As I watched her, I couldn’t help notice the determination she spoke with when she talked about carrying on her mother’s legacy and breaking into the entertainment industry.  With an amazing air of confidence, she said, “my mother prepared me for it”. I’m rooting for her. The industry can be brutal without the right guidance, and I’m sure that is part of what Whitney educated her on. She has mighty big shoes to fill, but recently when I came across a You Tube video of Bobbi Kristina singing Adele’s “Someone Like You”, I can say without a doubt, she has promise.

Take a listen and share what you think…

To those on the outside looking in, Amber’s life seems to be ideal. In fact, one could say that up until recently, her life was just that. Now her days are filled with fear.

Two months ago, while hanging out at the mall with her friends, Amber met Dante. She’d seen him around plenty of times before but never seemed to catch his eye. This day though, he approached her as she stood outside H&M. By the end of the conversation, and by the time her friends had approached to depart, they’d exchanged numbers, with Dante promising to call her later that evening.  Talking to each other until late in the evening, Amber hung up thinking of nothing by Dante and feeling like she was the luckiest girl in the world that he had chosen her. One week later they could officially say they’d spoken every day over the phone, with several text message exchanges throughout the day.

Amber hadn’t shared with her mother that she had a boyfriend. She knew her mother would object to her 14-year old daughter considering herself in a relationship with a boy. Not only is ninth grade a time for focusing on grades, 14 is much too young for a girl to even think she is mature enough to handle such a responsibility, her mother would day. There was no way she would tell her anything about Dante.  Amber was adamant about “nothing, and nobody” coming between her and true love.

Since she has kept the secret so long she now has it in her mind that she must endure the pain alone. The pain of being physically, and emotionally abused by the boy she thought loved he so much. It started with him telling her how she could dress, “stop with the lip gloss”, making her erase all the numbers from her cell phone – except for those he knew for sure were family members. He forbid her from having an outgoing messages on her text timeline unless they were from him or her mother. He told her that if he couldn’t have access to her Facebook login, then she must not really love him, so he frequents her account just to see if anyone is messaging or tagging her. Her life is now in his hands, and she worries what her mother – and anyone else who might find out, might think of her.

Even when her mother began to notice that her grades are slipping, she managed to promise that she would pick the grades up, and that it’s just because she hasn’t been sleeping well.

This story is still playing out, so all we can do is hope for Amber’s sake, that things work out in her favor.

This article details ten signs you may be in an abusive relationship.

We’ve all heard the song, right? Lit­tle Ms. Wil­low Smith, the beau­ti­ful daugh­ter of Will and Jada Pin­kett Smith. She had peo­ple all over the world, up and out their seats, danc­ing and singing the lyrics to her song. I remem­ber when I first heard it, I couldn’t believe she was only 10 years old! Sup­pos­edly, your vocal range is not fully devel­oped until around the age of 23, so I think we can expect BIG things from Wil­low in the next 13 years.

From where I’m stand­ing, it seems that Ms. Wil­low is liv­ing the dream — all the while remain­ing focused on her grind:

Don’t let haters keep me off my grind
Keep my head up i know I’ll be fine
Keep fight­ing until i get there
When I’m down and i feel like giv­ing up i think again.

In her own words, ‘giv­ing up’ is nowhere in her future!

Recently, there has been talk of Wil­low hit­ting the big screen to recre­ate the role of Annie (also known as Lit­tle Orphan Annie), the story of a young orphan girl’s adven­tures in find­ing a fam­ily that will take her.  There are many that take issue with Willow’s par­ents’ approach to this celebrity sta­tus she is climb­ing to. They feel that at only 10 years old, her pri­mary con­cern — and the con­cern of her fam­ily, should be the focus on education.

Though I don’t know Will and Jada per­son­ally, by all accounts they appear to be solid indi­vid­u­als, who are extremely involved with their children’s lives. I just don’t think they would set their daugh­ter up for aca­d­e­mic fail­ure. The pic­ture I get is Wil­low hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with her par­ents where she promises them that this is really what she wants and that she will make sure to com­mit to her stud­ies as well. They are allow­ing her to embrace, and express her indi­vid­u­al­ity so that she can grow beyond bound­aries. Isn’t that what Baby­girlz are all about…exploring tal­ent and being unafraid to be your greater self?

My hats off to Wil­low! I wish her con­tin­ued suc­cess on her way to superstardom.

Davis was enrolled a mas­sage ther­apy pro­gram at For­tis Col­lege at the time of her dis­ap­pear­ance and was only six weeks away from grad­u­a­tion. She didn’t have a car and would nor­mally take the bus to school. Since Davis went miss­ing, there has been no activ­ity on her cel­lu­lar phone. It’s unchar­ac­ter­is­tic of her to leave with­out warn­ing, and inves­ti­ga­tors believe foul play was involved in her dis­ap­pear­ance. Her case remains unsolved.

