Archives for August 2021

I have “Black girl booty.” If you get that gap in the back of your jeans because your bum bum curves back and out plus you have a small waist, you understand my pain.

But here’s the truth: I feel shame.

Do you ever feel shame for things that weren’t your fault?
I do.

Please don’t judge me…
Body shame and body-shaming is not just for big girls. ANY woman who does not fit the EVER-CHANGING standards of beauty falls victim and internalizes them. To our own detriment.

Hear me out…
Recording artist Lizzo is unapologetically old, beautiful, and plus size. She has won Grammys, been in movies, and inked her own deal with Netflix. Yet despite her accomplishments, TROLLS have the gall to pretend to care about her health and to publicly shame her for her size. I did TWO rants about it on Facebook live – here and here.

As I took a stand for Lizzo to not let herself be policed by trolls, I bumped into my internal haters. My trolls are about my hair, my nose, and my butt.

When I was 12, my birth mother, as an act of violence, maliciously cut my long jheri curl off to bleeding bald patches. She called me bad names, ridiculed my big nose, and said I was ugly.

Because I grew up unprotected, having a curvy derriere drew unwanted attention from grown men who felt they had the right to grope and fondle. To circumvent them, I wore a headscarf and big clothes so people couldn’t see my body.

Sometimes my covers kept me safe.
Other times not.
First I resented my female body. But the more it was hurt, the more I hated it. Especially my bum-bum.

As I argued for Lizzo to free herself from the tyranny of her haters, I realized I hadn’t freed myself from mine.
So that is what I’m doing now.

I’m wearing my natural hair WITH blonde tips because I like it!
I’m wearing short shorts even with all my cellulite showing because I love AND approve of me to myself.

I’m never going to be a size two or have Beyonce hips. I have an ass on me that sits high and looks low.

My body belongs to me. The past is gone. Other people’s violence doesn’t get to dictate my pride, pleasure, or joy in my body. God gave me THIS body-
THIS nose–
THIS hair–
THIS booty.

I get to free myself from the personal and historical trauma of being born a Black girl descendant from Black Female slaves whose bodies were not their own.

By claiming my body, I’m healing history.

I invite you to do the same.

I love you.

I’m more girl than woman with you.
Giggly.
Girly.
Shy.

You speak to me in pleas instead of demands.

You soften me.
You take away the danger.
You make it safe to be fragile.
Tender.
Uncertain.

I know I am wounded.

You know it too.
You turn my wounds into credibility.
Then justify why
I am supposed to be loved like this.

Lavishly.
Relentlessly.
Gentle and soft.

You touch me like I am fragile.

Your fingertips trace the lines of my face like I’m a mirage.
Too good to be true for you.

You lean in close…
Your breath on my cheek
Warm and moist…

Your lips trail softly to my ear…
You whisper…
And whisper…
And whisper…
“I love you Venus Opal Reese.
Let me love you. Please let me…”

I make room for you inside.
I feel something within me awaken.

A piece of me that ran away and locked herself in a high tower filled with books in the form of a mental labyrinth, confusing and impossible to figure a way out.

My little girl self who stopped feeling safe at 6 when she gave her first blow job as payment for playing jacks.

She found safety in books that would whisk her away from the pain of being beaten and starved because she looked like her father…

She divorced herself from her body so it could not be used against her.

But you lavish love upon her heart.

My battered emotionally raped heart.

Big gumdrops of Candyland love
that can only be given but never earned.

Your love guides me.

Out of the tower of my terrified heart.

Through the labyrinth of my razor-sharp intellect…
… Into a nurturing garden of yellow dandelions, happy tulips and white roses….
…where it is safe to be a girl.
A lady.
A woman.
I didn’t know how unsafe
I was until your love.
I didn’t know how guarded
I was until your grace.

I didn’t know how hurt my heart was until you persistently pour love on it.

Thank you for taking such precious care of my little girl self.
Your love is growing me up into your woman.

But for now…
…I relish being
your babygirl.

