Source: Shutterstock.com

Her oxygen was turned up to the maximum and she was non-responsive. She wasn’t even squeezing my hand now. But I held her hand and prayed that God would work a miracle, or if that wasn’t in His will, that He would at least give me peace about the situation.

I want to say that my aunt lived a full life but I can’t. I want to say that she did most everything she dreamed of doing before she passed but she did not. I want to say that she was free of the chains of others people’s opinions but she was not. While I watched her live a beautiful  life dedicated in service to God as a pastor, mother and all-around nurturer, I also watched her live a life tortured by fear.

“What would they say? What would they think? How will they react? Is it the right time? We have to wait….”

She lived a long life as God’s servant, but the fullness of that life never came to complete fruition. I took a long hard look at her life and saw how it mirrored my own. At 26 years old, I have been afforded many opportunities, many of which I took, but many of which I let slide between my fingers. Why?

For fear.

I refused myself the deserved happiness and pride of receiving my Master’s degree for fear of being called “uppity” by my own family. (NOTE: They called me “uppity” anyway.) I deferred to share my hopes and dreams divinely placed in my heart for fear of them being shot down as so often they were. I turned down more than a few opportunities to travel abroad for fear of being called flighty. I’ve held myself back in a major way simply because of fear. Fear of failure, fear of other people’s disapproval, fear of the unknown.

But as I watched my aunt, my second mother, lay passing away in that hospital room I realized that life is not to be feared but to be lived. And not just lived in mediocrity, but wholly, abundantly, fully, lovingly, freely. What a disservice we do to ourselves and the God who created us by living just to get by when He has so much more in store for us!

I made the choice that day to usher in my 27^th year of life, 2013, with a new mindset, a new outlook, a new resolve to BE and DO everything for which I am purposed. I’m going to learn how to swim (I know right?). I’m going to fall in love. I’m going to travel to many a beautiful destination, camera in hand. I’m going to do the service work I’ve dreamt of for years. I’m going to push myself out of my comfort zone, past the ridiculing stares and whispers of others, and I’m going to honor God with my life.

During her life, my aunt gave me roots: a deep respect for God, a desire to stay humble, a desire to serve wherever, however I can. And in her passing, I believe she gave me wings. For I have realized that tomorrow certainly is not promised and every single day, every single moment, every single breath I breathe is another opportunity to be whole, excellent, and free. I relinquish the fear that once drove me to sacrifice myself to the gods of mediocrity and I choose to honor the God of my gifts and talents and callings and opportunities.

It’s a new day and I’m 26 years young. Let freedom (and purpose) ring.

La Truly is a late-blooming Aries whose writing is powered by a lifetime of anecdotal proof that awkward can transform to awesome and fear can cast its crown before courage. La seeks to encourage thought, discussion and change among young women through her writing. Check out her blog: www.hersoulinc.com and Twitter: @AshleyLaTruly.

Johnny Louis/WENN

From ESSENCE

It’s a question that we’ve all asked ourselves on more than one occasion and during different phases in our lives. Even if we don’t use those same words or don’t verbalize the question out loud, our actions, choices and doubts are fueled by this quest to answer this broad question. We pretty much start wondering this from the time we awkwardly enter the school cafeteria and look for a table where we belong. Trying to figure this out can make us style our hair a certain way, date that boy, break that rule, join that club or pursue that degree. It can ultimately take us to the life we have now.

Even as grown women, we still ask it. We just swap the cafeteria for adult circles amongst our friends, colleagues, co-workers and society at large. No matter how many years go by, we still ask: “Who am I, really?” And until we can answer that question, it’s impossible to believe we’re amazing.

As women, we are moms, wives, sisters, friends and confidants, but we sometimes feel guilty for not knowing more about ourselves. As women we are expected to be selfless and to focus on others.

Read the rest of their inspiring piece on ESSENCE.

Do you ever feel selfish by taking a moment to give back to yourself?

HRC/WENN.com

From ESSENCE

When most celebrities were partying on New Year’s Eve, Serena Williams was in her hotel room resting. The 2012 tennis champion says she used to be that fun girl, but now calls herself “boring.”

According to the UK’s Daily Mail, Williams was in Australia over the holiday for the Brisbane International Tennis Tournament and admitted her career goals are now her priority. “I’m really boring now,” Williams said. “I used to be fun. Now for a fun time do not call me. I think I just got older, and I realized I can’t be that fun girl for the rest of my life. I could be the oldest number one [tennis champion]. I don’t know how that goes with the funnest.”

