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13 FEB HER
                   “The first thing I wrote was a cook- book. It wasn’t as difficult as writing a novel or something like that but it was still work so I wrote a cookbook based on being in the kitchen with my mom. She was very creative and when she
was at her best, you could not beat her. “With the cookbook, in the be- ginning, I talked about how we don’t have much and the good things that she taught us. ... That’s what that’s about. That even though we didn’t
have much, we had it difficult, we overcame and some good skills that we learned from that.”
The collection features the good moments of her childhood, but Thompson knew she couldn’t leave
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her story untold. In between the compilation and her memoir, Thompson crafted a short story ti- tled “Unlikely Billionaire” about a girl who did not know who she was and set off on a journey to find out.
“It was such a small part,” she said of “Down South.” “In doing that, I said ‘I wanna tell the whole story. And tell it from a place of hope.’ I had never felt brave. I had never felt like I had much going for me as a young adult. When I looked back, I thought ‘You were brave.’ So I started to call the book ‘Brave’ and it’s a memoir from the age of about 8 to 34, it tells my story ... I tell it raw. ... You can understand why my self-esteem is so low and they could also see how I overcame.”
The reception to the memoir “Brave” allowed her the opportuni- ty to embark on a book tour where she was able to speak to others who were going through a tough period in their life.
“When I finished ‘Brave,’ I felt so heavy that I thought ‘If you stay in that mindset, you can’t see all of the good in the world if you stay stuck.’
So I thought ‘Let’s write it from a dif- ferent perspective.’ I wanted to write something that was positive. Same topic, just a different way ... I think about all of the young women I came
 HER MAGAZINE ¯ FEB/MAR 2020 13























































































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