Venus Rising

ProfileIssue: Leo 08

Victoria Rowell Writes About the Amazing Women who Raised Her

Photo by: Lesley BohmAs a ward of the state in Maine, Victoria Rowell was raised in foster care for 18 years. At the age of eight, she received the Ford Foundation scholarship to the Cambridge School of Ballet. After dancing professionally with various companies, she later became a two-time Emmy Award-nominated actress and received 11 NAACP Image Awards. In 1990, she founded the Rowell Foster Children's Positive Plan, which enriches foster children through artistic and athletic expression. Now Victoria Rowell pays tribute to the many women in her life in her new, best-selling book, “The Women Who Raised Me.”

In her lifetime, Victoria met in person with her birth mother only three times. A descendant of bona-fide Yankee blue blood, Victoria’s white mother, Dorothy Rowell, was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized after having six children with various men. Because Victoria’s father was black, the Rowell family disowned her and she was left to become a ward of the state.

The social service agencies in Maine initially placed Victoria in the care of a white family who wanted to adopt her. However, Victoria was taken away from them at the age of two because at the time, the agency felt it was more important that she be raised in an African American family than to stay in her original placement. Once placed in one of the only African American families in the area, Victoria’s birth mother continued to pull strings behind the scenes to get her children back, which prevented Victoria from ever being adopted.

In “The Women Who Raised Me” Victoria writes about all the mothers and female mentors in her life who she feels helped her transition out of foster care and into adulthood. “I was never meant to be raised by one mother, but by many,” she states. From Agatha Armstead, Victoria’s longest-term foster mother who noticed and encouraged her creativity to LaTanya Richardson Jackson who symbolically adopted her as an adult, Victoria writes about the kindness and compassion of the women who appeared in her life.

…what I had yet to find was that family connection, that true belonging that I sought above all else. LaTanya, without being told, understood that, and in the ensuing years would frequently invite me and my children to be part of her family celebrations and holiday gatherings. At so many junctures, her generosity was medicinal.