Adiba Nelson

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

Nicely done, MAC. Nicely done.

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

Want to go on a carbs and wine tour of Italy? Break out the leggings and go for it. This time is yours.

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

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

This was how my eating disorder began. This is when I first consciously ate my emotions. THIS is when I said, “I don’t need you to love me. I don’t need to love myself. I don’t need to feel or be felt. Hear or be heard. See or be seen. I just need to eat. I just need to eat because food will never judge me. Food will never leave me (unless I make it leave me, which I did. In college. A LOT.).

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.

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.

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.