uncle wouldn’t give me my baby back. He said, ‘You’re going to college.’”
As her uncle insisted, Washington matriculated at Coahoma Community College, a Historically Black Community College in Mississippi. She finished with an associate degree in
Biology. In her pursuit of more degrees, she went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in Law and Legal Studies, a Master of Business Administration, and a Master of Science in Criminal Justice.
Her daughter was returned when she was 5 years old. “But she’s constantly fighting to get back to my uncle,” said Washington, who, during this time, had birthed a son. “Now, I’m stuck trying to raise two kids.”
It was a difficult balance for the single mother trying to work and raise children. So, she allowed her daughter to spend more time with her uncle while a neighbor had agreed to babysit her son so she could work.
“Now I’m back in that position again where somebody else is raising my children,” she said.
At some point, Washington opted to leave Clarksdale, MS., to get ahead in life. “I took the kids and left the city,” she said. Destination: Belzoni, a small town in Mississippi. Now she lives in Southaven, MS., and manages one of the largest properties in Memphis. She also held down a job in security as chief of operations for On The Top Security — until recently.
Despite Washington’s struggles with ACEs, her life is no longer topsy-turvy — thanks in part to a praying grandmother who kept her grandchildren in church. Now, she solely depends on God in all facets of her life.
“I can’t complain,” said Washington, who has three children now — ages 25, 21 and 17. “I’ve come a long way, and I’ve been blessed.”
Some time ago, Washington had a conversation with her mother and one of her uncles. She walked out fuming, she said, recalling that uncle saying to her: “It seems to me you turned out alright.”
Washington was incensed. “Nobody ever stopped to ask us how we were dealing with the things that we went through,” she said. “Everybody just expected us to just pick up the pieces and move right along.”
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