Over the past few weeks, I’ve been in purge mode.  Even my children have felt the joy in releasing and ridding of accumulated stuff.  My little one, well, just call her Niecy Nash Jr. As she stirred around our home, she repeated one word for all to hear: detach.  In other words, don’t get vacuumed into the ‘awww’ factor. My ten year old led our purification mission – from the mouth of babes God speaks.   

My cleanse initially started in the physical realm but quickly morphed into a mental, emotional, and spiritual purification journey.  Unlike my usual– abc, 123—structure, profound clarity is always hidden in the ebb and flow of being inwardly still.  I quieted the headstrong, ‘cup half full or half empty’ perspective, tossed the content and shattered the glass. Renewal isn’t about measurement, but clarity.

Renewal is personal and can only be analyzed from your own mind’s eye. However, it does includes acceptance, forgiveness, healing, listening and becoming whole with the holes—silence is a piercing gateway.  Spiritually, even Jesus encouraged us in his parable of putting new wine in old wine skins and telling us to ‘be renewed in the spirit of your mind’.   

As I’ve always told my girlies, pay attention to you. Stop looking outward for commentary on your divine design, you must know, love and approve yourself first. Give and recieve love and flush out the rest. (Yes, I have to remind myself of this often.)

How do you know if you’re moving in a rightly direction – there’s always confirmation.  You don’t have to seek it. It tends to just show up and usually confirms your internal compass.  Sometimes, it’ll blow you away.

Lisa Newell

Confidence and empowerment is something near and dear to my heart, as I know the pain of self-rejection and the hazard of constantly striving to over achieve. It’s not productivity that is the problem; the issue is the mindset in which the goals are set and undertaken.

If we as women buy into the faulty thinking that our worth is based on what we do, what we look like and whom we are trying to please today, we will never have peace of mind, empowerment and personal power or authentic confidence.

The driven behavior that is going on in our society today is not even healthy masculine behavior. Truly healthy masculine energy (not male, -masculine- there is a difference) allows us to move forward into life and get things done. It creates a sense of independence, provision and protection.

Even as women we need to have a balance of these qualities in order to speak up, have courage to go through fear and to keep people out of our space when we need to. These qualities are not limited to males/men. The driven quality that most people attribute to men that we see is really the wounded ego. In fact, men need to live in more balance and tap into the feminine qualities of the Queen also, truth be told. The need to relax, feel and enjoy life is a human need for health and well-being.

The ego, our sense of human identity has its place and I believe that if you did not have one, you would not be able to self-identify yourself. Yes, you can be aware that you have an ego, yet are NOT the ego. You can be aware of yourself as a spiritual being, yet living the human experience via your “role” or as you call yourself, yet not get lost in the ego. This only comes via awareness and spiritual maturity which is a process unique to everyone.

It is not a one size fit all cookie-cutter process. Anyway, the ego wounded pushes and drives us as it gets lost in “survival of the fittest”, judgment, competition, all based in fear. Ego gone wild is fear at its worse. So, in earlier decades of my life, my ego, (I too was lost in it at one time), in its need to survive and get, (notice I said “get” not “receive”) affirmation and what I perceived then as love was always striving to prove that I was “good enough”.

Yet, funny thing was I never truly felt good enough or that I had enough of anything, be it time, energy or money. This is no way to live and accounts for all of the stress, fear and chaos that is going on in the world today, not to mention war, disease and greed. As women, it’s time to see through this nonsense and stop the madness in ourselves first, and then perhaps we can do what Dalai Lama said in regard to “the western woman saving the world”.

If we don’t save ourselves first, the attempt to play rescuer again is a waste of time and as dysfunctional as ever. If we don’t develop confidence from our CORE, it’s just fake, cosmetic. Living into the Queen is about self-love, self-acceptance, and recognizing the POWER of love and feelings. Our feelings are just a guidance system to reveal to us what we truly perceive; not what we give lip service to.

As human, women and men, we have allowed ourselves to be conditioned like Pavlov’s dog to repress our feelings and run away. When we learn to make friends with them, we then are able to be truly empowered and physically healthier as well. As we face our fears and release this repressed pain-body of emotion that dwells within us at a cellular and energetic level, we can heal.  Once we heal our wounded ego, these “cataracts of the soul” can fall away and we can let our Light shine and see others and ourselves more clearly.

