Category Archives: Mothers

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Erica Gets a Backbone : Mary Mary Season 4, Episode 7 Recap…

 

marymaryHello World,

As many Christians know, 7 is the number of completion so as it is the 7th episode of Season 4 of Mary Mary reality’s show, one would expect something to be completed in this week’s episode…Was something completed? Of course, you have to read on to find out 🙂

white dressSo this week’s episode starts in the studio, Tina and her husband Teddy along with Warryn, producer for Mary Mary and Erica Campbell as well as Erica’s husband (for those new to the show), are discussing Tina making a solo album…Aside: I noticed that Tina was wearing a red dress that showed a lot of cleavage…Remember when Erica Campbell wore that white form-fitting dress in a promo shoot for her solo album and was giving major body although she was fully covered? The thing is that Mary Mary have been outside of the gospel music box since jump, and I think that attitude comes out in everything they do from their clothing choices to their reality show…So my question is: Do you think that Christian women should feel comfortable showing their cleavage OR showing off their curves even if they are fully clothed? Okay, so back to the recap…

Studio Scheming…

So while Tina is talking about potentially making music of her own, Warryn is getting excited because he secretly hopes that if Tina starts working on her own music, she won’t focus on Mary Mary… Warryn says, “I need Tina to focus on her solo career and stop worrying about Mary Mary because that will help all of us.” In other words, Erica can continue to work on promoting her solo brand without having to consider Mary Mary…But just when he thinks  his secret plan is working, he realizes he is foiled again when he asks her if she has definite plans for an album and she can’t answer the question….

Speaking of Breasts… pink ribbon

It’s that time of the year that women of a certain age dread…It’s time for Erica to have a mammogram and she is scared….”Warryn beat cancer five years ago, and my father died of cancer,” Erica says to her friend, Yvette, who comes to the doctor with her….Apparently, Yvette has battled cancer three or four times…I so understand that fear…Having lost two of my sorority sisters because of breast cancer, I know, if I don’t know anything else, that breast cancer is no joke…But I’m proud of Erica for not letting her fear immobilize her and that she reached out to her friend to support her in taking of herself…

The “No Love” Boat…

Erica

Erica has no time to worry about the results of her mammogram because Mary Mary has a gig on a Costa Rican cruise…Tina booked the Marys to perform on the cruise and sees the cruise as a way for them to have a vacation with their hubbies AND perform…Warryn & Erica don’t see it the same way…”A cruise ship is where acts go to die,” Warryn says…

Tina

Tina is tranquil for a hot second before she realizes that her room is right by the elevator which could make her an easy target for fans…But before she gets in somebody’s face about it and threatens to leave the boat as the “Old Tina” would do, she simply asks to be moved to a different room without a lot of drama…A round of applause for her self-control…

Erica

Warryn & Erica are still grumbling about even being on the boat in the first place as they discuss the situation in their room…Warryn is pressuring Erica to finally stand up to her sister and let her know that she wants to focus on her solo career not Mary Mary…”If this was Tina, she would do whatever suited her,” he says…

Tina

A few minutes later, at least in TV time, we find out that Tina & Warryn have gotten a new room…Hallelujah, Tina didn’t have to tear the club up to get a new room…While in their new more private room, Teddy and Tina have a FaceTime conversation with their daughter Laiah, who is dressed in a cheerleading outfit and ready to cheer! Tina yells, “Put somethin’ on it!!! Some hot sauce!!!” See that’s why Tina has that red hair…She know she’s fiery like some hot sauce…I had another philosophical question while watching tonight’s episode….I wonder what it’s like to have parents that travel all of the time? My parents were home all of the time…Shoot, I wished they traveled back then so I could have some time away from them…So anyway, I have no idea what it would be like to be a kid and be away from your parents on a somewhat regular basis…

Erica

While Erica is away from her husband, she gets a call from her doctor’s office…I really hate when the doctor’s office calls…Don’t you? The cliche’ “no news is good news” must have been said originally by someone who was glad the doctor’s office hadn’t called…And unfortunately, Erica is told some bad news…The test results are inconclusive, and Erica is told to come back to the doctor’s office as soon as she returns from her cruise….So if that was me, I would have to have the captain to turn the ship back around because there is no vacation at that point…Erica says, “This is not the news that I need to hear as I sail away.” Erica goes back to her room and tells Warryn about the call from the doctor’s office. He says to the camera, “I was personally diagnosed with cancer, and I survived so I understand her stress.” Well, Praise God that he is a survivor!!!

