The actress/comedienne went on the Hot 97 Morning Show to explain her open marriage and discuss her comedy show and thoughts on current events. She looks amazing!
Mo’Nique said she currently weighs 218 pounds after “tipping 300″ when she starred in the 1999 sitcom The Parkers. “My goal is between 190 and 200,” she shared, but she’s already very pleased with her results.
“I am the best Mo’Nique I’ve ever been in my life right now,” she said. “And I still have a ways to go. But I feel amazing.”
On November 6th, 45-year-old “Precious” actress Mo’Nique began a weight loss journey that she has since documented daily on her website and Twitter account.
After nearly seven months of lifting weights, running, doing yoga, playing basketball and other activities, the Oscar-winning actress has lost 80 pounds.
She looks fabulous. What are your thoughts? Post your comments below.
Nina is speaking to me. She says: “Freedom means to me, NO FEAR!”
And that is what I am trying to work on in my life. I am afraid of so much. Although I am coming out of my fear and exposing it, it would be premature for me to feel that I have discovered how to resolve it. So Nina was so straight forward, much like me, but somehow she was respected it seems. Or, maybe she had haters but didn’t give a damn. I care too much about what people think because I care too much about people. She cared but I guess she felt it different because she was a musician and drank. I do neither.
At any rate, here is a snippet of what she said. The entire movie is extremely deep and challenges people, especially women and even more so, women of color to let go of fear, find freedom, and leave a mark.
At any rate, I am focusing this week on freedom and finding it through letting go of fear.
To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story (W/Dvd)Everybody is half dead. Everybody avoids everybody. All over the place, in most situations, most all the time. I know, I’m one of those everybodies, and to me it is terrible. And so all I’m trying to do all the time is just open people up so they can feel themselves and let themselves be open to somebody else. That is all. That’s it.”"I always thought I was shaking people up, but now I want to go at it more, and I want to go at it more deliberately, and I want to go at it coldly. I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a nightclub where I performed, I just want them to be to pieces.”
“I want to go into that den of those elegant people with their old ideas, smugness, and just drive them insane.”
“When I’m calm and cool and really got the antenna working, you know when to push and you know when to not. Nobody can tell you though, you have to feel it. In any situation between human beings. It’s what makes a groove.”
“What’s free to me? It’s just a feeling. It’s just a feeling. It’s like how do you tell somebody how it feels to be in love? How are you going to tell anybody who has not been in love how it feels to be in love? You cannot do it to save your life. You can describe things, but you can’t tell them. But you know it when it happens. That’s what I mean by free. I’ve had a couple times on stage when I really felt free and that’s something else. That’s really something else! I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: NO FEAR! I mean really, no fear. If I could have that half of my life. No fear! Lots of children have no fear. That’s the only way I can describe it. That’s not all of it, but it something to really, really feel. Like a new way of seeing. Like a new way of seeing something.”
Nina Simone: To Be Free
Release by the Estate of Nina Simone: “Freedom” Recording session: Documentary, excerpt from “Nina: An Historical Perspective” by Peter Rodis
You can buy the full interview (highly recommended) on Amazon:
Listen to it at least once a week. It’s life changing. And cheaper than an hour of counseling.
I wanted to write this first entry by proclaiming “today is the first day of the rest of my life.” But I can’t say when I decided to improve on my current situation. To be honest, the fall into the hole and the climb out of the hole has been happening at the same time. But it’s obviously much easier to let gravity pull you down than to find the strength to pull yourself out.
There’s so much to say. So many thoughts are coming to my head and even that funny feeling when you are on the verge of being on the verge of getting water in the back of your eyes. I feel pain about my experiences that seem to take over my mind while I also feel very excited and motivated about the improvements I will make. The difference at this very moment, from any other moments, is somehow I have found more strength to lift myself out of the hole.
Welcome to my mind…which is where this entire journey starts for me. While some say it is a spiritual journey, I guess I can call it that when I have that discovery. Right now, it’s been my mind keeping me in the hole.
