There is beauty in almost all things in the world, but history has its secrets and sad realities. Hidden tales of real people who are forgotten.

To me, it is increasingly saddening to know that there will always be people in history that are forgotten about. It certainly doesn't mean we can't try to do everything we can to make their legacy live on, and that's when we always try to remember, to learn, and to teach each other. It is our responsibility to continue the education, to memorialize the hero by always talking about it over and over to as many people as possible.

Do you know who Madam CJ Walker was? She is the first Black self-made entrepreneur turned millionaire.

Did you know America held a formal Anti-Lynching Conference? And that this same Madam CJ Walker delivered a speech?

It is yet another unbelievable reality that history forgets entrepreneurs like Madam CJ Walker. Or, if remembered at all, briefly discussed. There was only a small overview in an African-American studies class at the University of Maryland many moons ago, but never once do I recall this incredible woman of history in my high school, or earlier, years. Why?

So this is why I am honored to read Rojé Augustin's poetry, to be part of her blog tour hosted by the Poetic Book Tours. I read her work and I'm reminded that I haven't read more poetry in my life, and especially from people of color about people of color, because voices like this cannot be forgotten. Augustin's poetic drama has done something so creatively thought out that when I read each page, I immediately could see her work crafted into a monologue, then into a play of sorts. I realize that a show has already been created on a streaming service, but I can actually see in my mind an authentically different format, into that play; I can even see college students scurrying to figure out which scenes and segments to use to audition for it, and I am inspired. I believe this will happen.

I am getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about all of it. The structure and subject. The beauty of the words. It's safe to say I'm now a huge fan of Augustin.

Rojé Augustin has put onto paper something that is truly memorable and filled with so much story, vigor, and awareness. Madam CJ Walker and her daughter's relationship while developing a product for African-Americans and paving a way for other people of color, while still constantly experiencing racism and more, all told in verse of varying ranges and styles: acrostic, sonnets, haiku, alliteration, and more, like her variation of an Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven), is both stunning and thoughtful; a lyrical play with each achievement of mother and daughter, interspersed with photos and illustrations, some fascinating and intriguing, and some horrifying to see images of American men lynched from trees; yet this is the reality of this one American story. Sometimes it is the very picture of despair in a period of time completely unwilling to support a Black woman with intelligence and determination that makes me so sad; all I wish is that members of the white community group together for educating themselves and not for violence; to instead correct each other on their own preconceived notions and to increase awareness so that our society moves better, kindly, differently.

After all, it is not a Black person's responsibility to always be the ones over and over to educate those who are not marginalized because it is exhausting. It is vitally important for those not of color to do the work, to reflect on where they can make change, to open their minds more so that we can ultimately partner together to further each other and help each advance up that ladder of success.

Racism has no place in America anymore (or ever), and Augustin's work on Madam CJ Walker has become instrumental in reminding us of a history that is simultaneously sad to remember, but crucial to learn so we can help our neighbors, the future Madam CJ Walkers and their daughters. I would imagine we would not ever want to be mired in a past that holds each other brutally back.

So here is a bold statement, my bottom line critique/analysis of Rojé Augustin's work, but I am eager to write it - this might very well be one of the most truly amazing creations I've read in a very long time. A bold statement to many, I am sure, but I am doggedly adamant that this is so. This was an experience to read and I am SO thankful for it. I want to see this everywhere, I want the vision of it being brought to the stage as a play to actually happen. Augustin has presented, in an extremely unique way, the story of an American visionary, the first Black women millionaire, and I want to hear more about her, learn more of other Black voices, because it goes right back to - why don't we learn this history more, and why can't we celebrate these voices more where it becomes part of our curriculum everywhere?

I want to see this as a Broadway play - I'm going to put the positive vibes out there and hope it comes true.

And side note: I also love Augustin's personal story and would love to see her story as a memoir.

About the author

Rojé Augustin is a native New Yorker who grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Her first novel,  The Unraveling of Bebe Jones, won the 2013 National Indie Excellence Award in African American fiction. She wrote the novel while living in London and Sydney as a stay-at-home-mom. She established Breaknight Films shortly after her move to Sydney in 2009 to develop and produce television projects across a range of formats, including television, web, and audio. Her first Sydney based project was a podcast and visual web series called The Right Space, which explores the relationship between creatives and their workspace. Rojé continues to work as a television producer while also writing in her spare time. She is an Australian citizen who currently lives in Sydney with her Aussie husband and two daughters.

Visit the author:

• On Instagram

Listen:

"Why Our Hair Is Not Straight"

"Elegy for my Mother"

"The Lost Letters"

"Graves & Thrones"

It's not often that I get to come across an opportunity to be on a team of incredible women and also be part of promoting a book. Especially a book with a vision I'm intensely passionate about. I want this book to really succeed, and I need to tell you why. On a personal level first.

