Some books entertain while some inform. And then there are those rare works that reach into your chest and rearrange something inside you. Nicole Avant’s Think You’ll Be Happy: Moving Through Grief with Grit, Grace, and Gratitude belongs firmly in that final category.
It is not simply a memoir; it invites us to reconsider how we carry our wounds and what we choose to build from them. Everyone should try to read it, because its lessons apply far beyond one woman’s life.
A Childhood Steeped in Legacy
To understand Nicole Avant, you must first understand the home that shaped her. Raised by her father, entertainment icon Clarence Avant, known worldwide as “The Black Godfather”, and her mother, philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, Nicole grew up in a household that was far more than a family residence.
It was a refuge, a salon, and a sanctuary all at once.
Legendary artists, activists, and leaders passed through their doors. Bill Withers. Quincy Jones. Muhammad Ali.
These weren’t distant icons to young Nicole; they were dinner guests, mentors, and living examples of excellence and service up close.
From this environment, she absorbed a fundamental lesson: that success means little unless it is shared, and that community is something you actively build, not simply inherit.
A Career of Bold, Deliberate Choices
Nicole Avant refused to be confined to a single lane. Her career reads like a blueprint for purposeful reinvention.Â
She worked as a music executive, navigating the entertainment industry with the instincts she’d absorbed from childhood.
She became a political strategist, translating her gift for connection into meaningful civic work. And in 2009, she was appointed as the United States Ambassador to the Bahamas, a role she held until 2011, representing her country with the same dignity her parents had modelled at their own table.
Each chapter of her professional life seems guided by the same question: How can I use this platform to lift others?
The Unimaginable Loss
In December 2021, that foundation was shattered. Her 81-year-old mother, Jacqueline, was tragically killed during a home invasion.
The woman who had been the heart of the family, the gracious presence who had welcomed the world into her home, was gone in an act of senseless violence.
This is the moment where many stories end in bitterness. It is where grief calcifies into resentment, where loss becomes a permanent identity. What Nicole Avant did instead is the reason her story demands to be told.
Forgiveness as an Act of Power
Rather than allowing bitterness to consume her, Nicole chose to forgive her mother’s murderer.
This was not a passive decision, nor an easy one. It was a deliberate reclaiming of her own life.
She explained that holding onto hatred would mean surrendering her own personal power and energy, handing over the keys to her spirit to the very person who had caused her harm.
This is perhaps the most radical lesson in the book. Forgiveness, in Nicole’s framing, is not a gift to the wrongdoer. It is a boundary drawn to protect oneself. It is the refusal to let another person’s actions dictate the rest of your emotional life. That takes a strength most of us only imagine we could summon.
Turning Pain into Purpose
Nicole did not stop at forgiveness. Nicole Avant transformed her grief into a mission of cultural preservation and storytelling.
She produced The Black Godfather, the documentary celebrating her father’s extraordinary influence on American culture.
She produced Tyler Perry’s historical film The Six Triple Eight, shining a long-overdue light on the landmark all-Black female battalion of World War II.
Each project is a thread connecting past to present, an act of ensuring that the stories of those who came before are not lost.
In this way, her parents’ legacy of lifting others did not end with their passing. It evolved into something that could reach millions.
A Continuing Commitment
Following her father’s passing, Nicole Avant has continued to advocate for community service, education, and the arts.
She carries forward her parents’ lifelong commitment to service, not as a burden, but as a living tribute. Her work reminds us that legacy is not something we inherit passively. It is something we choose to keep alive through action, every single day.
Nicole Avant’s story teaches us that pain is not the end of the story; it is a passage. It does not ask for our permission, and it rarely arrives on our terms. But what we do next is always, always ours to decide.
We can let grief harden us, or deepen us. People can let loss shrink their world, or let it expand their compassion.
One can hold onto resentment until it consumes energy, or forgive, not because it is easy, and not because anyone deserves it, but because our own freedom depends on it.
Her mother’s final text message, “Think you’ll be happy,” was not a suggestion. It was an instruction. A blessing. A charge to keep moving forward, no matter how heavy the weight.
Like Nicole Avant, we do not have to let pain weigh us down. We can choose to rise above our present circumstance not by denying our grief, but by refusing to let it write the ending. We can take what breaks us and build something that heals others.
And that, perhaps, is what it means to truly be happy not in the absence of sorrow, but in defiant, deliberate, and courageous spite of it.
