​In 2018, it is more than evident that the advantage for black men is in disproportion to what other men have in this world. The most unsettling thing about that is that we live in a society where this illogical and dysfunctional mentality is acceptable; what’s more, the contrast is what is deemed abnormal. Before we get into this, let me first say, that before anything, I am a black woman spirit and all that I am, all that I am becoming and all that my purpose is, serves with the intent to uplift, heal, restore and enlighten as I transition to return to that from which I come…royalty, power and dominion. Suffice it to say; that is what attracts me to the black man. In him are qualities which exude royalty, power and dominion that I am innately attracted to, they are familiar, they are a vibrational match to who I am at my most divine level and therefore, it is that which I am most divinely aligned with. However, in my recent encounters with black men, there has been a void of the vibrational frequency assuring me that they see themselves as such. If I may be transparent, while it is disheartening to see, it is incomparable to the feeling associated with the energy when you come into contact with it being a woman of  a certain caliber. It is imperative that we get to the root of where it stems from and the time to do so is now.

Like most black women I know, I come from a lineage of “strong black women”. In today’s society with the Olivia Popes, Annaliese Keatings and Beyonces who “run the world”, I’ll admit, it is refreshing to see. However, too many of us have gotten lost in that mentality causing us to lead misinformed lives under the guise of this “I don’t need a man” superpower that we proudly wear as a badge of honor while deep down inside we are suffering. As women, we were created to nurture and heal, therefore it is impossible to live out our fullest potential as a woman without a man. PERIOD.  

STOP reading right now if you’ve found offense in anything I’ve said thus far. You won’t be able to receive what is to come, in the manner for which it is intended. If you are ready to heal the disconnect between the black man and woman, I invite you to continue reading.

​That being said, it doesn’t matter how strong and powerful you are in this world as an “independent diva”, you still desire the energy of a male counterpart. It is of a woman’s natural instinct to be attracted (drawn, pulled) to masculine energy. Also, it is important to understand that there is a difference between masculine energy and being a masculine man who is aware of the power of his masculine energy. Somehow, while this “ I am woman, hear me roar” mentality was being passed down, the principal of feminine energy and its importance to be in harmonic, divine flow with an equivalent or balancing masculine energy, was disregarded. This leads me to my next point.

Lack of knowledge of the Role of Men and Women
( https://youtu.be/qsbm670LW2U)
In order for the woman to fully serve her purpose in a man’s life, she must first understand the importance of her role in her own life. She must know who she is and that will help her to understand the value she adds to a man's life. There is no one or no thing on this earth without purpose. Our entire journey is about finding and living that purpose out. Yet, we have not been properly gifted the knowledge that was to be passed down through generations allowing us during our individual journeys to evolve into our complete selves before trying to become one whole unit with another. In the beginning, for everything that was created, there was a polar opposite; light and darkness, male and female, and so on. This is indicative of the effectiveness of having balance.

Bringing our attention back to the roles of men and women, we must understand that proper balance is needed to efficiently operate in a healthy relationship with a man. For instance, men are hunters innately. It is their role to be the pursuer, which only makes sense for women to be pursued. We’ve all heard the saying “he that finds a wife, finds a good thing…”, however, lacking the knowledge of what a "good thing" is and how to be that for the right man, we as women often times experience unwanted encounters. When you are a woman who knows her value, you get to decide the kind of man you are most aligned with. You get to become the woman, the kind of man you desire would be attracted to. It is also important to know that men are leaders assigned to leading the direction of the family. They are dominant and desire to be in their rightful role of leadership. However, as it is with women who are unclear about who they are, men who are not aware of the purpose of their divine obligation to lead righteously, dominance and control can be misused and manipulated. More than that, when you are in-tune, tapped in and turned on to self, you will find it almost impossible to align with something that isn’t a vibrational match to the current state of your thinking. In other words, you will only attract what you are presently. To ensure that you only attract what you want, be sure to get clear about who you are first (https://www.tmjempowers.com/blog/but-first-let-me-take-a-selfie).
Learned Behavior from Childhood
I think it’s fair to say that our way of thinking and behaving was shaped by what we saw growing up; most of which was incorrect or dysfunctional in some way. The first seven years of our lives are when we are the most susceptible to what our environments consist of. Growing up, I witnessed both married and single couples. In as many as I can remember, there was some form of abuse. I saw how the men and women interacted with one another and subconsciously, those observances taught me what to accept in my own relationships. Let me tell you, it wasn’t always good.