By: Dr. Venus Opal Reese
Date: 08.17.21

I thought being a millionaire would solve all of my problems.

I was soooooooo wrong.

Being a millionaire AMPLIFIED how very poor I am.

Hear me out… Please.

I don’t mean poor like sleeping on the streets, individually poor. I mean generationally poor.

If you have money but the people you love don’t, through no fault of their own, being a millionaire feels like you ain’t ____.

I am not talking about guilt or imposter. I’m talking about the utter helplessness one feels realizing just how much we DON’T have as a People.

Making millions put a spotlight on three very important factors.

1. While I had money it wasn’t enough to take care of my bloodline. Meaning, I could buy gifts or give money but I couldn’t buy life insurance in enough time to save my cousin’s life.

Or pay the astronomical hospital bills each year for my goddaughter who was born with a week immune system.

Or pay for my grandnieces and nephew’s college education enough though they were honor roll students.

I had “money” but not the kind of money that could impact the quality of life of the people I love in any way but superficially. #ThatHurts

2. I didn’t know enough about wealth acquisition to account for the built-in expenses of having money. Taxation and Inflation eat millionaires for breakfast.

As a millionaire, I’m in the 40% tax bracket. That means for every one dollar I earn, Uncle Sam AUTOMATICALLY takes 40 cents. Do you have ANY idea what it feels like to make one, two, FIVE million dollars and forty percent goes away?

Yes, you can do tax write-offs but the useful write-offs are reserved for the Trumps, Elsons, and big corporations of the world. For small business owners, EVERYTHING becomes a write-off just to try to lower your tax bill. But it’s a fine line between being “smart” or being criminal.

While you are turning over every rock to find a legitimate write-off, expenses keep going up. Each year you make money, each year you have to pay more for the same thing or service you had last year. Now you have to raise your rates, which you are loathed to do because it feels like passing the buck to your clients. So you don’t. Now YOU have to take a pay cut to make sure your team gets paid.

3. Working hard and alone. All the profits I made from my company went back into the company to grow it. And it did. But even with a team of 20+ amazing people, I STILL was working 60 hour weeks. And I eventually became sick.

So I dissolved that business and created a new one.

The new one is not dependent upon my labor. It’s designed as a “we” business instead of a “me” business.

It’s leveraged and scalable because it’s rooted in technology instead of sweat equity. I’ve built in a self-referential ecosystem so that the different constituents (I.e., content creators, equity partners, potential investors, and “sister keeper’s” affiliate opportunity, etc.) are monetarily rewarded.

If you want to learn more about my digital platform that is designed “for us and by us” go here: http://venusopal.com/reveal

I firmly believe that if we as a People are committed to generational wealth, we will have to do so collectively instead of individually. I don’t simply mean “buy Black.” I mean create, fund, and own our own infrastructures. Technology adds the speed.

But it takes cooperation.

Jay Z has a song, “Family Feud.”
The music video is directed by Ava Duverney and stars a who’s who of Black celebrities. It starts in the future and works it’s way backward. One of the lyrics states, “What’s better than one billionaire? Two/Especially if they are the same hue… Nobody wins when the family feuds.”

If we are committed to generational wealth, we can only achieve it by healing the distrust and generational betrayal we have acted out on each other from slavery to the present day.

I’m willing to heal, build and grow with you sis.

I’m willing to fund a digital platform that features Black Women content creators to provide you a safe and inclusive space to connect, grow and heal.

I am also willing to be the first and take ALL the risks so we as a People have a business model that is PROVEN and can be modeled for generations to come.

The real question is this, sis: Are you?

Are you willing to support Black Women in business the same way you support red bottoms, or lace fronts, or Netflix? Wherever you spend your money is what you support.

I know you don’t see it that way.

I didn’t either until I started to see how much we spend with very little awareness about how powerful our buying power is. We build markets, fund trends, as well as source other races’ billion-dollar valuations (think Clubhouse) but not our own.

But we COULD.