The first thing that reached out to me was the title. That alone pulled me out of a darkness I had been dwelling in, wondering how I could course correct my life so I could feel successful to pursue writing as my creative career, no longer miserable in Corporate America. Something about the way I was lately feeling, and something about their book title - it was interconnected, and it felt like I should pursue participation and support.

And then it hit me why the title meant something to me. For so many years I was defined by a breast cancer journey, a club I never wanted to be part of, and while that chapter is in my rear view mirror, I was done with it. So I abhorred hearing people describe me as a breast cancer warrior; I felt sensitively for those who were terminal and had passed on. Were they not a warrior, also? Did people think they gave up? That I was somehow stronger than them? No. To me, I was just lucky.

And there was this creeping reality sneaking up on me all the time that my life should never be defined by a part of my journey, or one chapter of my life. Yes, there are SO MANY puzzle pieces to me, even I can't figure them all out. So when people describe me as "a mom," "a wife," or "a breast cancer warrior," I feel the imposter syndrome hit me full force and I scream in my head, "BUT THAT'S NOT ME!" I'm so much more than that.

So, the book title is what first connected to me, and then meeting the co-authors who are incredible, smart, engaging, sensitive and aware and thoughtful. I wanted to help, in some small way, in any way that I could.

And while the vehicle to drive the subject of this book might be domestic abuse, with very raw and personal stories shared, analyzed and reviewed to discuss new language and words to describe abuse, the totality of the message is inclusive to all of us. "...but that's not me." is so much more than a book about domestic abuse. It is an important message and I believe will change lives. We have to get the publicity and the online chatter out there, to put it in the hands of people - everyone. We may not be in abusive situations, or maybe we are, but we don't think so. Or, we might know someone who is, but the behavior has become "normal" to us - "that's just the way he is to her." "That's just the way they are together." Is it okay?

And is domestic abuse solely regarding intimate relationships? No. It can be an abusive family situation, it can be an abusive sexual harassment case at work. It can be toxic friendships. Suffering, abuse, victim status don't always come to play and many don't identify with it because it doesn't fit with what we've been indoctrinated to believe is a pure example of abuse. TV and books in the past have painted this image of what it most likely looks like, so when the victim doesn't get a black eye, the words "...but that's not me." echo throughout their thoughts.

This book gives foundation, awareness, and LANGUAGE. That the intuition we might feel is real. Trust it. Go with it. Be aware. Help each other. Help yourself. This book will change lives. Please help us get it out there.

Disclosure: I am a part of the team with The CornHer Office and am supporting the co-authors to get the awareness out into the hands of everyone. I will fiercely do everything that I am capable of to make this successful.

What is available now?

• The BOOK IS AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and was just approved to be listed with the Library of Congress!
• To be part of the first batch of 50 exclusive first edition copies that will be signed by the co-authors, along with more items available for you (including private Zoom sessions, etc.), head to the book website that will redirect you to the purchasing site
• The site also includes merchandise (tote bags, caps, etc.) you can add to your order (I personally already purchased the vintage cap and the coffee mug today).

Upcoming events

• November 15, 2020 - Book trailer casting call in Columbus, Ohio. Click here for all of the details; if you are local and have your story you would like to anonymously share.
• December 4, 2020 - Book launch in Downtown Bryan, Texas at the Chocolate Gallery. 25 guests maximum attendance in-person, with a Q&A and book signing!

What other products are available?

• Dr. C's Course: click here to see the most recent course launch about Leading through Crisis (what is the difference between crisis and uncertainty?); it is a three module course, includes lifetime access, and a workbook for $40.
• Peaceful Holiday Planner: the 5th edition has been revised and is a 120-page downloadable product or $34.95. You can print it out in any size and on any paper you would like, and it is a collaboration between the incomparable Sophia Gaudi of Creative Soul Wild Heart and Erika at the BETTER over PERFECT community website specifically to keep your holidays filled with peace!
• Peaceful Holiday Planner Decor Kit from Sophia Gaudi is absolutely amazing, and so worth $15!

About the authors

Erika Shalene Hull, founder of BETTER over Perfect Co., resides in Ohio with her husband and five active children. While caring for all the humans and managing her home is her current vocation, encouraging and uplifting others through the trials of life is her purpose and her passion. She strives to empower women every day to be the best version of themselves through her daily live videos, courses, writing, speaking and volunteer services. After spending 10 years, primarily as a Financial Development Director for a world-wide non-profit organization, Erika sought to lessen the gap between the challenges of working and motherhood, by leaving Corporate America and becoming a full-time entrepreneur. Having to overcome numerous traumas during this tine, including abuse, the suicide of her oldest child, and the day-to-day hardship of a crippling genetic disorder, she is courageously passionate about helping others rise above their own personal obstacles.

