Black Friday at Pooka!

For Colored Girls…

Greetings Family! Well Dawn told you that we had a girl’s night to go see For Colored Girls when it opened a few weeks ago. I am still completely absorbed by the emotion of this beautiful, raw, honest, funny, intense, emotional, heart stopping and triumphant movie. My sisters…if you still have not seen it run don’t walk and take your girls with you. I must admit that I was a little nervous about seeing this movie. The book is always better than the movie in my opinion. Especially a book containing poems that jumped off the page and into your spirit. I tried not to read any reviews because I wanted to formulate my own opinion of how this work would play out on the big screen. I did read one review however that thought Tyler Perry would not give this most reverent book and play its due justice. I am here to tell you it is his best work yet family! It was truly awesome. I believe that he was able to bring these powerful words to a main stream audience, especially our younger sisters, who might not have otherwise been exposed to these stories of us. The words of Ntozake Shange flowed like liquid on the screen and they moved us from story to story, sometimes drowning us and sometimes washing us clean. Our stories are not always pretty. Sometimes our stories have pain that crosses from generation to generation. We may live in the pent house but we are not so high up that we can’t get hurt. But in the end we survive. We fight and laugh our way to the other side sisters! I am proud to be a Colored Girl because we are fierce and refuse to let anyone walk off with all our stuff!!
I love you Colored Girls!!

Black GIrls Rock!!!

YEAH!!! I am sooo empowered this week! The last couple of days have been filled with inspiration and motivation! Let me tell you, I started out by attending the Essence Women’s Conference, you want to talk about AMAZING, it was an awesome day! If you don’t listen to anything else I say, listen to this, if at all possible attend this conference next year! I”ll give you a quick replay of my day... I arrived and was warmly greeted and given my very cool patent leather tote filled with goodies, I had a beautiful breakfast, and then listened to our welcome from Mikki Taylor from Essence who was followed by Lisa Nichols, best selling co-author of The Secret, Chicken Soup for the African American soul and many more, well all i could say was, YES!!! She was inspiring, she had everyone on their feet screaming yes, Yes! She told us we don’t just say yes, we gotta say it twice! So all day as women passed each other you would hear a yes, Yes! You feelin good?, yes, Yes! Enjoying your day? yes, Yes!! Are you motivated? yes, Yes! After getting us charged up you had your choice of individual sessions, I chose “How to make a million” and it was an awesome panel of dynamic women with real business advice. Then back to the main ballroom where Tamron Hall led a discussion on how to find your power! Then a fabulous lunch where the amazing Judge Hatchett was the key note speaker. I’m running out of adjectives but she was DYNAMIC!! After enjoying our lunch and rousing applause for Judge Hatchett, we were a part of panel discussion with Lauryn Lake, Finesse and others on men, women and relationships, where to find one, how to keep one and what to do when you have a bad one! It was so much fun and the men on the panel told all of the women in the audience that even though we don’t want to hear it most men like a women who can cook!!!(I’m going to live a lonely life, LOL) Once that was done we had more personal sessions and I chose a session on recharging with Lela Ali and Dr. Ian. Both were funny and gave great tips on how to relax and unwind. As our day started winding down we found ourselves back in the main ballroom for a closing message from Iyanla Vanzant! Okay now the ticket was $200 and thank goodness my fabulous family got me one as a gift but this seminar could have easily been $500!!!! 
Keeping up with my wonderful weekend, on sunday the pookalitas and friends went to see For Colored Girls and our review is coming soon but I have to cheat and say I thought it was sooooo good! Later that night I was inspired again watching Black Girls Rock on BET! Well my wonderful weekend made me realize that as BLACK Women we are resilient, fabulous, fierce, beautiful, unique and WE ROCK!!!! 

ps. When I got home and looked in my goodie bag, I found a TSHIRT that I’m gonna wear every day until next years summit, LOL!!


For Colored Girls

Hey Pooka Family! I hope everyone enjoyed their summer and you are comfortably transitioning into the Fall season. We had a great summer and I still can't believe we are into the last quarter of the year already!

Well, the girls and I are excited and looking forward to seeing "For Colored Girls" this weekend! I remember when we went to see the play years ago at the Schomburg Center in the City. What a moving play! I can't wait to see how Tyler Perry has transformed the play into a movie. The cast is phenomenal (also loving Janet's new haircut; thinking about cutting mine like that)! This is one of those movies where you get your sisters and sisterfriends and go see it together (much like we did for Precious and Why did I get Married). We're planning on catching the matinee on Sunday and doing brunch afterwards to fellowship and talk about the movie. Hope you get a chance to get out and see the movie this weekend too and if you do hit us up on our Facebook page and join our roundtable discussion on your thoughts of the movie.

For those of you in north Jersey..maybe we'll see you at the show!

Pooka Lifestyle Lounge