Even though the date isn’t ’til next year, I’ll be blogging about my plans over on my loc blog, Mocha’s Locs (I have one post already). And check out the wedding website I created if you’re just that interested in us lol ; ) Just click here.

Any tips/advice are welcome and appreciated!

Jamie Fleming

~Benjamin E. Mays

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Jamie

mochawriter.com

Jamie Fleming

~Amy Dubois Barnett

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Warning: Shameless plug ahead

Need an article, press release, bio or any other writing service? You can check out my website here or email me —> jamiefleming@mochawriter.com.

Jamie Fleming-Dixon

Jamie Fleming-Dixon is the founder and author of ForColoredGurls.com. Her intention is to empower readers, inspire them to live their most fabulous lives and to motivate them to reach for their dreams and goals. This is done through motivational articles and quotes, interviews with women from all walks of life, posts on topics that affect every area of women's lives and more. For more info about Jamie and FCG, email her at info@forcoloredgurls.com.

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~one of my daily affirmations

Jamie Fleming-Dixon

Jamie Fleming-Dixon is the founder and author of ForColoredGurls.com. Her intention is to empower readers, inspire them to live their most fabulous lives and to motivate them to reach for their dreams and goals. This is done through motivational articles and quotes, interviews with women from all walks of life, posts on topics that affect every area of women's lives and more. For more info about Jamie and FCG, email her at info@forcoloredgurls.com.

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If someone were to ask you who you really were, how would you answer? Would you say marketing executive, teacher, mother, daughter? What if someone asked you to dig deeper, to the core of you?

Anita Charlot, metaphysical and transformational life coach, has been helping people answer those questions since 2000 through her company, Purrfect Harmony Unlimited, a business that empowers, entertains and informs through activities like workshops, retreats, mentoring and more.

The idea for Purrfect Harmony Unlimited was realized when Charlot was seeking a therapist during a difficult life change-she had gone from dating men to seeing women. But when she tried to discuss her intimacy and trust issues, many therapists didn’t understand her struggle.

She also recognized that other women probably shared the same feelings and could probably benefit from having someone really understand what they were going through.

‘Why don’t I become that person for people like myself?’ Charlot asked herself.  PHU was created with the motto, harmonizing your life, one area at a time.

“Through years of experience, I have come to realize that there are a very limited number of materials, products and services that attempt to speak directly to the lesbian and bisexual mothers’ experience,” Charlot says.

PHU aspires to bring self-awareness and healing to both the gay and straight community. This is done by openly discussing life experiences and sharing very intimate details that will give information concerning the struggles and triumphs we all encounter daily.

The company has since evolved, and now serves men, business clients and organizations.

“It is the vision of the company not to be exclusive to the lesbian and bisexual mother but to speak out on behalf of the empowerment of all women, no matter what that entails,” Charlot says.

She believes life and the journey to self-awareness are based on the destination, and they both are learning experiences.

“I know that it’s a destination, but on the way to the destination, there are so many different things you can learn about yourself and your teammates- if it’s a business area or relationship,” she says. “Really understanding who you are and exactly what you want and being okay with that will always lead to a more connected relationship, whether it’s a friendship, dating situation, marriage or family situation.”

And knowing who you are helps you in every aspect of your life, including dating and business relationships, says Charlot.

“When it comes to dating, when you know who you are, you’ve identified what’s important to you in terms of the type of person (you want), that way you don’t waste time on unnecessary dating situations,” she says.

“(In business relationships), it helps you determine whether or not you can take a certain job, or if it feeds your spirit.”

Self-awareness is the company’s main focus, according to Charlot, and she assists people in doing so with her “tell-it-like-it-is” approach.

“At times, the whole truth is what a person needs to hear to break through the persona that they have created,” she says. “My ability to cut through the layers of a person’s personality and reach their spirit is a direct result of years of being kept silent, struggling with who I was inside for the benefit of my family as well as society.”

“Since I’ve lived most of my years as a mere shadow of myself, it is very easy for me to detect others who are doing the same thing.”

PHU offers several topics to awaken your inner spirit. Her program teaches you how to identify:

• Hidden parts of yourself that have staggered your growth,
• How you continuously give your energy and your personal power to those that don’t deserve it,
• What your life’s passion is and the steps to take in order to turn your life’s passion into your life’s work,

Charlot is also available for individual coaching, organizational and corporate keynote presentations and workshops ranging from one hour to multi-day programs. The presentations can be customized for your group. Topics for these are:

• Discovering Your Purrfectly Authentic ^TM Self
• Purrfectly Authentic ™ Communication
• The 5 Phases of Dating ™ and
• The 7 Principles of Living Your Life Purrfectly Authentic ™.

She also does public speaking, individuals and couples coaching and Purrfectly Authentic Communication, a 10-session communication program that helps couples to identify where there is a breakdown in communication and how to rebuild it.

