How did you become an advocate for breast cancer awareness?
I was an ambassador for Susan G. Komen’s Circle of Promise. At that time I had more than a few girlfriends who were dealing with breast cancer issues. The number of African American women diagnosed with breast cancer is rising at an alarming rate. African American women are the last to be diagnosed and the first to die. What I really do is talk to women about breast cancer. It is an important dialogue that so many women are afraid to have. I talk to them about it at my shows and encourage them to tell others to check their breasts. I believe in each one, teach one.

Why did you wait until now to do a remake of one of your father’s songs?
People kept asking me to do [a duets album] like the Natalie Cole record. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to find my own way to honor my father. I wanted to make sure I was ready to do it and that the conditions were right. I picked this song (“You Were Meant for Me”) because of the tempo, hue, and color. It really fits perfectly with this body of work.

What was the inspiration behind this album?
After 21 years in the game, I feel like I am still on the cusp, like I am still just cresting the top of the hill in terms of my artistry. I had dreams at 17 of playing Carnegie Hall and the [IZOD Center]. I had almost given up hope, putting those dreams away. Then Prince called and asked me to open up for him during his [2010 Welcome 2 America Tour] concert at the Meadowlands arena. That re-energized me. Now I’m back at the beginning.

Your Twitter bio describes you as a supreme gadget girl. Are you a tech-savvy diva?
I have embraced technology since 1998 when I first got my website, LalahHathaway.com. I am really into computers and gadgets like the iPhone and iPad. I am very adept at social media; it is very intuitive for me. I like to talk to and engage with my fans—social media is a great way for me to do that (on Twitter @LalahHathaway). What I like about the music industry today is that it is such an open field because of the technology. Independent artists can do the same things major labels are doing to get their music out here for people to hear. Everyone has a shot.

(Image: ThinkStock)

Here’s a recap of some news that’s come across the wire this week as we trek through the final stretch into Christmas 2011. Brace yourselves; it’s not pretty:

A woman was set on fire in the elevator of her apartment building by a handyman who admitted he killed her because she owed him money for back jobs.

An entire family—mother, father, daughter, son, even the family dog—died when their small plane crashed into a New Jersey highway 14 minutes after taking off for reasons as yet unknown.

A mother and her two young children returned to their brand new home—funded through Habitat for Humanity—to find that their house had been broken into, ransacked, everything (including Christmas gifts) taken.

It’s hard to read this stuff no less endure it if you’re actually involved. These are the types of stories that make us question humanity. What’s become of us? How can we live in a world in which things like this—and worse—just keep happening? Why do bad things happen to good people?

But there’s always a flip side. Like, the stories highlighting the many secret Santa’s at stores across the country who are anonymously paying off random people’s layaway debt. Or, stepping up in line to pay the bills of those waiting to go next. And there’s the story of my friend Jan, who will celebrate two years since her cancer diagnosis—the one in which they told her she’d have two years, max, to live.

Jan had a 50th birthday party recently. It was intimate and decadent and fun. She gathered 14 women; we were all asked to wear red and be prepared to sing our hearts out at karaoke—no exceptions no matter how shy or tone deaf you claimed to be.

Over a dinner of lobster bisque, salmon and red velvet cake, Jan told each one of us why we’d been invited. She thanked us for standing in the gap for her, holding her up, praying for her and with her, making her laugh, sending notes, caring, just being there. Then she recapped the last two years during which she endured surgery, and chemo, and countless doctor visits to be prodded, poked and monitored. But that’s not what she talked about—at all.

Instead, Jan talked about how she’d seen her youngest of four children enter high school and her first child graduate from Yale, her own alma mater. That daughter took a job teaching English in Korea and Jan went with her second daughter to visit; they had a ball. Jan was honored several times for her dedicated work with Yale, with her church, and in her community. Shortly before her birthday party, she and her husband celebrated their 25th anniversary on a trip to the beautiful island of Anguilla. She’s looking forward to Christmas and to all that’s coming in 2012.

Summing up, Jan said, “I don’t know what the 50s hold, but my 40s were great. In the last few years, I’ve had the time of my life.”

Here’s the thing about the world we live in now: It’s one of extremes. Extreme weather; extreme sports; extreme religion; extreme wealth; extreme poverty; extreme politics; extreme TV. You name it; we’ve taken it to the extremes.

What Jan seems to have found in the midst of being diagnosed with a terminal illness, an extreme situation to be sure, is that thing that eludes so many of us, individually and collectively: Balance. And in the midst of that balance, she’s found joy, love, and peace.

Every year when my kids ask me what I want for Christmas, I say, “Happiness, love and peace on Earth.” They scowl and give each other the she’s-crazy look. They hate that answer.

“Mom,” my son says, as if he’s patiently trying to reason with a lunatic, “We need you to tell us something that we can actually give you. Think box, something that comes in a box.”