This hole in my head has a lot of levels and passageways. I am reminded of the book I read in high school, “Dante’s Inferno.” The pain and suffering is the worst feeling one can imagine. On this blog, I will describe the various floors, hallways, closets, and dead ends inside this hole I’ve been living in for years. And I will write the many attempts to find strength to pull myself out of this hole.
I’ve seen what freedom from this hell looks like. But I’ve never been able to visit for long.
But now, at 44 years of age, I guess that maturity, wisdom and a bit of “I just don’t give a fuck,” has given me strength. The age of 45 is another strength builder. I know that in 5 years, if I don’t take care of these things, I might as well seal the nail in my own coffin. By 50, I know what I want to look like, feel like, be like. I whimsically say that I want to get my “Halle Berry.” She’s inspiring me right now. She’s beautiful, older, in love, and pregnant after the age of 45. There’s hope!
Thanks for listening. I hope to be as honest as I can be about my experiences.
The first step for me happened a long time ago. In fact, the first step towards knowing that I needed to change happened during the time when I was getting worse. It’s that feeling of knowing you should be doing better before and after you do the wrong deed is why I have carried so much guilt.
But it wasn’t until I sought counseling after dealing briefly with someone in regards to my brother, that I realized I needed to take more actions that matched what I should do that’s better.
My brother has been in trouble since he was an early teen. I could tell a hundred stories about why I think he’s in trouble (the cause, who to blame, the effects, etc.) and what I have done during all of this time to cope with his situation, but I need to stay focused on my health and well-being. For now, I have come to terms with what can only be described as his choices (and the lack of choices) as a result of being incarcerated off and on for more than 20 years.
But I was already stressed and tired from several events that I shouldered alone during the fall and winter of 2012. And that had only been added onto shoulders that were already wearied from the luggage that had been added over the years. So my brother found me on Facebook and although I hesitated at first, I found what can only be called “courage” to reach back out to him. But when I called the number he provided, he never answered. So I wrote a message to lady listed as his fiance on his Facebook wall. I thought to myself, “how long have you been out where you have found a woman who is now your fiance?” And I asked her what was going on with my brother. She called and when I called her back, she hung up the phone on me saying that my sister told her to not tell me anything about the whereabouts of my brother.
That hurt me deep into my core of my heart. So I decided to go to the Crisis Center for the Mental Health Department. But I didn’t know I was in crisis, I just went because I knew that I refused to lay in the bed crying and in pain. The lady who I spoke to wanted to make sure that I wasn’t suicidal or could I hurt someone. Hell no. I am not trying to die. There’s nothing in my blood that wants to die. I am a survivor and want to live a very, very long life. I feel that black people in general, especially me, are suffering from oppression rather than depression. Black people don’t kill themselves like that. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen but we struggle with the bullshit of everyday life. To wake up everyday and think “I’m black,” means that you have to brace yourself for whatever abuse and negativity comes your way. It can be as small as turning on the television and seeing black women arguing on Real Housewives of Atlanta. Or, it could be the evening news where some black woman or black man is wanted for a crime. Or, it could be watching a black boy sitting in the grass with his hands tied behind him, handcuffed, while a white patrolman stands over him with a notepad. It could be watching your child want straight hair instead of the natural hair. Or it could be my mind conjuring up a memory of some incident such as hearing my grandfather being called a “boy,” to hearing my Mother being called a “nigger,” to reminders of sitting in school where it was allowed for white teachers to mistreat black youth.
So I decided to get help. In 2013, this is the year, that I admit I cannot do it by myself.
I need a team of people who will support my growth and help support me during the downtimes.
I don’t care if they are my best friends or will show up to my funeral or daughter’s graduation. Right now, I need professionals, programs and organizations that can help me get my six areas of life in order as they are all out of balance. The six areas of life that govern all life are: emotional, financial, mental, physical, social, and spiritual realms. And all of them have to be working and in balance. If one area is suffering then other areas are affected. In my case they are all broken.
