INTERVIEW WITH NOVA B. RUTHERFORD

4:48 PM Posted by MS.NOVA

As the writer for But I Love Me More.com I enjoy a role behind the scenes. I share your stories, tackle your questions and from your incredible lessons, I too apply them to my life in hopes of becoming a better person. A few months back I started an interview segment in Live To Tell, where women I know and admire answer five questions to reveal how they began to figure it all out.

To make things fair, I will also take this interview and be as honest and candid as the women before me. When I conducted it, I never imagined that one day I would be filling in the blank space with my own adventure story. Jeez. In spite of some natural nerves, I do hope this gives you an opportunity to know me better, know my voice and appreciate why I do what I do.

Here we go...

1. Of the Three Steps to Love Yourself More - Acceptance, Accountability and Action - which one have you struggled with the most? How did you overcome that?

Acceptance. As I often say, acceptance for what I am and what I am not. The most obvious reason is my mixed race background, being raised in a small white community in Canada by a white mother and resembling no one around me. My closest friends of color were/are Ugandan or West Indian. That is not my experience. My African-American friends, though we are close, that is not my experience. Clearly, my white friends and I have a different experience.

In hindsight I felt like a person who belonged everywhere and no where. I was always popular, had and still have a crazy eclectic group of friends, but I never had a close friend with whom I could share MY experience. Accepting that and being secure in my own identity is something I have only recently overcome. I give credit to time and age for that. For years I'd hide in baggy clothes in an attempt to downplay my femininity, because I couldn't handle the attention I would get from men. But once I accepted myself, my beauty, and sexual fineness (ha!) life truly began to bloom.

2. Describe a challenging time in your life and explain why you are better for it?

I have written and spoke about my bout with depression. In a very short span of time, I suffered a great deal of loss and felt like life was kicking my ass with some UFC type moves. I was 21 years old. This slump lasted until I was 24 and just when I thought things couldn't get worse - no job, toxic people, abuse, broke, dead dreams, and more - a dear friend committed suicide. I had known her eight years and was with her the week before she was lying at the bottom of subway tracks.

Mystically, I was contemplating suicide myself and I feel in my heart that her loss saved my life. The sadness swallowed me whole, hers and my own, and knowing I shouldn't be left alone, I stayed with friends. It was their silent strength that gave me the courage to push on. It was their grief that prevented me from doing the same to my own family. My friend was 28 when she left us and I vowed to her and myself that I would do all that she did and could not and truly, truly live my life. I have never been the same since her death and in a way, what I do now is to encourage and empower young women just like her. The lotus in the swamp.

3. What attributes did you have to bring forth in order to achieve your goals? How did you stay on track?

Being a dreamy Pisces who gets easily distracted while swimming place to place, I need structure, focus and an element of routine to get what needs to be done DONE. I know what I need and I don't fear asking for it. To write my most personal experiences, takes great courage - something I didn't have even five years ago.

To deal with my life, family and the characters who comprise it takes a great deal of compassion, patience and humor. Thankfully I'm well endowed with all three. I have stopped beating myself up, worrying about the unknown and putting my thoughts and assumptions on other people. It was exhausting and I was wrong every single time. I believe in myself much much more and I'm no longer afraid to say that. For a long time, I was.

4. What is the best advice you’ve ever been given and when in your life did it help the most?

"When you don't know what you want, know what you don't want."

Thanks to Namugenyi "Mary" Kiwanuka for that gem! Indecisive little me as applied that to all aspects of my life, from what I want in a man, to what to order, what to wear and what kind of life I plan of living. When the negative is ruled out, the positive is so much clearer.

5. Who are the “Girls Who Get It” in your life (famous, or not)? Why them?

I'll stick with the famous people as I don't want to single out people in my personal life.

Oprah Winfrey has been my single greatest influence. When my mother was working two jobs and putting herself through university, I would watch Oprah afterschool. From 8 years old I have absorbed her words, laughed, cried and Ah-Ha'd.

Mary J. Blige. This is a person that I will honestly LOSE IT the day I meet her. I started singing in the mirror with the hairbrush to "What's the 411?" and when I had my first breakup at 15, I cried on the bus to "My Life". As a fan I've loved her music, and a music industry snob, I've watched her career rise and fall and rise again, and as a woman I respectrespectrespect the process and honesty that she has exuded to get to this point.

Over and above these women, there are so many and all that I profile are people I appreciate in one way or another. My closest friends who have been with me for 15 years or more (its a small handful), know ME, and vice versa and I feel we are a true reflection of one another. After all, I'd like to think that I "get it" too!