If you have any infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing this case, please con­tact:  Hen­rico County Police | 804–501-5000

Accord­ing to CBS Chicago, Figueroa hasn’t been to work or used her credit cards since Octo­ber 11th.

Sev­eral news sites indi­cated that Jere­miah Jah­san Ali was listed as Figueroa’s boyfriend on Face­book, but when I vis­ited Ali’s page, his cur­rent rela­tion­ship sta­tus is sin­gle. More than that, there is absolutely no men­tion of Figueroa on Ali’s page.

Chicago News Report sent mes­sages to at least 20 peo­ple on Figueroa’s friends list — none of them responded. Not even Ali, who is report­edly roman­ti­cally involved with Figueroa.

Here is what Ali said about “reporters” con­tact­ing him regard­ing the 21-year-old woman’s disappearance:

“Man i didnt even wanna tell to many peo­ple onlly peo­ple that i could trust you know. Didnt know how Mf were gonna look at me you know. To peo­ple that know me they know i went do no shit like that but oth­ers might think twice you know. Im glad its all over but man they least can apol­o­gize for all that. Could you believe i had reporters writ­ing me here on face­book WOW really on face­book lol thats crazy”

A screen-shot of the actual comments are below: 

Ali seems to be imply­ing some­one has accused him of doing some­thing wrong, or ille­gal. I’m sure the police have already spo­ken to him. When we con­tacted Ali, we asked one ques­tion: “Can you think of any rea­son Figueroa would dis­ap­pear and not con­tact anyone?”

If you have any infor­ma­tion on Figueroa’s dis­ap­pear­ance, please con­tact the police.

Fam­ily mem­bers say Kelly Allen always stays in touch with her fam­ily, espe­cially with her brother. How­ever, since March 13, 2007, nobody has heard from her.

On March 7, 2007, 20-year-old Kelly Allen left her house to spend a few days with a girlfriend. But the girl­friend started to worry when she got home after work on March 13, and didn’t find Kelly.

Her con­cern turned into panic when an employer, who was sup­posed to meet with Kelly for a sec­ond inter­view, called on March 16 and said Kelly hadn’t shown up. This was so not Kelly.

Cops fear Kelly is in dan­ger because she is always in touch with friends and fam­ily and nobody have heard from her. She is 5’4″ tall and weighs 160 lbs. Kelly has two tat­toos: one on her shoul­der of two eyes and a rose and one behind her right ear of a half moon.

Those who love Shemika Cosey say even two years later, her dis­ap­pear­ance is extremely dif­fi­cult to deal with.

Cosey was last seen Decem­ber 28, 2008 in Berke­ley. She was 16-years-old at the time.

Shemika’s mother, Paula Cosey, says her daugh­ter was spend­ing the night with rel­a­tives in the 6000 block of Napier. Fam­ily mem­bers say when they went to bed that night, Shemika was still up watch­ing tele­vi­sion. When rel­a­tives woke-up the next morn­ing, Shemika was gone and so were her coat and purse.

The clothes the teen brought for her overnight stay were still in place, and the door to the house was left unlocked, a sign Paula Cosey says shows her daugh­ter intended to return.

“Some­body has my daugh­ter. I think some­body have her. She might have left with some­body she don’t know any­thing about but they had no right to keep my child,” Cosey said.

Shemika Cosey was last seen wear­ing a tan col­ored Old Navy jacket and blue jeans. If you know any­thing about her dis­ap­pear­ance, con­tact the Berke­ley Police Depart­ment at 314–524-3311 or the Polly Klass Foundation.

Police believe Acree may have run away from home, but her fam­ily doesn’t agree with this the­ory. She was a fresh­man at Austin Poly­tech Acad­emy at the time of her dis­ap­pear­ance, and was about to start a new job. She has no his­tory of run­away behav­ior, but accounts dif­fer as to whether or not she was happy with her life. Her fam­ily has crit­i­cized the police inves­ti­ga­tion into her dis­ap­pear­ance. Author­i­ties admit­ted they made seri­ous errors at the onset of the inves­ti­ga­tion by not imme­di­ately dust­ing for fin­ger­prints and not tak­ing the bro­ken lock from the base­ment door.

Acree’s mother died when she was young, and she spent sev­eral years in fos­ter care in Ken­tucky before being adopted by her aunt. Her case remains unsolved.

It’s been a while…Babygirlz has been under­go­ing major changes to the inter­face and the struc­ture of the sto­ries to be writ­ten. That takes more time that I thought it would, and all of the plan­ning has had me very busy — in a good way! One of the changes has a theme of “Miss­ing but not For­got­ten” and is in response to the many Black women that go miss­ing, with no press — no resolve.

As many of you know from watch­ing the news, there are many times when a Black girl goes miss­ing and the media atten­tion that sur­rounds her dis­ap­pear­ance, is lit­tle to none. In honor of that, and in sup­port of, Baby­girlz will high­light a miss­ing girl with each issue.  I wish I could do more. I wish I could get out there and help look for these girls. I wish I could make the media real­ize that our girls are just as impor­tant as the next. I wish I could con­vince them to put their faces ‘out there’ each and every night until they are brought home to dev­as­tated loved ones sad­dened by their absence.