At 31 years old and ranked third in the world, Williams accomplished quite a bit in 2012: She won Wimbledon (her fifth tittle), the U.S. Open, a gold medal at the Olympics and the WTA Championship for the third time in her career. Williams also became the second woman in history to earn a career Golden Slam.

Well, these things happen. See what else Serena had to say, including comments about her new “night time problem” over on ESSENCE.

Listen, don’t shoot the messenger.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, TLC will be premiering “Best Funeral Ever” tonight with an hour long special. The show will follow Dallas funeral home, Golden Gate Funeral Home, as they come up with some of the most eccentric homegoing celebrations you’ve ever seen. The owner,John Beckwith Jr wants to bring about a certain attitude to the sad situation, looking to give a smile to the mourning friends and family, versus just going with continued sadness. They can pretty much make anything happen; as Beckwith said, “If the deceased wanted to dunk a basketball, we can make it happen.”

Golden Gate, while providing the wishes for the family and possible “too little, too late” dreams by the deceased, they also provide professional funeral mourners. Now, some of you may have seen this type of person at a church service or funeral you’ve attended , but they do it for free. The professional mourners hired by Golden Gate are trained to grieve loudly and excessively at funerals of people they’ve never met so the family will open up.

The show will likely turn into a full reality show if the special does as well as TLC expects with the ratings.

I’m not sure that I’m interested in watching a show about eclectic funeral arrangements but it certainly can’t be any worse than anything else on television.

Shutterstock

Sometimes I scroll back through my tweets and statuses, and I wonder if I’ll ever get the hang of 24/7 political correctness. Especially now, since I’m amidst what I have coined as “a personal renaissance,” or a “renewal of life, vigor; rebirth…” as Dictionary.com describes the word ‘renaissance.’

I learned that very little about me was politically correct years back when I was just 22-years-old. I didn’t even know my little renaissance was beginning as I decided to take the road less traveled and try out this new “mind of my own” I had been told about  – the exact opposite of my homegirls at the time. I felt like a mindless drone, following in the shallow, Forever 21 shod footsteps of a few lost young women with no real character, only painted-on facades that came off in powder rooms. I was lost, following the lost.

I knew that at my core I wasn’t a “mean girl.” I knew I wasn’t a glam girl who wanted nothing more than to peruse fashion magazines and spend the bulk of my sad little work study checks on makeup and club wear. I knew that Rihanna and weaves and high heels didn’t fulfill me. And isn’t that always the way? We come to the realization of what/who we aren’t before we can get to the heart of who we are sometimes.

And the truth is… I had no clue. All I knew was that I was different and I was sick of following. Pretty soon everyone knew it. I was 22. An age that at 16 I longed to reach, thinking I would have it all together by then. Surely, I would have a topnotch salary-paying job lined up by the age of 22, my own place, and a fairy tale romance with a good man who would surely marry me by at least 26.

Why did I want those things? Was it because deep down that’s what I truly believed my path to be? Or was it because between the lines of my favorite television shows and in the sharpness of some distant auntie’s questioning about my life’s timeline, that’s what I was being TOLD I was supposed to want?

What I didn’t realize at 22-years-old was that my 20s weren’t meant for patterning my life after what looks good in other’s lives or “getting it all together.” MY 20s were meant for figuring SOME of it out, getting to know me and my passions and purpose. I was figuring out that I was different and dealing with that absolutely amazing albeit frightening reality. I was understanding and accepting who I was NOT.

What a lot of people won’t tell you for fear of  individuality being birthed, is that it’s okay to not know what the heck you’re doing and to be a mess in your 20s. The cool reality of our 20s is that we get to learn about ourselves. Life reveals our authentic selves to us, toughens us up and teaches us to simply be all that authentic goodness. Life begins in the midst of a beautiful mess. Path-defining questions rise from a mess. Revolutionary thoughts swell in the minds of beautiful messes. Heaven cracks open from the soul felt prayers in the middle of beautiful messes. The beginning of the rest of our lives always starts from some sort of mess.

As I grow older, I’ve lived just enough to grow the beautifully ugly guts to fight opinions and ideologies and stupidity to get totally naked and free and begin stepping into my own skin. My own skin, porous enough to allow new experiences to saturate and do me some good, yet tough enough to scar and keep it moving despite the wounds of warfare. Whatever/whoever I AM, I live to be her now. Not hide her away behind a society-painted mask. My 20s have taught/are teaching me that.

