In the Broadway show The Color Purple - the 2016 Tony Award-winning musical revival - the main character Celie survives incest, domestic violence, sexual assault, servitude, discrimination, and many other forms of abuse. The time period and environment she finds herself in was anything but empowering for a young black woman yet her final response to the degradation of her abusive partner is, "I may be poor. I may be black. I may be ugly. But I'm here."

Celie leaves her abuser, at his (and everyone else's) dismay and shock, and at the end of the show returns transformed having become completely self-sufficient after starting her own clothing business. The culminating song titled "I'm Here" brought me to tears as I watched Tony Award-winner Cynthia Erivo so honestly portray the newly empowered Celie. My favorite lyric in this song is when Celie proclaims boldly and confidently, "I believe I have inside of me everything that I need to live a bountiful life." She stopped believing that she wasn't enough or that she needed someone or something else to be happy. She took the power back.