Nicole Avant

Yes, I was.

I'm a busy woman, but it's good.

Trying to be productive with my life.

The song and it's it's you know, it's so beautiful typical Diane Warren and then you know Gabby her sings the song and the 2 of them coming together and it's just it's one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard it was perfect for the film and I think every single person when you listen to the journey. It's all of us we're all on our own journeys in life and it's it's just beautiful.

So one of my fellow producers, Carrie, sent me a sizzle reel. And she said, listen, I know that you love history and American history. And I think we have a great piece of American history that has not been told. And I had heard of Major Charity Adams, but I had no idea about the battalion. And the 855 women. And I had no idea about the backlog of mail and 17 million pieces of mail.

And they had six months to deliver the mail. Everybody had tried to deliver this mail. Everybody. All the men. Everybody has tried to deliver the mail. No one can do it. They figured, we'll just send these women over. They're not going to be able to do it. You have six months. Good luck. They did it in three months. And the importance is...

And the best part of the story is that they really, as you saw in the clip, it's when you, there's no mail, there is low morale. And when you have low morale, you cannot win a war. You cannot be, you can't go forward if you're not speaking to your mother or your father. Imagine, there's no email, there's no Wi-Fi, there's nothing. It's the U.S. Postal Service.

And that is how people stayed connected. It's about connection, and humans have to stay connected, feel loved, feel together to move forward. And then the men, all of a sudden, everything turned around, and the men, you know, regained their vigor and their strength, and they moved forward, and they won. And these women, we have to thank them for this.

And I wanted to give them their flowers, and we did.

I decided, you know, you have to begin again. We all have to begin again in different parts of our lives and at some point on our journey. And for me, I wrote Think You'll Be Happy after my mom died and after she was killed. I mean, and it was just so, I mean, imagine. I mean, I spoke with her the night before Everything's great. And her last words to me were, OK, think you'll be happy.

And I figured I'd go to her house the next day and see her. There was an attempted robbery. Robbery went bad. My mom got caught in the crossfire. And I woke up to a call from my husband in the middle of the night saying, get to the hospital. your mom's been shot. And I, I'm telling you, you know, your world shatters, your heart shatters.

And I realized, A, I didn't want anyone else to feel so alone. There is no real, you know, everyone says, you're going to feel grief in this way. And then you're going to feel this day on this way. No. Grief comes in stages. It comes in waves. Everyone feels it differently. But it is a part of

of life and I didn't want people to feel ashamed of talking about being in grief and also give people tools how not to be taken down by grief. And as you know, I felt I was drowning in quicksand a lot of the times. And then I thought, you know what? No. This man already took a life. My father said, you're going to let this man take your life too? Finish your book, make the movie, keep going.

My dad was 92 and came to live with us. And it was, but it was such great advice because he said, Nicole, you have a life force. You have a life. I've given you life. You need to do something with your life. You need to honor your mother. And you can't let someone else, again, take your life force, your creativity, your future. Right.

So, you know, make the most of who always used to say, you know, you come with a number and you end with a number. What are you going to do with your dash? Your life is your dash and you have choices every day. And so I wanted to honor my mother, but also share all the lessons I learned from her and great life lessons. But, you know, my my father, too, but, you know, mostly about my mom.

And that's why I just think you'll be happy. She left me with a mantra. to think constructively, to be a good person, and to show up and create the best life that I can.

You know, I was so... It's so hard to explain, but I was... I've never felt that level of despair, ever. I knew what despair meant, and I've felt that way before, but never at this level. And I've never felt as furious And I didn't know what to do with it.

But I knew going back to my life force, I knew that if I hated someone so much, then that means that that energy takes over my life force and my light continues to dim and my light goes down and I can't be positive. I can't be powerful. I can't be productive while I'm busy hating somebody, while I'm busy wishing the worst on someone.

so for me it was you know forgiveness is such a tricky word i always tell people because people think oh you're how could you forgive that person how it's not condoning a behavior i'm never condoning violence or negativity or anything but forgiveness is for me it's for my strength it's for my mental health it's for my spiritual health it's for my physical health because unforgiveness is poison

And it's almost, you know, like they say, it says, you know, the snake will bite you. And instead, it's unforgiveness is running after the snake and asking the snake, why did you bite me? Why did you bite me? Why did you bite me? Instead of tending to the wound and taking the poison out.

So all that just came to me and I just remember falling on my knees because at that level, it was that heavy of just shock. And I remember I just said, I cannot hate this man because believe me, I was filled with hatred and it was such a terrible, ugly feeling. And I'm not that person. And so I just made a decision. I'm not going to be that person. I'm going to honor my parents.

