WWW. LIFESTYLEBYKY.COM

Hey Guys,
I havent been on here for a while. Thats because I have a new website that I built from scratch and can finally call something my own.
visit www.lifestylebyky.com

See Ya Soon :)

Jesus is my boyfriend...

After watching Whitney's funeral I am covered by the blood of God. I feel so at peace. I have so much faith. I am so grateful that I have finally found my way with the lord and my bond is stronger than ever. I seek him even through the tough times. I look to him for my job. I look to him to pray for people that don't even know Im praying for them. I seek the lord not only for the bad but for the good. He is so worthy to be praised and ever since I started my first job I have needed him more than ever. Melissa P told me a few weeks ago that Jesus has become my boyfriend and that is so true...he has. He loves me unconditionally, will never hurt me and always sees me through. He has given me the strength to cut a lot of negativity and hurt out of my life. He has blessed me in more ways than I know or can even remember. My spiritual journey with the lord is far from over. There's still a lot of work to be done. Im not perfect, I am still a sinner, and I am young. I also know I will never judge anyone for their discretions and I too hope not to be judged. But God has anointed me and covered me. My mom would always say something along the lines of "if Jesus came today where would you go? I used to resent her for this especially once when it came right before heading to a party but now I get it...God is not a joke...death is real, jesus is real and the uncertainty of life is real"


My spirituality has always been something I struggled with. Trying to do what I want as opposed to what God wanted for me had to end...I wasn't happy. I was drinking and partying yet waking up void of something. Now I wake up calling on the lord for prayer to get me through the day and reading my bible on the train looking for words of inspiration. Not saying Im a complete angel because Im not (Miami in a couple weeks lord knows what ratchetness may take place) but I am on a journey and all I see is the lord's light.

AMEN!

Black History Month: Being Black never been so cool after Soul Train

I was watching the news with my grandmother 2 days ago when I found out that Don Cornelius was suspected to have committed suicide. I don't know what hurt me more the fact that he was dead or the fact that he committed suicide. I think it was the suicide. How can a cultural icon be battling such detrimental demons that it would cause him to take his own life. I can only imagine the thoughts and the feelings of gloom and torment he was going through...but why? As I sit here watching "Soul Train: The hippest Trip in America"I am inspired, and I am proud. I am so amazed at the plight of Blacks. Cornelius was one of the first successful cultural icons before Obama and before Oprah; he singlehandedly changed the lives of generations and generations of blacks and  I am so disheartened by the faith of this GREAT GREAT MAN. One of my favorite past times is watching old 70s episodes of Soul Train; the fashion captivates me and the dancing is so amazing. I remember when I watched the episode of Soul Train last year when the Jackson 5, specifically Michael Jackson premiered his rendition of the Robot which blew my mind. Don Cornelius was a business mogul and a genius and I wish I could just scream from the roof tops to him that he was amazing and that his life is worth so much more than to take it. I am truly sad and he will me missed.

Black History Month: Life Upon the Shores

I am not Henry Louis Gates Jr. biggest fan (he's said a few questionable things about Obama that I did not approve of) nevertheless I am a huge fan of his efforts to explore the history of African Americans. When I received  "Life Upon the Shores" in the mail today  I was super excited. I cannot wait until I have time to tackle such an enormous book but I am excited because of the richness of its contents. 500 pages of the history of our people, my people. If I find anything interesting I will be sure to dish.

Black History Month: Food for Thought...Double Dutch and the Double Jeopardy

Growing up in the playgrounds of the inner-city, little black girls master the art of Double Dutch. According to the book Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America by Charisse Jones, symbolically double dutch can be a metaphor for the struggle many black women face to keep their balance between race and gender."When all is said and done, women could win all the rights afforded to men, but African American women would still have to deal with being Black in a color-conscious society. "
Some say black women put their race before their gender because attaining the same rights as men is something that we can actually work towards attaining. However being black is something that cannot be constructed. Our color is a genetic makeup that can never go away and it is something we will always be judged by. For many black women, race supersedes gender. The problem that I see with this theory is that racial solidarity can sometimes be a hinderance to a women's dignity. For example, if a black man was making uncomfortable sexual advances in the work place towards a black woman yet she chooses not to say anything because of the consequences he will face; this woman is putting her race before her gender.
This post is literally food for thought in the name of black history month. The concept illustrated in this post is influenced by the book "Shifting" and should raise some questions in terms of the intersectionality of race and gender.

Finally Met Belle

This post is about 4 months old, but I was looking at my blog and realized how much I loved this book over the summer time. Literally lived by her words. This moment was one of my fave days in 2011, by far.

How Young is too young for a relationship?

