Archives for October 2020

If you have been following me for awhile, you know I can’t cook. I’m serious. I am so bad at cooking I actually burnt boiled eggs. (Yes, it’s possible #dontjudgeme)

But due to the pandemic, I am doing something I NEVER in a million years would have thought I could do.

I’M COOKING FOR ME!!! Granted it’s frozen food & pre-cooked links–mere details! I’m growing in ways I never imagined before AND in ways required as I surrender to God’s will for my life.

My team is growing!!! I have an AMAZING new publicist!!! AND she is a millennial!!! She is brilliant & can create at the speed of my thought! Which is NO small accomplishment. Plus I have a new admin who takes care of all of my social media communications! This is a GIFT!! I feel supported & certain. Both women are exquisite & they each inspire me.

I’m scheduled for interviews through to the end of November AND today I had the opportunity to share on the eWomenNetwork Success Panel!! This is HUGE!!! I stopped collaborating two years ago when I got sick.

I love Kym Yancey. He, his incredible wife Sandra, & the Managing Directors of eWomenNetwork launched me. I would not have this life had it not been for their vision for who I could be… & I will be grateful for the rest of my life.

AND yesterday I was contacted about an opportunity for television. IF it goes forward, I will not be able to speak on it, so keep it on the hush, please. Loose lips sink ships. I feel like God is positioning for things beyond anything I can pray for.

I feel like I’m waking up from a deep coma.

I feel God moving in & through me. Hot Mess Millionaire is up on YouTube & RACKING IN views. Thursday, episode 2 streams. We screened it this past Tuesday & it was well-received so I feel good about it’s reception. Send prayers.

The Hot Mess Millionaire Facebook Group is growing like weeds! It’s good. I can feel the pace picking up & I am ready.

Feet swollen.
Standing in line. 11 hours.
Hungry.

I don’t mind.

My grandmomma, she couldn’t read.
Back curved forward.
Handwashing White Folk laundry.
Washboard pressed against the bottom of a tin tub filled with urine infested sudsy water.

Little Mr. Timmy wet the bed at night.

Grandmomma would take me to the market with her so I could read the prices for the flour and lard.

Store owner found out grandmamma couldn’t read.
White man.

He would see how much money she had. Charge the whole sum for a tin of lard.

We would walk back from the market and she would tell me about her grandmamma.

All the way from Africa.

She told me about how her grandmamma could pick bales and bales of cotton, from sun up to sun down, bent over.

Her fingers turning into claws to dig that stubborn soft cotton out of the tight prickly bud.

Her grandmomma couldn’t read– she worked her fingers raw so her granddaughter, great granddaughter, great great granddaughter someday, one day would be able to read.

Go to school.
Sit wherever she wanted.
Just like the White Folk do.

Grandmomma would grease my scalp and braid my hair as I read the Bible to her.

She said hearing me read those stories made her strong enough to wash another tub of White Folk laundry.

I didn’t realize until year’s later she was washing those clothes for me.

I wouldn’t understand why my grandmother told me about her grandmother picking so much cotton, on her feet all day, sun up to rundown, so her daughter didn’t have too.

My mother, she worked three jobs, all hard labor.
Standing.
Pushing a broom.
A mop.

So her daughters would never have to.
My people are from Cairo.
Not that far from Suwanee.
A little over four-hour drive in the mean glare of the Deep South’s sun.

Lines.
We wait in long lines.
4 hours. 6 hours. 12.

We waited in lines to de-board those ships.
Knee high in feces.
Rotting flesh.
Death.

We stood, scared and trembling.
On the auction block.
Watching our momma’s sold away.
That’s how I ended up being raised by my grandmomma.

We stood at the back of the bus.
Then we stood with our fist in the air.

In lines.
Long lines.
Like bloodstained spiritual veins.
Linking us to all the mommas.
Who stood for us.
To have the right to stand.

The lines are long.
We don’t mind the wait.

We’ve been standing for centuries. Standing is the legacy our maternal linage bequeath us as a super power.

So we stand.

Just like our mommas did.
And we will keep standing for little Black girls who have yet to be born.

So our great-great-granddaughters will know they are loved.
Then.
Now.
Forever.
And they are free.