We can then stop the self-judgment via these illusions, and stop the projection unto others that cause us to judge and compare everything from looks, to where one is educated, lives, etc, etc. The wounded ego loves hierarchy. The Queen is about feeling, flowing, nuturing and then taking inspired action. She uses the masculine qualities as needed in an integrated way, and she also can let go and delegate, without needing to control everything.

Then there is FUN. Now that’s a novel thought. Until we live in more balance and start enjoying life and relationships again – women AND men – we are destined to continue to see rising depression rates, illness and divorce. I went for an early bike ride this morning listening to Black Eye Peas “I Gotta Feeling…. Thank goodness I can feel again.

When I was living in fear and repressing my “bad” feelings, I could not really feel much of anything, including “good” feelings – except when I exploded! Repressing feelings are outright dangerous to your health. When we learn how to release them in a healthy, energetic, quantum way, we can heal our minds, bodies and hearts and start to consciously move into higher levels of spirituality and growth.

I’m about living “thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”. Confident women are genuinely self-assured without needing to prove their worth to others. We just know we are “ok” just because we breathe! Life is about growth and unfolding, not “fixing” yourself. Let’s keep it practical, lets have fun AND get things done.

Here is a video of “I Gotta Feeling…performed for Oprah in 2009 in Chicago. Joyful feeling is so powerful and inspiring. Your health, wealth and life depend on it. What do you think about the idea of living as the Queen instead of being driven by the opinions of others and the ego?

Valencia Ray, MD
The Confidence Doc

Even the cooked up controversy over the Islamic Cultural Center planned for lower Manhattan – which, contrary to right wing, Islamophobic ranting isn’t “The Mosque at Ground Zero” (but so what if it was?) – can’t drown out the sound of rushing flood waters and cries for help from either the millions displaced by last week’s catastrophic flooding in Pakistan or those in the city of New Orleans still traumatized, homeless and refugees in their own country five years after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina with help from the Army Corps of Engineers and the United States government. Still, driven by FOX News this non-issue  - and insult to the Constitution, hundreds of Muslims who died on 9/11, and millions of Muslims worldwide – is giving reality a run for it’s money. But what’s new in a country where the exploits of marginal talents like Lindsay Lohan, Lady GaGa, and  a brilliant actor’s wannabe porn star daughter dominate the national consciousness?

Thanks to Spike Lee’s latest HBO documentary, If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise, for revisiting New Orleans and not allowing us to forget not only what happened there five years ago, but to who, how, and why. Part I aired last night on HBO, Part II airs tonight, and both parts will be available at HBO on demand. If you don’t have HBO, invite yourself to the home of someone who does. Lee’s documentary is not to be missed. To ignore it is to collude in the collective amnesia that we Americans seem to love so much.

Ditto following coverage of the floods in our fragile ally, Pakistan, where at least several thousand have died and 14 million - say the total population of Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island doubled - left homeless. Unimaginable? As someone in “Da Creek Don’t Rise” eloquently puts it talking about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, look around you today and then imagine that your home and everything in it, including some of the people, are simply gone tomorrow.

Where is the Marshall Plan like the one used to rebuild post-war Europe, for New Orleans? For Pakistan? It doesn’t take a degree in political science or a career in the foreign service to figure out that the disaster in Pakistan could and should be an incredibly important moment in U.S. relations with Pakistan. We should be on the ground providing emergency water, food, shelter, clothing, medical care and temporary housing to the displaced millions. Then we need to stay there and spearhead the rebuilding and upgrading of that country’s infrastructure: roads, electricity, housing, hospitals, institutions, whatever that nation needs to create a functioning, civil society. Al Quaeda, the Taliban, and militants wouldn’t have a chance against a Unitedd States government committed to real rebuilding, as opposed to propping up tired leaders and the corrupt institutions they are aligned with and the threat of military intervention.