Black women are less likely to respect dominant black men because they have not been given the necessary tools mentally to truly understand the structure of a strong family foundation due to being Europeanized and stripped away from their native culture. When the black man was removed from the black family and emasculated, psychologically, women were conditioned to become the head of the house hold designed to be “taken care of” by the government in place of the black man. There isn't much emphasis on how to submit and allow a man to lead in the home, because there were no black men in the homes. When the structure is broken in the homes, it is subsequently broken in our communities as well.

With black women being conditioned by controlling  acts of brutality and manipulated into perverted forms of submission, planting the seed for dismantling the black familial structure was inevitable. The ability to understand where the deeply rooted subconscious beliefs stem from, empowers us to be able to go back into what we saw growing up and make distinct correlation between what is correct and what isn’t. Before you write me or my perspective off as being an incorrect absolute, allow me to leave you with this:
​
( excerpt from the “Willie Lynch Letter”)
“The Breaking Process of the African Woman Take the female and run a series of tests on her to see if she will submit to your desires willingly. Test her in every way, because she is the most important factor for good economics. If she shows any sign of resistance in submitting completely to your will, do not hesitate to use the bull whip on her to extract that last bit of resistance out of her. Take care not to kill her, for in doing so, you spoil good economic. When in complete submission, she will train her off springs in the early years to submit to labor when the become of age. Understanding is the best thing. Therefore, we shall go deeper into this area of the subject matter concerning what we have produced here in this breaking process of the female nigger. We have reversed the relationship in her natural uncivilized state she would have a strong dependency on the uncivilized nigger male, and she would have a limited protective tendency toward her independent male offspring and would raise male off springs to be dependent like her. Nature had provided for this type of balance. We reversed nature by burning and pulling a civilized nigger apart and bull whipping the other to the point of death, all in her presence. By her being left alone, unprotected, with the male image destroyed, the ordeal caused her to move from her psychological dependent state to a frozen independent state. In this frozen psychological state of independence, she will raise her male and female offspring in reversed roles. For fear of the young males life she will psychologically train him to be mentally weak and dependent, but physically strong. Because she has become psychologically independent, she will train her female off springs to be psychological independent. What have you got? You've got the nigger women out front and the nigger man behind and scared. This is a perfect situation of sound sleep and economic. Before the breaking process, we had to be alertly on guard at all times.”

Recently, while scrolling through my daily go-to for witty and sometimes enlightening philosophy, I came across an interesting statement.  Contrary to the usual "woe is me", "hey look over here, I need validation!"-esque posts, this post was intriguing. It resonated with me. It read, "Being a mother while trying to repair myself mentally and emotionally is the hardest task I've ever taken on." I could immediately feel the depth of that statement.

I began to recall the rollercoaster of events occurring during my own self-discovery journey while being a mom. Let me tell you, it wasn't easy. At all! In my new book, POWER, I discuss my journey and how it led to my need for this mental and emotional healing in the first place. More than that, I take readers through my journey of healing and repair.

Although, this was a self-discovery journey which required most of the work to be personal, internal labor that I had to do alone, there were more times than I care to admit that I believed I couldn't do it at all, let alone... alone. "God, where are you. Do you see this?" was often how I started my negotiations with God. That usually ended with me laying in my sacred space, puffy-faced and red-eyed, wondering how I ended up in whatever catastrophic, emotionally charged tale of defeat I'd successfully convinced myself that I was in the middle of. In every one of those moments, when I was expecting God to show up, it was always a close friend who came through for me and helped me find my way. It was then that I fully understood that within those friends, there was God working through them, as them to provide to me what I needed the most.

