Ode to Oprah

Oprah.

I am completely fascinated with, in total awe of, and humbly enamored by everything that is Oprah Winfrey.

I cried during each of the last 5 episodes leading up to the show finale. Yes, I shed tears over an afternoon talk show host's retirement bonanza. And I am not even the least bit embarrassed.

Because ... I'm a fan.

No. I am not that fan who has written Oprah countless letters over the span of 25 years (because, duuuh, I'm only 24). I've never sent her an email or requested a written transcript of her show (tell me they're not still wasting paper on those things). Never have I bargained my soul to the Harpo gods in exchange for seats to a taping. I, unfortunately, cannot even boast by saying I've seen every Oprah episode.

Although I did Tweet her once.

My behavior may fall short of fanatical when it comes to the Big O, however, I assure you that my adoration and respect for her is as deeply rooted as that tree in Mississippi under which Ms. Winfrey was conceived.

Oprah - a perfectly and beautifully concocted phenomenon.

Beyond her ability to connect with people is her ability to make you examine your own imperfections. Through the years, her colorful guests have been like a catalogue of songs; millions of melodies and lyrics telling uniquely different - but yet relatable - stories.

I always find it quite curious when a person has an "Oprah? She's no big deal" kind of attitude.

When someone acts aloof about Oprah, I find myself plunging into a never-ending diatribe about her hundreds of philanthropic endeavors and how I would've never read Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth” without her Book Club and about how incredibly moved I was by the "You Get A Car! You Get A Car!" episode which aired the day before my birthday and about how her sophistication inspired me to choose her as the woman I admired most in the media when I competed for Georgia's Junior Miss in high school...

One hour at a time, Oprah reminded us to maximize our full potentials, she reinforced the importance of finding strength amidst pain, and she convinced men across the world to trade excess weight for longer penises. Mmmm...SCORE!

She shared with us her less than perfect past - her struggle with weight, broken home and childhood - and proved how yesteryear’s shame is merely a stepping stone to tomorrow's triumphs.

The human spirit, Oprah showed us, is as complicated as quantum physics yet as simple as saying, "I need you."

Many attribute her success to impeccable timing. "Right place, right time" gets some credit; her intrinsic giftedness to excel fueled by God's graces gets the rest.

I relish in the beauty that one of my most precious role models is a self-made billionaire whose ethnic background and gender are identical to mine. I am even prouder that those same physical characteristics with which I closely identify weren't deal breakers but instead were history makers.

Oprah ... everything she is is everything she wasn't supposed to be.

So I thank you, Oprah, for fulfilling your life's purpose and for picking up some of the slack for the rest of us, too.

I Just Don't Clique

I've always felt that groups were dangerous.

As an elementary school kid, I was certainly always a part of a "clique" of friends. These cliques were of the utmost importance because to be accepted meant that your existence was relevant. Donning the freshest (90's) names like "Sister Posse 2000," every pig-tailed, corn-rowed, balloon suit, British Knight wearing little girl wanted to join our crew. But we were brutally selective about who we let in. Carry a cuter lunch box, have longer hair, or get more attention from the teacher on a particular day...then your odds for acceptance, at least for some time period, were slim. And when the leaders of the vicious pack (with humility and shame, I hereby admit my role as one of those leaders) relinquished some of their vanity, other desperate little innocents earned their passage into our screwed up sorority of insecure, prepubescent brats.

Then I became a middle schooler. And that's where the story of my days as a cliquester ends. Retrospectively, I attribute my journey into "solodom" to many milestones - the sudden death of my Daddy, feeling nerdy because of my academic excellence, the craters and hills also known as the acne on my forehead, my pot belly and size 8 shoe as a 12 year old, second child syndrome...should I continue?

I didn't think so.

Was I maturing into my Virgo tendencies of shying away from crowds, or was I blessed with Divine wisdom beyond my scope of adolescent comprehension? I like to think a little of the former and a lot of the latter ;-) Whatever the case, I began looking at cliques of friends as battle grounds for inevitable destruction. For the most part, I was right.

The three things I dislike most about friend cliques are the inability to maintain privacy, disingenuousness amongst its members, and the sacrifice of individuality.

Let's be real - our human nature tells us to run our mouths by any means necessary. If something is told to us - especially in confidentiality - we feel it our civic duty to spread the word to others. In cliques, I find it extremely unbecoming that Friend 1 knows every detail about Friend 4 just because Friends 2 and 3 can't keep their mouths shut. If Friend 4 didn't directly inform Friend 1 of the matters, then Friend 4 prooobably didn't want Friend 1 in their business.

Then there's good ol' fashioned back stabbing. Back stabbing between friends happens within and outside of cliques, but somehow the cut seems much deeper when those IN your "circle" are working together against you. It defeats the purpose when your support group doubles as your group of harshest critics.

The biggest friend clique flaw is the omnipresent phenomenon of "group think." Losing your identity - your goals, morals, and standards - to satisfy the group's interests and agendas is a problem. Conforming rather than risk taking is cowardly. Stifling your potential to accommodate your friends' egos deprives you of your life's true purpose.

As little girls, the group got jealous if you had a better Barbie house; as adults, they're envious of your big brick house. The group think of grade school yesteryear is the same enabling group think of adulthood - an impediment causing full grown people to seek validation from barely qualified peers.

I recognize that some girls and women enjoy idealistic, "Sex And The City," "Waiting to Exhale" group friendships where like-minded counterparts uplift, praise, and genuinely support one another. Dating back to elementary and as recently as adulthood, that has yet to be my experience.

So I have fully graduated from feeling the need to be a part of a clique of friends.