Thing is, I don’t really need anything that comes in a box. I need balance, more within myself, within my family and throughout our world. I need us all to pull back from the extremes and get centered around what really matters so we can fix a few things and be proud of ourselves and the world we’re creating.

I hope your Christmas overflows with all good things and that you get what you really wish for, boxed or not. If you have a key to achieving greater balance, please reach back and let me know since that really is my Christmas wish.

Derrick Bell walking with a group of Harvard law students (Image: Getty)

Another iconic figure was lost Wednesday. Derrick Bell, the first tenured Black professor at Harvard Law School, died yesterday of carcinoid cancer, according to the New York Times.

Professor Bell made a name for himself early on in his law career. He was recruited by late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to join the NAACP Legal Defense Fund where he oversaw 300 school-desegregation cases.  Bell went on to serve as deputy director of the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, according to The HistoryMakers.

Known for standing firm in his beliefs, no matter what the consequences were, the Pittsburgh-native gave up a Harvard Law School professorship to protest the school’s unjust hiring practices and left the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department after being told he would have to forgo his membership in the NAACP.

The pioneer of critical race theory penned Race, Racism and American Law (originally published in 1973) and Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1992). He released his memoir Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth in 2002.

He leaves behind his wife, Janet Dewart Bell, and three sons:  Derrick Albert Bell III, Douglas Dubois Bell, and Carter Robeson Bell; two sisters Janet Bell and Constance Bell and a brother, Charles Bell.

Felder discovered firsthand what science and mental health experts have been saying for years. Happiness isn’t a consequence of your station in life; it flows out of how you decide to respond to life. “You will always have joyful times and sad times,” says D. Kim Singleton, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist based in Washington, D.C. But happiness is about maintaining a sense of peace despite those highs and lows, Singleton asserts. “You determine and create the happiness you want in your life.”

We have a genetic tendency to be happy or unhappy, says a study by psychologists at the University of Edinburgh and researchers at Queensland Institute for Medical Research in Australia. Our happiness is also affected by what happens in our lives and what we think of it. Many people attach happiness to perceived sources of security and comfort, such as money or marriage. But a Princeton University study shows that once life’s basic needs are taken care of, happiness and emotional well-being no longer improve with increased income. Moreover, a report published by the American Psychological Association shows that increases in financial wealth can erode happiness. For those who connect marriage to happiness, a study by researchers at the University of Zurich in Switzerland published in 2005 found that happier singles are more likely to get married. And if you think health dictates happiness, a 2005 study by the University of Michigan Health System found that people with severe illnesses and disabilities have about the same level of happiness as those who are healthy.

Getting to happy
Happiness may be challenging to find because most people may have been groomed to identify with or expect unrealistic, unsustainable characteristics of this seemingly elusive state. Is it excitement and exhilaration, or feelings of peace and satisfaction? Jon Gordon, author of The Seed: Finding Purpose and Happiness in Life and Work (Wiley; $22.95), says it’s more the latter. It’s not your circumstances that make you happy, he says, “It’s your perspective that makes you happy.”

Felder’s breakthrough came when she realized that waiting for happiness would lead to more bouts of self-inflicted depression. Her impatience to feel better led her to take certain steps that brought positive results.

Give in to your emotions. Allow yourself to indulge in feelings of anger, disappointment, or grief—but with a deadline. Felder gave herself a limited time to attend her pity party. “I say I’m going to rant and rave on this day. On the second day I’ll mourn it. On the third day I’m over it.”

Mentally shift your focus. We often allow ourselves to be held hostage by our thoughts, when the truth is our thinking is where we can exert greater control. Felder could have focused on her cancer as a problem, but she decided she would start looking for the positive in every situation. Yes, she had cancer, but her illness resulted in quality time with her mother, who spent three months with her, helping her recuperate. “In a weird way I’m grateful to the cancer because of the time that I had my mother to myself.”
Find a greater purpose. An extension to focusing on the positive can be cultivating opportunities to help others. Felder realized she didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself when she was serving others. So, in 2005 she founded Tamika & Friends Inc. (www.tamikaandfriends.org), an organization dedicated to prevention, support, and raising awareness about cervical cancer. Even today, whenever she feels down, she considers her greater mission. “I almost lost my life at 25. I’m grateful for all the things I’ve accomplished in the last 10 years.”

(Image: ThinkStock)

A big cup of coffee too late in the day had me awake in the wee hours the other night, watching a rerun of Iyanla Vanzant’s riveting interview with Oprah. I had heard about it and read about it but there was nothing like seeing it for myself, as Iyanla told the story of gaining more than she ever dreamed of in life… Then, losing it all.