So, even though every now and then I still wonder if I’ll ever get the swing of being politically correct 24/7, I always end up shrugging and smiling as the beautiful mess in me says that now, that’s just not who I am and it’s quite all right.

La Truly is a late-blooming Aries whose writing is powered by a lifetime of anecdotal proof that awkward can transform to awesome and fear can cast its crown before courage. La seeks to encourage thought, discussion and change among young women through her writing. Check out her blog: www.hersoulinc.com and Twitter: @AshleyLaTruly.

Dear Keyshia,

I recently read a feature that you did in the October issue of Essence with Kelley L. Carter entitled, “No More Drama,” in which you discuss your new reality series, “Keyshia and Daniel: Family First.” Although it was a brief article, it made my heart smile. The fact that your show is described as a celebration of “your new life as a wife and mother” is absolutely amazing and not even just for the obvious reasons. These obvious reasons include the idea that your show is adding to the positive images of black love and black families on television. It’s even deeper than that though. Your new life is worth celebrating because you are a living, breathing, walking, talking, singing testament to girls and women everywhere that it is possible to overcome challenging obstacles that seem to surface with the intention of robbing us of all future success and happiness.

The first time I ever heard you sing, passion and soul bled through your song lyrics so naturally that I knew you had a story to tell. It wasn’t until I watched your reality show “The Way It Is” that I learned how gripping and powerful your story actually was. You were so open and honest about the things that you felt that you lacked growing up, being adopted, having a substance abusing mom who would later go to jail, coming from somewhat of a broken family and other things that people usually find so easy to sweep under the rug and never speak about. I’ve always admired the way that you could discuss your mom’s struggle. In the aforementioned article, you discussed how you are still dedicated to keeping your mom sober. Having dealt with my share of substance abusing family members, I know how hard that can be to even speak about. Talking about it makes you vulnerable and deep down inside you want to protect yourself and that family member from the judgmental eye of others. I understand that certain things are painful to talk about, but I appreciate you allowing your life to be an open book in some ways and telling your story without regard for critics. The naysayers can say what they want but the truth of the matter is that through your transparency you’ve provided some young girl who possesses dreams and aspirations of her own but similar troubles with a glimmer of hope that says, Hey, you know that obstacle you’re facing right now? It is possible to surpass it. Your life tells her that her past does not have to dictate her future and that she shouldn’t give up or feel defeated by her circumstances because there are better and brighter days ahead if she just hangs in there.

In one of the last episodes of ”The Way It Is,” you shared with a couple of your friends with strong affirmation that someday you would have a beautiful family to go along with your beautiful career. You went on to declare that this was simply the direction that your life was going in and refused to believe otherwise. I am so overjoyed that in your return to reality television, you have exactly what you declared that you would; a beautiful family and a beautiful career.

I am too thrilled about your current success and I await with much anticipation and excitement all of the other wonderful things that God has in store for you because the best is yet to come. As someone who has gone through my own share of similar struggles, I say thank you for being a great example. Thank you for not giving up.

- Jazmine

Jazmine Denise is a freelance writer living in New York. Follow her on Twittter @jazminedenise

All photos are courtesy of WENN 

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Source: Clutch

It is the arrogance of childhood that makes us think that we will grow up and be on equal footing with our best friends. We think we will go through the natural transitions of girlhood into womanhood – giving up dolls for make up and nail polish, prom dates, college, marriage and kids –at the same time. Some of us even go so far as designating each other as godmothers to nonexistent babies that are supposed to come after dream weddings. Yet, as we all know, life comes calling and its rare that these dreams are actualized the way we conjured them.

One of the biggest wake up calls of my 20s  is seeing how many of my close friends have fallen so far from their initial plans. Dream schools were picked out, majors declared, and fellowships verbally claimed…but that feels like so long ago. Friends who I thought would leave me envious are nowhere near enviable to me. When I look at my own life, I feel almost a bit of guilt. Out of all those whom I started my journey into womanhood with, only a couple of are still running alongside me,  gunning for the goals they had set out for themselves.

Yeah, I know we’re all adults. Me and my girls are, to a large degree, responsible for the ways our lives have shaped out so far and how they will continue to do so in the future. This is why the guilt I feel at times is so perplexing to me. Why should I feel guilty for doing what I said I was going to do? I shouldn’t feel as if I need to be an apologists for my achievements, and yet the sensations gnaws at me every time they inquire, “what’s new?” My mother told me I was going to leave many friends behind; that those I started out with, wouldn’t be the ones I would end with — but, that knowledge has not helped alleviate the sadness in the situation.

