Dear Reader
In March 2021, I was watching an advance screener of the Tina Turner documentary that was due to come out on HBO a few weeks later. While I wish it had been because I was going to fly to Switzerland to interview the legend herself, it was because I was doing the next best thing (okay, maybe the 3rd next best thing, after a Zoom interview with her), and that was interviewing the filmmakers. Titled, simply, Tina, the documentary is centered on a rare sit-down with the icon, in which Anna Mae Bullock reveals how she felt about being Tina Turner.
I wrote at the time, for American Songwriter, that it was a parting gift for fans. She was, as the line in the Hamilton song goes, teaching us how to say goodbye to her. She was leaving the public eye for good. Even after retiring from performing in 2009, she continued to give us parts of herself—whether writing another memoir (My Love) or consulting on the mighty Broadway show about her tumultuous, triumphant life. Now that she has actually left us, the record will show—and has shown, through countless obits and tributes, how vast her influence was.
We know she led the way for generations of rock and pop stars, from Mick Jagger to Beyoncé. But her passing has drawn mourning from those of us who didn’t know her personally because, as Amanda Petrusich puts it, we know how much further her influence went; how she contributed to the world, in such “a robust and profound way.” She gave us music—oh so much music—that we’ll still delight in for years to come. But for so many of us, she showed us more.
It may seem a little trite to say, but she showed us the way back to love—of self and for another. And even though she didn’t like being a role model for all the trauma and pain she had to go through for it to be so, she left behind a map of sorts for us to follow. For how to live with vibrancy—in spite of it all. For how to still find success later on in life. For how to be in an adoring relationship.
One of the biggest takeaways for me from the doc is that she shows us that healing is not a linear path. You don’t just go through something and then you’re done with it. The doc honours the hurt she still felt from the abuse she endured. As co-director T.J. Martin said to me, “The person we’re sitting down with, is someone who’s still processing these things, not overcome them,” says Martin. “She is making the decision to survive every day. It’s not, ‘I survived and then it was over.’” Healing comes from the little choices made on a daily basis.
The doc also goes into Turner’s Buddhist practice of chanting, specifically the line: Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which she was known to do for a long time in her life, and how it helped “change the poison to medicine.” Stuck in my own toxic environment, in the middle of what seemed like a pandemic that would never end, I was intrigued by this. I bought her book, Happiness Becomes You, and began sitting in front of a white wall and gave it a try myself, saying the phrase over and over.
I can’t say for sure if it was the chanting that did it, since I also gave up alcohol at the time (and feel like that helped clear up a lot of things), but slowly, things started to change around me, and for me. And not to simplify this too much, because I also did a LOT of personal work, but two months later, I met B, who’d end up becoming my partner and Zoe-Rose’s dad. We have so much to thank Tina Turner for—the music, the dancing, the tenacity she modeled for us even though she didn’t want to be a role model of any kind—but I am most thankful for this. (Also, if you don’t have “When The Heartache Is Over” on your running playlist, you’re missing out!)
All of this to say, it’s worth re-watching, or watching for the first time, the documentary, Tina, as a celebration of her life and legacy.
Long live the queen!
Thank you for reading.
Your neighbour
Nadia