While I hate the pain that this lady caused me and while I am grief-stricken that my sister still has that personality where she is threatened or has to control how I interact with my brother (and she used to do this with my Mother), I am THANKFUL to them for giving me the final straw that broke the camel’s back. It helped me to stop feeling guilty about the relationship I don’t have with my sister and served as a reminder of why I had to separate myself from that emotional vampire.( I love my sister, and my brother, but this website is about my truths and sometimes it might mean that my true thoughts about others around me will be recorded. And right now, I will continue to deal with her and him with a long wooden spoon…still.)
It’s also going to be filled with some things that I try but might not work. I might make decisions now that I might look back on with 20/20 hindsight clarity and see that I could have done it differently.
But one thing is for sure, my life feels like a wreck and I am not living it to the fullest. I take complete responsibility for it but I also know that I cannot do it alone. I am willing to except the good and the bad that comes out of it. I am not perfect and have already forgiven what may come in the future.
But I need to forgive, forget, and bury the past. And I know that whatever I do today will impact my future.
I also know that my daughter is watching and the best way that I can help her in this very moment is to show her that I am taking care of myself.
So off to counseling I went. I was diagnosed with PTSD. I don’t drink or or take drugs but they offered me an appointment for “meds.” WTF???? I said “yes” because I am willing to do anything to feel better.
So the first step for me was to stop everything else and take care of myself. I honor myself in this moment. And I will do what takes. I am giving myself a 12 month goal to:
1. Own a house
2. Lose 60 pounds
3. Lower my blood pressure
4. Reduce my risk of diabetes if I don’t have it yet
5. Smooth out my complexion
6. Laugh and smile more
7. Pursue and develop positive relationships
8. Be a better role model and friend to my daughter
9. Change the negative words that I tell myself and that I hear about me in my own head
10. Write a book
11. Get a real estate license
12. Get an insurance license
13. Clean out and do something with all of the papers that I have been packing from year to year
14. Travel to Springfield, Branson, Columbia, Jefferson City, Colorado Springs, Ann Arbor and Detroit Michigan, and Mall of America
15. Buy a house in Detroit Michigan or Ann Arbor
16. Make $70,000 this year
17. Go to the dentist
18. Go to the eye doctor
19. Help my daughter pass the SAT, ACT, PSAT, and the GED
20. Fight for my daughter’s rights with her former school
So I want to say THANK YOU to my sister and the fiance for giving me the wings to lift me up and turn the fire up in my life. The negativity is generating a better me. And yes, once I again, I forgive you but it just makes me realize how miserable you are, too.
Keeping a secret about sexual abuse / sexual abuse in general : http://comfortinthestorm.com/?p=229
PTSD
Sister doing scandalous things
Brother in jail
because your wasting my time with whatever it is you are trying to waste my time with. I’m not going to spin my wheels where nobody wants to see burnt tires!
There is a simple solution for your problem, and it is YOUR problem, not ours. My father was fond of saying that his TV had a a volume control, a channel selector, an on/off switch, and power plug. If he didn’t like what he heard, he could turn down the volume. If he didn’t like what he saw and heard, he could change the channel. If he didn’t anything he found, he could urn it off. And if that didn’t work, he could pull the power plug. Only fascists and socialists tell people they can’t publicly voice their beliefs. People like you are throwbacks to Germany in the 30′s, trying to stifle views you don’t agree with. None of us here want to see you have a heart attack or apoplexy and die.
Your Dad must have loved you! My white parents loved me too but were trapped in their own cultural and institutional myopia, part of the “mental illness of racism,” typical for we white folks. While loving me, they also without any conscious hate presented me with the inescapable white world and the distortions of reality, not just about People of Color, but especially about white folks… Me: Superior, privileged and ingested with the poisonous myth of the “rightness of whiteness.” Inescapable if one is white anbd grows up in America. Thandeka tells us, “The first racial victim of the white community is its own child.” Ugly stuff. But what an opportunity to be about change: Ours. Starting in our own backyard before we try to grasp what the community we have oppressed actually needs from us. No problem finding the source of the problem! and what a healthy breakthrough for all of us
I have many questions about Christianity, too. But I have found answers. First and foremost, Jesus was never a Christian and he never called himself that. Christianity was born many years after his death (if he ever existed). Secondly, Jesus was never called Jesus nor a Jew because the letter J is a 400 or 500 year old word. You can Google that.
