I’ve been doing my “Black Actress” Indie gogo campaign for about 30 days and the experience has been very interesting. I’ve had tons of suggestions on what I should do and say to reach my goal of $20,000 and most the suggestions come from a good place but don’t make any sense. Here is just a few of the ones I’ve gotten from my family. There’s only 10 days left, donate what you can, no amount is too small http://igg.me/at/blackactress
Only as an adult am I able to take in the importance of Easter. I’ve forgotten about the chocolate, the games and egg hunts and wearing pastel colors for an entire weekend and I’m finally able to see the true message, the beauty and the story. Easter is about new beginnings, a new sense of hope and love and new energy to continue the rest of the journey.
I feel people often forget about 2nd chances and the fact that we all get them and sometimes we even get 3rd and 4th chances if we work hard enough. There’s nothing that we do or have done that can’t be improved or resurrected with a fresh start.
Last night I did my first “self assessment”. I spent nearly 2 hours writing and reflecting on my strengths, my faults, my progression and how and where I can improve. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while but I kept putting it off I think because I was a bit scared. In the past my idea of self assessment was more like “self criticism” having ideas or reflecting on things and only seeing the negative or beating myself up for not doing it as good as I could have. Being that way did nothing for me, got me no where and never felt like a new beginning. But last night was different, I was happy, I was genuine and it was an assessment rooted in self love. It was a true new beginning. It’s so important to be able to look at yourself and be confident and comfortable enough to have a real conversation on how to be better. If you need a fresh start, what and how do you plan on being different and how committed are you to making a positive change. Forgiveness is not just for some people or situations, it’s for everyone and it’s most important for you. I’m by no means perfect, I’ve made many mistakes and I’ll continue to make mistakes but I forgive myself. I’m constantly getting a 2nd chance and a fresh start and working harder every time at improving myself, my beliefs and everything that is a reflection of me.
If you’re brave enough to give yourself a real self assessment I strongly suggest you do it. Give yourself a new beginning. Happy Easter!
PS. I have to sing this song this week for an audition, the lyrics are a true reflection of my inner voice right now! My actions for the next week are all steps for my life to begin!
Tatyana Ali is our guest star in the first episode. Listening to her story was so inspiring and exciting for me, it brought tears to my eyes. My journey is very similar to hers, both of us are West Indian, been in the industry since we were kids, started out doing commercials and print ads for major department stores. Finally moved up to Television and literally grew up on TV.
Her maturity and strength in this industry is incredibly inspiring to watch. Since doing The Fresh Prince of Bel Air she hasn’t stopped, she’s produced, written and starred in many different projects be they big or small but she hasn’t stopped. Speaking to her I confirmed what I already know, when you love something you can’t stop fighting for it. Thank you Tatyana!
Please Donate, Share and Tweet #BlackActress
I have some very exciting news! I’m taking my biggest leap of faith to date by writing, producing and starring in my first web series. The series is called “Black Actress” and it is a scripted mockumentary about a character named “Kori Bailey”. Kori is a struggling actress pursuing an unconventional career in an upside down world. The show is going to incorporate interviews and stories from some very well known black actresses such as Tatyana Ali (Fresh Prince of Bel Air), Tracee Ellis Ross (Girlfriends), Keke Palmer (Nickelodeon) and many more.
I’m producing, “Black Actress” with Issa Rae a very successful, producer, writer, actress who created the most popular African American web-series to date, “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl”. Issa is also producing a TV show with Shonda Rhimes who is the creator of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal” on ABC.
I’m very excited about this project because it is a story that I’ve wanted to share for years. The show is not just about black actresses but it is a show for anyone who has pursued and believed in a dream when it didn’t make sense to everyone else around you. I’m so happy to finally be bringing this project to life with Issa and as the first show from my own production company, “Jungle Wild Productions”
This project would not be complete if I didn’t allow you all to be apart of it! I’ve created an Indiegogo campaign for “Black Actress”. For those of you who don’t know, Indiegogo is a crowd-funding website that allows people to donate money towards creative projects that they want to see brought to life. I am officially launching on Wednesday March 6th but I wanted to share this with all of you earlier because as I said before you’ve supported me thus far and I need your support more than ever now. Check out the link below and donate what you can, and spread the word about “Black Actress”!
Black Actress Indiegogo Campaign:
Thank you so much for your continued support!