In a vintage interview with Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey shared the value of her relationship with best friend, Gayle King. "She is the mother I never had, the sister everybody would want, the friend everybody deserves... the therapy that I didn't have and that I don't need." While I was overwhelmed with emotion (hell, even Oprah was crying) and happy for Oprah to have that support in such a loving friendship, it made me a little sad. I'm sure that could be accredited to my not so "lit" social life these days, feeling like I'm transitioning through different relationships in my life that I was sure would be long-lasting. At a time where trying to maintain my own sanity and still be the hero that my daughter affectionately calls "Mommy", you can imagine the amount of support that is needed. However, as I remember my darkest moments, the scariest memories, there was always a feminine energy present to nurture and console me like a mother. I have always had a girlfriend to confide in when the burden of secrecy was too much to bear alone. I could her trust like a sister to never dishonor the loyalty between us. I've always had the friend who made me laugh when all I wanted to do was cry (and because she was also the friend to bring wine, laughing was inevitable by the end of our visits together).  Even in times when there was no one physically there, I knew that something within me was there listening.

To summarize, it's cool to have a group of friends to hang out and party with, but it's a completely different thing to have those friends who can love and support you even when the entire world seems to be against you. I used to think I wanted a clique of female friends mimicking the friendships as seen on Sex and the City and Girlfriends. However, as I continue to repair myself, I realize that all I need is God and a Gayle.

We've all been there. You meet someone and you feel this undeniable chemistry. You get excited, thinking to yourself, "This is it!" You tell your closest friends and family and just when you're about to pick the floral arrangements for your wedding, reality sets in. This isn't going to work! Back to the drawing board, right? You begin rapidly flipping through your playbook wondering where you went wrong. You pull out your "list" and begin checking off the things that you once believed you wanted in a suitable mate. You start to doubt yourself. You shift your perspective from seeking what you want, to what you need. Time is ticking as the sand in this invisible hour glass you've assimilated in your mind begins to flow. In an attempt to reach the finish line in this race to love, you get desperate and start the process all over again only to end up in the same situation again and again and again and again.

You see, the issue isn't that you haven't found the "right one", the issue is that you're looking in all the wrong places. Too often, we look for the "perfect" mate to compliment us, complete us and to give us this validation that we think being in a relationship provides us based on societal views and opinion. We think that somehow us being in a relationship strips away our flaws and instantly causes our deeply rooted issues to dissipate because now we are "perfect enough" for another to love us.

But that couldn't be further from the truth. According to the law of attraction, we attract what we are, not what we want. We attract what we are ready for. In other words, if you are broken and incomplete, you will only attract that back to you. It's like looking into a mirror, you will only see a reflection of what you put in front of it.  Although you may want the idea of your perfect mate, you must ask yourself," Am I ready?" Are you the equivalent to what you're seeking? For instance, if you are seeking a mate who is financially well off, but you're head over heels in debt, I can assure you, you are going to run into some issues in the financial department within your relationship. You cannot fulfill another person's deficiencies with your own. I want you to really think about that.

More often than not, that is where we make our mistakes in the dating game. We lead with our strong points, as we should, but we neglect the things we as individuals need to work on in terms of our personal growth and development, but most importantly, our healing. I am in no way saying that you shouldn't date, however, I am strongly encouraging you to examine yourself in every area of your life. We'll call this, "taking a selfie". Ask yourself, "Am I a mirror image of what I desire in my future mate?" Check your spirit. Check your heart. Check your mind. And yes, even check your wallet! Ha! In all seriousness, my desire for you is that you do your work and that you truly "heal before you deal". When we are in the phase of our lives where it seems time is running out and we start to get anxious thinking that we'll never find "the one" it is then that we need to shift our focus to actually being the one... for ourselves. Take the time to discover and date yourself and before you dive heart-first into a serious relationship, be sure that you're ready. When in doubt, it's okay to stop and say to yourself, "but first, let me take a selfie".