Next, if God already knows what everyone will face, then why would have created this world for suffering as he had to have known that Adam and Eve would have screwed up before he set out to do this.
Next, it’s too bad that someone used the word “liberal ghetto” considering they call themselves “blues musicians.” How do you really see yourself playing the blues if you don’t understand nor appreciate the culture and the community the music was created from. To insult an entire race of people in order to support your Christianity, is not following God. I could tell Vande to look up all of the references to “leprosy” in the Bible and he might be shocked to discover that Jesus, Moses, and many other Bible heroes were BLACK.
Jesus was hated by the Romans and definitely hung out with the liberals and in the ghetto. He was a Nazarene and not a Jew. Nazar means “uncut” or “unshorn” and he never cut his hair. Samson was a Nazarene and his strength was in his hair. Back in that time, they didn’t have combs just like they didn’t have the Internet so the hair would lock into what is liberally called dreadlocks by the white slave masters who saw the slaves hair after they spent months on ships without proper grooming. But today, blacks celebrate their hair and the look.
I laugh when I think that Jesus could have looked like “Lil Wayne” or Bob Marley. Half of these people wouldn’t knwo Jesus (Yeshua) if he hit them upside the head and stood right in front of them and said “My name is Yeshua.” They would say “get out of my way, I’m looking for “Jesus.”
Jesus turned tables over in temples. ANd he hardly ever sat in church. He was out in the streets, hanging out with prostitutes (his feet was rubbed with perfume), and going to the sinners. He hung out all night with his boys on a bot. Now they are so concerned about your marriage, but Jesus wasn’t married. Imagine if Jesus had a wife and told her “Yo, I’m fixin to go and hang out in the streets with my boys. We might talk to prositutes and theieves and then we migth have a fish party on a boat in the middle of the ocean.” His wife would say “NOoooooo Jesus, what about me and the kids?” These followers of Christ are not living Christlike…well maybe they are considering that Jesus never called himself Christ.
The Garden of Eden in Genesis says that it was near the Land of Cush and describes other borders. You should GOogle where the Land of Cush is….well, I’ll tell you…the Land of Cush is hte original name for Ethiopia. So that places the Garden of Eden right in Africa and the continents were probably closer together and one land mass so that tells me even moreso that Adam and Eve were black. And again, they weren’t like the cute little couple you see everywhere. But Jesus wasn’t the way he looks all over.
How can one say they follow ONE TRUE GOD, when Jesus said that he HONORED HIS FATHER and wanted everyone to HONOR HIS FATHER and not him. Everyone is so busy honoring Jesus (who wasn’t called Jesus) that they are fogetting to honor the ONE TRUE GOD.
Jesus’ name was Yeshua and the 10 commandments say “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain.” And someone I think that by calling Yeshua the name “Jesus” is vain and against the laws.
I won’t even tell you what I think about the story of Creation where Adam and Eve were the first woman and man. The Bible says that he made all of the animals and the fish and fowl. And then he made man and woman and said he made it like HIM AND SHE or something like that. You should read the first paragraphs and you will see that God is both a MAN AND A WOMAN. But the original man and woman were like the other animals with no ability to choose right or wrong even though he made man and woman in his likeness while the other animals were not in his likeness. So then God decided to have an experiment and in Chapter 2, that’s where he creates the Garden of Eden and made ONE special man and placed him in Eden. he kept Adam separate from the other men and women who were not in eden but were running around like the other animals. And then Adam was sitting around looking crazy and bored and so God made EVE to keep Adam company.
But God didn’t keep Eden pure and decided to put Satan in there. This doesn’t make sense to make a choice to put Satan in such a pure garden. But he did. And then you know about the aplie and the nakedness and shame and God played stupid like he didn’t know what happened and then had the nerve to get mad and kick Adam and Eve out of the garden and place them in the wild with the other animals including the men and women who did not have choice. And then he put an angel to BLOCK the Garden from Adam and Eve. Well, why didn’t he put the guardian angel up there in the first place and keep Satan out?