I, at times, sit and wonder, where the hell did things change so much? When did visions change? When were goals reassessed/forgotten/carelessly dismissed?! I could have sworn that my girls and I started off on the same page, but this may not be so. What pains me the most is no longer having much to talk about with these old friends of mine. The days of our long, winding conversations about nothing and everything are as foreign to me as an Eastern European language. We no longer have anything to talk about due to the differing cultures of our lives. I cannot understand their lamentations of their husbands and/or children, because I don’t have them. And they, cannot understand my lamentations on my burgeoning career and single-girl expeditions, because that are the contents of my life, and my life alone.

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www.mocradio.com

I fell out of love once. If you’ve ever fallen out of love, you know it has just as many stages as falling in love. The first time I fell out of love I didn’t recognize my downward spiral, but instead, thought the slide was something that happens when love hits a wall.

My first step was simple, I wasn’t feeling the situation any longer. Some people walk away at this stage, but I invested a lot in this love, a lot of time and energy, and I refused to believe that it was over simply because I wasn’t feeling it anymore. Instead of leaving, I suppressed the feeling by doing things I thought could save that love. If I dressed differently things would change, I told myself. Maybe if we did things we don’t usually do, I’d see this love in a whole new light and find it all over again. The love changed temporarily, but that initial feeling always lingered in the background, the things I did to make it feel better, only made it feel better for moments at a time, and I needed to do more and more to be able to endure this love.

These things weren’t so hard, or not as hard as what faking it was making me go through. Anyone would kill to have what I had-though no one really knew the truth about what I had. “How stupid is it of me to want to walk away when some people had nothing?” I said to myself. I listened to girlfriends and family go on about how lucky I was. This love wasn’t beating me down, this love wasn’t cursing me out, but I wasn’t in love anymore, this love had burned itself out.

I stuck with it, went on vacations, did things to distract myself from the slow decline, guilt-ed myself into staying, but every morning when I woke up and stepped out of bed, I felt the ache in my body, my mind and my heart. I knew I had to leave, I knew this wasn’t going to get better and prolonging it wasn’t going to make it go away. This was my process of falling out of love the first time and it took me some time to finally walk away, to say I’m worth more than this and even though that doesn’t make this particular situation bad, it just meant this wasn’t for me anymore. I realized that I’ve been falling out of love for the past two years, and the only reason I didn’t make the correlation sooner is because the love I’m no longer in love with is my job, my career, the thing that I’ve invested eight years of my being to.

I tried to fix how I felt, I tried to ignore how I felt, and when the decline began I told myself that simply getting a new gig would change my apathy, it would change that feeling of wanting to run away. However, a new gig never came, so the decline persisted. I beat myself up about the recession and how selfish it was of me to feel this way, but when I’m there I feel like a stranger among these personalities. I do it because I have bills, I do it because it’s what I know, I do it because I can, but I’m no longer doing it because I love or even like it, and that may not matter to you, it may even sound silly, but this isn’t some job that landed on me. This is eight years of hard work, of building a reputation for myself, making great friends, setting goals that I’ve accomplished and if I’ve truly fallen out of love again, I have to start all over again. If you’ve ever been in love and fallen out of love, you know that the hardest part is finding a new love all over again.

Source: Newsone.com

Lawrenceville, Georgia does not tolerate child molesters as 29-year-old Antoine Johnson found out this week.

The former intern and summer camp organizer at Hebron Baptist Church received a life sentence after being convicted of three counts of aggravated child molestation after he pretended to be a teenage girl and lured teen boys into having sex with him.

NewsOne reports:

Kristen is a 14-year-old girl.  She hangs out online and meets boys, promising to fulfill their sexual fantasies. Boys, of course, would line up for the chance to meet Kristen, and were willing to do anything to get with her.  But the catch was that in order to get the “goodies” from Kristen, you had to have sex with a grown man to prove your loyalty.

Not only were the expectations of Kristen frighteningly unrealistic, the even harsher reality is that Kristen didn’t even exist. Kristen was the online creation of Antoine Johnson.

Gwinnett Superior Court Judge Timothy Hamil called the scheme “absolutely diabolical” as he gave Johnson a life sentence in prison for molesting two boys, ages 13 and 14.  He was also sentenced for attempting to lure in a 15-year-old back in 2008.  Johnson did most of his dirty work on MySpace and would even get on the phone with the boys, telling them that “Kristen” would be next in line for good sex if they got with him first!

