What I love about Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is a really special day for me.  Besides being my birthday, I use this day to take off from my job every year and evaluate where I am in my personal and professional life.  It's the day I evaluate how much time I am spending doing this or that and what that categorically looks like for my family, my full time job, and my business.  

I have always been overloaded in one category or the other.  When my children were all under 10, I was 'all mom'.  Now that they are all over 10, I am no less of a mom, but as they grow, I feel that I too have to grow in education, invest in knowledge, continue a progressive career and prepare for a stable retirement.  Valentine's Day is my day to do that.  

A couple of years ago I was working as a promotional model and spent a great deal of my spare time outside of my full time job traveling and promoting companies' products.  Mom-time was down; business time was up.  I had a time limit on keeping all those balls in the air for a goal that I had and once I met it, I took a break from promoting and re-balanced.  And isn't that true of all our lives as women---as business women...a constant set and reset, balance and re-balance?  That is why I love Valentine's Day.  It's the day that I remind myself to be as confident and as prepared as I can possibly be in every step of life.  It is my day to balance and re-balance.

Whitney Houston

Back in third grade, I was one of those little black girls that had my mama go out and buy me a new dress so that I could amaze people with my note-climbing ability by singing "The Greatest Love of All"...not really. My school was K-12 and in a very small town, so small that I was only one of about 9 African American's in my entire school and I was related to 6 of them, so no one else was competing with me on singing that song! No one did and I thought I was the next Whitney Houston that night as I walked out with my third place trophy and check. After that, the sky was the limit for me. I was off to a good start and bound for success, just like Whitney.

Even after I lost interest in singing, it was Whitney was the first woman that I remember being able to relate to in terms of looking in the mirror and seeing someone that resembled me. She was on the cover of magazines, on t.v. and award shows; everyone loved this woman. Her brown skin, dark brown eyes and amazing smile made her a princess to me.

Girls grow into women, have their own experiences and choose their own paths. As I grew older, I became more interested in Xscape, EnVogue, and Mary J. Blige. But I will always see Whitney as the one who (in my 8-year-old eyes)  first brought African American beauty, grace, and class to the screen, a real hero for me to look up to. The year was 1986 and that is the image that I will hold on to when I talk and think about Ms. Whitney Houston.