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Saturday, June 25, 2016

"Mixed" Feelings

I saw an ad on TV the other day for SheaMoisture. SheaMoisture is a haircare line designed (I suppose, but I'm not quite sure) for "ethnic" hair. The ad which, hopefully you can see here: 



(If you can't see the ad it shows the Black women confused and obviously hurt because they can't shop shoulder to shoulder with their white counterparts as they select shampoos and pomades. SheaMoisture comes to the rescue as the only one who sympathizes with the Black condition, inviting Black customers to cross the line and move over into the "white's only section (did I really write that?)." By the way, the mixed girl is with her mom on the "better" aisle.)

Anyway...here's where I am on this. I'm not impressed. I'm looking at the ad and I see that SM is trying to make us feel better about ourselves by making the attempt to pull me into something that they say is equal by throwing me into a sea of different and then telling me that I'm better off for it and, all this after SM told us they weren't for us in the first place. 


Oh...wait, what am I talking about?




Last year Shea Moisture was in the news because they used white models as the images to 
sell their products.  Not just this ad either, there were several... We got mad and rose a stink about it. 

What made us think a thing marked Shea Butter, or Cocoa Butter, or Coconut Oil belong to us?

And... who told us SheaMoisture was a Black Hair Care Product in the first place?

Granted, I was irritated in the '80s when I started buying my own hair care products and to my dismay, came to the disappointing realization that the products for my hair, if there were any in the store, were tucked away, not on the other side of the hair care aisle, or at the end of the aisle in its own section, but that it was on the bottom shelf under the foot powder and fungus remedies.

Flash forward to today, the section, and it still is its own section, is easy to find.
It's on the hair care aisle (where I shop) and there are 100%, maybe 150% more products than before.
I'm not mad about it. They've made it easy for me to find what I want. (Remember the spices and the ethnic spices aren't in the same place in the store either.) If I want to find a store filled with products designed for my type of hair there are indoor swap meets full of them. Certainly I can shop at a beauty supply (the one in my "white neighborhood is a topic for another time).

But, if I wanted SheaMoisture, where do you suppose 
I would find them in the neighborhood store? 
Would I feel better about shopping for them?
Would I feel... included? 
Would shopping for SheaMoisture make me feel better about myself?

Well, I was in the store and looked today. Yay! SheaMoisture, for the breakthrough. Aside from being very difficult to locate in the sea of products I found you here:


Yep, that's them... down there near the floor... ahem...

...with the anti-theft stickers on them.
I think I'm feeling some kind of way about the whole thing.
I think I'll just go to the section where I can find what I need or better yet, 
I'll buy my products hand-to-hand or online from small businesses who
truly have my interests in mind.


Saturday, April 23, 2016


Worked on breathing today!

February 14, 1997 I started the Sheriff's academy in San Diego. I was never an athletic person. I mean, I like dance and step and zumba class but I was...in the band. I was a nerd. I was a fat kid. I played growing up, but nothing like the academy. But I was determined that the academy physical training wouldn't beat me! The first day we had to jog. It was probably only about one mile and we jogged pretty slowly. They drove a van behind us and told us we could get on it if we gave up. I watched some get on the van. I refused and pushed through. I finished that first day and really had to consider if it was worth it to do this every day for the next 11 weeks. Again, I told myself I would not let them beat me! Everyday when it was time for PT I would start having anxiety. My heart would start pounding, I would sweat and pant. Jogging was the hardest thing I had ever done. I graduated from the academy eleven weeks later. I was #1 academically, but the greater success was that I was able to meet all the PT requirements.
Fast forward to 2010. I started a school at my church and in accordance with our vision to incorporate mental, spiritual, and physical fitness our pastor started a boot camp for the staff and students. We worked out 6 days a week for an hour each day for 3 years straight. After the first few months, guess what he added to the training? Yep! Jogging... ugh! But it wasn't that bad. With pastor leading the pack he would call out "Lean back, throw your legs out in front of you and breathe!" Well, the school had to close after 3 years for lack of funding and with it went the boot camp.
It has been three years since we closed our doors. I still work out at the gym, I take the classes (Zumba, RIPPED, SPINN, U-Jam, Kickboxing), I take karate classes, and I still jog. Last week I went out to jog a couple of miles and at the 3/4 mile marker I was DONE. My body was good but I had not been able to control my breathing and I was pretty much hyperventilating! I'm overweight but I'm in pretty good shape. This wasn't about being able to do it or even about my anxiety any more, it was about BREATHING! So I looked it up online for advice and pointers. This is what I learned: Start slow and concentrate. Walk and breathe. Deep breaths. Then walk faster still concentrating on the breathing. Count the number of paces for each breath. Then a slow jog. The breathing should be easier to control. Then step it up to your goal pace. Today I jogged an ALMOST effortless 3 miles!
But this LONG post is about more than that, isn't it? It's about not giving up. It's about focussing on what sustains us and what gives us the power and strength to do what we set our minds to do. It's about overcoming obstacles, looking (asking) for help when we need it and never giving up. If you've read this far, I hope you are encouraged. Don't let struggles in life get to you. Don't let anxiety stop you. You may just need to work on your breathing!

