OWNing Your Mistakes (with apologies to my 21-year-old self)

Hello World,

What I love about Oprah and have always loved about Oprah is her ability to keep it real although she is in the public eye and admit her mistakes – from her decision to use a dangerous quick weight loss regime to lose the pounds years ago to the launching of her OWN network last year. In an interview with her bestie Gayle King on “CBS This Morning,” Oprah revealed her top mistakes in launching her network. Launching too early was her top mistake, she said.

“Launching when we really weren’t ready to launch,” she said. “And doing that because you’ve announced you’re going to do it. It’s like having the wedding when you know you are not ready and you are walking down the aisle, and you are saying, ‘I don’t know if we should be walking down the aisle… maybe we should have postponed this.’”

 Check out the video below if you want to see the interview…

Oprah isn’t shy about admitting mistakes she made before she was Oprah the media mogul either. In the May issue of “O Magazine,” Oprah writes a letter to her younger self when although she was a college student at Tennessee State University, she was already a reporter at Nashville’s WLAC-TV! She was actually the youngest and the first black news reporter for the station. And although she was already on the cusp of success, she was preoccupied with dating a boy named Bubba. One day, she brought him to the station to let him see where she worked. Instead of being proud of her, he was intimidated by her success…An excerpt of her letter is below…

“On this day you’ve brought him to the station to see where you work, hoping he’ll be proud, too. He seems less than impressed. The truth is, he’s intimidated. You don’t know this, though, because you can see yourself only through his eyes. A lesson you will have to learn again and again: to see yourself with your own eyes, to love yourself from your own heart.

Read the entire letter here….

When I look at my life when I was about 21 years old or so, I, too, regret some of the choices I made in love…choosing the guys that were ambivalent about me instead of the ones that really held me down…my mother warned me about mistreating one former really nice boyfriend in particular…all things have worked together for my good (Romans 8:28) but if I could go back, I would have done it differently for sure…

I don’t live in regrets but what would you do differently at 21 or so if you could go back and right wrongs?

Any thoughts?

 

After the Altar Call Book Signing This Saturday at Nubian Bookstore…

Hello World,

If you missed my book release party party (check out pics here) or my book signing at Lifeway Christian Store (check out pic & post here) last month, you have a third opportunity to support me at Nubian Bookstore THIS SATURDAY! The address for Nubian Bookstore is 2447 Southlake Mall, Morrow, GA 30260. I will be there from 3-6 p.m. I would love to see you there…I still have hundreds of book release party pics that I need to sort through, and I plan to have more photos posted in the gallery section of my blog by next Friday, April 6, but in the meantime, here are a few more photos from that awesome night…Enjoy…Happy Hump Day….

Line Sisters & Dear Friends...

 

My father, Rev. Dr. Denzil D. Holness, praying before the night's festivities...

 
 

The crowd enjoying the vocals of Beauty...

 

Me & Yvette chatting...

 

Another touching photo demonstrating Line Sister Love...

 
 
Don’t Forget…This Saturday…Nubian Bookstore…3-6 p.m…See you there!!! 
 
Any thoughts?
 

Can Women Really Have It All? And at the same time?

Hello World!

You’ve heard those questions before, right? Can women really have it all? And at the same time? If you haven’t heard these questions before, I am referring to the desire for today’s modern women to be wives, mothers and career women. (For the record, these questions are not asked of men…)

These questions and answers were explored in the first episode of “Mary Mary,” the reality show featuring chart-topping gospel duo Mary Mary which will premiere on Thursday, March 29 at 10 p.m. on WE tv. (The reality show will officially start airing on Thursday, April 5 at 9 p.m.)  I went to the Atlanta premiere of the show which was held at Greater’s Travelers Rest Baptist Church in Decatur last week.

Mary Mary on the red carpet...

Between Erica & Tina Campbell (they are both married to unrelated men with the last name Campbell. Isn’t that cute?), they have two husbands, six (soon to be seven) children as Tina is pregnant, three Grammy Awards and a thriving career in the spotlight…

Erica Campbell, Rosie Pisani, vice president senior vice president of marketing for WE tv; Tina Campbell..

In the first episode, Mary Mary are presented with an opportunity to perform at Macy’s Great Christmas Tree Lighting concert on Thanksgiving Day. Mary Mary are excited about the the opportunity to perform in Atlanta in front of 100,000 people in Atlanta, as our city is a top city for their fans! However, Erica & Tina, the wives and mothers, are not too excited to be leaving their families on such a special holiday, particularly since Tina’s oldest daughter Laiah will be performing at a glee concert during that time…

Mama Braxton also came to the premiere...

 

There is also drama surrounding Erica’s pregnancy as she begins having contractions before a performance. (She has actually had a beautiful baby girl, Zaya Monique, since then who also attended the premiere:) And now Tina is pregnant!) And Mitchell, Mary Mary’s manager, and their sister known as Goo Goo, who is their stylist, have a confrontation! I won’t give it all away…but I will say that if Mitchell had his way, Goo Goo would be good and gone!

Nicci Gilbert formerly of the '90s R&B group Brownstone...

 

Viewers also get to know Erica & Tina’s mother Honey, who was their first choir director at Evangelistc Church of God in Christ in California. My grade of their first show: A. And I’m not saying it because they are a Christian group with their own reality show. I enjoyed the show because it was positive and had enough drama to get my attention. Plus, they are in their ’30s like me, and I appreciate that realistic black women (even if they are superstars) also have a voice in the sometimes unrealistic reality TV genre..More pics from the premiere are below…

Celebrity photographer Derek Blanks was in the house...

 

Comedian & Minister John Gray interviewed the duo about their new reality show...He was hilarious!

 

A pint-sized Mary Mary fan in her quest to win a door prize!

 

They also performed their new single "Go Get It." The album will be available on May 8.

 

Each person who attended the premiere was asked to bring a canned good, and the canned goods were donated to the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

 
Any thoughts?