 B-Ball Breakdown

Warryn & Teddy Campbell (it still trips me out they have the same last name although they aren’t brothers and married sisters!) play some basketball on the ship…While they are playing the game, Warryn tries to convince Teddy to encourage his wife to launch her solo career…Teddy seems to agree with his brother-in-law…Warryn hopes his conversation was “another nail in the coffin of Mary Mary.” So I’m thinking that the death imagery was too deep…

The Campbells Times Two

The four of them go to dinner on the boat. Warryn has encouraged his wife to tell Tina that she is going to focus on her career instead of Mary Mary and basically get everything out in the open…And now that Teddy is in on his plan, it should be smooth sailing at this point…But nobody puts Tina in a corner and she goes off like you thought she would…While the sisters are arguing, Warryn looks to Teddy to support them…But Teddy says nothing. “I’ve been praying for wisdom, and I know not to get in the middle of two sisters,” Teddy says to the camera…And after what Teddy did, he basically can’t cross Tina for the rest of their marriage…Erica calls Tina “a major butt hole.” Finally, Tina says to Teddy, “C’mon baby” and they leave without Teddy saying a word…Again, he would need not to ever disagree with her ever again…

Rain Forest Excursion

The four get off the boat in Costa Rica and tour a rain forest…So I’ve been to Costa Rica…I generally don’t like rain, but the rain has made Costa Rica one of the most lush countries I have ever visited…I mean the green is in technicolor over there…I also zip lined in a Costa Rican rain forest…It was exhilarating, but this recap is not of my trip…(I’m planning a summer vacation so tropical locales are on the brain.) While the couples are on the tour, Erica pledges to stand up to her sister once and for all and tell her that Mary Mary is over. “I’ve got to stop Mary Mary no matter who it hurts.” Yeah, yeah, Erica, I will believe it when I see it…From what I can see, erebody is scared of Tina….

Stir-Fried Crap

Those are the words that Warryn uses to describes how he feels after they return from the rain forest…In other words, Warryn is sick…He coughs and wheezes and looks like he is about to topple over while Erica takes him to the infirmary…For a second, she “breaks character” and says, “Not right now. Get that camera out of here.”

The Performance

After all of that drama, the time has finally come for Mary Mary to perform…Tina is the first one to show up for a change and is getting ready with a sound check…After a while, Erica shows up since she was taking care of Warryn…Erica wants to rehearse “A Little More Jesus” from her solo album which gets Tina irate. “First of all this is a Mary Mary performance.” And Erica responds with, “At this point, they like Mary Mary and Erica Campbell.” And then she delivers the best line of the night: “I’m over it. Warryn is sick, my boobs are broke, Tina walked out and we still have a show.”

But the Marys manage to pull it together and perform and Warryn, even though he is sick, comes on stage to play the organ…The show is really good actually and Tina says, “What we have together, it’s not what we have apart.” Particularly, as it has taken them 14 years to build what they have together…Erica agrees but says, “I just want to take a minute for Erica.” Thank you for standing in your truth Erica and not letting your little sister be the boss of you!!! Tina says she has been “loosed” of her Mary Mary shackles pretty much whether she wanted to be loosed or not…

So at this point, they only have one more scheduled Mary Mary performance…will Erica keep her mind made up or will she continue to be double-minded and unstable in all of her ways?

I hope this 7th episode is the completion of this back-and-forth drama about Erica Campbell vs. Mary Mary but I guess we will have to see what happens next Thursday!!!

