I’ve been watching a lot of videos of Tina Turner this week. She is so awesome. Other people seem to be focusing on her voice or her hits or her legs or her hair, but I’m focusing on how she kept reinventing her life and writing her own ticket for how she wanted to live. She didn’t let society (or Ike) limit who she was. She didn’t let trauma define her.
I want to be like Tina. I want us ALL to be like Tina.
The child who was picking cotton in Nutbush, Tennessee later moved into her mansion in Switzerland. The kid with musical gifts and a “rough” voice ended up winning 12 Grammy awards, selling out stadiums, and selling over 100 million albums. She was a black woman who made it in the white man’s world of rock and roll. She left a marriage where she was held in bondage, dreamt of selling out stadiums as the Rolling Stones did – and then made that happen. The middle-aged divorced mother of 4 became one of the biggest sex symbols in modern culture.
She defied so many expectations. She left her famously abusive marriage to Ike Turner and ended up finding peace with Erwin Bach, a German man 16 years her junior. She left the US and became a citizen of Switzerland, where diversity is defined by whether you speak German, French or Italian.
How did she do all this? She said it was because she kept her mind clear – she never smoked or drank. She discovered Buddhist chanting early on. She said that Buddhism saved her life. And Buddhism helped her accept the possibility of death later on.
I keep thinking of her song, “I Don’t Want To Fight No More.” It has so much to do with the philosophy behind divorce mediation.
… I don’t care who’s wrong or right
I don’t really want to fight no more (too much talking babe)
Let’s sleep on it tonight
I don’t really want to fight no more (tired of all these games)
But baby, don’t you know
That I don’t want to hurt no more (it’s time, I’m walking, babe)
Don’t care now who’s to blame
I don’t really want to fight no more
This is time for letting go
… Hanging on to the past
It only stands in our way
We had to grow for our love to last
But we just grew apart
No, I don’t want to hurt no more
So I hope you’ll go out there this weekend and find yourself a little inner Tina. Don’t let your current struggles define you. You don’t gotta fight no more.
And if you find yourself dancing or singing in the process, well, so much the better.