So now Adam and Eve are in the world and have babies. To me, what I have just explained gives answers to why Adam and Eves sons had wieves. Where did these wives come from? Because if you go by th efact that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, then it would imply that her sons were sleeping with her (incest) and she had daughters which would have been hersons sisters. I think there is a show that was once on tv called sister wives. Well that’s nasty. But it’s interesting that people don’t have deep discussions about this.
So what about the fact that my original thought makes sense and there was already man and woman running wild in the world outside of Eden and Adam and Eve were place dout in the world with them and that’s how their sons took wives. MAKES MORE LOGICAL SENSE TO ME.
But I dare not share this with the Christians you are arguing with because they’d be forced to deal with God blaming mankind for his own limitations. As he should have never let Satan in there in the first place. And why do I HAVE TO BE RESPONSIBLE For the sins of Adam and Eve so many years later.
I won’t even talk about your comment of RA (HORUS). But I could show you exact relationships between RA and the Christian GOD.
Even Jesus, (google it) went to Egypt to learn from the architects of original religiions. Just like Plato went there and stole volumes of books from the Alexandria library and then had the nerve to repin them and give himself credit for writing.
Then, there is something somewhere where women actually ruled the world. They were the leaders over men many years ago befor the Bible was written. Just think about the Amazon women. And many rulers of Ancient Egypt (real name was “Khemet”) were women. There were about 5 Cleopatra rulers. There was Queen Tiye, Nefertiti, and others.
In fact, Queen Nefertiti was married to Ankhenaton or Amenhotep and she is the one who found Moses floating in the basket. Or her daughter found Moses. At any rate, if you have read about leprosy, you will see that Moses demonstrated the power of God to the pharoah and his skin turned “leprous, white as snow.”
So when the GREEK and ROMANS stole the stories from ancient Egypt and Africa and rewrote them, they didn’t want women nor blacks ruling the world and so wrote these stories where they make women responsible for every weakness of a man. Have you ever wondered why the noses were blasted off of every ancient Egyptian statue? Well those noses were AFRICAN noses. It’s not just a matter of poor construction that every single nose was blasted off.
So with a combination of PLAGEURISM by Socrates, Plato, and other Greek and Roman philosophers, by the artists who were appointed by the Roman church to COPY the regalness and richness of Egypt and to create white Jesus and Mary and saints and line their churches in gold and marble, and then blowing off the noses, and wars where they burned all of the knowledge down to the ground….well, there we have this new fangled CHRISTIANITY.
Then the pompous King James decides he wants to REWRITE and improve the Bible by changing the names of everyone and then stamping his name on the cover.
I believe in GOD and I’ve had some unexplainable spiritual things sorta like that dude in the Green Mile. But I don’t see the same things that everyone sees. Oh, I see it but I see the stuff that has been hidden from the teaching although it’s writtten write in the Bible. And I am not a sheeple and so I am curious and question. And in my spiritual journey and reading of the Bible, this is what I found.
I do have to say that Atheist should just be indifferent. By arguing that youd on’t belive in God is NOT the opposite of believing in God. You are in fact demonstrating that there is a God and your role is to disprove it. It’s like when people say the opposite of love is hate. Well, that’s not true because hate is just love manifested differently. So the opposite of love is INDIFFERENCE. Therefore, the opposite of believing in God is INDIFFERENCE. You shouldn’t worry about what anyone says or thinks. But spend that time and energy doing something else.
I hope this makes sense.
You will have to research on your own but if you do, you will see that ieerything I say is there.
Everybody is half dead. Everybody avoids everybody. All over the place, in most situations, most all the time. I know, I’m one of those everybodies, and to me it is terrible. And so all I’m trying to do all the time is just open people up so they can feel themselves and let themselves be open to somebody else. That is all. That’s it.”"I always thought I was shaking people up, but now I want to go at it more, and I want to go at it more deliberately, and I want to go at it coldly. I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a nightclub where I performed, I just want them to be to pieces.”