Abiola Abrams, ESSENCE.com’s spicy Intimacy Intervention advice columnist has written a hot new personal development book designed just for women like you. She had us at the title—The Sacred Bombshell Handbook of Self-Love. Inside Abrams shares her own personal stories and lessons on how to tap into your feminine energy and learn to love yourself. This week instead of letting you ask the questions, we thought we’d give it a try and ask the author and motivational speaker to tell us a little more about her powerful new advice guide.
ESSENCE.com: Why did you write this book?
ABIOLA ABRAMS: As I work with my one-on-one coaching clients and have the privilege of answering the intimacy dilemmas of readers, it almost always comes back to self-esteem, self-love and how we feel about ourselves. Some letters I receive ache with so much self-hatred that I just weep. We have all been there. From the reader asking me how to seduce her husband because she hates being “fat” to the woman emailing about whether she should let her husband have sex with her friend to have a baby, it’s all a matter of what the most self-loving choice is that you can make right now? Over the years I realized that everyone always says, “love yourself” and it sounds so simple, but it’s really not. I wanted to create a guidebook with exercises, healing modalities, challenges and assignments to help us get there. There is a sacred and self-love solution for almost every problem.
ESSENCE.com: What is a “sacred bombshell?”
ABRAMS: My work is all about helping women become who they were born to be. My great-grandmother was a midwife in Guyana. She helped women to give birth to babies and I help women give birth to themselves. I have reclaimed the word bombshell to mean a woman who loves herself, inside out, mind, body and spirit. A sacred bombshell is a woman walking in her truth. That may include traditional bombshells like Halle Berry, Beyoncé and Josephine Baker, but it also includes women like Maya Angelou, Celia Cruz and Zora Neale Hurston, who I mention in the book. You and I are the bombshells next door!
ESSENCE.com: This sounds wonderful. Which women do you most recommend this book for?
ABRAMS: A self-love crisis looks different for different women at different times. For some of us, it’s being in an unhealthy relationship and not being able to leave. For others it looks like abusing ourselves with some kind of addiction or it’s not having the courage to step up and go for our dreams. We all have insecurities, so this book is for the woman who is not yet who she was born to be. I am building a Sacred Bombshell support community on AbiolaTV.com, and on my Facebook page. Readers can buy the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, or wherever you buy books.
ESSENCE.com: You mention healing “modalities” in the book. What do you mean?
ABRAMS: Well, my sacred bombshell sisters, the same mindset that created a problem can never solve it, so we always need tools to get us to where we want to be. These tools, or “healing modalities,” can be as simple as prayer, meditation and eating food that loves us back. I include these plus other healing modalities I use with coaching clients and myself such as Emotional Freedom Technique, journaling, affirmations and more. In fact, in addition to the audiobook, I’m doing a “Sacred Bombshell Meditation” album and an e-course. It’s important to me that this book is a transformational tool for the women who read it. This is why my book tour includes powerful love, body and spirit healing retreats around the country and why I am Skyping with book clubs that read it.
ESSENCE.com: Did you bring any of this sacred bombshell energy to your Essence Festival Empower U Flirting workshop in New Orleans?
ABRAMS: Absolutely! The book’s subtitle is “The 11 Forbidden Secrets of Feminine Power.” When most people discuss flirting they focus on the externals, like what to say and how to look. A woman standing in her feminine energy is the most powerful creature on the planet, so I teach that there’s an “inner game” when it comes to flirting and an “outer game.” It all comes back to self-love. Flirting is merely enjoying your own magnificence in the presence of others. That’s why I say “Always Be Flirting” or “ABF” and keep your magnetic feminine energy charged from your source.
For more from Abiola, visit her website or catch her on Tuesdays with Intimacy Intervention on ESSENCE.com. The Sacred Bombshell Handbook of Self-Love has been nominated for Best Self-Help Book by the African American Literary Awards. The other three nominees in the category include Iyanla Vanzant’s Forgiveness, Bishop TD Jakes’ Instinct and Russell Simmons’ Success Through Stillness;