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The End of Mary Mary : Mary Mary Season 4, Episode 6 Recap…

marymary

Hello World,

It’s that time of the week again – time for your Mary Mary recap so buckle up and get on my ride 🙂 …I’m not gon lie…This episode made a little sad…It looks like Mary Mary, as we know it, is ovuh or about to be…Last week’s episode ended as Tina got on stage at Shiloh Baptist Church in Harlem on behalf of her sister Erica who was struggling backstage as she was tired and wo down…

This week’s episode’s picks up at Shiloh Baptist Church after Tina gets on stage…

Testimony Aborted…

Although Erica was supposed to be recovering backstage, she was getting worked up listening to Tina share her testimony again for the members of Shiloh Baptist…But before Tina could get too far down the long and winding road of her testimony, Erica walks back on stage while singing basically to shut her sister down mid-testimony…It works, and Mary Mary saaangs, “I cried my last tear yesterdaaaay” to the appreciative applause of the audience…Whew, that was a close call #NoMoreTestimoniesTina…LOL…

Warryn’s Wrath…

After the performance, Erica checks in with her husband Warryn, who is still steaming that Mary Mary booked a show at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in New York instead of Erica. He reiterates the fact that he spent $40,000 to promote Erica’s solo career in New York so that she could come back and perform at the popular New York venue and get all of the dough instead of Mary Mary. And now he is even more mad because the Mary Mary show at B.B. King’s didn’t even sell out even Erica though tells him the venue was “packed.” Warryn replies, “Packed and sold out are two different things.” Touch your neighbor and say, “Ouch. That hurt.” He concludes that basically something needs to be did about Mary Mary i.e. Tina because both the Mary Mary and Erica brands are being damaged at this point. Plus, Warryn also warns his wife that she needs to “slow down before it all comes crashing down.”

Mary Mary Meet…

After Warryn got on Erica again for the B.B. King performance, Erica decides she needs to meet with her sister and tell her what’s up. So they meet at a restaurant. Basically, Erica doesn’t believe that Tina’s management skills are up to par and blames her for Mary Mary being booked at B.B. King’s even though Erica was the one that booked the date with the agent. But Tina wasn’t trying to hear it. “Mary Mary didn’t take a gig from Erica Campbell. You booked the date.” Tina had a good point. Erica was technically the one to book the date although she only did that because Tina blew the agent off when he called her first. All Erica could say was, “I didn’t know it was such a big deal until after the fact.” Really, both of them are to blame. If Tina wouldn’t have blown off the agent, he wouldn’t have called Erica. And Erica shouldn’t have booked the date without thinking about the ramifications first.

mary mary and fatherLibrary of Congress Induction…

Not only are Mary Mary gospel superstars, their music was inducted in Library of Congress in this episode! And although Erica is pursuing her solo career, she couldn’t help but be happy for Mary Mary. “What would Daddy be like right now?” (Their father Eddie A. Atkins Jr. died in 2013.) And Tina feels the same. “Why wasn’t Mom here?” Then Tina actually admits that had she planned appropriately, she would have made sure their mother was there to witness such a momentous occasion in their career. The Library of Congress has almost 22 million items in it and now Mary Mary are among that number!!! But just when Tina is starting to realize that maybe her management skills aren’t what they should be, she makes another HUGE mistake….This time, she tells members of the press at the induction that Mary Mary is working on an album that will drop in 2016…The only problem is that Mary Mary aine even working on an album…You must know that Warryn is going to wreck something or someone over that statement…Stay tuned…I got more…

Tina’s Trippin’…

So although the Library of Congress induction started off as a lovey dovey Mary Mary moment, it set the stage for what came next…Tina booked a Mary Mary gig at The Howard Theatre in D.C. and the sound was jacked…As a manager, this is one of the issues that Tina is supposed to handle but doesn’t…And then after the performance is over, both Tina & Erica are looking forward to leaving our nation’s capital and head back to their families…But slow your roll…They are informed that Mary Mary is supposed to perform at an NAACP’s Concert For a Cause, a concert to support the NAACP’s literacy initiative “NAACP Reads” …but get this… Erica is the only one that signed the contract so technically only Erica has to show up…So Erica begs her sister to perform for her because she is tired…I mean she did almost fall out at the Shiloh Baptist Church performance…But Tina has no sympathy this time. “Sissy Sis ain’t gon help you today. I’m going to see my kids.” Erica calls her a “selfish dog.” And Tina replies, “You don’t sound very gospel and very Christianly.” There Tina goes again, making up words! But at least she aine testifyin’ no more…LOL…

This Woman’s Work….

