Single ladies rejoice, there’s FINALLY a website just for us!
Be Your Own Girlfriend [MyOwnGirlfriend.Tumblr.com] is a site created to encourage single women everything to do just that – be our own girlfriends. The Be Your Own Girlfriend Tumblr & Twitter sites post inspirational quotes, dating suggestions and wonderful reminders that being single isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I caught up with the creator of Be Your Own Girlfriend, Be Bonita Spokesperson and Ardor Brand PR owner Carrie Kholi to chat about what lead her to create this awesome site, what she sees in Be Your Own Girlfriend’s future and how she feels about being a single, educated professional woman in 2012.
Essence: Good morning, Carrie! How are you?
Carrie Kholi: Morning! Pretty good! And yourself?
Essence: I’m feeling pretty darn awesome! So I want to take a second to talk to you about your new project Be Your Own Girlfriend. How did you come up with the concept?
Carrie Kholi: Well I tend to talk about love and relationships a lot & literally I was [having a conversation] with one of the BFFs & we were talking about a particular person in my life that wasn’t really living up to my expectations. In the conversation, I began to realize that I probably also wasn’t living up to theirs … but I felt like I was trying so hard. I literally said, “Eff that, I’m going to be my own girlfriend. Imagine if I would put as much effort into myself as I do others.”
What I [mean] by that is … Imagine if I just made myself everything I need to be to fulfill my needs. If I looked to myself before looking to someone else to give me a particular type of loving.
Essence: Wow! I think all single women feel that way. But what made you take those feelings and manifest them into the My Own Girlfriend Tumblr & Twitter?
Carrie Kholi: Because I know all single women feel that way and because I was in a really bad place with myself when I started [BYOG]. Not like “Oh, I don’t know my worth” but a very “why doesn’t anyone love me like I love them … [why] can’t I keep a partner?” type of space. I started the blog becauseI knew I was smarter than that and better than that, but the sadness, and disappointment, and rejection was louder than my own smart voice. With all of my self-knowledge, I was still having those thoughts [and] knew that there were women having the same thoughts and … really believed internalized and believed them!I wanted to tell them to cut that out!
And then there’s the biggest part about BYOG… the reflection part. Everything in our life is a reflection of who or what we are. We attract it all. Be Your Own Girlfriend is really about taking a look at yourself and taking stock. Making a list of what you want (or what you think you want today) and figuring out how to create that in yourself, because that’s the only way to bring it to you.
Essence: Do you think single professional women are under a lot of pressure from society to “settle” for an average partner instead of waiting for someone extraordinary?
Carrie Kholi: I think we put the pressure on ourselves because we pay too much attention to other people’s ideas of what we should “have.” [For example], “Oh, I’m 25 … where’s my wife? Where’s my husband?” Well … probably somewhere making themselves ready for you. We get attached to the idea of being a successful person meaning having one successful relationship … but honestly we need the bad ones, or the mediocre ones, or the “just not right” ones to get us closer to that real one. I think we just have to know ourselves.
If you’re in something or with someone just for the sake of being there, you’re not loving yourself. So of course that person can’t love you in the way you need & you’re keeping them from the one that’s going to love them for them.
Essence: What do you want women to take away from Be Your Own Girlfriend?
Carrie Kholi I want them to know that they can have [whatever] they want but they have to [truly] want it first. They have to see themselves having it and believe it, without a doubt, to be theirs. They also have to identify what they want in someone else,but be prepared to give that to themselves & their partner.
It’s simple: if you desire it, you can have it. You just have to be prepared to do what it takes to get it & then keep it. Sometimes that means a lot of emotional, physical [and mental] work.
Essence: Can you give us an idea of things to come for Be Your Own Girlfriend?
Carrie Kholi Well, we’re having the first seminar this summer as part of a general women’s self-care conference but Be Your Own Girlfriend is actually the holding place for the book I’m writing. The book is of course much longer but I’m using the Twitter and [Tumblr] to give people an idea of what’s to come & to gauge what else to include … I could talk about intimacy and relationships forever so maybe we’ll make a trilogy. LOL.
Essence: And we’ll be right there to support you! Any last words for single Be Bonita Beauties everywhere?
Carrie Kholi: Be good to yourselves. We want to compare what we have, how we do … everything … to external forces and factors. When we’re good to ourselves, we measure ourselves by ourselves. We’re compassionate when we fall. We’re congratulatory when we succeed. We’re willing to try every day. I think that’s it … and then resolve to be the baddest chick in the room in every room you enter!
Essence: #POW!
And there you have it ladies! Make sure you check out Be Your Own Girlfriend on Tumblr & Twitter and always, BE BONITA!
With <3,
Essence, Be Bonita Blogger
Carrie Kholi is a graduate of Hampton University and Rutgers University. Kholi is the owner/CEO of The Ardor Brand, A-List Entertainment & kholioli.com. She lives in Philadelphia, PA.
The seniors that attend the send-off are identified by partnering organizations. During the event, the attendees receive care packages for college along with advice from beauty, hair, fitness, and education experts. In return, the attendees are asked to “pay it forward” by graduating from college and vowing to help another young lady.
Disappointment is Inevitable: Ladies, I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer, but there are a multitude of ways that we potentially disappoint ourselves the day after the holiday of “love.” We’re either irritated by the fact that the girl in the adjacent cubicle for some reason refuses to take that giant bouquet of flowers home (the ones that her boyfriend hand-delivered as though he himself has no job -_-), or we’re sad that our significant other isn’t acting exactly as he did yesterday, or we’re irritated that he or she didn’t get yesterday right, or we have no significant other, and we’re chastising ourselves for where we are in our lives. Here’s what they don’t tell you: Everything is exactly as it should be. Valentine’s day is a holiday perpetuated to provide bumps in consumerism. It’s great as a reminder of love. But honestly, the type of love you have inside, the type of love you desire from another, it should be strong and sustainable … it has very little to do with a 24-hour period.