Billions for the banks, the auto industry, wars (and warloads and corrupt U.S. allies/government officials) in Afghanistan and Iraq – yes, the one that “ended” but in which people continue to die – but just can’t find the money or the will to rebuild New Orleans for all it’s people or win the hearts and minds of the people of Pakistan? Absurd. A great opportunity is being squandered. This is the moment to implement a U.S. government financed resurrection and rebuilding of New Orleans and Pakistan, a Marshall Plan for the 21st century. Instead, we’re allowing ourselves to be emotionally manipulated and distracted from what’s really important by rabid Republicans, Tea Partyers, and assorted idiots who’ve created a false controversy about plans for an empty building blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood.

If we can’t move past this as a nation, I’ll take the distractions of an addle brained Lindsay Lohan, the low on talent but high on manipulation Lady GaGa, and the machinations of a budding porn star, over an oblivious U.S. government. At least those gals know an opportunity when they see it.

Abbey Lincoln August 6, 1930 – August 14, 2010! Thanks for your talent, courage and integrity.  YOU ARE MISSED!

Finally, be sure to check out my web site next week and participate virtually in Making the Third Chapter Fabulous: Prose! Yoga! Passion! the retreat I’m hosting in Martha’s Vineyard. And stay tuned for information about 2011’s Retreat!

Jill Nelson 8/24/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

Everyone says they have had it, with the war “thing”…what I love ( is there a sarcasm font) about this country is the sheer decadence with which we can choose to turn a blind eye to the world. I have never thought of myself as having an us or them mentality but I am finding myself developing one. By us I mean those that live in a world bigger than personal situations, who don’t look at others and say you will never understand because you’re not me or you don’t know my brand of blues and by them I mean those who live in small, microscopic sized worlds and think the world is a dumping ground for their bad day. I was the latter this week so I am taking myself to task here…when the American petri dish fits!

Friday couldn’t have been a better day, I went to a film on my favorite artist and I was excited about being invited to a graduate seminar this fall and agreeing to go. I also made plans for the holidays which involve a study abroad and life as very busy. Busy is good when you got this war “thing” all up in your life. My phone rang and I missed the call, it turned out to be my sweetie calling from Afghanistan. The place where the war “thing” is happening, I think many people have heard of it at least. Basketball Wives isn’t filmed there. Well missing a call is about one of the most painful thing that can happen, aside from an extended deployment ( wait that was last month) and the sadness in his voice crushed me. I stormed into AT&T wanting to make sure nothing like this happens again and had this kid talk to me like I was stupid, tell me I have the worst phone for dropped calls, “everyone knows the Iphone sucks” he says in that what are dumb voice, and that there were worst things that could happen to me…like my partner could be dead than missing a call… but he’ll do me a favor and change my SIM card. Well I was shaking. I thought he should’ve been considerate, kind even…helpful and not condescending to the brink of rudeness. I thought he should’ve cared. I was living in my own small little world, where the customer gets respect, helping a war bride is honorable and selling products you are proud of and have faith in is the standard. Clearly I don’t get out much.

Who cares about my small world, where the person I love is trying to fix a mess made in the lives of people who have lived under tyranny for years and years, of the women who are mutilated and murdered? Oh and the thanks he gets is someone trying to kill him and some AT&T kid with fake diamond studs in his ear with hopes of being discovered by Vanilla Ice T being rude to his woman. My world is so small I think people care about 1500 year old monument that get destroyed on the other side of the world, or my dumb little problems of trying to get supplies to a girls school in a small village where there is no electricity or running water. I needed to wake up and decide which side I’m on. You thought you bought a phone that works…..haaaa. It does everything except its core function. duh!

It’s us vs. them out there alright and there are more of him than me so I’d better get clued in real quick. All this indulgent thinking of mine, that the world is about the war, or the economy or helping fellow man or customer service only serves to annoy those that are really in charge and who know there are more important issues like the MTV VMA’s on VH-1…and seeing who “tweeted”. The sooner I come into this world and out of my own small one I am assured things will work out just fine!

[Photo courtesy Lifetime Entertainment]

Just when America was getting to know designer Kristin Haskin Simms on the cable television hit designer competition show “Project Runway,” Simms’ time on the show is over.

The Philadelphia-based designer was, as they say in “Project Runway”-speak, “aufed,” as in eliminated from the competition in the show’s fourth episode, which aired Aug. 19 on Lifetime

The culprit: a challenge in which the designers had to create an outfit to complement one of the creations of haute couture milliner Philip Treacy. According to the judges, Simms’ creation failed to complement the lightness and joyful mood of Treacy’s orchid hat.

