Adiba Nelson

Give me a minute please. I’m a little busy trying to decide if I should throw something, burn something, take my eyes out and dip them in bleach after reading that shit, have a woosa moment, or just. fucking. drink.

[CN: mention of suicide] How did we get through love before Lemonade? We examined our lives through Mary’s shamelessly honest storytelling on My Life.

“Why would you do that? You have a daughter. Why would you put yourself in that position?”

While most of my friends on social media are in a complete uproar over season four of Orange Is The New Black (OITNB to the rest of us), I am standing at full attention, giving Jenji Kohan the loudest slow clap in the history of slow claps.

Black women were branded as sexually promiscuous and immoral, which in turn was used as justification for sexual trauma/rape.

"...do you know what happens in lightly buzzed stupors? You get brave. Really brave. So, I signed up for it. In my lightly buzzed stupor I signed up for the burlesque mentorship program.

So, by your reasoning, it’s safe to say that we should go into areas where one group of people are thought to be terrorizing another group of people, round up the terrorizers, and get them off the streets. OK, cool. I see your proposal, and I raise you “history."

If I had to pinpoint it, I’d say I am a diva because I had a mom who demanded nothing but the very best from me, from how I sat in a chair, to how I entered a room, to what grades I brought home. She demanded the best from me — and now, finally, I am at a point where I demand the very best from myself, and those I surround myself with.

Black women have endured the unfathomable. We’ve watched our leaders be assassinated, and our hopes go with them. We’ve watched the nation’s leaders be assassinated, and watched our hopes float away with them too. We’ve buried our 5-year-old daughters after they were bombed to death in church, our 12-year-old sons who were playing in the park, and our 29-year-old daughters who were stopped for simple traffic violations.

There wasn’t going to be any sparkle. There wasn’t going to be any new mommy magic.