Archives for January 2023

Don’t Watch Police Body Cam Video

The sick joy of showing the gruesome beating of yet another Black Man by the Police that resulted in his death, is being circulated via the body cam video.

There is so much monetary and social currency in showing Black Men be hunted, captured, beat, or shot—it’s become normal.

But it’s not.

NO OTHER BODY in America creates “more news” than the hunted, mamed, and murdered Black Male body.

Not Asian.
Not Latino.
Not Indegious.
Not Indian.

And definitely NOT. WHITE.

And each time the trauma of being prey for the thrist of Black blood is circulated, (much like the lunching turned picnics for White families) I/we are sucked into a black hole of fear and hopelessness.

So I say no.

Don’t watch the footage.
Don’t circulate the body cam video.
Don’t look at the photos of domestic terrorism masking as law and order.

There is monetary and ideological profit from our pain.

It’s because it IS profitable and reiterates the narrative/streotype/belief of Black Men as the vicious threat that must be captured and killed, that the video WILL be circulated.

We cannot stop the circulation.
We CAN protect ourselves.
We CAN shield those we love.

You can stay informed through vetted articles and quality commentary that isn’t splashing terrified images/videos of Black bodies running for their lives and being violent beaten near death.

Your nervous system can only take so much.

Protect your peace.
The more we look, the more the death of Black Men by Police becomes normalized to us, which breeds hopelessness and helplessness.

It’s impossible to continue fight/stand/resist when hope is lossed and fear rules the day.

Protect your children.
Social media will parade these images in heavy rotation. Your children will “accidentally” see yet another Brother running, scared, and being beaten within an inch of his life by the police, only to die a few days later.

Protect your purchase power.
Black People are the biggest consuming market in North America. What we watch makes or breaks networks, advertising budgets, and social trends.

By not watching, you bypass the emotional triggers designed to get you in your feelings. You reserve the capacity to think and strategize.

There IS a SIMPLE and easy strategy you can employ IMMEDIATELY to protect yourself and family from this sadistic American tradition.

CHANGE THE SETTINGS ON ALL YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS.

The positioning of “watch with your own eyes” to see if the Police are justified will compel you to want to watch. It’s media manipulation. It’s just effective marketing. Watching doesn’t change the Police’s stance that their excessive use of force is justified.

And watching won’t bring Tyre Nichols back.

Please use the guide below to protect your peace and your family from one of the most insedious ways oppression keeps us in fear as well pimp our pain for their profit.

I love you,

Dr. Venus

Chart by: Kristin L. Cheers

I’ve been sick for 10 days…

(Personal Share) I’ve been sick for over 10 days.
Not Covid.

Closer to pneumonia but not quite.

I’m on the mend. God is faithful.😊

Happy is right here. 🐶🧡🐶

My DOO + Team are doing AMAZING.

Word to the wise: if you get sick and your business stops because you’re sick, your business model is broken.

Being sick has expanded my education and career options.

I now know the difference between a muscle relaxer and an antiinflamitory: a prescription.

Getting sick puts life in perspective.

Like good credit.

I have damn near prostituted myself to Exqifax to have a score of 823.

Growing up poor, my momma would put the bills in each of her children’s name.

My credit was TRASH by the time I was in junior high.

I learned my worth through the pecking order of household utilities.

My oldest sister’s name was used for the phone bill.
My brother’s, the gas bill.
My baby sister got the electric bill.

What did I get? The water bill. Which meant that the only reason we could wash our asses was at the cost of my good name.

I keep good credit as a “corrective” experience for childhood trauma.

I’ve been watching videos of Quinta Brunson in between sleeping and waking enough to walk Happy and take the medicine. She inspires me.

I’m thinking about writing a stand up set while this virus runs it’s course.

Just dreaming again. An “antibiotic/asthma inhaler/ cough suppressant/ muscle relaxer feel-like-my-body-has-been-hit-with-100-dodgeballs-by-a-group-of-angry-teen-whitt supremists,” dream.

I’m going back to a sleep now.😴😴😴

Send love.

I Wish Dr. King HADN’T Dreamed

I wish Dr. King HADN’T dreamed.
(Hear me out. Please.)

A dream is fragile.

It can be manipulated.
Subjugated.
Eradicated.

A dream is vulnerable.

It can be misappropriated.
Commercialized.
Weaponized.

A dream is intangible.

It can be manipulated.
Victimized.
Criminalized.

A dream is a vision.

Something to strive for.
But impossible to obtain.

The striving requires endless effort.
Backbreaking work.
Soul-crashing sacrifice.

For what?
A dream?

I can hear so clearly the hopes
of the Ancestors who marched.

Who sat.
Water hoses.
Police dogs.

Jail.

All for a dream.
Feed people hope.
When they have no power.

Hope for something better makes us brave.
Dreams fuel the passion to march into the next generation so they can run.

Vision is seeing what’s not there as if it were.
We sometimes call that faith. The substance of things hoped, that are unseen.

Dr. King’s dream was
—a vision
—a prophesy
of what equality for all could look like.