Visit Erika:

• On her website
• On Instagram
• On The CornHer Office

Dr. Cheryl LeJewell Jackson, founder of The Psycho Mom, lives in Texas with her husband, two boys and as much family as one house can hold. After earning her Doctorate in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, she spent her career working with organizations and helping employees find fulfillment at work through clarity and engagement. In addition to running her own consulting business Cheryl serves as a lecturer at Texas A&M University, serves in her community, and volunteers at her church. In addition to ...but that's not me., she has published two books, Strong. Brave. Powerful., a novel bringing attention to the lasting impact of abuse and the journey toward recovery, and Family Business, making Fortune 500 business practices accessible to the small business owner. Cheryl is also a professional speaker and blogger, passionate about encouraging women to step into who they were made to be.

Visit Cheryl:

• On her website
• On Instagram
• On The CornHer Office

Together, Cheryl and Erika also founded The CornHer Office, a physical and virtual community with a mission of leveling the playing field for women in business. By changing the language, we are changing the conversation, which changes our reality. Learn more and join in this incredible movement of women helping women. We would also love to hear from you - share you stories of struggle and triumph at:

• ...but that's not me. book website
• ...but that's not me. Facebook page
• And always - use the hashtag #ButThatsNotMeBook and #womenhelpingwomen on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook

Thank you!

Brain on Fire, now a Netflix film starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Thomas Mann, and Tyler Perry, is easily one of the most unnerving medical books I've read in a while. What's most frightening is Cahalan's complete inability to understand or control, what was happening to her. At 24 years old, just as she was truly making a name for herself in journalism in New York City, she awoke to find herself strapped in a hospital bed, completely unaware of what had happened to her. Memories erased, speaking was impossible, moving was not allowed, nor was she able to even if she tried: she was strapped to the hospital bed. Pieces of each day began to fragment into moments that increased doubt in her own confidence and undeniable fear at the unknown of what happened to her, the question of what was happening in her body that plagued her, possessed her, but the most terrifying is that it appeared out of nowhere. All within one month. A month that turned into more time erased, a life re-drawn into something maniacal. Her life as she knew it, how she was leading it and loving it, was gone. Doctors diagnosed her as bipolar, manic depressive, with her conditions of erratic behavior leading to fainting and seizures were frantically increasing at an alarming rate.

How it happened still is a mystery encased in medical riddles continuing to be untangled today about an auto-immune disease; we know it happens to primarily young women, but other than that, there is no true and consistent understanding. Historically over the past 100 years, there is an unexpected number of documented cases of young women who suddenly were filled with "hysteria." A notion befitting a 1900s novel on high society, women with fainting spells, however in today's advanced medical community, doctors and nurses and researchers might have a tiny inkling of reasonable and sound evidence to prove something significant. Something within the auto-immune disease category, but more specifically the unique and rare anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.

But even though medical communities might slowly be familiar with this, science is still unfolding pieces every day for more awareness, how to manage it, and one day, hopefully a cure. The "madness" that descended upon the author, one that tested a relationship with her new boyfriend, and also assuredly bonded her once estranged parents, became a goal to combine efforts to figure it out together, in collaboration with doctors who believed. With her family dedicated to her, they shared a common journal in her hospital room to record moments they recorded when they visited with her, seizures, and events that went beyond understanding for a healthy human body, comparing these journaled events with shocking camera footage to decode a pattern, anything to explain why Cahalan was besieged with this medically "new," disease.

What I respected was her acknowledgement that she was lucky, on so many levels. She had a solid family support structure, and a boyfriend who was there for her every step of the way, even though they had just started dating. She had extensive medical health insurance as well, but even with all of that, while it still gave her the luxury to be potentially cared for more than others, she still encountered doubt and disbelief and many diagnosed her initially with mental disorders, paranoia, and more. What about patients who don't have the "right" healthcare coverage, who don't fit into the "approved" and "believable" medical population? What might patients such as those experience?

Moving and heart-wrenching, and downright scary, this memoir of a young woman's spiral into a series of medical appointments, memory loss, physical debilitation, seizures, and more is at times thoughtful and straight-forward, but mostly filled with downright horror. It is completely terrifying to imagine what it might be like for a young mind to go awry, astray, and fall apart, all without any medical research or support for those suffering from an auto-immune disease that many still don't believe exists.

Read this. Recommend it to your friends with young daughters. Watch all and care for them. This is important.

Disclosure: I downloaded this book for free from my library's Libby app.

