Adiba Nelson

Adiba Nelson

Bio

Adiba Nelson currently resides in Tucson, AZ with her fiancee, 6 year old daughter, and 2 teenage stepsons-to-be. When she is not advocating for disability rights, performing burlesque, or writing her monthly style column, she is busy managing social media for her local Easter Seals affiliate. She is also the author of the children's book Meet ClaraBelle Blue, and is currently working on the follow up book, ClaraBelle's Big Discovery. You can find Adiba at http://thefullnelson.net/

Adiba Nelson Articles

Your broken heart will heal.

A Word To The Brokenhearted

The universe always knows, and so what it does in all its lovely knowing, is it clears a path for you. When the universe sees that things have reached the point where they stand to steer you off your path, it will clear a way for you to continue moving onward and upward.

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Donald Trump... Well, that man shakes me to my core. Actually, not HIM, per se, but the people who blindly follow him. Image: Jamelle Bouie.

Trump Supporters Terrify Me

That man shakes me to my core. Actually, not HIM, per se, but the people who blindly follow him. The out-and-out bigots who will call me the N-word just as easily as they’d call their buddy “Bob.” The people who SWEAR they're not bigots, but support him because they believe in his promise of new jobs and deportations.

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You know that old adage, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”? We make good on that. Image: Parkwood Entertainment/screenshot.

Lemonade:  Beyoncé's Visual Telling Of Love

Enter: Lemonade. [...] Beyoncé reminds us that she is as real a woman as the rest of us. She is a strong woman, yet made even stronger in her ability to start anew.

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I’m Becky, and I didn’t even know it. Leave it to the woman I model my hustle after to put my asshole behavior right in my face. Image: Parkwood Entertainment/screenshot.

I'm Becky With The Good Hair: That Time Beyoncé Called Me Out

In my mind, I was Beyoncé, and she was Becky. She was the one he needed to run back to. She was the one who could have his ass, because I was leaving and I wasn’t sorry about it.
Then Lemonade came out and the light bulb came on.

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Do-over.

The Baby That Wasn't There

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

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With the exception of Jennifer Hudson winning an Oscar for her amazing turn as the glamorous yet jilted Effie in Dreamgirls, every single Oscar that a minority actress has won has been for portraying a negative or otherwise stereotypical role.

#OscarsSoWhite: When Art Doesn't Imitate Life

If 93% of the Academy is White, but as of 2014, only 62% of Americans were White, and art is supposed to imitate life...

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Postpartum depression is real. Take it from Adiba Nelson.

Postpartum Depression Stole Two Months Of My Life

It was the weirdest thing. I looked at this tiny human and felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. No overwhelming joy at finally meeting this person I’d been so excited for in months prior, no lurking sadness about no longer being pregnant and relishing in those shared “inside mommy’s belly” moments. Just... nothing. My brain said, “You have a baby now,” and that was that.

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I'm A Black Woman And I Don’t Want A Black Son

"I will peer relentlessly into every cop car I pass with a young black man in it, stretching my neck to make sure that it’s not my son who’s been arrested for driving while black, walking while black, or breathing while black. I will hold my breath while listening to every news report of another black man that has been arrested, beaten, killed, and made an example of."

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Image: Behind Blondie Park

Dear Pantene, Girls Without Dads Are Just As Strong

Where did you even get that statistic from? Did you make it up?

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I watch, fearfully, sadly, and angrily as evidence of everything she said my father did to her slowly reveals itself to me.

'It's All In Your Head': Intimate Partner Violence And Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy

My father was an abusive man, plain and simple.

That wasn’t all he was, but to my mother, that's who he was. He was a controlling individual who perhaps took the scripture, “Wives, submit to your husbands” a tad bit too literally — and when my mom didn’t submit, she paid the price. Often with a blow to the head.

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