Category: General Topics

Emotional Hair

“Can you remove your hood in the store ma’am?”

That was the last I heard of the store clerk after removing the hood. I’d stepped once more into a sea of misplaced smiles, the check-out line occupied by a mixture of awe and wonder, of marvel and disgust alike. And it all started six years ago.

January 3, 2009

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My husband and I were in Norman Oklahoma for a documentary production to which we were preparing to premier that summer. Meanwhile, I’d become fed up with the perm and decided I was no longer going to be engaged in such a one sided relationship. I was tired of complaining about what to do with it and tired of it not growing much in return. What did this hair think it was anyway? I was supposed to spend money on perms and braids while it just sat there. Nope. I was not having it. And so while at my sister’s house, letting her husband and mine occupy the office while we did girl things, I decided right then and there to let her twist my hair.

It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. I had no idea how deeply I would fall for this new thing in my life, or how much emotion something as seemingly unimportant as hair, would garner.

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It was easy in the beginning. Like any other relationship the “newlywed” phase was going smoothly. While I mostly kept it covered with head wraps to which I had also fell for, my selfie game was tight. This was before Facebook though and I wasn’t really into MySpace, so most of these pictures were not published online. That was ok though because this was just the beginning. I couldn’t be sharing this new love of my life with everyone. It was like I had met myself for the first time. I felt alive, strong, and free.

Eventually, I could not keep my hair under wraps for too long. I loved the head wraps but they had become hot and uncomfortable. My hair was growing faster than it had in my life and was attempting to crawl down my back. In addition, I started to enjoy the look of myself without the head wrap even more. My hair was no longer just a combination of DNA strands emerging from the follicles of my scalp, but it was part of everything I did. I had to take into account the way my hair looked when I got dressed, and when I added accessories. “Does this hair go with these shoes? Hmmm”. Now, I was ready to hit the streets.

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No, not like that (get your minds out the gutter). I mean I was ready to take on the world. That is when I noticed it. This hair took on more attention than I did. It stopped people in the streets. Stopped them mid-sentence. It even momentarily stopped women from shopping (now that’s serious!) How could they risk going on without asking me how I got my hair like that? Men too marveled, “See I want my hair that thick”, they would say. It was really something and opened the door to deeper questions of identity. I often get questions concerning where I’m from. They think I’m going to reply:

“Nigeria”.

Instead I say, “I’m originally from Chicago”.

“Oh”, they say and continue to stare. I smile because I get it. They are confused because I don’t look like an American. I like that.

Trouble in Paradise

Not all of the attention brought on by this hair is good. There are a lot of people who look at me like I disgust them. In truth it is because they’re curious about me. It is not just my hair that is different and they can sense it. This brings me to the beginning of this post.

“Can you remove your hood in the store ma’am?”

It was the last thing I heard before my feet was crossing the threshold out of Family Dollar. The few customers present bathed me in eyeballs and the employees spoke in whispers among themselves. After ringing me up the man didn’t bother to inform me on the final cost of my products. It was as if he thought I could read his mind. Good thing I can count. I peered over the computer screen and paid what was due. With that I walked out of the store. No one ever said a word.

First you get people all excited, then curious, angry, surprised, and even fearful. Look at you turning heads and opening minds, you emotional hair you!

Books I Hate

TSP-cover-600x857I love to read. Obviously. But there are some books I just hate to read. Not only do I hate to read them, I think I even hate to see them! I hate “How To” books for example and “Secrets to Success ” books. Just the sight of someone standing there with a cheesy smile promising that their book is what you’ve been waiting for your whole life just irks me. I don’t care for religious books either. When I say religious I’m not talking about biblical references, direction, guidance, and some kind of message. I’m talking about church sermons in the form of a book. It’s just not a good idea to post entire scriptures in your novel or book or whatever. If I wanted to read the bible I would do just that. But the “How to” thing pretty much takes the cake though. It’s border line depressing even. “Want a better life? Buy my book!” I’m sorry, what? To make matters worse these things sell like crazy, amazing.

Let’s Talk Womanhood…3.31.15

What is Womanhood? The question hangs over the head of our daughters with anxious anticipation. The youthful mind dividing itself into sections of experience: first date, first love, marriage, and children. We split ourselves into portions and gamble off pieces that do not fit. We grow old and still we find this question lingering against the frontal lobe of our minds, and occupying the mental space of our thoughts. “What is Womanhood?” It is a question we believe can be answered inside the quite deception tugging away at the purchase of cigarettes, the buying of liquor, the entering of the club scene or the mixing of our flesh with another’s. What does it mean to truly become a woman?

It has never been so exciting to ponder these questions in a time such as now. In just two weeks, together we’ll get to experience the questions themselves, and like short poems that tease our taste buds with instant melody, how delicious is the involvement.

This is not just a collection of poetry, but of inspirational quotes, and raw experience. It is the story of her.

Her Love. Her Man. Her Children. Her Womanhood.

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Copyright ©2015.Yecheilyah

Available 3.31.15.
theliterarykorner.com

Blogger Conferences?

