By Javacia Harris Bowser
For The Birmingham Times
Shauntasha Nicole Toombs believes that everyone has a story worth sharing that can help others and ourselves. She is leading by example with the release of her first book The Girl in the Mirror about her life experiences which encourages and empowers others to push through adversity and work through their fears to find freedom.
“As I wrote this book, my entire life changed with every stroke against the keyboard,” Toombs said. “I wanted to share with others how it’s okay to be vulnerable, how it’s okay to be transparent. And it doesn’t matter what you have faced in life — you can overcome, you can still be who God called you to be.”
Even though she’s only 31 years old, Toombs has faced many hardships. She’s had career aspirations thwarted; dealt with difficult and dysfunctional familial relationships and had to recover emotionally from being harassed and being held up at gunpoint at the age of 16.
Along with her faith, therapy what has helped Toombs through it all and through therapy she decided to share her story.
“I wanted to be that catalyst for others to know that you can still your overcome and you can still be whoever you want to be in spite of,” she said.
To celebrate the release of The Girl in the Mirror, Toombs is hosting a book launch event at Clyde Williams Hall on the campus of Miles College on June 17 from 12 to 3 p.m.
Toombs believes her story has something for everyone including lessons about forgiveness and perseverance. The book explores how and when to walk away and when and how to push through even when you feel like all hope is lost.
While being a story of inspiration, The Girl in the Mirror is also a message to Toombs’ younger self, and what she would say is simple: “Stay true to yourself and never let anyone dim your light.”
A Dream Deferred
Toombs grew up in Phenix City, Alabama with her mother, father, and two brothers. She had a strained relationship with her father who she felt wasn’t involved enough in her life and the lives of her brothers. Her mother was a minister at Liberty Hill Missionary Baptist Church and always busy with the work of the church. And being a preacher’s kid was tough, the writer said.
“You’re always in the spotlight and everyone has an image of what a preacher kid should be, what they should look like, how they should act,” Toombs said. “That made me be something that I wasn’t growing up. Because I always had to put on the image for others, I could never enjoy who I was as a person.”
She did, however, find joy in sports running ran track and playing volleyball and basketball. “Sports taught me determination and resilience,” she said.
Toombs was so good on the basketball court that she snagged some basketball scholarships. But in her senior year at Central High School in Phenix City, she tore her ACL and meniscus and lost those offers.
When she was working part-time at a local Zaxby’s she was held up at gunpoint one night while working the closing shift.
But Toombs bounced back from it all and after graduating high school moved to Birmingham to attend Miles College.
“I was a biology major, and most people doubted me,” she said. But Toombs got her degree in four years just as she had planned. Next on her agenda was to attend nursing school at the University of Alabama. But when UA wouldn’t honor her credits from Miles she was devastated. She simply couldn’t afford to take all the prerequisite courses again.
But after getting knocked down, Toombs pulled herself up and prepared to pivot.
“That was a dream of mine but that wasn’t my purpose,” Toombs said of nursing, “That’s not the purpose that God had for my life.”
Pivot Leads To Purpose
After deciding no longer to pursue nursing school, Toombs spent a year and a half serving as a track and field coach at Miles College.
Today Toombs is a certified personal trainer at Extreme Fitness which allows her to do what she had hoped to do as a nurse. “I’m still helping people,” she said. “I’m still able to help women and men from the inside out — mentally, physically and spiritually — because I’m still like speaking life into them.”
The Girl in the Mirror is available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million. Find Shauntasha Nicole Toombs on Instagram @_klassycole.
This story was updated at 9:53 a.m. on 6/15/2023 to include photo credits and clarify a paragraph of background information.