I have some very dear, precious friends in my life. And while several of my friends loosely associate with one another, I value the privacy that I have with each of them on a personal level.

And if those friends ever feel compelled to share my secrets, at least they share them with people I don't have to see or talk to every day :-)

Beat That Meat!

Last September, I committed to getting back my fantasy bod, and I felt like my workout and eating routines were really paying off in December. Then, recently, I reached a crossroads.

Actually, it was more like a plateau.

Like Fergie, "I be working on my fitness," and I put a lot of thought into finding new challenges for my body --- interval and resistance training and lots of cardio. I find successful results in the gym, so I decided my workouts couldn't be the culprit.

I turned my focus to my diet.

I am NOT a dietician, but I eat relatively healthy. Lots of spinach, lean meats, fish, apples, prunes (I love prunes). 4 Subways are within a 1.5 mile radius of my house, so I "Eat Fresh, For Less" a LOT. Cannot lie, though...I allow myself several cheat sweets throughout the week but always in moderation. And definitely nothing my 60 minute cardio workouts can't keep under control.

Then a friend suggested I give up red meat. I don't eat red meat that often, so that sacrifice was a non-factor to me. But I am Black and from the south, so you know what that means - I eat a helluva lot of chicken.

Could chicken be the culprit!?! Yikes!

For 10 days at the beginning of March, I gave up meat. But I didn't notice a change in my weight, shape, or in how I felt. So I said, "Bring on the grilled chicken dish, with a side salad, sprinkled with low fat bacon bits!"

Then just like in the movies when a fairy godmother senses pending destruction, the Omnivore Gods were rallied and sent to stage an intervention in my life.

Within 5 days, I was bombarded with the following:

• www.meetyourmeat.com (recommended by my linesister, Crystal)
• Oprah's 7 Day Vegan Challenge
• Food, Inc. (foodincmovie.com)
• Erin Lanahan Method YouTube Vlog about Demystifying Workout and Eating Myths

Meetyourmeat.com graphically reveals the inhumane and shockingly unsanitary living conditions endured by pigs, chickens, and cows before they make it to our dinner plates.

Oprah's Vegan Challenge follows her staff as they give up all things animal for a week. Several Oprah staffers lost some major LBs doing this!

The Food, Inc. documentary exposes how profit - not consumer health - dictates most of the food and farming industry practices.

And my colleague and fitness guru, Erin Lanahan's vlog explains how eating meat can be counterproductive to fitness goals as your body's fat cells store toxins and hormones found in much of the meat we consume.

Yes. I was extremely overwhelmed at the amount of food information that was thrown at me in such a short time period, but I knew there was some lesson to be learned. I couldn't ignore the signs.

I'm not going to spoil it for you because I really, really want you to watch the links I provided.

However, I will say this. In my effort to become more educated about my diet habits, I have been shocked into an entirely new way of thinking about my food choices.

I am not okay with knowing that chickens are genetically redesigned to have bigger breasts just because white meat is the consumer's favorite part. It bothers me that pigs have intelligence levels comparable to that of 3 year old children, yet instead of letting them have some level of dignity, many farmers use bulldozers to move pigs around their property.

It's troubling to know that, thousands of meat packing workers are often underpaid, mistreated and sometimes, are illegal to work in the US. The last thing I want to do is eat meat - in all its bacteria-filled glory- that was packaged at a plant where workers could care less about the job they're doing.

This time around, I've given up meaty "goodness," not for weight reasons but for health reasons.

I'm on Day 7 of meat abstinence.

Don't mistake this post for my "holier than thou," meat-is-for-losers message. That's not my intention. I've been enlightened a bit about what exactly it means to my body to eat meat, so I'm embarking on a new journey-- one which I suspect will be full of relapses as temptation and old habits rear their ugly heads. Meat and I have been best buds for 20 plus years now, so anything could happen ;-)

But just like we're educated on the dangers of smoking or of alcohol consumption, such should be the case for meat consumption.

We owe it to ourselves know.

LOVE

Love.

Romantic love.

When I was younger, I had a very practical view of love. To me, love simply was marriage and everything that came with it. Husband and wife. Kids and family vacations. Church and family gatherings. I thought love was just the production of husband, wife, and family.

Experience and maturity have taught me differently, and every day, I am learning the meaning of what romantic love and what being in love really is.

It's having unbridled, uninhibited fun. Laughing at everything or at nothing at all. It's finding the excitement in the mundane. It's intertwining toes in your sleep.

It's passing gas on each other and being utterly disgusted and reluctantly amused at the same time. It's critiquing without judging, nurturing without enabling.

Being in love...

It's caring nothing about what others think about them. It's being proud of their imperfections and thankful they accept yours. It really is taking long walks in the park because it's those times when you can't get in the car and leave that you learn how to tolerate the intolerable.

It's him rubbing your belly when you're cramping. Stroking his ego when his pride is hurt.

Love.

It's being excited about each other's ideas and encouraging them to spare no expense in following their dreams. Love is pushing them past the precipice and into their own gold mine. Love is sharing the riches.

It's being one. It's being individuals. Being equals.

Love is enjoying one dollar microwave dinners together with the same enthusiasm you have when you dine out lavishly. Love is not being afraid to say, "we can't afford to dine out lavishly."

Love is having a unique language of inaudibles spoken fluently by only the two of you. It's doing for them what you wouldn't do for anyone else ... including yourself.

It's hurting and healing. Experimenting and trusting. Respecting and depending. Revealing. Sharing. Sacrificing.

It's finding them desirable even when they leave their socks on when you make love.

Living in it, embracing it, and becoming better because of it.

LOVE