Losing custody of her children was the most painful experience of Tonya's life, but it was also the most empowering. It taught her to fight for what she wanted out of life.
Tonya's Story
"I lost custody of my sons."
I was having the most exciting and wonderful year of my life when I lost custody of my sons. I'd won the Tony, I was on All My Children, I was doing Broadway, and all of a sudden I'm walking outside to sign autographs and this gentleman walks up and hands me a divorce summons. I just started running down the street screaming and crying.
During our divorce, the judge basically determined both parents were fit and the toss of the coin went to [my husband]. People think losing custody of your children can't happen to a mother. I discovered it is actually a myth that mothers don't lose custody. When you look at the statistics from state to state about cases in which men fight to keep custody, the women lose 60 to 80 percent of the time. The reason people don't realize this is because [most] men don't fight; they just walk away and leave their children.
"For me, this was a confrontation with racism."
I've been a sort of honorary white person all my life, because I'm a celebrity and I'm an actress, so I have entry into worlds that most people don't. For me, losing custody was a confrontation with racism, a confrontation I had never encountered. Suddenly I was just an angry black woman, and I couldn't get the courts to act on my behalf.
My husband wouldn't let me see my kids for two years. He just refused to obey [the visitation ruling] and he knew they weren't going to put him in jail. I had appellate court orders, I had Supreme Court orders, and he just wouldn't obey them.
"I didn't get mad. I got even."
I gave up Broadway, I left the soap and I formed a woman's organization called Operation Z. I became impassioned about this idea that mothers don't lose custody. I believe it is a myth that is actually killing women. I found statistics that show women who lose custody wind up getting terminal illnesses and dying. As a mother, you are stigmatized. You don't want to speak about what happened because everybody assumes it's your fault. I formed this organization with a doctor out of the Justice Department in New York and a doctor who was head of public health service for the Mid-Atlantic region. We raised our own funds to support women who couldn't afford lawyers. This became my passion.
"My children got to see another side of me."
I think for a very long time my children saw me as this kind of weak person always getting beat down by their dad. But when I started to fight, they got to see another side of me, and I think that gave them a confidence that they had never had before. My children were very afraid of their father because he could reduce me to tears. To this day it's an ongoing thing. But, I have learned that despite the fact of my children living with their father and despite what I might have imagined he was saying about me or how he might have been influencing them, I have had a very powerful effect on them. The heart connection with us is very, very strong. They see me as a mother, even though I don't feel like I raised them.
"If you're willing to accept less, you're going to get less."
I have learned that the person who is most unwilling to compromise will prevail and win. Women are taught to be agreeable and conciliatory in court, but in custody battles, the rules are very different. If a judge sees that you're willing to accept less, you're going to get less.
What this 15-year process has taught me is that karma is not about punishment. It is about a kind of divine justice. We keep getting opportunities to do it right. And if I don't get it right the first time, the opportunity is going to come back again, and though I might view it as a punishment, it's just a lesson. I am going to keep getting that lesson until I get it right.