Actress and mental health advocate Taraji P. Henson is on a mission to create the world she wants to see. The star is currently doing this by using her influence to facilitate difficult conversations, be it about mental health or pay equity. Henson’s latest venture is a new children’s book, You Can Be a Good Friend (No Matter What!), which became available on June 18.
The book narrates a story about the main character, Lil TJ, who struggles to make friends on the first day of school but eventually cracks the code and helps others to do the same. Henson says the main character reflects her inner child.
“Little TJ is me, my little girl that I’m healing every day and giving a voice when unhealed Taraji would tape her mouth up and throw her in the closet. But I’m healing her” she says. “And this is what little TJ looks like healed. She is full of life. She understands love. She understands herself, and she embraces herself,” the Academy Award-nominated star explains.
Some of the main themes covered in the book include empathy, standing up for yourself, friendship, and the work it takes to maintain relationships.
“You think just because you wake up one day and you’re like, ‘I want friends,’ it’s just gonna be that easy. No. I’m 53, and it’s still hard navigating different relationships,” The Color Purple actress says.
The 53-year-old entrepreneur designed the book as a tool for children and their parents, especially as adults guide kids through the challenges of rejection and developing connections.
“What was really important for me is to also give parents tools in the back of the book. Because what happens is, when your kids hurt, you feel the pain worse than they do, and you wanna go into fix it mode,” she says. “But how can you fix something if you don’t have the proper tools?”
She also adds that parents must be good friends themselves if they’re to teach their kids to be good companions to others. As a mother of one, Henson recalls helping her son, Marcell Johnson, navigate his own friendships and shared some of the lessons she gave him.
“Friendships take work,” she says. “You get more flies with honey. Some days you’re gonna bump heads with your friends, and you will have to decide if that friendship is important enough to work on. You know, to see if you can settle your differences, because sometimes you won’t be able to.”
The actress has been blessed with a small circle of solid friends herself and has known them for decades. Her best friend since the 7th grade currently manages her non-profit, The Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation, which was established in 2018. The foundation helps provide access to mental health resources within the Black community.
Henson believes nowadays, people should learn to offer more grace in friendships and give one another the space to be themselves, even if they live their lives in a way different from your own.
“Just allowing space for grace. And when I say that, not even just space for grace for your friends, but space for grace for yourself,” she says. “And when you allow space for grace, that’s when empathy takes over. You know? Because we can be so judgmental even about friends.”
Henson also shared some of her friendship dealbreakers, and some of them included women who feel the need to compete, people who aren’t truthful, and those who are perpetually in conflict and can’t find joy.
“I don’t have space for that. Life is too short. And, if I’m here and I’m trying to shine a light on you and all you keep doing is bringing this dark cloud, I wanna get wet,” she says. “I like the sun. So if you can’t see the sun and if I can’t get you to see the sun, then maybe I’m not the friend for that. I’ll have to let you go because I can’t enable you.”
Friendship has been a fundamental part of Henson’s life, and she says it has brought a sense of safety, and so much more.
“It’s a safe space for when I don’t feel like myself. I can go to my friends, and they will give me life. Talk me off the edge. Give me that extra oomph I need for whatever I’m trying to accomplish in life,” she says. “I don’t know where I would be without my friends. I’m telling you, it’s important. You gotta have friends.”