On last night’s Real Housewives of Atlanta episode, Kim revealed that Brielle was not home because she was at her boyfriend’s family home. I was a little taken aback by this comment for a second, but then I realized...Brielle is 14. My friend Dee wrote a comment in disbelief that Brielle had a boyfriend in which I counter-commented because I do not believe Brielle is too young for a boyfriend. I mean I may be a little bias in the situation but my first boyfriend was when I was 14 years old and he has been in my life ever since (not necessarily as my boyfriend but as a friend). I started out young, and yes a lot of people had their opinions, but I turned out fine. I didn’t get pregnant, I practiced safe sex and I didn’t catch a STD. I was super smart. I knew that although I was young and curious I had goals that I wanted to attain. If my daughter ever came up to me at 14 saying she had a boyfriend I wouldn’t lock her up in her room and tell her to stay there until she’s 30 because that was not done to me. I was able to confide in my mother when it came to my teenage boyfriend and she trusted me enough to know that I would make the right decisions. My boyfriend at 14 was able to come in my room and hang out with me (with the doors open of course) and even though we found clever ways to sneak around I will raise my daughter to have enough sense to know what’s right and wrong. I don’t want to be a overprotective mother, I want to be an understanding mother and it would be ignorant of me to believe that If I told my 14 year old she couldn’t have a boyfriend that she wouldn’t go behind my back and court him anyway. At 22, looking back at 14 I can’t say I was too young because it was with the right guy. My first boyfriend was everything to me and I was everything to him. Had I been with a low-life loser whose intentions was only to get in my pants then maybe I wouldn’t have such a liberal perspective but between the ages of 14,15,16 everyone is dating and everyone is experimenting with their first boyfriends/girlfriends, you would be a fool to assume otherwise. 

The Numbers Game

“Numbers don’t define me and I’m not going to let them define a woman” –Jozen Cummings

One of the age old questions that have the tendency to haunt females but roll off the shoulders of many males tend to be:

“How many partners have you been with?” 

“How many people did you have sex with?”

 “What’s your number?”

As I sit down on my bed on this beautiful Sunday Afternoon reading my Febuary issue of Essence magazine I can’t help but to contemplate the importance of knowing this information. In my younger days around the time when I was 17 or 18 this was a question I prided myself on asking guys I was considering courting because to me, it defined the character of a guy. I thought it was unattractive if a guy had a smaller number than me. Since we are keeping it real, I thought they were super LAME! ::currently cringing at my impaired thought process and immaturity:: When I was 18 I met a guy who told me his number was in the 70s and instead of being turned off by such a disgusting image I will never forget sitting on my terrace on a beautiful summer night listening to him gloat and thinking “Wow he’s experienced…this may be fun.” Now you have to understand I was by no means experienced sexually during this time but I believed the higher the number the more amazing in bed you were and boy is that theory flawed. Let’s just say Mr. 70 plus partners was a complete snooze fest and I am ever so happy that I have overcome that stage in my life.Now I ask the “What’s your number” question not to place any judgment on any man in my life but just out of curiosity. The number thing isn’t one of the first things I ask a guy now and it definitely doesn’t skew the perspective I have on a guy.
Conversely when I am asked my number a majority of the time I tell the truth…It just depends on how much I really like the guy. I never lie to the point of exaggeration; I may knock off one or two encounters because mentally I don’t want to remember that experience but for the most part I try to keep it accurate.

I feel like men who would pass up on dating a girl because of her number has not reached a level of maturity where something like that wouldn’t matter. I have developed the repertoire with my ex boyfriend where we feel compelled to ask each other our numbers and while mine has stayed pretty much in the same ball park for the last couple of years his has changed drastically and I do admit it kind of rubs me slightly the wrong way. However I will never forget about 2 years ago when my ex was thinking about taking a girl seriously he revealed that he can’t take this particular girl seriously because she was on her 9^th partner and she was only 18. The way he reasoned it was that she started having sex at 16 and in 2 years she accumulated 9 partners, which automatically made her a little suspect. I don’t know what stunned me more, the fact that her sexual independence made her a whore or that guys actually paid attention to this. I mean does it really matter how much sex someone had before meeting someone new? I totally see where my ex and a lot of other guys are coming from. When you are thinking about dating a new girl you want the sanity of knowing that someone’s hypersexual ways won’t lead to the demise of your relationship together and you want the security of knowing that you can bring this girl or guy around your friends without someone having it over your head that they already had him/her. But I can also look at it on another level in that everyone deserves a chance and a clean slate especially in a new relationship. Judging someone by their past and not giving them the chance for change is obstructive.  How many people someone had sex with doesn’t define a person. As long as you keep it healthy, safe and wrap it up the amount of people someone has been with in their past should be left in their past. 

Friends and Friends Lost

After I started my first job after college I began to burn many bridges in the sense of not being able to manage a successful social life in such a high pressured job situation. I notice that I have and may continue to do things by myself because my friends and I have outgrown each other. The older we get, the more our identities are being shaped. What inevitably is happening is that we are forgetting that thing, whatever it was that brought us together in the first place. It's disheartening that the same people I once called my bffs are now just mere casual acquaintances. As I look around my room filled with photographs of the good times, I can't help but to think that I am part to blame. At one point I did believe that going to events alone was empowering and in many senses I still do but while at these events I see people in two's, three's and fours and suddenly my single self just isn't enough.