Adiba Nelson

I applaud you for being here. I applaud you for giving life the five fingers of death and deciding to show up for whatever the day brings — every day.

Apparently, we Black women have a smell. And it’s been bottled and labeled and is being offered up for consumption by Sunflower Cosmetics. Yep. You read that right. There is a legitimate company out there who is selling a perfume called “Black Women.” If my girlfriend hadn’t posted a picture of it in a local shop, I would have called her a damn liar.

Soy Adiba Nelson, y soy Latina también!

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

A: No one is perfect, B: Perceived perfection is a LIE, and C: THEY’RE CHILDREN FOR FUCK SAKE!

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.

It is made up of women that I've known since I was 8, and women I met last week.

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.

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

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.