So, I ask you, sis are you willing? I’m not asking for a knee-jerk yes that sounds good in the moment but isn’t really thought through. Please read this entire article again so you truly comprehend what I am asking of you.

(I’ll wait. Long pause.)

Do you comprehend the depth of my “are you willing” question?

Your actions will be your answer.

So…we will see.

I love you.

It’s impossible to be free if a woman doesn’t have her own money.
Countless women stay in relationships that don’t work, at jobs they hate, or sacrifice their dreams in order to give their children the best life they can afford.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can make living life easier.

Money doesn’t fix problems, but it is a resource that can greatly aid you when life kicks you in the teeth.
Some women fear money.
Others abuse it.
Some shun it.
Others worship it.

Regardless of your relationship with money (yes you are in a relationship with money) it is something required to live your life.
My life started in a social situation that was beyond my control. I grew up poor.

Sardines in the tin can smothered to death with old mustard; block government cheese too thick to cut with an old knife; soggy chickpeas out of an expired can was my birth family’s norm. We lived on food stamps, charity from churches, and EVERYBODY worked as soon as we were old enough to get paid.

Like most people born into generational poverty, money seemed like the way “out.”

So like many poor girls, I thought if I worked hard, I would one day be somebody.

Well someday came and went.
Being “somebody” is subjective and amorphous.
Life keeps marching on.

Here’s the truth about money: it’s transient.
Its very nature is to move.

Making money is never the problem.

The real problem is not making money, but rather institutionalizing money so it becomes a financial asset that can be bought, sold, or traded.

Here is a prime example.

The Slave Trade was North America’s first corporate institution. The Dutch West India Company, on June 3, 1621, was given jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic Slave Trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. The trade of slaves did a number of things:
1. made the company liable for lost cargo instead of individual merchants (tax protection).
2. turned enslaved people into labor.
3. turned enslaved people into financial assets.

When one grows up poor, one sees the “good life” on television and strives for it. We work hard. Go to school. Get a good job. Work hard. But we NEVER really get ahead.

The truth is working hard will never make you rich. It will only make you tired.

Labor is designed to keep you broke.

The reason poor women stay poor is because we have never been taught how to generate wealth GENERATIONALLY instead of INDIVIDUALLY.

Generational wealth is made in three simple steps:
— create a product you own that a group of people LOVE.
— structure that product such that it is leverageable and scalable (WITHOUT YOUR LABOR!).
— eventually turn it into a financial asset others can make money off of for years, decades, centuries to come.

This three-step process is the source of America’s wealth.
The product — slave labor.
The leverage & scalable structure — breeding slaves as well as laws that made a child born to an enslaved woman a slave from birth, generationally.
The financial asset — buy, sell, and invest in stock based on projections of the amount of work enslaved people will produce in years to come.

This is how wealth – generational wealth – happens. There is NO WAY to know this if you are poor or even working class. We are taught to “labor” to work hard, not create.

But what if we did, sis?

What if we created a product that a group or community LOVED and were able to use technology to leverage and scale that product and eventually have others buy, sell, or invest in stock of the company who OWNS the product?

If we did that, do you realize what that would mean?
That we have created a company that has a billion-dollar valuation.
#micdrop

Birthing 100 Billion Black Women in the next five years through technology and content is closer than you think, sis.

You don’t believe me?
Fair enough.
But when you comprehend America and engage America on America’s terms, you will be BLOWN AWAY by how doable it actually is to create generational wealth when you move from “worker” to “investor.”

I will break all this down on August 12, 2021. Go here to save your spot: venusopal.com/reveal

I love you sis.

If you are anything like me, being a poor female has had its drawbacks. Especially being able to provide for those I love. I was NEVER taught how to make money GENERATIONALLY. It’s no longer enough for me to “get mine” but leave an entire race of people I love trapped in the same paradigm our ancestors prayed us through.

No. Not on my watch.

It’s time for US to heal so our next generation inherits wealth instead of debt.

We really do have EVERYTHING we need to create the generational wealth in five years that our ancestors could NEVER have.

Let’s make them proud.