For the audacity of that dream, he was:
beaten.
arrested.
Murdered.

I wished Dr. King hadn’t dreamed.
Or at the very least, not shared his dream with the world.

If he hadn’t, maybe his four little babies would not have been left fatherless.

Perhaps he would have been alive to facilitate unity of labor unions on both sides of the color line.

Groomed a group of leaders to teach the babies how to organized politically to impact legistration, not just visualization with marches.

Taught us the value of our spending power as well as the power of our unity.

I wonder if Dr. King had just kept his dream to himself would we even HAVE the prison industrial complex?

Or

Teen moms?
Blk Men who publicly hate Blk Women?
Crack epidemic?

I wonder.

If Dr. King had lived, just 10 years longer, I believe his dream would have been translated into strategic actions that would have altered the course of human history.

We would be living in an entirely different world, if Dr. King had lived to make his dream a reality.

I don’t begrudge the Dream.
It has inspird the world and justice and continues to do so.

I thank Dr. King for his dream and sacrifice such that I can speak, learn, live, and buy in ways Dr. King could not during his lifetime.

I honor Dr. King’s dream.
His service.
His sacrifice.

I just wished he had lived long enough to fulifill it.

That’s all.

Surrendering To God

“… I am weak, but He is strong.”

I learned this song in vacation Bible School when I was a child hungry and finding refuge in the Church.

I didn’t understand it then.
I just sang the words so I could get the free lunch.

I have never thought of myself as strong.

In truth, I’m mostly scared.

I fear not fulfilling God’s will for my life.
(Hear me out.)

My life is too extreme for it not to be useful to humanity.

And yet, in the silence of my solitude, I worry: can I truly pull off what God has shown me in my mind?

I have been trained in the violence infested and unforgiving trenches of the Streets…

I’ve been educated at some of the most prestigious academic institutions in the America, if not the world…

I’ve shared meals with rats and roaches in condemned Baltimore buildings…

I have done all my God has asked of me, and yet, it hasn’t been enough to thank God for keeping me alive.

I am not strong.

I don’t have the courage nor confidence of the Shepard boy who knew how to sling rocks that took down a giant.

I worry.
I fret.
I fear.

Failing.

I can hear my 1920s gangsta God, sporting a Fedora, sipping on aged cognac, smoking a hand-rolled Cuban cigar, chucking at my fears.

“Bae” that’s God’s pet name for me, “Your strength is not your courage or confidence.”

“Your strength,” My God takes a slow sip, which he savors before finishing His thought, “is that you are brave.”

I sit in silence as Spirit, looking like Southern Comfort on a Sunday afternoon, wraps her loving arms around me and covers my eyes.

In the beauty of Her darkness…

I let go.
To fail.
To fall.

I free fall backwards, heels over head, through an emotional and energetic wasteland of
—broken promises.
—broken trust.
—broken dreams.

I see a litany of violence, losses, and betrayals from my past.

After each one healed, I chose to live again.

Dream again.
Believe again.
Hope again.

To try.

I open my eyes to see the truth of me.

Strength shows up when I need it.
In the way that I need it.
When I refuse to surrender.

To the degree of the threat/attack is to the degree my strength arises from a deep place I can only access once provoked.

That deep place is where I surrender to God.

I refuse to surrender to the attack, but I humbly surrender to my God.

“…I am weak, but He is strong.”
The song makes sense now.

My strength is being brave enough to surrender my will to my God.

2023’s New “HOTNESS” ALERT!

Hey Sis,

SOUND THE ALARM!!!!
New HOTNESS ALERT!
30+ Years in the Making!

It took over 30 years to FINALLY have my life align with my God’s will for my life.

  • My God kept me alive in my birth mother’s womb when she tried to abort me.
  • My God kept me alive when I was living on the streets by the age of 16.
  • My God sent my 9th grade math teacher to take me in off the streets of Baltimore and love on me so much I graduated from Stanford University with a 2nd Masters and a PhD.

If my God would have stopped there, that would be enough.

But no.

My God ENSURED I was trained to navigate social systems, breakdown complex ideas so they are accessible to the masses AND to monetize my knowledge instead of my time, skills, or labor.

The result: $6+ million in less than 7 years and a purpose-driven, MIRACULOUS LIFE!!

I can see SO clearly now that my Call is the emotional and economic freedom for Black People, worldwide.

Starting at home.
My home.
My heart.

Black Women Entrepreneurs.

In this New Year, I’m building an ARMY of Black Women Millionaires who are committed to Us healing and thriving together!

I REFUSE to be the only Sister Millionaire in my family, community, or at “The Table.”

This is a “we” thang not a “me” thang.

So my sisters in success, who are established, experienced but EXHAUSTED; who are ready to hit the million-dollar mark in one year (or less) check out my BRAND NEW MINI-COURSE!!!

Click here for all the delicious details.

Sis, be prepared to have your mind BLOWN!🤯💣🧨 Can we say PURE 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I love you,

Dr. Venus