Struggles of Childhood Trauma: The Princess Washington Story

Princess Washington (Photo by Wiley Henry)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first installment of a two-part series about childhood trauma that Princess Washington knows all too well.

 

MEMPHIS, TN – The probability of Princess Washington succeeding in life after experiencing childhood trauma — poverty, neglect, bullying, and merely surviving in a tempestuous household with her drug-addicted mother — is statistically unlikely in some cases.

Washington was seven years old and suffering ill effects from ACEs, an acronym for Adverse Childhood Experiences. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), about 64 percent of American adults had experienced one ACE. Women are impacted the most. 

While living in Section 8 housing with her two younger brothers in Clarksdale, MS., Washington’s ACEs were apparent: poverty, neglect, emotional abuse, etc. Despite this fact, even at her tender age, she innately assumed the role of caregiver. 

The choices Washington was compelled to make were predicated upon the harsh conditions that she and her brothers were forced to endure. Her mother, she explained, was battling her demons and often left them unattended.

“That was the norm,” said Washington, 43, whose father was absent from the home. But then her survival instincts kicked in. “I was trying to figure out what we were going to eat. Sometimes we ate. Sometimes we didn’t.”

Hunger pangs constantly gnawed at her. In addition to strangers coming in and out of the home, fear engulfed her as well — because crack cocaine, her mother’s demon, was wreaking havoc all around her.

Washington longed for stability, security, and a safe place to live. Her maternal grandmother, prompted to intervene posthaste, whisked her granddaughter away from potential danger. 

Her grandmother also lived in Section 8 housing with her son, Washington’s uncle, who struggled mightily with an addiction himself, she said. He is one of her grandmother’s 10 children.

“At some point, the state of Mississippi stepped in and wanted to remove my brothers from my mother's care,” she said. “They ended up coming to live with us.”

With her uncle in the home, Washington’s fears resurfaced. “He tried to kill everybody in the house,” she said. “He had poured diesel fuel all the way down the hallway. He had already blown all the pilot lights out and turned the gas on.”

Washington remembered him lighting a match to his bedroom. She said another uncle was on the scene and confronted him. “They were tussling in the hallway. By that time the fire had reached the hallway.”

The family was literally trapped, unable to flee. But Washington’s grandmother managed to hustle her grandchildren into her bedroom to fling them out the window to safety. But a heavy dresser, she recalled, was blocking their escape.

“There was nowhere else in the house we could go,” she said.

Washington’s grandmother was a praying woman — an evangelist in tuned to God. And out of the ether, the family was spared. Because of his dastardly deeds, her uncle was institutionalized, treated, and released.

After that harrowing ordeal, the uncle was allowed to return to the household. Years later, something stirred in him again. Washington’s older brother, who was raised by his grandmother, was there at the apartment when that same uncle went haywire.

“They started tussling,” she said. A cousin, who was there too, “took off running” and jumped out a bedroom window. Washington followed. They ran, screaming, to an aunt’s apartment nearby.

Washington was 14 when her mother, still battling drugs, birthed another child. Her grandmother would take in her baby sister as well. She said it was an added responsibility that her grandmother didn’t need.

Her grandmother, however, knew what to do in this predicament: pray. 

Copyright 2025 TNTRIBUNE. All rights reserved.

Surviving Childhood Trauma: The Princess Washington Story

 

Princess Washington (Photo by Wiley Henry)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final installment of a two-part series about Princess Washington, who decided that she wasn’t going to succumb to the ill-effects of her traumatic childhood.

 

MEMPHIS, TN – Growing up in Clarksdale, MS., was a harrowing experience for Princess Washington, who was caught up in a vortex of trauma that swirled all around her. But she refused to succumb to it.

The struggle was real, though. After Washington’s grandmother rescued her grandchildren from her crack-addicted daughter and her son’s dangerous impulses, Washington would soon grapple with adolescence.

At 17, she birthed a baby. Insisting that she graduates high school, one of her uncles and his wife offered to raise her daughter during the week. On weekends, Washington would take the reins. 

Motherhood was now Washington’s new reality. While she didn’t want her daughter to suffer from ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences, she longed to be a doting mother. But anger was welling up in her. 

At school, for example, she was often bullied. But then she yielded to a dare one day and stabbed a girl in the head with a pencil. The assault got her suspended from school and branded a troublemaker.

“I got suspended a few times from school,” she said. “And I’d taken a knife to school.”

Meanwhile, Washington’s uncle and aunt were still raising her daughter. Uneasy with the arrangement, she said, “Here I am following in my mother's footsteps, where somebody else is raising my child.”

After Washington graduated high school, she assumed her daughter would be returned. But that didn’t happen. She said, “My uncle wouldn't give me my baby back. He said, ‘You’re going to college.’”

As her uncle insisted, Washington matriculated at Coahoma Community College, a Historically Black Community College in Mississippi. She finished with an associate degree in Biology. In her pursuit of more degrees, she went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in Law and Legal Studies, a Master of Business Administration, and a Master of Science in Criminal Justice.

Her daughter was returned when she was 5 years old. “But she's constantly fighting to get back to my uncle,” said Washington, who, during this time, had birthed a son. “Now, I'm stuck trying to raise two kids.”

It was a difficult balance for the single mother trying to work and raise children. So, she allowed her daughter to spend more time with her uncle while a neighbor had agreed to babysit her son so she could work.

“Now I'm back in that position again where somebody else is raising my children,” she said.

At some point, Washington opted to leave Clarksdale, MS., to get ahead in life. “I took the kids and left the city,” she said. Destination: Belzoni, a small town in Mississippi. Now she lives in Southaven, MS., and manages one of the largest properties in Memphis. She also held down a job in security as chief of operations for On The Top Security — until recently. 

