A Letter From Crystal

You came to this page to learn about me. I’ll get there. But first, I want to tell you about my grandmother.

Her name was Frances J. Wilkinson, and we called her Gaga. She was a Black socialite in Tacoma, Washington – choir director at Allen A.M.E. Church, founding member of the Red Rose Cotillion, and a member of the Uniques and the Debonnaires Social Clubs. She always dressed like she was going somewhere important, because she always was. She carried herself like a woman who knew her worth, in a time and a place that gave her every reason not to. I often referred to her as Coco Chanel.

She raised me – without ever doing my thinking for me, and she gave me a vision of myself laced with an expectation that I was going to college.

When I was sixteen, she sat me down and told me everything a boy was going to say to try to get me into bed. I was mortified. But you know what it did? It gave me the power to bear up under the pressure of their expectation, because hers meant so much more. It also meant that when those boys tried – I could look them dead in the eye, straight-backed and say, “That is exactly what my grandmother said you were going to say. And the answer is no. I am going to college.”

She was loving and no-nonsense. When I was seventeen, she was straightening my hair in the kitchen, as I sat on the red stool, right next to the stove. She grabbed a handful of my hair, turned my face toward hers, and asked me point-blank if I was sleeping with that boy Antoine. I shrieked, and then denied it. The next day, she came home early from work, took me straight to Planned Parenthood, and put me on the pill. In that moment, she saved my life. Because she knew. She always knew.

Whenever I came to her with a problem – Gaga, how do I do this? – she never gave me the answer. Instead, she would say, “How do you think you should do it?” Next she would whip out a pencil and paper, sit me down at our kitchen table, and instruct me to come up with two or three solutions before she’d step in. “I will help you,” she would say, “but I will not do it for you.”

She taught me critical thinking skills because she refused to think for me. She gave me confidence because she told me every day that I could do anything I put my mind to, and she gave me a standard to live up to – that was both hers, and then mine.

To this day when things get hard, or I feel like slacking, when the road stretches out before me without an end in sight, I can still hear her voice, and I remember – I am Frances J. Wilkinson’s grandchild, and I can do whatever I set my mind to.

She has been gone for thirty years, but she’s with me every single day.

No one is coming to rescue us.

That’s something Gaga showed me by example long before I had words for it. She didn’t wait for permission or a better offer or someone to hand her the map. She built the life she wanted – with dignity, standards, and the full expectation that the women around her would do the same.

That’s the work I’ve been doing for over thirty years.

I started in Los Angeles as a Hollywood talent agent, learning how rooms really work – who gets the opportunities and who gets overlooked. It rarely comes down to talent. It comes down to knowing your worth and refusing to apologize for it. I turned that knowledge into books, workshops, speaking and coaching that strips away the gatekeeping and hands women the real information.

In 2022 my own life put everything I teach to the test.

A health crisis dropped me on the other side of my own advice. Suddenly, I wasn’t the expert in the room – I was the patient, being expected to comply, stay quiet, and accept what I was told. I asked myself the same question my grandmother would have asked: Crystal, how do you think you should handle this? I got out a pen. I used my voice, and I became what the system calls difficult. And I learned that being difficult can save your life.

That experience became A Woman’s Guide to Empowered Healthcare. Because the same woman who runs her own life can run her own care. It’s all one muscle.

So here is what I want for you.

I want you to stop waiting for ready. I want you to stop shrinking in rooms that weren’t designed for you. I want you to use the voice you already have – in your career, in your relationships, and yes, with your doctor.

You already have everything you need. A woman I loved very much told me that. Now I’m telling you.

With love and zero excuses,

Crystal Wright