Love Letter to Brown Skin Sisters

Black girls don't run anymore/we wallow in their sins/attempting to evade our current realities/accepting of our gross idiosyncrasies/ we become accepting of societal statistics/ ultimately accepting out plight/ we've become victims to diabetes, hypertension, High blood pressure, and a plethora of other diseases yet we still fail to run...

Tomorrow I will be running in my first 5K run, a goal that I've set up for myself 2009. I am ecstatic!!! I'm an avid jogger/run and run anywhere between 6-5days a week about 3mi per day. During my runs its unusual that I see brown skin women running, its my white female counterparts that  I see. I guess you'd consider me the minority runner on my morning runs. Mulling over the question as to where the sisters are on my morning runs I thought to myself maybe they're in the gym afraid of sweating out their perms or trying to keep their light skin complexion. But I realized when I did have a membership at the local campus gym there were only a handful of brown skin sisters there also.

So where are you ladies??? (Cupping my hands to my mouth) "Where are you ladies?" I hope to God that its not the "new do" that is keeping us from staying fit, I would hate to buy into what some of my male counterparts agree to. All joking aside our community would so much much healthier if everyone participated in some type of  activity for 30mins at least 3-5times daily. Our unhealthy lifestyles is one thing that is ultimately within our control in a society that is said to keep our race from progressing, amongst the slew of other factors that are literally wiping out our community . Its time that we save our race/ community through physical fitness and good health.

So as I'm mentally preparing for my run tomorrow I hope that we seriously begin to think of our health. I don't have to and will not go into detail  about the overabundance of health related conditions in our community due to a lack of physical fitness. Do the research, the statics concerning the health of black women is appalling. During my run tomorrow in hopes of not coming in last my motivation and drive will be you, my sister and the beginnings to a better and healthier you.