A lot of the time, our miss­ing go ignored because of the assump­tion they left of their own free will – that they don’t want to be found. Until such a time comes where equal place­ment on the air becomes a real­ity, it is manda­tory that you let your par­ents /guardians/loved ones, know your where­abouts. I am not telling you that you don’t have a right to pri­vacy, because you do. But please con­sider this…many young women go miss­ing daily and their cases go with­out atten­tion, and with­out being solved, because it is believed there is no foul play.

Listed are a few sug­gested pre­cau­tions that might aide in your fam­ily being able to file a suc­cess­ful police report, on your behalf if needed:

• Even if you don’t want to tell your mom or dad that where you are going, at least set up some kind of sched­ule with them.
• Decide on a time to check in, and stick to it.
• Send a text mes­sage to some­one close to you let­ting them know you are okay, with an esti­mated time of when you will return home.
• Place a sta­tus on your Face­book, if necessary.
• Make sure your par­ents know who you are deal­ing with. Even though you may feel you know that per­son bet­ter than any­one (or at least well enough), that can quickly change. There have been many cases where a friend has been involved with wrong­do­ing toward some­one that trusted them.Choose care­fully.

When the police agree to take a miss­ing person’s report, your fam­ily is equipped with a case num­ber that can be given to any media out­let to run the story. Estab­lish your­self as trust­wor­thy so that if it ever comes a time that you need to be found, your absence will be taken seriously.

Be Safe. Be Smart.

I thought about a young cousin, 16 years of age, who is rebelling and caus­ing much fam­ily drama, and won­dered how her wings got clipped. I thought about a beau­ti­ful niece who is in a love/hate rela­tion­ship with an unavail­able man, and won­dered why she doesn’t think she deserves more. I thought about another young rel­a­tive who wants to be a model and thinks pos­ing provoca­tively on Face­book will get her noticed and won­dered why she doesn’t under­stand that her per­se­ver­ance and pas­sion will take her fur­ther than just her looks. I won­dered why, not only my fam­ily mem­bers but other young women, weren’t embrac­ing a sweeter melody…a melody that con­firms who they are as beau­ti­ful black women, and the beau­ti­ful Black women from whence they came.  The women that were self-confident,intel­li­gent, and ready to leave a pos­i­tive mark on the world. They are YOU.

Dur­ing my reflec­tion, I real­ized that I bore some of the blame. There were times when I was not always avail­able. Had I loved them enough, and told them they were pretty enough? Did I encour­age their dreams or their cre­ativ­ity? Had I loved myself enough to be a role model for them? Did they see me cower in a sit­u­a­tion rather than move for­ward with courage? Did they see me depressed when tri­als came my way, rather than faith­ful and deter­mined to remove my bar­ri­ers? Have I not cor­rected them when I saw inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior?  Prob­a­bly all of the above.

I take respon­si­bil­ity for my lack of avail­abil­ity. I offer these lessons not only to fam­ily, but to other girls/women who have veered off course, those who are flit­ting but­ter­flies and those who are eagles; I want noth­ing more for you than to soar:

1. Lift your head to the heav­ens from which your bless­ings come. You can’t see your mir­a­cles if your head is down so walk tall.
2. Put one foot in front of the other and walk towards your des­tiny. Even when your foot­steps are a bit unsteady, they will carry you to the places you need to go dur­ing life’s jour­neys if you don’t give up.
3. List your goals, from the minut­est to the most grandiose. Break those goals into sub­goals if you must, but each day begin stock­pil­ing the resources you’ll need; social net­works, books, orga­ni­za­tions, men­tors, etc. to help you attain those goals and mark your progress.
4. Don’t let the media, music videos, or ill mes­sages from soci­ety negate your worth, your beauty, or cause you to reflect on your flaws. Your flaws are just beauty marks God gave you to make you unique. Your so-called imper­fec­tions are what give you your own style and fab­u­lousity.
5. Imag­ine you are a lump of clay. When clay is still pli­able and wet, it can be molded and shaped into any desired form to become a work of beauty. Let that be a metaphor for the life you want.
6. Find a poem such as Maya Angelou’s Phe­nom­e­nal Woman, quotes, or other affir­ma­tions, by black women and let it become your mantra. Post a copy of it on your bed­room mir­ror, in your locker, or other places within your space, and let it touch your soul and curl up in your spirit to encour­age you.

Remem­ber you are a work in progress on your way to being the sum total of who God des­tined you to be, so embrace your pretty wings. Hold on to what he has given you. It is some­thing more beau­ti­ful and more sub­stan­tial than you could have ever imag­ined. You need only believe and make the com­mit­ment and it’s yours for the taking.