Monday, April 11, 2016

What I Learned This Week: I QUIT!


Dear sirs,
It is with no regrets that I write this letter. I was at one time very grateful for the opportunities with which I had been presented during my stint in your service. I have, however, come to the understanding, observation, and recognition that you mean nothing but harm for me in everything that I put my hands and my heart to. You made me believe I was doing well but with every job review I was getting worse. I worked many overtime hours without pay or recognition. Each of the tasks you gave me I took on wholeheartedly, each one taking a piece of that same heart. I will no longer spend my days doing mundane tasks. I will no longer serve ill will. I will no longer smear lives with hatred. I will no longer maintain an attitude of despair and defeat. I will no longer give the worst of me to highlight the best of you. In my time under your supervision I have killed many dreams and lost many opportunities and you made me think I was my own supervisor. I slammed doors closed and locked them before I realized I had no keys. 
Your promises, when I came on the job, were all lies. There were no lifelong benefits; my health has suffered and there is no WELLNESS plan; my finances have suffered and there is no SAVING plan; my family has suffered and there is no LOVE plan; my soul has suffered and there is no SALVATION plan!  Even the meals you served in the lunchroom were unfulfilling and lacked nutrition. You commissioned me to do your dirty work, to steal from the poor and ignore the brokenhearted, to kill and destroy, to maim and mar. I won’t do it any more. The final straw was when I realized you were charging me to work for you. The cost was too much. Much more than I can afford to pay. It was costing me everything that I AM. 
Therefore, this letter is to serve as my resignation, effective immediately. I will not be returning to your service. I will not be applying for unemployment benefits and require nothing of you. I have been approached by another job. I have accepted another position, one with EVERLASTING benefits. The pay is more than I can carry. The potential for growth is astronomical. I’ve already been given a RAISE! I am turning in my badge, on my new job I carry a different kind of SHIELD. I am turning in my uniform for on my new job I will wear a WHITE ROBE. The nametag you assigned me is of no use, because MY NAME HAS BEEN CHANGED! 

Thankfully His,
Child of God
Child of God
(Previously known as Sinner)

Friday, February 5, 2016

What I Learned This Week: I Am Part of the Revolution

I guess, when I look at the history of the United States I have to admit that I am heartbroken. There is so much that is so wrong with this country, its history and its people. The death and destruction, but most of all, the hatred. The fear that has been born and fed from misunderstanding and self-righteousness. We take what we want, we give little, and demand more. Who does that?

So, reflecting on my own life, I have discovered, declared and decided that I am part of the revolution. I lift my voice on paper with pen and I say what needs to be said to the people that need to hear it. I speak words of encouragement and I take up arms in your defense. I want to walk blocks with a paper pinned to me that lets everyone know that I am woman, I am mother, I am wife, I am Black...I am African American....whose ancestors were not given a choice but simply a place and we continue to accept that place as our own as if that were the only place that we have.

We hold on to religion as if the only real hope that we have is in death and that our lives are simply the result of a sinful nature which we are hopeless to control. And, brothers and sisters, that is a lie.

I have decided to be a change. Even if it is for the sake of no one but those who share a roof with me. But it won't. It will be for the man who hates me before he knows my name. It is for him and her who decide my fate based on the way my hair doesn't lie flat against my scalp and despises me because I allow it, in all its glory to wind upon itself and stand at attention. It will be for the children who, in awe, reach out to my skin to see if, in fact it is a permanent state of being and whose mothers have insisted that they stay away from it lest they become a victim of the disease it carries. It will be for the old woman I listen to as she rambles on about her past and the one Black friend that she had growing up. How that little girl shaped all of Black America for her and in her mind, we are all made up of that one. A culture bound in limits.