Not surprisingly, Simms wasn’t allowed to even hint about how she had done on the show when she was interviewed last week. But Simms, 39, had only good things to say about her experience on the show, which was taped earlier this summer.

Kristin's dress for a challenge utilizing materials from a party store. Photo courtesy Lifetime Entertainment.

“It was a great experience. I did ‘Project Runway’ on a whim and a dare pretty much from family, friends, customers and I didn’t expect to get on. I had no expectations going in,” she said. “It was amazing. Just to be critiqued by Tim Gunn was amazing.

“It’s all baby steps. And now I’m on this crazy, national stage.”

Simms is the first to admit that her style was not what many people might expect.

“I’m an accidental designer,” she said. “I never in a million years thought I’d be a fashion designer.”
[Photo from the Strange Fruit collection, courtesy Lifetime Entertainment]

Simms’ background is primarily as a graphic designer. She only got into fashion design in late 2005, beginning with a line of political message t-shirts. Eventually, she branched into clothing and showed her first collection of her line, Strange Fruit, during Philadelphia Fashion Week.

Being on “Project Runway” was “nerve-wracking” Simms said. But Simms said because she hadn’t had years of experience and training as a fashion designer, she approached each challenge as a bonus. She felt she was lucky just to have made it on the show.

“Everyone on the show was different and had their own design aesthetic or process. For me, it was just ‘I’ll just drape it and see what happens’.” Simms said. “I worked a lot from my mistakes. I would start with an idea and then I would see something else I wanted to do.”

Simms said she was already working on her next collection and had been inundated with requests to do fashion shows and trunk show appearances, and was also working on getting samples made up to shop her line around.

She also has several non-fashion projects in the works including a couple of screenplays she’s written.

“The way I look at it is at least I got as far as I did,” she said. “I just take it as a blessing.”

A family tree is an insightful adventure. Navigating the branches, I found that the adage ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’ is an honest truth. Surely, one can separate from its source, but the seed within remains the same — plant it anywhere, the roots will grow and reveal themselves. Let’s get down to earth– as your children sprout into young adults are they being bruised or nurtured as they ripe? Check the garden, maybe you should prune as they blossom…

 It’s easy to bask in the sunshine as a sole entity, but what happens when you’re in charge on next season harvest? Seemingly we’ve all been equipped with spiritual sensory to know the difference between what is healthy or unhealthy whether we acknowledge/use it or not. However, when it comes to children, parents have been charged with a unique blessing to undergird and oversee their children’s lives from the tip of the branches to the base of the trunk. Sure it’s selfless and complicated, but a joy… again whether you acknowledge it, or do it, or not.    

 Often, parents spend a tremendous amount of time, effort and energy, uprooting all the ‘weeds’ with hopes that their children produce the best possible life harvest.  But what happens if the primary ‘weeds’ are at the root level – i.e., the grandparents, the ex, or worst, y-o-u?  What if you discover the deadliest harm to flourishing is among you?  There are a few options to eliminate damage – however, what’s most important is to shield your children from negative influences no matter the source or how close to home they may be — forget a scarecrow,  I prefer weed killer.

 As we guard ourselves and our ‘crops’ from being scorched, over-watered or malnourished by those who may mean well, it is critical to have safe guards in place. Although people don’t come with a perish date or visible damage, watch for fruit flies. Even such, I personally believe that honesty, age appropriate of course, is a critical component to keeping your family aware of perceived hazards.  Believe or not, protection, not agreement, is a part of love.  Use wisdom, don’t allow anyone to walk through your garden and toss fertilizer around.  They may putrefy you and your most precious gift. 

 Lisa Newell

Money and career success in general impacts our relationships, our lifestyles and even our health. All around us the workplace and business landscape is shifting. Being a former eye surgeon, I know what it means to invest a lot of time and effort at learning a skill yet, nowadays, there is no profession that is immune from change.

Job transition and entrepreneurship rates are rising rapidly, and depending on your perspective, this can be a “good” or “bad” thing. One thing is for sure – if you want to successfully navigate our changing times with your physical and financial health intact, you will need to consider opening your mind and become aware of what FEAR is – Fictitious Evidence Affecting Reality.