Production deals, book deals, her dream house: Gone. Husband, credibility, fame: Gone. Fortune, self-esteem, “friends,” focus: All gone. But worst by far, Iyanla lost her daughter to cancer, on Christmas day no less. Nothing is worse than that.

When Oprah asked her how she had managed to get through it all, Iyanla spoke straight into the hearts of parents everywhere when she said, “I put my child in the ground. I can do anything.”

It was a searing moment of truth. You couldn’t help but feel how raw, spare and brutally real Iyanla’s life had become. She had survived the worst life had to offer, worse than most of us will ever know. You had to respect that, and you could tell that Oprah, who was there to dissect the unraveling of her own relationship with Iyanla a few years back, now respected her anew.

I couldn’t help but watch Oprah as she watched Iyanla. You could almost see the wheels spinning in her head. For all Oprah has endured and seen and achieved, she had to be asking herself; How would I deal with losing it all? I sat there asking myself that question, too.

How would you handle catastrophic loss? Sadly, millions worldwide have confronted this recently given global economic instability, massive earthquakes, tornados, and floods.

According to the most recent labor statistics, 13.9 million people are unemployed and 45% of them, or 6.2 million, have been out of work long-term, meaning for at least six months. Absent from those numbers are the additions coming from areas of natural disaster, most recently, from Minot, North Dakota where the number of evacuees has risen to 40,000.

Between fallout from The Great Recession and a spreading rash of “500-year weather events,” unprecedented numbers of Americans are sustaining unthinkable losses every day. Jobs and homes, sales and companies, benefits, investments, savings, and security have been wiped out. Gone with them are some of the most priceless assets any of us can have: Relationships, relative peace of mind, and a sense of optimism about the future (which we’re now being told is hampering the economic recovery, a theory that I think is crap.) At its worst, lives have been lost.

But like Iyanla Vanzant, people are surviving. They are rebuilding. They are starting over from scratch where they have to, and it is awe-inspiring!

Alongside devastating stories of destruction and helplessness are uplifting tales of selflessness and resilience. Evacuees who don’t know whether their homes are still standing or not, are pitching in where possible to try to save the homes of others. People who are recipients of Red Cross services are donating their time back as volunteers rather than just being on the receiving end. Strangers are opening their homes to the homeless. Businesses are donating goods, shelter and manpower. Nationwide, groups are organizing to travel across the country on their summer vacation to pitch in wherever and however they can.

Crisis does sometimes bring out the best in us. What doesn’t kill us, can make us stronger. Every one of us—even the broken and traumatized—has something good to give to the world, if only we can harness the will and the faith to give it.

As Iyanla said in an interview on National Public Radio, “If you’re still here and you have the opportunity and the chance to do good and to be good and to live more, you want to do that.”

It’s her take-away from her daughter’s death, which Iyanla says taught her what really matters: “When I had to give up my house, I said, this is a house, my daughter gave up her life. This is not an arm or an eye. And even if it were, if I only had one arm, write with the other one. If I only had one eye, look out the other one. You only got one leg, hop on the one you have. You understand?”

Understood.

Don Barden and Alan Hughes at BE's G&T 2010

I learned of Don Barden’s passing this morning. And while I’d known about his illness for some time, I found myself surprised and saddened by the loss to the Black business community. Though soft-spoken and of average stature, Don seemed like a titan that would endure for many years to come and someone whom I’m proud to have counted among my friends.

I first met Don Barden in 2002 while in Detroit on assignment. I’d heard of the serial entrepreneur who went from being a music promoter to building a multimillion-dollar real estate portfolio and a cable business that ranked among the largest Black-owned businesses before entering the gaming industry. And I really wanted to meet the man. So I called his office a week or so prior to my trip to schedule a lunch meeting.

We met outside of one of his favorite establishments, Sweet Georgia Brown in downtown Detroit. Just prior to entering, Don stopped, bent over, and picked up a dime that was lying on the sidewalk. I couldn’t help but give a little laugh and hoped that I hadn’t offended him. After all, this is the man who sold his cable business for $350 million. He was wealthy, so why stoop to pick up a coin that far less affluent people (including myself) probably wouldn’t bother with? “I’m not too proud,” was what he said when I asked. At that moment, I knew I liked this man.

Over the years, I’ve had the honor of getting to know him better. I’ve dined with him at Fitzgeralds, the Las Vegas casino his company owns; attended his 60^th birthday bash; and (in retrospect I’m ashamed to say) shared a few cigars and drams of scotch with him while talking business, politics, or whatever else came to mind. “Young man” is what the blue-eyed CEO often called me.

Some four years back I conducted a one-on-one interview with Don onstage at our Entrepreneurs Conference. We discussed his life, successes, and failures (he never achieved his goal of operating a casino in his beloved Detroit) before a crowd of a few hundred people. During the Q&A portion of the session, one young fellow put Don on the spot, basically asking him why he didn’t provide money to African Americans looking to start businesses. Don’s response was direct: He made it clear that if the success of the business hinges on playing the black card for financing, it’s not going to succeed. While the public display of tough love ruffled the feathers of the asker, it was valid business advice.