As I type on computer keyboards and watch words come to life, I realize that I have become part of a renaissance that has lasted and tested time. A symbolic shift from an era of masters to masterpieces of me and you bound together. An artistic rambling of thought and temperament. Pen and ink, paint and keys, colors that rise to the surface like hot grease voices singing negro spirituals turned jazz sonatas with a blues back. This is the place where I dig my heels in and reminisce on times past and make promises to myself that the past will not be the future for my sons, or the sons of my sons and my daughters will not cry out in the dark of nights for the souls of forgotten boys.

A shot cries out as I throw away plastic guns. My sons will not be the victims of fear and hatred and so I teach them a lesson in the revolution. We must arm ourselves with knowledge and power. We must not be afraid to be who we were created to be and own our place on this planet. None can make you less, son. None can make you less. No one can make you anything unless you decide in your mind that the revolution is over and take the place that is thrown toward you.

Today, I have decided with the determination that my fingers pound on these keys that every breath that I take and every word that I write and every thought that goes through my mind must be for the building up. As I take my place on the battle line and the marching line, locking my arms with those who stand united with me. No longer will the shade of coffee in a cup divide and separate me from who I love. No longer will I stand idly by and watch the shift in the atmosphere as if I have no control over my own airspace.

I am part of the revolution. My job in it, is to impact your mind.

The Coffee Date

Standing in her living room I was oddly uncomfortable. The room was clean. Tidy, and reminiscent of the way model homes were decorated and eerily uninhabited. Those homes that possessed no soul. No rhythm or heartbeat. Without the echo of footsteps on wooden floors and the parade of laughing children on staircases.

She invited me to sit. I lowered my body in unison with my purse onto the brocade tapestry. And then, thinking twice about setting my purse on the sofa pulled it back into my lap. I glanced at my shoes near the front door, a longing in the eyelets peering at me. I wiggled my toes in stockinged feet grateful that I had the fore-notion to cover peeling polish and crooked knuckles.

Balancing the tiniest cup of coffee on a china saucer I watched a cube of sugar slowly dissolve. Who uses sugar cubes any more? She laughed and talked about nothing. My eyes dancing back and forth from her lips, moving up and down, a silly pucker and phony high-pitched baby voice, to the bare walls and coffee table. A candle that had never been lit and a vase of silk flowers.

She must do chores all day. I thought about my own home, stacks of books on shelves and tables and in corners. A fine layer of dust on the blinds and bits of thread and this or that screaming their existence against the dark colored carpet that I hated from the time that we moved in but had been too lazy to do anything about. My sewing machine, I remembered, had been left on the window seat in the kitchenette, out of its case, the spools of thread on their sides threatening to fall and unravel on the linoleum. My heavy ceramic coffee mug, on the table, a ring of sugary sweet caffeine drying inside, a line of it down the outside of the cup lending itself to a unique ellipse on a white paper napkin next to a novel, its pages dog eared and stained from reading and rereading pages that pulsed with their own life.

This home, with its dainty scent of rose petals and pine cleaners did not echo the open arms of her mistress. But she was proper. Far from the wild haired, open mouthed stare of my front room, not used for sitting in delicate conversation, loud music blaring, booty shaking and off-key singing, door slamming cadence. Frying bacon and dirty diapers and smokey burning the second time from the bottom of the stove where the berry pie boiled over. Dirty dishes left for later, when living stopped waiting for something brilliant to happen. Birds that ruffle feathers and dogs that shake loose hairs into the air as they lay in panels of light from curtain-less windows, proof of life when humans, doing human things are absent.

Interrupting her chatter, I asked, because I longed to see and hear the passion in her voice. I wanted to see her heart, raw and naked in the room. Spilling over in color-filled words onto the area rug. If she could just let her hair spill over her shoulders and dance with carefree abandon. Awakening sleeping beasts. Allowing her hands to touch and feel textures and temperatures as they explode in sparkling flashes of light. But she just kept on talking, everything in its place. Everything just so. Proper and in order.