About the Author (from her website)

Susannah Cahalan is an American journalist and author, known for writing the memoir Brain on Fire, about her hospitalization with a rare auto-immune disease, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.

She has worked for the New York Post. A feature film based on her memoir was released in June 2016 on Netflix.

Visit her:

• On her website
• On Facebook
• On Instagram

It is without a doubt a time of uncertainty and fear. And so now is when we reclaim moments with our immediate family and slow down. To share time and meals without technology, and if we do, to instead just be present together.

We so need to honor, respect, and appreciate nature and Mother Earth much more (my opinion: I fear we are being rushed earlier for mass change because we have just pushed it too much with nature and mankind; racism is massive and ugly and we cannot ignore it collectively). We have mass produced, toxically polluted our waters, land, and air, so that as expected, any disease easily has evolved and continues to be ahead of the data for us to learn how to “fix” it), and nature is speaking loudly to us. If we do not radically change, make different choices, we are on the way to a life of nightmares.

The rain over Desecheo Island.

When things return to what it was like before, may we also learn to support our local and small businesses, local farms, to learn how to appreciate doing things on our own, living off our own land (if we can) to whatever degree it may be (from having our own chickens, to making our own tinctures, balms, sprays and medical remedies), because we can no longer blindly trust what is in the big box stores. We continue to be brainwashed by this "big store" setting and assume a product has gone through rounds of safety testing before we buy it; it hasn’t. It is filled with chemicals which disrupt hormones. It is carcinogenic. It can cause cancer. Yes, even Clorox.

Hopefully this is when we completely revolutionize and speak loudly how we want to receive information from health and government officials. I hope we take time away from modern day news, to publicly denounce and demand the 24-hour news cycle might finally implode.

We become an obsessed audience, feeding off each spiraling negativity, allowing one bad feeling to override the next, a brainwashing of the nastiness of politics and more because it is thrown in our faces over and over again, and yet we don’t even understand the majority of what is “interpreted” by the news. We only feel constant anxiety and panic which leads to more anger and arguments and less dialogue.

Instead, research on your own. Watch the news but NEVER take the “translation” of the news from any politician or even a news reporter. Editorializing shouldn't really be their thing, yet we end up spouting someone else’s agenda. We, instead, should do our own work and make informed decisions.

If opinions are based on interpretations from any news network, it is a skewed source. If you are creating your opinions based on Facebook friends, no matter which way they feel or vote for - please don't. Think with your heart, your head, your gut, your intuition. Research extensively on your own and build an opinion developed on your own. Trust yourself. We are the ones our ancestors planned to one day have for this great Earth, and yes, I think they might scorn the results thus far. I think they might be exceedingly sad.

Let's do the work. Together.

This is just my own little thought. You may feel free to cut me in the comments, but I do so hope you think of this with love. Please be kind to each other. Our universe needs us.

This three hour audiobook was as intense and special as Stephen King always is. Thoughts of love, death, moving on and letting go, intersect in the life of one man, Scott, who, while he never changes physically, is suddenly and dramatically losing weight. All of it. But you'd never know it to look at him. If his weekly tracking is correct, it won't be long at all that his body will experience complete weightlessness. What's causing it? Does it matter anymore? And truly, what can he achieve in the time he has left in Castle Rock that will resonate with his friends, new and old? And most importantly, can he help them learn anything as well?

This is a gem of a tale with a short bonus story, which felt like a very special and surprisingly good "b" side track from your favorite band. It really doesn't matter what King writes about; he does it well and makes this reader always happy. When in doubt on what to read next, I just settle down with a King tale and I thank the lucky stars above that he hasn't hired writers to do his bidding or to write in his style (a la many famous mass market writers of today), and instead just continues to produce, one uncomfortable and insightful story after another, or one sweet and sad scene after another. There isn't anything in the human emotion and in life that Stephen King hasn't been able to deliver and articulate well into his stories, something that doesn't strike immediate nervousness or fear, or increasing sadness and empathy, and for that, I will be ever grateful. Stephen King continues to provide us with everything we always need, if we only continue to give him those chances to hear him out again and again.

Side note: I listened to this audiobook from my library's Libby app, and it is read by the great man himself; he is an EXCELLENT narrator, that I will also emphatically state each and every time. It's not often an author is as good as reading their work as they are to write it, so with Mr. King, it is quite a pleasure to hear his voice yet again.

Disclosure: I downloaded this audiobook for free from my library's Libby app. Check with your local library if they participate with Libby (they probably do).

About the Author


Stephen King is the author of more than fifty novels, including The Stand, The Dark Tower series, It, The Shining, Under the Dome, Pet Sematary, 'Salem's Lot, oh...what more can be written that one doesn't already know. So here you go, click here to visit this wicked cool author's official website.