Terri Amos-Britt is truly an enlightened mom. But even after getting married and having children, Terri, who was a Miss USA in 1982 and an anchor for Movietime (now E!), couldn’t shake the feelings of anger that would sometimes consume her. So she set off on a quest for answers—and peace. Celebrity Parents spoke exclusively with the mom of four about her becoming an Enlightened Mom, how she was able to deal with her past, and how she’s finally found joy in her life.
Terri, what was the impetus for writing The Enlightened Mom?
It all began on Mother’s Day. My late husband, Steve, owned a company called The Conscious One, and he said, “Let’s do something on how you healed your issues with your mother.” For many years, I had a hard time buying a card on Mother’s Day because they were all so sweet and sentimental, and frankly, I didn’t feel that way towards her. We sent out an email and we were shocked to discover that we had 1,700 responses back. At that moment, it dawned on me that many people, not just me, didn’t feel loved and accepted by their moms.
So I wrote The Enlightened Mom because I realized that I had anger issues that I wasn’t properly dealing with. As a mother and step-mother, I was often angry and I didn’t know why. I couldn’t stand myself the way I was, and I didn’t like who I was when I was interacting with my stepson. I made the decision to go into therapy, and it was my therapist who said that I needed to find peace through meditation.
How did it help you?
What I realized is that I had been my whole life performing; it was like I was onstage all the time, trying to make people love me. And that is where my anger came from. The thing was, I was putting the same rules that I lived by in my mind on my children. And that’s what was making me angry and controlling, because by being in these rules in my mind, I wasn’t connected to my heart.
I started to practice what I was learning at the healing school to help me refocus my life. I wanted to be who I really was, not who I thought I was supposed to be. Once I did that, the anger simply started to melt away. The reason why was because I was listening to myself, for the first time in a long time, maybe ever. As I learned to accept myself, I learned how to accept my family, too. It was ground-breaking. I realized that if I was going through this, so were others, so I wanted to bring this message into the world and hope that it could help others struggling in similar situations.
How is your family dynamic today?
It is so much better. My daughters would fight a lot when they were younger, and it made me feel bad as a mother. I saw that they were mirroring back what they were seeing. I had a belief that it wasn’t okay to fight, it wasn’t okay to have dissension in the family. When I took a step back, I was able to have a shift in consciousness, and suddenly, my girls stopped fighting. You attract what you need to heal, and because I no longer needed anger and fighting, neither did they. At the end of the day, it’s really how you live your life that affects your family the most, not what you do or say. When you love and accept yourself, it’s easier to love and accept others. And that’s where peace and harmony, for both yourself and your family, lies.