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This may already exist, making this post completely irrelevant in which case you could be doing something more valuable with your time. Though I do hope you’re sacrificing a minute or two to hear this amazing idea of mine that probably already exist. 🙂

What if someone could organize a Bloggers Conference? I know there are a lot of them, but this is not just any conference. Not just a community of writers sitting around tables listening to boring PowerPoint presentations from “professionals” that cost you rent money to attend, I’m talking about a fun meet-up of the bloggers you interact with daily. A stream of writing activities, individual business workshops for you to sell your material, and exciting activities against the backdrop of a relaxed atmosphere. A place where bloggers, who may not be writers in the organized sense, can come together and meet face to face. And to top it all off this is an event that is funded & supported by….you guessed it: Bloggers. We can set a date (preferably in the summer) and vote on a central location that could better assist our goals for this event. We can set up committees to assist with food, funding, transportation, activities, & promotion. A conference like this can even give us the opportunity to have an Award ceremony in which we are able to give each other tangible awards. Depending on its success, this can be something for bloggers to repeat once a year and be less expensive to attend.

 

Welcome

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I picked up your scent going out the door this morning. I should have known that the impulse of a summer dress, short sleeved and cool, and the sliding of my foot into sneakers meant you were not far away. Instead, I would let my sweater drape over my arm and sniff the moisture you left hanging in the air. It wasn’t very bright out, but budding flowers and children laughing was enough. Did not need to see the sun lean its body dramatically over the clouds to feel the heat of spring on my skin. Bright colored birds sang a joyful tune on into the sky, and the curtains moved against the window sill just as seductively as the tree branches swayed leaves to and fro. And as my husband presents me with a pot of African violet, with petals all soft and blooming, and my neighbors resurrect house chairs for a spot on the porch, I know that spring has arrived. Welcome.

Lasting Marriages – Miracles in Disguise

Circa: 2012, me and Hubby on the way to New Orleans to port for our 7 day Cruise
Circa: 2012, me and Hubby on the way to New Orleans to port for our 7 day Cruise

“As far as I’m concerned, if a Black man and woman make marriage work in amerika, they’ve accomplished a miracle. Because everything is against them. Just being poor is one of the biggest obstacles. Most of the arguments are about money. It’s hard to be loving and caring when you can’t pay the bills and you don’t know where the next dollar is coming from”

– Assata Shakur

This excerpt from Assata’s autobiography is so on point that I had to share it with you. This I do not limit to Black people but all people. Marriage is something I think we take highly for granted. It is one of the oldest institutions in which requires so much work and yet receives so little praise. I just want to take the time to encourage all of my married people, especially my married Black people, since our divorce rates are higher than any ethnic group. As Assata has mentioned, it is a struggle to focus on the love you have with one another when there are so many other distractions surrounding the basics. Trying to live life, fulfill a career, rear the children, pay bills, it all gets cloudy sometimes. But we cannot allow this to damage the beauty of the coming together of man and woman. I have been married for seven years now and we’ve been together eight total. One of the things we love to do together (aside from travel) is movie night. It started as something sporadic and has now become a tradition. Now movie night is every night! Lol. It gives us the opportunity to enjoy each others company after a long day with life. When we come into the door and we finish our dinner and all the miscellaneous things in preparation for the next day; when the lights dim and the surround sound begins, we try to leave everything else behind us. No smartphone. No internet. No talk about work and bills and blah blah blah, just me and him. It nurtures our relationship in ways that are probably far more impactful than we can realize at this moment. While I still consider myself a newlywed as compared to some of you veterans, I just want to encourage you to find an activity you share with your hubby or wifey that no matter what happens in the world, it does not get in the way of your bond. In the words of Lena Horne “It’s not the load that weighs you down, it’s the way you carry it”. So shift some of that weight, get rid of some even. But find something to do together that makes the whirling world stand still. Be honest and open with each other concerning your flaws and doubts and feelings and allow the love that brought you together to be a kind of therapy within not just your marriage, but in your life. Marriage is work and anyone who tells you different is a liar. It is not easy and sometimes it can be a real struggle. It is for this reason that if you are married and have been for some time, across nationalities, if you are still married, then you are a living miracle. Never underestimate that.

Womanhood Don’t Begin in Menstrual Cycles

Yecheilyah-72dpi-1500x2000-e-bookIs a collection of poems and inspirational quotes that focuses on womanhood. Scheduled for release at the end of this month, this book combines poetry with the strength of true womanhood. It will also feature an audio book of a selection of pieces. It will be available as an e-book as well as in print. I will also present opportunities for free copies to be given in exchange for a review. Details on that coming soon.

From Girlhood to Womanhood

When I got my first menstrual cycle at thirteen, I remember everyone being very excited. I remember them hugging me and explaining things I did not wholly understand. I was not very excited, but they were. This was obviously a very important part of my life that the adult women before me had apparently made clear. “Why was everyone so happy about this?”  I thought.

Today, the menstrual cycle is no longer symbolic of the great “Welcome to Womanhood” or “Rite of Passage” as it once was. Women are not excited to speak about it. They may feel it exposes the “nastiness” of too much information. And in most extreme cases, many young women do not understand what it is. What has degraded a woman’s transition from girlhood to womanhood? We do know one thing for sure: the maturity of a young woman’s mind yesterday as compared to today. It seems that at some point in our history, the growth of our little girls, especially within the black community, has depended so much on the shape of the body, that it has stumped mental growth. Young women walk around here today and they think turning eighteen or twenty-one automatically gives them a right to womanhood, although the cultivation of their mind is stuck in childhood. Many of them do not understand that womanhood is not just the outer appearance of what makes up a female. It is not breast, booty, vagina and hips, and it does not arrive necessarily with age. Though with age comes wisdom, not everyone who is of age is wise, and as such not even age itself can alone define womanhood. For this reason we cannot assume, for today’s woman, that her womanhood began the moment she bled her first menstrual cycle.