I'm going to honor my mother. I'm going to live my life. I'm going to do my best. And you know what? If I move through life with my heart in repair, I move through life with my heart in repair. It's OK. Doesn't mean that the grief goes away. It just means I'm moving through life with it. But I try to be as it's not as heavy as

as I think it would have been had I not given up the anger, had I not given up the fury and the hate.

Knowing that I'm loved by, I mean, friends would simply text the words, I love you. I'm here for you, for anything, everything. And that just was a healing balm. Just, you know, being with friends and family and hearing, I love you. Even more than, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I love you kind of covers everything. But what it gave me was I had hope. I had hope to move forward.

I felt that I had a reason to live. It was a reminder, the more love, the more love you feel from others, it reminds you that you have a reason to be here. And I do have my dash. And I'd like to live out my dash. You know? And in order to do that, and I don't want to live out my dash as some, you know, angry bitch that's walking around just pissed off all the time.

I want to live my dash with as much joy and hope, but never, ever, ever give up. That's why I wanted to write the book. We all want to give up at times, all of us. for various different reasons. But things do get better, and the bad times do not last forever. They feel like they're going to last forever, but they don't. Nothing in life lasts forever. And so the good always comes back.

It comes back differently, and it comes back in ways that you may not even ever imagine, but the good always swings back into your life. I am...

It's a great post, but people forget it is very, and it's stereotyping right now, but it's very Miami Vice. So people forget that the Bahamas is a third border. So we've got Mexico and we've got Canada, but people forget the Bahamas is 53 miles off. of the coast. So the Bahamas has to be protected.

It is a huge law enforcement post, which, of course, now I'm friends with DEA and Coast Guard and FBI. All of a sudden, these were my guys. These were my people. And I thought, oh, wow, this is a completely different post than what I really expected. I mean, I knew there was a lot of work to do, but it is a real law enforcement post.

And I think people, especially the Coast Guard, my whole team, what they did every single day, I'm telling you guys, they keep us safe. Every single day, the things that we don't even know, we will never know and we shouldn't know, it's none of our business.

It really isn't our business. But it's, they're putting their lives at risk and I think that we forget that. I think that Coast Guard go out and people think, oh, they're just, you know, what do they really do? And I said, they're actually really humanitarians. You have no idea what they find. in the issue.

You have no idea when people flee countries and they decide there's no hope for me and they just decide to, you know, sometimes go over with a child. You know, people do so much good and I think that they all get lumped into one thing and, oh, they're all bad. And it was one of the best times I've ever had in my life.

One of my favorite chapters in my story was serving in the Bahamas and meeting new people that I would have never met otherwise, you know, completely different lives. And we learned a lot from each other. And so it was really great, really great.

There's hope. Come on, you know. You know, my mom, actually, I give it to my parents because my parents were so politically active also when I was growing up. So senators and presidents and mayor, everybody was always in and out of the house. So for me, I was always helping my mom since I was a little girl, organizing everything, which then as I became an adult, I was like, I can do this.

I know what I'm doing. I know how to fundraise. I watch my father. Remember, my dad was born in 1931, North Carolina, segregation, Jim Crow. I mean, he talks about running from the Ku Klux Klan. He talks about never looking up because my grandmother said, I would say, why can't you look up? Why were you told not to look up?

He said, because you didn't know if you were going to see someone that you knew that was lynched. Oh. I mean, this is in our lifetime. So for me, watching my father really mobilize and organize to change things for black Americans throughout his life, I watched that dedication. I watched that motivation. I watched that organization.

And so by the time I got to working with Senator Obama at the time, I had watched my parents, you know, do everything and host everything and raise money. But really, it was about putting people together and what I wanted to do for him. I said, if he's going to be the first black president, then all of the fundraisers need to look like the United States of America.

They were always one look, everybody's from Beverly Hills, everybody's from, no, I was like, we're mixing this up. And it worked, and it was great.

You have to be together. And I really do believe that you want not just diversity with color or race or religion or whatever, but you need diversity of ideas. You need people to... I love being able, for example, to say, you know, I didn't think about it that way. I never even saw it from that perspective because you have this different perspective and thank you for that.

And some, you know, and it doesn't always work, but you need that. I think you need that. And human beings are different and we all have something to give and we all have talents and putting people together and giving different opinions and giving, sharing different ideas, I think helps us definitely move forward and not keep us stuck.