I’m referring to psychological fear. When I wrote my book Empower Up and Play Big which introduces new cutting-edge brain science and practical ways to apply it into our everyday lives, it occurred to me that based on the way our brain works, if we are unaware of managing our attention, it is all to easy to create “stories” of fear of success of fear of failure.

These terms are tossed around loosely and often without much consideration as to what they really mean. From a practical point of view of learning how to “breakthrough fear”, I think it’s important to define what is the root issue in the first place. Fear of failure and success break down into the fear that there is a threat to either our sense of security, love or self-esteem.

If you are familiar with the chakra system of integrative health, you will understand that these are issues in the first three chakra levels, and even if you are not familiar you can still understand the point here, so stay with me. If these two fears are related to these three human needs, how do they play out? In essence “Fear of Failure or Success” show up in our lives as:

1. Fear of not having our security needs of survival met, not being supported

2. Fear of rejection and not being loved

3. Fear of not being good enough, worthy, or having lack of confidence; low self-image

Think about it this way. If we want to start a new business or change jobs, we tend to run our idea through filters like these:

• “HOW will I get paid, HOW will I make money” (Not if this is what I want to do in the first place – “security rules” – no trust in the Universe/Spirit to provide guidance)

• “What will they think of me”, “Will they be envious”, “Will they think I’m still one of them”, “Will they approve” (Fear of loss of love)

• “Who do I think I am”, “I can’t do this”, “I’m afraid I won’t do it and I’ll look bad”, “This can’t happen for me”, “No one in my family has ever done this” (self-image, self-esteem, self-confidence issues)

Of course it is a good idea to do your best to make sure that your food and shelter are covered, yet if you only focus on this, you cannot take risks. At the end of the day, there is no such thing as a “secure job” or “secure business”. I see in the media all the time people getting the rug pulled out from under them.

Plan ahead proactively if you know a job transition is on the horizon instead of putting your head in the sand. As far as others rejecting you, the best I can say here is, you can’t stop it so why worry about it? Once you learn the power of self-love and learn the power of a personal spiritual practice to expose the “stories” that keep you playing small, there will be less concern about rejection.

If you take any psychology classes, you are likely to run into “Pavlov’s Dog”. We humans are conditioned all the time, especially as children to give automatic responses based on conditioning and unfortunately, as children this conditioning, how we get our need for security, love and self-esteem is not met in a healthy way. We are trained to put ourselves down and to “look for love in all the wrong places”.

Well, the times in which we live is making it more and more difficult to live with this perception. As long as we buy into the illusion that feeling fear is to be avoided at all costs, and that we are to run and react whenever it pops up, we cannot live empowered, conscious lives. You can empower yourself by learning how to release this fear memory from your body and consciously redirecting your attention to rewire your brain more constructively.

Every time the fear of losing security, love or self-esteem shows up, if we are not aware of how our own brain and mind work, what energy is, and how we are acting out of the paradigm of old stories, we will not be able to build successful businesses, transition our careers powerfully, or maintain good health. Stress is a killer and is directly linked to psychological fear.

I have lived virtually all of the above fears listed. I can say for sure that as I’ve come to accept myself and continue to grow in the awareness of the power of letting go of the need to control and see my way clear, the Universe has “made a way out of no way” every time. Yes, I use logic to a degree, yet the main driving force is listening to my intuitional guidance and taking the inspired action needed instead of waiting for drama to push me along.

Growth and change are a part of life; the question is, are you willing to breakthrough fear, or are you going to wait until fear breaks you? What do you think?

Valencia Ray, MD

The Confidence Doc

The war is winding down! What war? Which war? I conveniently forgot there is a war! The one allegedly ending is the one in Iraq, not Afghanistan, but tell that to the 47 Iraqi police recruits and their families – and the over 100 people injured – by today’s suicide bomber. Talk about giving the United States the finger as it tries to escape the debacle of its own creation in Iraq, except suicide bombers deliver not only the finger but arms, legs, torsos, heads, and all manner of body parts. (And let’s not forget U.S. soldiers killed in Operation Oil Hustle, er, I mean Operation Enduring Freedom.)

