A young dancer from Jackson, Miss., reflects on leadership, self-advocacy and what it meant to watch her mother carry financial struggles quietly while still making space for her dreams.
For more than four years, Ms.’ Front and Center series has created space for Black mothers living in extreme poverty—women too often ignored in our politics, policymaking and media—to tell their own stories in their own words. What began as a platform to document the realities facing mothers participating in the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, has grown into something much larger: an ongoing chronicle of survival, caregiving, joy, exhaustion, resilience and hope amid systems that too often fail women and families.
Over the years, readers have followed these women as they navigated impossible choices around housing, healthcare, childcare, work, education, mental health and family stability. Their stories have illuminated not just the daily realities of poverty, but also the broader structures shaping their lives—and the extraordinary strength required to keep going anyway.
Presented in partnership with Mississippi-based nonprofit Springboard to Opportunities, Front and Center has always sought to build empathy through lived experience, allowing women to author their own narratives rather than be reduced to statistics or political talking points.
This Mother’s Day weekend, we are honored to expand that conversation through a special three-part Front and Center mini-series—The Kids of Magnolia Mother’s Trust—featuring the children of mothers whose stories readers have come to know over the years. Published Friday, Saturday and Sunday ahead of Mother’s Day, these essays offer a deeply personal look at how children experience their mothers’ sacrifices, struggles and love, and how they understand the world around them because of those experiences.
In these stories, we see young people grappling with questions of equity, safety, community and possibility. We see what children notice when their mothers are carrying enormous burdens, and what changes when families are given even a little more stability or support. Most of all, we see the profound impact mothers have on shaping the values, dreams and sense of justice their children carry forward.
The series also arrives as the Magnolia Mother’s Trust launches its seventh cohort—marking a new phase for the nation’s longest-running guaranteed income program, with approximately 100 Black mothers set to begin receiving $1,000 monthly payments alongside expanded peer-led community support initiatives ahead of Mother’s Day.
The lives of mothers ripple outward. And so do the systems that support them—or fail them.
In the second installment of The Kids of Magnolia Mother’s Trust, Tamya reflects on leadership, self-advocacy and the sacrifices her mother made to support her love of dance. She writes about growing up in Jackson, Miss., participating in Springboard’s Youth Fellowship, learning Black history and navigating the painful experience of walking away from the dance team she once dreamed of leading after feeling undermined by a new coach.
Following Tamya’s essay, her mother Tamara reflects on what it means to hear her daughter speak so confidently about her future, her worth and her dreams. She shares how hard she worked to shield her children from the weight of financial struggles growing up—and why watching Tamya grow into a strong leader with ambitions far beyond her circumstances feels deeply emotional and affirming as a mother.
Tamya: “I Know My Worth, My Skills and My Leadership”
My name is Tamya and I am currently a senior in high school. If there is one thing you should know about me, it is that I love to dance. I have been dancing since I was a little girl and it is where I have found my greatest passion. It is also the place where I have learned what it truly looks like to be a leader and trust myself and my instincts.
I know that sometimes it was a struggle for my mom to support me all the time in my dance classes. Uniforms, traveling fees, parade fees—these all add up. My mom has always done everything she can to take care of us, but I knew it wasn’t always easy to come up with the funds to cover all the expenses that come with having a child take part for years in a sport or activity.
But I did see that change one year when my mom was a part of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust. She didn’t really talk to us that much about it, but I knew it was helping to take care of my dance fees during that year, and she was visibly less stressed having the extra support to put food on the table and to pay the bills.
My mom got to see all that investment she made in me pay off when my coaches picked me to be captain of the dance team for my senior year. I was so excited. I worked really hard for that spot, and I am proud that my coaches saw the work I put in and have trusted me with this leadership position.
I did not want to let them or my teammates down, so I spent last summer preparing and making sure everyone was ready. I hosted my teammates for one-on-one practice sessions, making sure they were trained and ready to go. I got to know a lot of the new girls who were joining the team and made sure they felt comfortable and prepared for the year ahead. I loved getting to spend that summer dancing, being around my teammates and really trying to inspire them to be their best.
During that summer, I also took part in Springboard’s Youth Fellowship. My time in the fellowship opened my eyes to so much of Black history, from enslavement to the Civil Rights Movement, to those still advocating for our communities today.
I asked if we could visit a plantation during the fellowship. I had never been to one before, but I know how important it is to learn about our history. So many parts of Black history have already been forgotten or destroyed, but the Whitney Plantation, where we went, was trying to change that by showing the perspective of enslaved people. They recorded the names of people who were enslaved at the plantation and showed with brutal honesty how hard life there was for the families forced to be there. I really felt their presence there still. It was like the trees were whispering their stories still to us.
Being in the Youth Fellowship while also starting my role as the captain of the dance team taught me so much about leadership that summer. Looking at leaders in history and from my own experience, it became clear that leadership is not easy. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of hard work. It also requires you to learn how to advocate for yourself and others, especially when people are being treated unfairly.
I had to put these skills to use recently. After the school year began, a new coach replaced the ones who had chosen me as captain and made it clear she didn’t support me. She undermined my role by giving me unfair demerits and pushing me to the back of formations, creating tension that affected the whole team. Drawing on what I’d learned about self-advocacy, I tried to address the issue directly, but she refused to give me a fair chance to lead. At that point, I decided it was best to walk away.
It hurt to quit. I have danced all my life, and when I finally got the thing I wanted the most, it ended up not even being fun because of how it ended. Once I left, many of my teammates followed my lead. After all the training and hard work we put in that summer, my teammates also became my friends and they were all upset by what was happening. Many of them also left the team. That solidarity really helped me see that I was a leader for my teammates and that they valued me and all the hard work we had put in together.
Even though my high school dance career didn’t end the way I wanted it to, that has not stopped me from still having big dreams for myself. After I graduate this year, I’m planning to go to community college for a year. After that first year, I want to transfer to a school that has a dance team and strong academics. I’m hoping to study criminal justice with a concentration in forensic science.
I also want to spend some time away from Jackson and get to explore. I’ve been to a lot of different states, but I would like to go to New York and California. I would also love to visit Japan, Mexico or the Bahamas, or even further away. I feel like I’m breathing different air when I get to explore new places. Things just seem bigger—there are more types of people, more religions, more cultures. It’s important to remember that there is so much more to the world than what I just see around me. And since I know my worth, my skills and my leadership, I can’t wait to go explore it.
Tamara: “I Am So Proud Hearing Tamya Talk About the Leader She Already Is”
Hearing my daughter tell her story is enough to almost bring me to tears. I was very conscious when my kids were growing up that they did not know all of the struggles that I might have been facing. I didn’t want them to think we didn’t have money or that our lives were any different from any other family. I wanted to put a dream in them and allow them to believe that they can be anything that they want to be and their lives are not going to be determined by where they live or their circumstances.
That’s why I am so proud hearing Tamya talk about the leader she already is and all the dreams she has for her life moving forward. I know with the foundation that she has, she will be able to achieve all of them, and more.
You can also listen to Tamara Ware discuss motherhood, financial struggle and the impact of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust in a 2021 episode of On the Issues With Michele Goodwin, “Messages to Mom: We Have Your Back,” along with Nicole Lynn Lewis, Tamara Ware, former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter and Dr. Aisha Nyandoro.
Listen to the episode here, or below:
