On August 18, 2010,  L.Y. Marlow, author of Color Me Butterfly and Founder of domestic violence awareness organization, Saving Promise, sets out on a ten city tour in order to promote Saving Promise and raise awareness surrounding this serious and social issue.

I feel blessed to have been asked to speak at this pivitol kick-off event at Potomac Mills Mall in Virginia on Saturday, August 7th.  Time and other details forthcoming.  But for now, listen to the mark your calendar, while you listen to the 30-second service announcement; then watch the video. 

Release of paperback version of Color Me Butterfly: A Novel Inspired by One Family’s Journey from Tragedy to Triumph published in August 2010.

Stanice Anderson’s Let’s Go To PRINT PARTY

Stanice Anderson’s new book, is ready to print! It will be her first self-published book and intro into The WOW Zone Series. She and Mike (her son) are ind…ependently publishing.

Help Stanice go to print! FREE Event w/$25 donation available which includes a signed copy of the book upon publication in August.

“We need your help to get this book printed,” says Stanice. So instead a rent party, we’re having a Let’s Go to PRINT PARTY. Event features reading from new work, singing, comedy w/ live radio broadcast of Stanice’s Blog Talk Radio Show, “Life in the WOW Zone” w/co-hosts Keisha Hooks and Joyce Burnette.

Please come out, lend your support on Sunday, July 25, 2010 at 4 pm @ Liv (the BREAkFAST kLUB), 2001 11th St, NW, Washington, DC (atop the historic Bohemian Caverns on the corner of 11th & U)

Join the unique, out-of-the-box experience, as Stanice:

+ Reads from her latest book
+ Sings
+ Performs her signature Spokentry & Monologues
+ Conjures Laugh Out Loud Comedy
+ Provides Inspiration & Encouragement

While this is a FREE event, you can help this book see victorious light and support Stanice’s labor of love by purchasing advance $25.00 tickets which entitles you to a signed book upon publication in August.  Go to http://PrintParty.eventbrite.com

You can also opt to make a donation of any amount at the event or if you’re unable to make it to the event make the donation online or by mail. A donation of least $25.00, also entitles you a signed copy of the first book in The WOW Zone Series, WALKING ON WATER WHEN THE GROUND AIN’T ENUF: Getting Through Tough Times with Amazing Faith.

The event will also have food and drinks available; including mimosas and non-alcoholic drinks. Please come out! Be blessed and be a blessing.

For those of you purchasing advance tickets or making donations, make sure to include your mailing address, so that we can mail your signed copy of the book. If donating by check or money order, make payable to Shout Glory LLC, 1431 Bangor St SE, Wash., DC 20020.

(Draft Cover painting by D. “Peekaso” Pinder)

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT THE NEW BOOK:
“If you want to learn how to mount up on wings like an eagle, or run and not get weary, start by watching Stanice walk on water!” Joy Jones, Author/Performance Poet/Playwright (Black Women Playwrights’ Group)

“After reading just the first chapter of Stanice’s new book, I feel rejuvenated by her words in prose and prayer. She’s truly an anointed word and prayer warrior. We can all learn wonderful and marvelous things from her powerful teachings within the pages of this manuscript.” Barbara Joe Williams, Independent Publisher & Author, A Writer’s Guide to Publishing & Marketing

Stanice’s other books:
Co-Author — SISTAHFAITH: Real Stories of Pain, Truth and Triumph (Howard Books/Simon & Shuster) 2010
Author — I SAY A PRAYER FOR ME: One Woman’s Life of Faith and Triumph (Walk Worthy Press/Warner Books) 2002 hardcover and 2003 trade paperback
Author — 12-STEP PROGRAMS: A Resource Guide for Helping Professionals (Learning Publications)

What people are saying:
“Stanice writes for everybody, with a wisdom about the central truths in everybody’s life — to belong in the world, to be loved.” Patrice Gaines, Author & former Washington Post Reporter

“Stanice is a powerful speaker, an inspirational woman, and a good friend. She believes in her purpose in life and is driven to succeed while helping others at the same time. I highly recommend her in any aspect.” ZANE, Owner of Strebor Books

“Stanice Anderson is a master motivator, encourager, and one of the most engaging speakers I have heard in any forum. We were captivated. It was an INCREDIBLE experience. We laughed a lot, but were also reduced to tears at points. She makes powerful parallels and connections to emotional and spiritual battles that all of us experience. We were led to tear off masks, dare to be real and transparent after spending time with Ms. Anderson.” Bernice Mayfield, Heritage Church 

‘‘What Stanice has done is reconfigure her life, her triumphs and sorrow, through art in a way that takes us to unspeakable uplift.” Karen Evans, Founder & President, Black Women Playwrights’ Group

I believe the impossible is highly probable and that the possible is just too easy for God anyway. Stanice Anderson, WALKING ON WATER WHEN THE GROUND AIN’T ENUF

Sister Patsy Douglas

I truly miss, Sister Pat, as is true for many people that she positively impacted in many countries, in many walks of life .  She was killed instantly in a car crash while in Barbados on business.  Click below for Sister Patsy Douglas, St. Vincent & the Grenadines; via Dominica, West Indies, reading my poem, Tell Me A Story  (also the premise and opening piece for the book).

