Clutch Magazine: Surviving Mom and Dad's Basement

As a two-time veteran of getting stuck at your parents' house even though you're an adult who's lived on their own for years, I decided to give some tips to the readers at Clutch Magazine Online. Namely, set some boundaries if you don't want to have the weird, slightly co-dependent relationship I have with my own mother.

Here's a snippet:

Speaking of 2007, that was when I made my first return to the homestead after I left a job as a newspaper reporter to get my head, life, and career back together while not having to worry about rent. I can’t say I handled my first trip back to the basement all that well, considering I was severely ill at the time, battling Bipolar Disorder and was extremely depressed. I was largely unpleasant to be around and mostly wanted to disappear into the concrete beneath my basement, bedroom floor. But since my slightly older-than-most-Boomer parents are really more like Depression Era survivors, with their fiscal nature and love of saving, I received less grief about my finances and more grief about being an adult my mother still saw as her child.

Nothing like being suddenly informed you have a curfew at 30 years old.

Read the full post at Clutch Magazine Online.

Clutch Magazine: The Jacksons Aren't the Only Family Falling Apart Over Inheritance

For Clutch Magazine Online I tackle the on-going saga of Michael Jackson's family as they may (or may not) have hijacked their own mother, Katherine Jackson, in a bid to get better control over their dead brother's estate. But it's not just families who have millions at stake who go nuclear. It happens to regular broke folk like ourselves where long simmering hurts and fractures in our families rear their heads in the worst ways once grandma kicks it and a knife fight breaks out over $10,000.

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Clutch Magazine: Ladies Can Have It All (If You Get A House Husband)

For the extremely career-oriented like myself (I've always wanted to be a writer. This is what livin' the dream looks like), career v. family is a battle constantly being waged within ... as I have no immediate family without. I have some adult sisters and verging on elderly parents, but no children or significant other of my own. This has left me lamenting why-oh-why I can't have the kind of marriage my father had -- where you get your spouse and kids and you get to keep your great career too. 

For Clutch Magazine Online, I examine my desire for what my father had ... and the realization that getting either side of the deal in my parents' marriage will be hard to come by. (It's not like I'm turning down a bunch of awesome bread-winning males left and right, I'll take what I'm compatible with, whether that's Joe Ambition or Joe the Cool Dad.)

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The First Lady's Slavery Roots Published In NYT

The New York Times recently published a story about Michelle Obama's slavery ancestry, chronicling the story of a slave girl named Melvinia who was the mother to Mrs. Obama's great-great grandfather. The tale is a harrowing, but familiar one of a former black slave giving birth to a "mulatto" child a short time after emancipation.

More after the jump.

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No Blessings for Baby If Daddy is Jerk

I was over at What About Our Daughters yesterday and suffered a severe head rupturing upon reading the exchange between WAOD and TV talking head/minister Roland "Rolly Rolls!" Martin and his new black male accountability initiative that just happens to be punitive to women and their children.

I’ve called on pastors nationwide to stop the stream of momma, grandmother, aunts and female cousins coming to the altar for baby dedications with no man in sight. That pastor should say, “Until I personally meet with the father, I will not dedicate this child.” Somebody has to hold that man accountable for his actions. (Roland Martin)

I don't know how you get a man to show up for a Christening by telling the mother and her family who, you know, kind of want their child to be blessed in the church and loved by Jesus, that the minister will not do the service unless the father shows up.

Um ... what? Wait? WHAT???

More after the jump.

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Mothers and Daughters

In light of the recent melodrama over Alice Walker and her daughter Rebecca Walker, I thought it would be interesting to explore the relationships between black women and their mothers. Therefore I'm soliciting personal stories from readers about their relationships with their mothers for an upcoming article I'm writing for the blog. If you're interested in sharing your story, please e-mail it to me. I will not use anyone's names as I want people to be honest about the good and bad, their love, disappointment, joy and pain in their relationships with their mothers.

So if you have a story to share, write up to a max of 500 words on your relationship with your mom and email The Black Snob at blacksnob@gmail.com.

PS. I'm still on break! But I'm still answering my emails and working on story ideas for when I come back. Toodles!