The last time I saw Don in person was during our annual Golf & Tennis Challenge last Labor Day weekend. I’d sat down at an outdoors area of a restaurant overlooking the golf courses at the La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, California, when I spotted Don and invited him to sit with me. The conversation was pleasant. We discussed business, the recession, the state of his casinos, and, of course, Detroit. I noticed he was a little gaunt and looked tired—though I chalked that up to hard work and possibly a little jet lag. The other difference was that he spoke about his children and the future of his company after he’s gone.

At that time, he knew the seriousness of his cancer, but he was still upbeat. “I’ve got one hell of a fight ahead of me,” I recall him saying. “Take care of yourself and keep up the good work, young man,” was the last thing he said to me before heading off. The funny thing was he left me to pay the bill, but I didn’t mind. The conversation and company was well worth it. But just as I did eight years prior, I had to chuckle.

Underwood as President Elias Martinez in NBC's The Event

This week on Our World with Black Enterprise, host Marc Lamont Hill sits down with Hollywood actor Blair Underwood. With a career spanning a quarter century, including his early starring role as Russell Walker (a character based on hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons) in 1985′s Krush Groove, Underwood built a critically acclaimed body of work while remaining one of America’s favorite actors. Underwood talks with Hill about his latest star turn as U.S. President Elias Martinez  in NBC’s hit series The Event and what it means to be a veteran Black male actor in Hollywood.

SEE SLIDESHOW: Screening The Event

Also, in this week’s On The Record segment, Hill talks with Witness Freedom Ministries Pastor D. L. Foster, poet and performer Stacey Ann Chin and Emory School of Medicine Assistant Professor and HIV/AIDS researcher Dr. David J. Malebranche about the often conflicted relationship between gays in America and the Black community. This week’s Slice of Life profiles father and daughter Arnaldo and Vanessa Silver, who each fought breast cancer and won.

Our World with Black Enterprise is the award-winning weekly 30-minute program, hosted by Marc Lamont Hill, providing a fresh mix of interviews with today’s top newsmakers and celebrities, eclectic roundtable discussions concerning the hottest topics affecting African Americans, and profiles of some of the world’s most intriguing people.

Click here for times and stations where Our World with Black Enterprise airs in your area.

Chana Garcia (Source: Lonnie C. Major)

I forgot about how important it is to be around progressive people who are doing big things.

For three days last week I was in La Quinta, California, at the Women of Power Summit, where more than 500 fabulous females have convened to talk about everything from courage to confidence.

On Feb. 11 it was my turn to take the stage — literally.

I moderated a panel session called “The Truth About Black Women and Our Health.” How apropos. At first, I was nervous about being in front of a room full of powerful women, having to remember names and bios in addition to all my questions. But I shouldn’t have worried. My topic wasn’t as sexy as “What is Your Second Act?” which was taking place next door, so my room was only about half full.

Initially, I was sort of relieved. Fewer people in the room meant fewer folks to embarrass myself in front of. But to my surprise, my session turned out to be far more intimate than I imagined. And once I got started, everything flowed quite nicely. My panel, which included Dr. Andrea Pennington, Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, and Dr. Jennifer Jones, was awesome. So were members of the audience. They were engaged (lots of amens), and they asked really thoughtful questions. We talked about alternative medicines for those with chronic illnesses such as cancer, women and alcohol consumption (no more than two drinks a week, but don’t tell anyone that I broke that rule last week), and the significance of knowing your family history.

About midway through I was feeling myself, wondering why more people hadn’t attended “my session.” I was interjecting when needed, adding tidbits about my cancer journey here and there, and the more I shared my story, the more that nervousness melted away. When the session ended, I was feeling triumphant, like I pulled off something big. A couple of women even came up to me afterward and hugged me. Not bad for a first-time moderator. I have to admit that I was beginning to feel, well, powerful.

That’s the magic of pow-wowing with like-minded women and the secret behind the success of WPS.

Since it started five years ago, the summit has managed to attract some big-names folks — Susan Taylor, B. Smith, Jill Scott — but I found myself most inspired by the other attendees. And when that happens, something intangible, possibly even indescribable, unfolds. You find, as author Lisa Nichols put it, “a new someone to share the journey with.”

In my case, I found a few hundred someones. Yes, yes.

Chana Garcia is a New York-based journalist, blogger, and cancer survivor. On her blog, Cancer Slayer, she muses about life after chemo, healthcare reform, and other health-related news. Follow her on Twitter @ garciagyrl. Become a fan of the summit on Facebook at www.blackenteprise.com/bewps.