Adiba Nelson

"I now had my seat of power, my throne, if you will. That’s why I customized my chair to look like a throne. And that’s why I liked it in my act: because I was truly in love with it and all that it represented for me. It was no longer a trap or a cage. It was freedom. It was power. It was sexy. And it was mine."

I would break girl code. And if you love me, I hope you would do it for me too.

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.

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.

How do you go from two extremely different individuals living life separately to two extremely different individuals merging their separate lives into one loving family portrait — all while avoiding a cosmic meltdown? Very, very carefully. And with a bottle of wine… or 50.

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.

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

"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."

Let me tell you something, ladies. There are a million people in this world ready to tear you down at any given moment, for reasons they know, and reasons they don’t know. They will all but sell the blood of their firstborn child to make sure you know that they think you ain’t shit.

Soy Adiba Nelson, y soy Latina también!