Girlfriends a Fervent Prayer

For me. It is my daily offering to God. It is how I humble myself in service and offer gratitude for my life. My thanks is in everything I do, from how I clean the kitchen, to how I raise my sons, to how I nurture my marriage, to how I pour my time and excellence into my gift and career. Work as a prayer is also a devotional that I hope will keep me guided on my purposed path. I would hate to waste this lifetime never having completed the mission God, and I agreed on.

But like with literal prayer, my human self sometimes rushes through my work, and other days I just don’t want to do it at all… And on my hardest days, you will find me on my knees, knowing that the utterances that sound like weeping pleas will be heard and my prayers answered.

Girlfriends was a fervent prayer. It was also the show that taught me some of my greatest lessons in belief and faith. There was great joy and many tears (and grey hairs) for the days the storm was so rough I couldn’t see ahead of me. It still teaches me to this day about God’s timing.

For years, and I mean YEARS… I put on the hat of saleswoman/agent/manager and tried urgently to get Girlfriends to be streamed on one of the burgeoning streaming services. Just like I tried for years to give the show the ending it deserved in the form of a movie. I held onto these fights for so long that eventually, those who loved me (mainly my husband and best friend) told me it was time to let Girlfriends go because I had so much more to write in service to God’s plan for me. So… I let go and let God. Even let Jesus take the wheel and moved on with my career.

So imagine how I felt when I learned that while I was buttoning up a dream overall deal with Netflix to make more exciting TV, in another section of the Netflix mothership, Strong Black Lead was making a deal to acquire two of my shows — Girlfriends and The Game. The fact that Girlfriends will air on the 20th Anniversary of its’ release is nothing but divine. The synergy and synchronicity is nothing but GOD. Nothing but God’s Plan. Nothing but alignment. Nothing but a prayer answered.

The journey of Girlfriends has a long arc of growth around this hard-earned lesson of value. It began with the fact that I always intended for Girlfriends to be a single-camera comedy, much like its contemporary at the time, Sex In The City. I felt as though our stories deserved the same amount of quality and attention to detail and hopeful aspiration as their show portrayed. But, I was given a multi-cam sitcom budget. That wasn’t enough, so I did what I have seen my mother do and grandmother do and neighbors do and what all of our people in this country have always done— I made a dollar out of fifteen cents.

The first step in doing so was hiring talented, hard-working, and dedicated people to stretch the budget to greatness— I am forever thankful to EVERYONE who touched this show. In life, and especially with a TV show, you do not do it alone. But today I honor that part of me that believed and dared to dream and put in the work to get our stories in the canon.

Monday, September 11, 2000 my life significantly changed. Who knew that the airing of this show about four Black women living and loving and growing and dreaming and achieving and believing would create space for a generation of Black women to feel seen, heard, and accepted. Who knew that my desire simply to document Black women’s existence at the turn of the century would actually inspire Black women to expand their own visions of themselves as well as offer an opportunity to embrace their beautiful reflections.

I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to paint portraits of us and tell some truth of us through fiction. I’m so in awe that those bottled up narratives of our humanity are still washing ashore for many generations. We were 172 episodes of neither positive nor negative images. It was a place every Monday night we were just us… and we proved that it was enough. Who knew that just by doing the work, God would answer my own fervent prayers (and the prayers of many Black people in America) and that is to be seen as fully human.

There’s another precept about work. Khalil Gibran says that “Work is love made visible.” I pray you see and get to revisit how much I love my people.