Ann-Marie Lee-Wilkins and Sistah Pat

Also, please take time to visit the Patsy Douglas Youth Empowerment Foundation (PDYEF) that was started months after her death by her best friend, Ann-Marie Lee Wilkins.  Ann-Marie was herself empowered as a youth by Sister Pat and went from an academically challenged child to now a Nurse Manager at Johns Hopkins Hospital.  Now, she’s paying it forward.  The organization acts as a bridge between Maryland, US and St. Vincent and the Grenadines; including helping pregnant teens, stay in school, in both countries.  And in the case of Caribbean girls, paying grant scholarship tuitions.

Ann-Marie Lee Wilkins, Founder PDYEF, who while born in SVG, is a naturalized citizen of the US, was given my book, I Say A Prayer For Me: One Woman’s Life of Faith and Triumph, by her neice as a Christmas present.  Ann-Marie read it and then shared it with Sister Pat, both agreeing that I must come talk to the youth on the islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadine.  They got together and Ann-Marie took me to her home island, where Sister Pat and a group of other Catholic sisters and members of the secular community met me upon landing.

They coordinated a whirlwind 2 week visit with talks across the island with women group high teas to which the men, after hearing their wives go on about the brilliant day they had at the talk, demanded and got their “men’s” event. Men from all walks of life came; and unlike the women; they did not exclude the opposite sex.  Which was good seeing that the speaker was the opposit sex. LOL

SVG Girls' High School

Well, from there they had set up talks at every high school on the island, radio stations, including ABC and NICE Radio, SVG-TV, Methodist Hall event with the youth.

I left those islands, a changed woman.  I felt connected with a sense of world community as one body and each of us necessary intregal parts of the whole.  The message I’d been entrusted to take, my testimony of hope, grace, power, love, and redeption, crossed an ocean and a sea, I believe, left us all changed.

Perhaps, one day soon, I’ll share with you the story and poetry that was born during my three extended ministry/missionary trips to St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The Archer & The Arrow 

We all have times in our lives when it seems like everything is going against us.  Problems mount, illnesses come, frustrations multiply, and we feel like we can’t take one more bit of bad news and live!  However, if during those times we take our focus off the horrible circumstances that are surrounding us or the feelings or despair that are welling up inside of us and focus on what God has already brought us through in the days and years gone by-we come to believe He will work it out for us again and again and again!  

We have to set our faces like flint to walk by faith-to believe like my mentor, Dorine, always tells me, “Baby, it’s gonna be all right!”

I truly believe that nothing happens to us that isn’t already sifted through the hands of God first.  And because of that He knows and will give us just what we need to get through it.  Sometime, life is just like a master archer with a bow:  

To hit the target the bow has to be stretched way back to the absolute limits, but when the archer releases the arrow-WHOOSH-the arrow goes right where the master archer aims-the target!  Had it not been stretched, the arrow would have fallen to the ground, limp and defeated, having missed the mark.

Dear Heavenly Father: Thank you that you have given us the victory!  Help us to not focus on the situations that face us or the circumstances that surround us; but help us to stay focused on Your love for us.  Stretch us, if you must, so that we can be finely tuned instruments of Your Love in Your Hands.  Amen.  So be it!

Read James 1:2-5.  The Lord will meet you in the reading.

This is excerpt from story, In the Cellar of Afflictions, in my book, I Say A Prayer For Me, pgs 319-320 

Raymel

As written by John “Raymel” Austin, who has been my friend since we were children.  I believe that this was written for you too.

The world was blessed when you took your first steps. You are fulfilling your destiny now. This was meant to be. Think about it. what are the odds of you and me meeting up and sharing what we share in this world? And I’m talking from day one? If you had not lived what you lived you would be unable to discuss the things that you share now with others.

  Amen, John. Aptly put. I appreciate your comments. Many will be blessed by what you said. If it’s okay with you; I’ll include it in the new blog I’m building. Your words reconfirm what I found in my WOW moment, “We triumph not in spite of it all; but because of it all.”

Me 4 U

Hope is defined as “a wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment.” God is the ever present hope that is immutable and never deferred.