Joining that disappearing war are the estimated 4.9 millions of gallons of oil released into the Gulf of Mexico by the British Petroleum oil rig disaster, not to mention collusion by agencies of the U.S. government, etc. Now we’re being told the impact of 93 days of gushing oil was exaggerated, and that the oil has just conveniently disappeared. Presto! Chango! Another comforting illusion, like that rabbit in a magician’s top hat. President Obama and daughter Sasha even took a dip last weekend during a mini-vacation in Florida and released a lovely photo. Michelle was nowhere to be seen – doesn’t swim? hair issues? thigh shy? prefers her water oil free? – nor were the navy seals under water in scuba gear catching globs of oil before they could coat the President and second daughter. Nice photo op, but the First Family’s heading to Martha’s Vineyard, 1500 miles north, for their real summer vacation. Hey, I’m not mad at ya, Barack. In fact, see you there!

Which brings me to Making the Third Chapter Fabulous: Prose! Yoga! Passion, the retreat I’m hosting on Martha’s Vineyard, August 31 – September 5. Registration’s closed for this year, but we’ll be back in 2011. For more information, stay tuned to my web site, and we’ll be live blogging and posting photos during the retreat, so please check us out. History, and Paula Gidding’s wonderful book, When and Where I Enter : The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America, reminds us what can be achieved when women come together, so anything’s possible. Speak out against the madness! Don’t equivocate!

Jill Nelson 8/17/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

I said many times this past weekend that you never know how unhappy you are until you aren’t anymore. I went to the wedding a dear friend this weekend. I was by far one of the best weekends I have ever had. EVER! Why because we were all happy and not that glossed over pretend to be kind, the real kind. The kind I have rarely felt in my life but intend to feel more often. There was so much love and no one was moaning or griping about anything and trust me there were those of us that could.

Some were in the midst of a divorce, others work crisis, family drama, visa issues…you name it! However we all were really happy, and happy for our friend. I have spent a ton of time as a whiner. My ex used to tell me that but I never listened to him. He was right about a lot of things and as it turns out a lot of people. But whining feels good doesn’t it, how self indulgent better than chocolate is it? I should know I was an addict, nut I have gone into rehab. I read this quote and said put the “poor me” down once and for all. I share it will you all now and tell me…What are you addicted to?

Self Pity—The most insidious problem with drugs is that the human body develops a tolerance for them and requires larger and larger doses to achieve the same effect. The same is true with self-pity. The more you allow yourself to indulge in it, the more you will require.Soon, self-pity will become a habit, one so debilitating that you will rob yourself of all the potential you possess. Happily, there is a cure. If you truly analyze the situation, most often you will find that the problems that have driven you to pity yourself are mostly of your own creation. It follows, then, that the best person to remedy the problem is the person who created it: you yourself.

It always pays to know who is representing us.

News has come out of the magazine industry of two important announcements.

At Johnson Publishing Company, home to Ebony and Jet magazines, it was announced that former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers will be the company’s new CEO. She replaces Linda Johnson Rice, the daughter of founder John H. Johnson, who had been running the Chicago-based company since 1987.

Rogers, a fellow Chicagoan, has been working at JPC as a consultant since June. She left the White House in February, months after the infamous incident in which a D.C. couple crashed a state dinner.

When asked about her plans for heading the legendary company, Rogers told the Wall Street Journal, “The future is bright. These are iconic brands, and we have the opportunity to refresh and modernize them. Our first focus will be on the fundamentals: what do the books look like, distribution, circulation and content. From there we can move on to the digital realm. We have a lot of work to do on the front end, and it will start with a dialogue with our readers and with our future readers.”

Next we move from behind the scenes representation to representing on the cover.

Halle Berry is the cover model for the all-important September issue of Vogue Magazine. In the fashion world, the September issue is traditionally the biggest issue.

While she has been a tabloid fixture on a regular basis, Berry said she had not given an interview in three years because she was tired of “having other people tell the story about me that they wanted to tell.”

But when she was asked to be the cover subject for the September issue of Vogue, Berry said she couldn’t say no.

Said Berry, “What that means for a woman of color and what that means in the fashion world, what that means to pop culture, there was no way I could say, ‘No I’m not going to be on the biggest issue of the year.’”