By the time I wake up, I’ll have ended a seven-day juice fast. Well, I’ll have ended it before my fellow fasters even begin. See, the fast is supposed to be three weeks, and the third week is juice, but I never do things by anyone’s book, not a recipe, not a curriculum, not a marathon training program. In fact, I consider instructions as a starting point, a point of departure.

Probably because I think I know it all, and I know better than the people who wrote the instructions. This explains why my bookshelf has a shelf on upside down. Directions matter.

In August, I paid $400 to see Beyoncé and realize I’m not her audience.

God sent a small group of friends this morning to surround me… even though I work out by myself every day.

Affirmations are what we say to ourselves when no one else is around. It’s a counter to the negative self-speak. It’s a counter to the voice in our heads that tells us what we can’t do, who we can’t be. Affirmations are our response to the narratives that hold us back. Affirmations help us make space for blessings, abundance, and overflow.

In a movie about a Black man, the white men are the stars and saviors. The white men come through. The white men risk their lives. The white men rise up. The white men, shockingly, do the right thing.

As a Black woman in this country, I resist the urge to work myself, grind myself, and achieve myself to death. Instead, I’m choosing the soft, intentional, luxe life. Here are some morning affirmations as we walk the soul road.

I think often about my professors in undergrad. And I think often about the reality that some of them had to have experienced the worst day of their lives the same day we had class scheduled. There had to have been miscarriages and diagnoses, divorces and separations, outside children and personal calamities. There had to have been loss and disease, disaster and hardship. 

But I never knew it. 

And, honestly, I don’t think that’s admirable. 

But let’s be very clear: a PBI is not an HBCU. A PBI will not be an HBCU. A PBI cannot be an HBCU.

And if you’re a Black student who wants to attend an HBCU, you have to attend an HBCU to go an HBCU.

So, on Father's Day, when T. D. Jakes was supposed to be celebrating and uplifting Black fathers, he instead was criticizing and condemning Black mothers. Coincidentally, though, when T.D. Jakes was ten years old, his own father was diagnosed with kidney failure and until the end of his life, T.D. Jakes' mother cared for her husband and her family by herself... which effectively made her a single parent, so I wonder where his own mother falls into his sermonic scorn. Cause I'm sure he ain't come for her like he's coming for us.

In his "sermon," he says a few things: (1) we're raising women to be men, (2) we celebrate women for being "tough, rough, nasty, mean, aggressive, hateful, possessive," (3) women are climbing the corporate ladder and losing their families, (4) and women are not creating "a need for [a man] to pour into" so the man is going to leave.

So let's talk about it.

I was born in the 80s in Miami, so I was raised on some combination of Betty Wright and frozen cups. Any given Saturday, you could find a Black child singing along to the music of her mama and grandmama, Betty Wright’s “No Pain, No Gain.”

One of the lines oft-quoted is this, “Having a piece of man is better than having no man at all, so I’m just gon take what I got and work with it. You understand what I mean?”

We repeated it so much that we believed it. We accepted it as our truth. 

Having a piece of man had to be better than being single, right?

I spent time trying to love someone who didn’t love himself. Trying to build him back up. I offered my time, my body, my money, my mind to help me be what I thought he needed. And you know what? He resented me for it. He thought I was looking down on him. He thought I pitied him. He believed he was a charity case and that I didn’t respect him.

What I thought was love was interpreted as an insult.

I’m tired of hearing Black women tell the same stories about so many different men.

I’m tired of men with nothing to offer but hard dick, hard luck, and hard times.

I’m tired of men with “potential.”

But we wait so long and accept so much that the men don’t realize they’re inadequate.

And that’s on us.

Despite me being afraid of heights, I regularly dream that I’m flying. I’ll be soaring through the sky, wings flapping, arms wide, feeling the wind, cutting the air.

And I’ll admit I wake up disappointed.

I still can’t fly.

But since I’m afraid of heights, even if I could fly, would I ever try?

I saw her hurriedly scurrying across the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center at the Essence Festival.

She saw my skirt.

I saw her smile…