I’m a juicer! If you follow me on instagram or twitter than you’ll know that about 60% of the time I’m posting about healthy eating and all the juices and smoothies I make on a regular basis. Juicing is something I believe in and will gladly preach about to anyone willing to listen.
My journey with juicing started about a year ago when I watched a documentary called, “Fat Sick and Nearly Dead” by Australian business man Joe Cross. This is hands down the most inspirational documentary I’ve ever watched in my life, it completely changed my life and my perspective on food. At the time I was already becoming more and more interested in changing my diet and my body. The last few years my weight and diet have been a huge struggle, I love bread, sugar and cheese and these are all things that are really not good for me and no matter how I tried I wasn’t able to remove any of these things from my diet. Watching “Fat Sick and Nearly Dead” made me realize how much will power plays into making a big change and how often most of us automatically think we can do it, or I could never, or I love food too much blah blah. The basic synopsis of “Fat Sick and Nearly Dead” is successful business man Joe Cross is sick and overweight, he’s tried everything to cure himself and nothing has worked. He decides to go on a 60 day juice fast (he’s ONLY drinking juice for 60 days) across America and talk to Americans about what he’s doing and what they’re eating. Every single person he came across said they didn’t have the “will power” to do what he was doing. Watching it was sad and a big kick in the stomach because I realized that this whole time I was no different from the strangers he interacted with. The fast changed his weight, his health and his overall life. The next day my boyfriend and I bought a Breville Juicer, went to the farmers market and bought $300 worth of vegetables and fruits started juicing. You may not believe me but we saw a change right away, we had more energy, felt better inside and out and our skin started to look better and this was just with the simple addition of one juice a day to go with our regular diet. During the summer I did a my first15 day juice fast, it was difficult, at times I hated it but by the end of it I loved it! I lost weight, I looked younger and I overall felt better.
On February 4th I stepped my game up and did a 30 day juice fast. The rules were 5 days of eating and juicing fruits and vegetables and then 10 days of just juicing, and I kept doing that until the month ended. This time I didn’t have the same “hate feeling” I had when I did the 15 day one, as a matter of fact it was the complete opposite, the entire time I felt amazing! There’s something about challenging yourself and seeing yourself succeed that builds your confidence and throws those old thoughts of “not having the will power” to the wind! I lost about 12 pounds, challenged myself with new workouts every week and started to actually believe in myself and love the change that I was seeing not only in my physique but in my mentality. Mentality is everything! If you think you can then you can, if you want it then go and get it. 30 days of juicing changed my health, my hair, my skin, my body, my mentality and overall made me a better person.
How to make a juice: Green Monsta!
Kale
Spinach
Swiss Chard
(a big handful of both use the whole thing, stems and all)
2 Cucumbers
2 Broccoli Stems
4 Green Apples
Chunk of Ginger root
Put this all into your juicer one group at a time, press it slow and enjoy!
One night a random idea popped in my head to help with my own self confidence. I always found that even when I felt like I was being confident and feeling good about myself I still had that slight amount of doubt within me that would whisper just loud enough to make me only believe in myself 85% or 75% or sometimes 55%. I truly was tired of feeling like this and I wanted to be able to say I have 100% self love in, out and around me! So when night my intuition told me very loudly to write everything out and I mean everything! My fears, insecurities, any jealousy, doubts, regrets and anything else that might be holding me back from being who I really want to be.
I wrote out everything read it out loud and then on a separate piece of paper I wrote out my solutions to all those problems. It was so weird writing out the solution because it felt like when your girlfriend tells you some big dilemma she’s having and because you’re on the outside looking in, you give her one simple piece of advice and its solved! All of my solutions were so simple and reading out some of my doubts looked and sounded so stupid that I was almost embarrassed that I felt this way. After writing out my solutions I ripped up the piece of paper that had my fears and threw it away and I pasted my solutions to my vision board. It was that easy and it was THAT easy to change my mentality! Dead seriously I did that exercise about a month ago and have had no issues since. Any sign of doubt or fear quickly vanishes for me when I remember all the solutions I wrote and tell myself that “ain’t nobody got time for that!”. You hear people say it all the time and never really give it a chance but if you want to change you have to make a conscious decision to do so and then commit! I’ve done that and it’s safe to say that it’s working.
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