Johnson says that he created the online profile from a picture he took from a real girl.  He claims that he created the profile to help a friend’s younger brother overcome self-confidence issues.  One of the teens said that he went to meet Kristen one night and met Johnson instead.  At 2 a.m., the two had 0-ral sex in the driveway.

“At first I refused for a few weeks…but she kept asking me and asking me, and I gave in,” the boy said.

“I’ve been a prosecutor 13 years, and the defendant’s testimony was some of the most bizarre I’ve seen,” said  Assistant District Attorney Nigel Lush. “We got a look inside the mind of a true pedophile.”

When he wasn’t out hunting down young boys, Johnson spent his time as a mentor for boys at his church.  According to records, he mentored as many as 500 boys per week.

None of the children involved in this case were children Antoine met at church and he maintains that he didn’t touch any of the children he mentored.

The Gwinnette Daily Post says:

[Antoine] pleaded guilty to 11 counts of sexual exploitation of a child in connection with a cache of dozens of child Adult Videos films and hundreds of photographs found on his personal computer. He also copped to a count of enticing a child for indecent purposes and two counts of attempting to entice children. The judge tacked on 60 years of probation to restrict him from computer access or unsupervised contact with minors, should he ever be paroled. Prosecutors had offered Johnson a plea deal of 20 years in prison, but he balked at admitting in court to physically molesting the teens. On the stand, he admitted to lusting for young boys but blamed his impulses on a distant relative who molested him and exposed him to child pornography when he was 7 years old.

The newspaper also says there was no jury in the case. Antoine didn’t want the children to have to recount their story in front of a jury so he opted to have his case heard by the judge in a bench trial. After what the judge called “called three days of ‘gruesome’ testimony” he sentenced him to life behind bars.

I’m not minimizing his crime, what Antoine Johnson did is absolutely deplorable, but a life sentence seems excessive. Sometimes I wonder if the justice system in this country is much too quick to throw young black men away for the rest of their lives. True, Antoine is definitely a sicko who certainly doesn’t elicit any sympathy, but isn’t life in prison reserved for kidnappers and murderers?  The prosecutor recommended the harsh sentence saying “true pedophiles never get better” and in Antoine’s case, he won’t even have a chance to try.

Alissa is a freelance writer living in Columbus, OH. Follow her on Twitter @AlissaInPink

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Lockerz.com

Teen sweetheart Tiffany Evans recently popped back up on the R&B radar unexpectedly when she revealed in an Essence magazine interview that not only was she pregnant with her first child, but the she had been married for two years. Evans is only 19 years old, which places her walking down the aisle at 17 years old.  At 17, the only aisle I was walking down was located in the mall as I blew my whole paycheck on shoes, clothes and lip gloss.  No stranger to the tabloids, 19-year-old Miley Cyrus gained another gallon of side-eye from the public when she announced her engagement to boyfriend Liam Hemsworth whom she met in 2009 while filming The Last Song.  And the voice behind Penny Proud, 25-year-old Kyla Pratt faced a bit of backlash from abandoned fans when she announced that the reason she was MIA for a while was because she was busy being mommy to 1-year-old daughter, Lyric with fiancé, Danny Kirkpatrick, a former dancer turned tattoo artist.

In a world saturated by teen pregnancy, deadbeat baby daddies, and mommies who are shaking in the club when they should be at home two-stepping with their toddlers, it’s refreshing when we finally see young couples that are “doing it right” by getting married along with having kids.  But are they losing a crucial part of their youth in the process?

Getting married and starting a family are steps in life that there is no turning back from.  Your twenties are all about finding, nurturing and learning to take care of yourself before you become responsible for a lifetime of commitment.  I’m not saying there aren’t couples who take on these responsibilities early and do so successfully, but so many times I see people forgo the freedom and unique experiences of their twenties only to end up resentful in their thirties suffering from “Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda” syndrome.

Sure, the ladies mentioned above are probably financially stable and have both personal and professional experiences that most people will never have, but I still can’t help but wonder why it seems so many young people want to rush into marriage and having children.  I wouldn’t trade the reckless abandon of my youth for anything because not only do I try to live with no regrets, but many of those experiences (both good and bad) prepared me with life experience and memories that I wouldn’t have otherwise, which I am hoping in turn will make me a more well-rounded person.

The best thing about being a single twenty-something with no children is that it’s one of the unique times in life where you have freedom as an adult without having all the responsibilities of one.  Besides, you have the rest of your life to schedule every minute of your existence in a daily planner, multitask being a wife, mother and daughter and save for retirement. The list below features some key experiences that I think all young women should have in the short years we are still “young, wild and free”: