Tracee Ellis Ross Shares How She Found Her Confidence—and Keeps Growing

Tracee Ellis Ross has a talent for making us laugh—and for breaking boundaries. On screen, as the star of the popular sitcom, Black-ish, she is helping tell a new story about black families.

Off-screen, she is breaking boundaries for women as an outspoken voice on sexual harassment and someone willing to challenge the expectation that all women must marry and have children.

Now, also an entrepreneur, one could ask: How has she found the confidence to take all of this on?

The answer begins, she said at the 2019 Texas Conference for Women, with how she was raised. But most important, she explained, is this:

“I spent many years creating an unbreakable, unshakeable foundation for my life based on my spiritual practice; my relationship with friends and family; a desire to remain vulnerable and mindful about my life and my practices and how I walk through the world; and a desire to be of service to something larger than myself.”

It is perhaps that unbreakable, unshakeable foundation that also led her to make a very clear decision about how to live her own life on her own terms.

“Particularly as a woman, I found there are so many ideas about how I should be living my life and what the equation is for happiness,” she said.

“But in my journey of self-realization and self-acceptance,” she continued, “I discovered the person I am and the things I care about don’t always match up with the prescribed idea of a life.”

None of this means that her journey is one without fear but it does mean she knows how to work with it. One way she does this is by writing in her journal about things that she is afraid of and then turning the most important around by saying: “May I know that the space between where I am and where I want to be is inspired and not terrifying.”

Her practices certainly seem to be working for her. The New York Times recently published a lengthy feature about her entitled, “The Real Queen of Wellness.” And just last week it was announced that she will host the 2019 Fashion Awards.