Despite Washington’s struggles with ACEs, her life is no longer topsy-turvy — thanks in part to a praying grandmother who kept her grandchildren in church. Now, she solely depends on God in all facets of her life.

“I can't complain,” said Washington, who has three children now — ages 25, 21 and 17. “I've come a long way, and I've been blessed.”

Some time ago, Washington had a conversation with her mother and one of her uncles. She walked out fuming, she said, recalling that uncle saying to her: “It seems to me you turned out alright.”

Washington was incensed. “Nobody ever stopped to ask us how we were dealing with the things that we went through,” she said. “Everybody just expected us to just pick up the pieces and move right along.”

Copyright 2025 TNTRIBUNE. All rights reserved.

Amended law mandates parenting class and video before couples divorce

Charlie Caswell (left), James Kirkwood, Roy Ray, Marie V. Pizano, Dr. Altha
Stewart and Laurie Powell are advocates for children seeking to build stronger
brains for them, create awareness for Adverse Childhood Experiences, and
provide mental health services. (Courtesy photo)

Marie V. Pizano is still feeling a little euphoric after learning that an amendment to a law mandating a parenting class for divorcing couples had recently passed in the Tennessee House of Representatives. 

“I started crying,” said Pizano, an author, film producer, businesswoman and community activist, after receiving the good news via text. 

Pizano had spent the better part of this year drumming up support for what resulted in a bipartisan effort to amend Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 36, Chapter 6. HB 2588 passed 95-0. On the other side, SB 2032 passed 30-0. 

“It’s official,” she said. “Now we’re waiting on the governor’s (Bill Lee) signature.”

The amendment requires that a 30-minute video on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) be shown to parents attending a parent educational seminar – in addition to them participating in a discussion – before the courts grant a divorce.

ACEs are defined by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention as potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood before the age of 18, such as witnessing violence, abuse, parental mental illness, substance use, divorce, incarceration, and domestic violence.

“In that class, it tells you the rules: [For example], don’t talk bad about the other parent, [or when there’s] harassment. It’s all the do’s and don’ts,” said Pizano, also the founder and CEO of MVP3 Entertainment Group, an artist and talent management firm located in Memphis.

With a full plate of entertainment fare already consuming her attention, Pizano made a decision earlier this year to seek political help for her ambitious goal to quell tensions between divorcing parents and the resulting collateral damage to children.

She personally understands the effects of ACEs after her first marriage went awry and after witnessing other families struggle themselves with emotional turmoil after a tumultuous divorce.

“Something needs to be done about parents who are divorcing,” she said, “because they’re the ones responsible for traumatizing their own children.” 

Pizano said she had listened to the horror stories, cringed because of broken homes, and abhors the use of children as weapons and pawns in the middle of a painful divorce. 

She has spoken about ACEs in her personal and professional lives for years and couldn’t put a name to the problems she had been dealing with. “I lived it myself,” she said. “It’s trauma after divorcing parents.”

Legacy of Legends CDC, a nonprofit in Memphis committed to developing trauma-informed and resilient communities, provides free training for ACEs. Pizano was trained and awarded a certificate. 

According to the CDC in Atlanta, ACEs are common, preventable and costly to families. “There is nothing wrong with educating parents on ACEs,” said Pizano, which prompted her to stump for legislation to improve the quality of life for families impacted by ACEs.

She first met with community stakeholders like the Rev. Charlie Caswell, the executive director of Legacy of Legends CDC and CEO/founder of 3V Leader; the Rev. James Kirkwood, executive director of Memphis Christian Pastors Network; Roy Ray, who works to keep youth out of the juvenile systems in Tennessee and Mississippi; Dr. Altha Stewart, senior associate dean for Community Health Engagement in the College of Medicine at UTHSC; and Laurie Powell, CEO at Alliance Health Services.

Then she turned her attention to the former Shelby County Mayor Mark H. Luttrell Jr. and discussed with him the possibility of getting a bill passed. Luttrell put her in touch with State Rep. Mark White (R-83) from Memphis.

Pizano then went on to lobby State Rep. Mary Littleton (R-78) from Dickson, TN; State Sen. Paul Rose (R-32) from Covington, TN; and State Rep. DeWayne Thompson (D-96) from Cordova, TN.

The language to the law that’s already on the books was subsequently amended and moved judiciously through the legislature. Rep. Littleton sponsored the House bill. Sen. Rose sponsored the Senate version. Dozens of legislators signed on as cosponsors – a bipartisan effort. 

Earlier this month, State Rep. Antonio Parkinson (D-98) of Memphis made a pitch on the House floor to his colleagues on both sides of the aisle and encouraged them to support HB 2588. “It’s a good bill,” he told them. 

Rep. White, Pizano’s initial point of contact in the House, was called to the podium to speak. He first acknowledged Pizano – “my constituent,” he said – who trekked to and fro to Capitol Hill before the advent of Covid-19. 

“Marie Pizano is very passionate about what we’re doing to children in domestic and divorce courts,” White said, “…when the homes break down and there’s a lot of bickering back and forth, these are ACE experiences.” 

He continued: “And these things build up and they have a lasting effect on our children.”

Pizano concurs. But there is more to the problem, she said, than warring parents – attorneys. “They want you to fight. If you fight, they make money. They profit off you.” 

She refers to these attorneys – at least some of them – as “unethical.” “Attorneys need to be trained as well and educated on ACEs,” said Pizano, and added: “They fueled my fire to go create change.”

That fire is still raging within her. “I want to clean up the family law system. I’m not going to give up,” she promised.