Erica being the workaholic that she is and the professional artist that she is goes ahead with the NAACP concert while her sister chucks the deuces and rides (flies) out back to L.A. But every decision, good or bad, has its consequences. When she has free a moment, she calls her daughter Krista to speak with her. Krista sounds like she is about to cry and Erica asks her why she is upset. Krista says, “Because you’re always gone.” That’s modern day woman’s work for you – trying to juggle a thriving career and being a wife and mother…Something is bound to fall to the ground at some point…Warryn already told Erica she is doing too much so hopefully Krista’s words will help her slow down…

@imericacampbell is a Life Member of the NAACP. Join us today. #IamNAACP #NAACPReads

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L.A. Showdown…

Since Erica wasn’t able to get Tina to realize that her management skills aren’t the best, Warryn decides that he should meet with his sister-in-law and get her straight…First of all, he gets on her about saying that Mary Mary has an album coming in 2016 at the Library of Congress induction…But Tina being Tina just shrugs his words off saying that all that she has to do is “unsay” what she said and everything will be alright…”Unsay” is not a word, Tina, and there is a reason for that…Once you’ve said something, there is no way to “unsay” it. You can apologize, but the words have still been said. Warryn says, “I need for you to understand that how much weight your words carry.” Uh duh…there is power of life and death in the tongue…He is upset because not only has Tina misled the press, now Sony is going to start pressuring him about a Mary Mary album. But at the end of the meeting, Tina remains unbossed and unbothered…But even though Warryn wasn’t able to wield his influence over Tina, he is finally starting to get through to his wife. Erica is starting to get that she cannot give 100 percent to her solo career and 100 percent to Mary Mary. Warryn says, “Keep doing what you’re doing and you’re going to shorten your career by 10 years.” Also, he called Mary Mary “a plane without a pilot.”

So Team Erica looks like it’s winning in this episode and Team Mary Mary has lost one…

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

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A New Book Honors Church Mothers…

Hello World,

I hope this Sunday morning finds you well and you’re on your way to church to give Him praise morning…If you have been in church for a while, particularly a black church, you’ve heard of the term church mother…A church mother is a matriarch, whether formally or informally, of a congregation…An older woman whose wisdom, earned through years and years and years of living this life, is one of the church’s most valuable possessions…Though the beauty of youth has long departed, another beauty only acquired by watching God work things out time and time and time again, has descended upon her countenance…She is a jewel…a rare gem…

Photojournalist Alysia Burton Steele is capturing the rare brilliance of church mothers in her book in progress ““Jewels in the Delta.” From her Facebook page, below are descriptions of a few of the 50 Mississippi women that Steele photographed and interviewed for her book…

Mrs. Leola, 102, was thrown off a plantation in Yazoo City because she refused to have her little girls pick cotton. She wanted them to go to school. The overseer told her she had to leave if she wouldn’t let them work because she would “ruin his other blacks” because they would want an education too. She left and said it was the best decision she ever made. All of her girls have masters degrees and one has a Ph.D.

Mrs. Rebecca, 99, talked about how thankful she was for the woman she worked for as a cook. The woman taught her how to save $2 every week for a year and make a payment on her home. She paid her house off in 15 years. It’s not much, she said, but it’s hers and she has the original deed.

 
Ms. Velma, 78, dragged a woman out of church after she heard the woman talking about how fine her husband was. Punched the woman between the eyes and went back in and “sat quite comfortably” in church. Never saw the woman again. Husband had no clue she did this.

Read more about Steele’s book and see some of the photographs of the women in the The New York Times article “Chronicling Mississippi’s ‘Church Mothers,’ and Getting to Know a Grandmother” by Samuel G. Freedman…

And below is a video about the book…

So when you see one of the elderly ladies at your church today, maybe you shouldn’t just speak and keep on going…maybe you should get her talking and learn from the wisdom only she can share…

Any thoughts?