“My passion is to show each and every person that I come in contact with that their Purrfectly Authentic voice is the only voice in which they should use,” Charlot says. “We are born with this ability which is evident in how children often say exactly what’s on their mind prior to being conditioned as to what to say and what not to say for various reasons.”

“It is only when we are guided back to our ‘child-like’ nature and are born again into our true selves, do we learn to speak from our truth. We have played the game for so long…that somewhere inside, we got lost. It is my passion and purpose to help you find that again.”

For more information about Anita Charlot and her services, you can visit her website: www.purrfectharmonyinc.com or email her at intuitivepsyd@gmail.com.

Jamie Fleming

http://www.wyff4.com/news/18729882/detail.html

Jamie Fleming

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation’s oldest, largest and most familiar grassroots–based civil rights organization. The organization has more than a half-million members and supporters world wide.

 The NAACP was created in part as a reaction to the on-going practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois. Early members included white liberals and Black individuals like W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell).

The organization’s goal was to obtain the rights expressed in the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments for everyone (13^th-promise to end slavery; 14^th- equal protection under the law; 15^th- the right to vote for all males.

The main objective is to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority groups citizens of the U.S. and eliminate race prejudice. It seeks to remove all hurdles of racial discrimination through the democratic processes.

One of the NAACP’s greatest and most well-known achievement  was the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s quest to end segregation in public schools. In case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court justices unanimously decided that separate educational facilities for black and white students were “inherently unequal.”

For more info on the NAACP, check out their website: www.naacp.org.

Jamie Fleming

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

September 24, 1825-February 20, 1911

What she did: wrote abolitionist poetry and worked as an activist for equal rights for African-Americans and women.

She also founded YMCA Sunday Schools, was a leader in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, a member of the American Equal Rights Association and the American Women’s Suffrage Association.

Bio: Harper, an orphan, was raised by her aunt and uncle and attended William Watkins Academy, a school founded by her uncle for Black youth until she was 14. Around 1845, she published her first volume of poetry, Forest Leaves or Autumn Leaves. However, no copies are currently known to exist.

In 1850, the year of the Fugitive Slave Act, she moved from Maryland to Ohio. While there, she taught domestic science and was the first woman faculty member at Union Seminary, an A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) school which later merged into Wilberforce University.

Harper moved to Pennsylvania and became involved with the anti-slavery movement and the Underground Railroad. She often lectured on abolitionism in New England, the Midwest and California, and her poetry was published in magazines and newspapers. One collection of poems, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, sold more than 10,000 copies and was reissued and reprinted several times.

When visiting the south, she saw the awful conditions of Reconstruction, particularly for Black women. As a result, she began lecturing on the need for equal rights for Black people and women.

Harper realized that Black women were practically excluded from the suffrage movement and joined with others to form the National Association of Colored Women and became the first vice-president of the organization.

In an obituary, W.E.B. duBois said that it was “for her attempts to forward literature among colored people that Frances Harper deserves to be remembered…She took her writing soberly and earnestly, she gave her life to it.”

Source:

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/francesewharper/p/frances_harper.htm

Jamie Fleming

First Lady Obama rocking Isabel Toledo's design at the Inauguration

According to  the New York Magazine website, The Black Artists Association is not  very happy with First Lady Obama for not wearing clothes by black designers.

Co-founder Amnau Eele, a former runway model, told Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) , “It’s fine and good if you want to be all ‘Kumbaya’ and ‘We Are the World’ by representing all different countries. But if you are going to have Isabel Toledo do the inauguration dress, and Jason Wu do the evening gown, why not have Kevan Hall, B Michael, Stephen Burrows or any of the other black designers do something too?” Eele plans to make a formal appeal to Michelle’s office.

Eele was then asked if maybe Mrs. Obama was looking at the world colorlessly; she said, “It’s one thing to look at the world without color but she had seven slots to wear designer clothes. Why wasn’t she wearing the clothes of a black designer? That was our moment.”

I don’t think Michelle should have necessarily chosen a black designer, I mean, it’s not like she said ‘I’m going to look at some designs and pick ones by non-black designers.’ It’s really kind of ridiculous if you ask me. She wanted to look fab, she did, the end.

What do you think?

Source: http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2009/01/michelle_obama_under_fire_for.html

Jamie Fleming

By Phillip Elliot (Associated Press Writer)

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama signed an equal-pay bill into law Thursday before cheering labor and women leaders who fought hard for it and the woman whose history-making lawsuit gave impetus to the cause.

Obama, choosing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act as the first bill to sign as president, called it a “wonderful day” and declared that ending pay disparities between men and woman an issue not just for women, but for all workers.

With Ledbetter standing by his side, Obama said she lost more than $200,000 in salary, and even more in pension and Social Security benefits losses that she “still feels today.” He then signed the measure that effectively nullifies a 2007 Supreme Court decision and makes it easier for workers to sue for discrimination by allowing them more time to do so.

Read the rest here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/obama

Jamie Fleming