self-care
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The Best Gifts Come Unwrapped This Holiday: Treat Yourself to Some #SelfLove, Part 4
“No matter how uncomfortable, how intense or how inconvenient your feelings are, facing your emotions, feeling them and accepting them for what they are is the best way to heal yourself and live a more balanced and peaceful life.” —Aletheia Luna Signs of the holiday season had barely rolled around before I began experiencing the…
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Sing Your Own Praises … Treat Yourself to Some #SelfLove, Part 3
“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” —Buddha Since the beginning of the month, we’ve made a commitment to show up for ourselves with a little bit more love. If you’ve been following along with us, we started off our December journey to self-love by practicing the…
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Nailing It, Naturally: How I Do a DIY Mani-Pedi
#BlackGirlTragic: I am ashy. Tip to toe. The reigning Queen of Elephant Skin. Dry winter skin has my hands looking like I’m half eagle; I need a manicure so badly. In short, it’s not a good look. But true confession? Mani-pedis are one of the areas in my beauty routine where I am consistently thrifty…
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I Hate the Collection of Pills I Need to Take Each Day … but I Love Them Because They’re Keeping Me Sane (and Alive!)
There are many things I hate about Crazytown. I don’t like the stigma that comes with living here. The cost of living is insane. (Can you say thousands in copays alone each year?) And I hate that people I love have to live here, too, by default. But can I tell you what I hate…
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Daylight Saving Time Is a Depression-Inducing Devil, so Here’s What I Do to Keep It From Keeping Me Down
Greetings from CrazyTown! These are dangerous times for those of us who live in CrazyTown. Let me explain. About eight years ago, I went to pick up my kid from day care. The clocks had been adjusted the night before, so I knew it would be getting darker, earlier. I went into her day care…
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A Year Later, How Has the Trump Presidency Personally Affected or Changed You?
I’m writing this from my hotel room in New York City, where I’ve been since Tuesday evening and will be until Friday. I’m in town to attend The Root 100 gala Thursday night, but I’m here early to meet with my agent (and possibly my editor), hang out with some friends and visit the GMG…
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More Naps! Everyone Needs to Take More Naps!
If this past week has taught me anything, it is that we all need to find more time in our day to take a nap. On Monday we woke up to one of the most horrific mass shootings in American history. On Tuesday we saw the guy some call the president of the United States…
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My Battle With Depression (and the Pills and Therapy Necessary to Defeat It): A Coming-Out Story
A recent Facebook post is the reason for this story. Someone I don’t know well posted some difficulties he’s been having. He danced around what sounded to me like depression. Without actually using the D-word, he talked about having a hard time getting out of bed, feeling sad for no reason and just wondering if…
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For Colored Girls Who Don’t Know They’re Struggling
“It looks like melanoma,” my dermatologist said casually as she biopsied a mysterious scar that had developed under my left temple. I was unmoved. I cried when my hairdresser found a bald spot the size of a silver dollar in the middle of my scalp while roller-setting my tightly coiled curls a month before. I…
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Don’t You Know That You’re Toxic?
Editor’s Note: Trigger warning, this post talks about the subject of suicide, and was written before the death of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington. It can be time-consuming, this constant calibration of moods. I can’t predict when it will hit me, when my lungs will close and the room will begin to spin. When I feel…