My morning sets the tone of my day, so I try to remove distractions and consistently practice the morning routine I've created for myself. My day begins with a quick podcast session for motivation while I walk my dog, and then an hour workout before work. Lately, I've also added drinking warm lemon water because when I do, I've found that it keeps me hydrated, flushes out toxins, and gives me an extra spurt of energy.
After talking to a few of my favorite girl bosses, I've found a common thread in our daily morning routines that impacts our business and productivity: This whole idea of intentionality is something that's present in each queen's routine below.
Keep reading to learn more about the morning routines that help them bring their best self to their work every day.
Arielle Loren, Founder & CEO, 100K Incubator
Image via Arielle Loren
"I'm usually awake at 6:30am, but I give myself an hour to fully wake my body up before I jump into the day. I sleep with my phone off, so once I'm fully awake, I turn my phone on, check my email and calendar, and check my Instagram. Then, I get dressed and prepare to workout with my trainer.
"By 10:30am, I'm starting calls and jumping into my workday. I keep my routine simple---no complicated meditations or anything over-the-top.
"The most important thing is that I feel rested. I don't wake up to an alarm. I give my body time to acclimate to the day before turning any electronics on, and I get in alignment with whatever God needs me to do that day."
Lady Jade, Nationally Syndicated Morning Radio Co-Host, K104
Image via Lady Jade
"Since we start our national morning show at 4am, my alarm goes off Monday-Friday at 2:30am. The first thing when I get out of bed is turn on the overnight news so I can be up-to-date on current events that happened overnight.
"After I get out of bed, I take a shower to wake up, get dressed; and to get my mind right, ready and focused for the day I listen to [the] Word on my 20-minute commute to work. I love T.D. Jakes' podcast or I look up Pastor Mike Todd from Transformation Church to get motivated. I want to fill myself before I face the day."
Corvaya Jeffries, Founder, The Career Penny & Carmen
Image via Corvaya Jeffries
"I typically get up around 6am every morning. If I have a late night, I'll adjust as needed. Proper rest is a priority for me. Before my feet touch the floor, I take a deep breath and say a prayer. It is a brief but intentional conversation with God. If I wake up anxious or uneasy for whatever reason, I make it a point to write the prayer down in case I want to revisit it later in the day. This sets a tone of gratitude and peace.
"After a morning prayer and conversation with God, I get up and drink one standard-sized bottle or a full glass of water that I put at my bedside each night. Most people don't realize that after multiple hours of sleeping, our bodies and brains are dehydrated. This increases the oxygen to my brain and gives me that alert, on-point feeling I need to get right.
"Dehydrated is a bad way to start the day, especially if the goal is to be productive.
"After hydration, I move to another space in my room or apartment and do a short visualization exercise. I take 5 minutes to visualize a 'future me' because, for the rest of the day, I will try my best to focus on the present. As ambitious and purposeful women, we must find the balance between working toward our dreams and finding contentment and gratitude with what we already have.
"Then, it's hygiene time (face, teeth, body). I listen to a podcast, music for motivation (anything from Tasha Cobbs to Meek Mill) or an audiobook while doing this. Post-hygiene, I have breakfast---something aligned with my body or weight goals for the month. Finally, I check in with my team, catch up on emails, and open my planner which has an overview of my day, week, and month along with prioritized tasks. (Prioritizing is part of my nightly routine!)"
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Featured image courtesy of Corvaya Jeffries
This was first evident more than a decade ago when she quit her job as the corporate executive of a Fortune 500 company during a Periscope livestream. “I’m not sure if there’s an alignment of [our] future trajectory. I’m going to work for myself. I'm promoting myself to work for myself,” she said at the time before flashing a smile at the viewing audience. As she resigned on camera, a constant stream of encouraging messages floated upwards on the screen.
By 2021, she’d fashioned her work as a corporate consultant and her personal life with her husband and three adopted daughters into a reality show, She’s The Boss, for USA Network. This year, she released the New York Times bestselling memoir Nothing Is Missing, written as she was in the process of getting a divorce and dealing with her eldest daughter’s struggles with substance use.
Convinced that there’s no way the 39-year-old has achieved all of this without intentional strategic planning, I asked her about it when we spoke less than a week before Christmas. I’d seen videos on social media of her working on 2024 planning for other brands, and I wanted to know what that looked like following her own year of success.
She listed a number of goals, including ensuring that the projects she takes on in the new year align with her identity “as a Black woman, as an African woman, as a mother, as someone who has lived a [rebuilding] season and is now trying to live boldly and entirely as themselves.” But, I was shocked by how much of her business planning also prioritized rest.
Despite the bestselling book, a self-titled podcast, and working with numerous corporations, Walters said she’s been taking Fridays off. This year, she doesn’t want to work on Mondays, either.
“A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement,” she said, noting that she’ll check in with herself around March to see how successful this plan has been. The goal, Walters said, is to only be working on Tuesdays and Thursdays by sometime in 2025. “It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to have happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change.”
"A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement... It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change."
Walters said the decision to progressively work less was partially in response to her previously held notions about her career, especially as an entrepreneur. “When I first started, I thought burnout was a part of it,” she said. “What I didn’t realize is that even if you’re able to bounce out of burnout or get back to it, there’s a cumulative impact on your body. If you think of your body as a tree and every time you go through burnout, you are taking a hack out of your trunk, yes, that trunk will heal over, and the tree will continue to grow, but it doesn't mean that you don’t have a weakened stem.”
But, the desire for increased rest was also in response to the major shifts that occurred three years ago when she was experiencing major changes in her family and realized her metaphorical tree was “bending all the way over.”
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“One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity,” she added. “That is some language that I think is just now starting to really get unpacked.” In recent years, there’s been an increased awareness of achieving balance in life, with Tricia Hersey’s “The Nap Ministry” gaining attention based on the idea that rest, especially for Black women, is a form of resistance. Even online phrases such as “soft life” and “quiet quitting” have hinted at a cultural shift in prioritizing leisure over professional ambition.
"One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity."
If companies are lining up to consult with Walters about their brands and products, then women have been looking to her for guidance on starting over since she invited them to livestream her resignation 12 years ago. As viewers continue to demand more from content creators in the form of intimate, personal details, Walters has navigated her personal brand with a sense of transparency without oversharing the vulnerable details about her life, especially when it comes to her family.
The entrepreneur said she’d been approached to write a book for several years and was initially convinced she was finally ready to write one about business. “I started to do that, and then I went through my divorce. When that happened, I said, why would I write a book telling people to get the life that I have when I’m not sure about the life that I have,” she said.
Instead, she decided to write Nothing Is Missing and provide a closer look at her life, starting with being born to immigrant Ghanaian parents (“You need to know my childhood to know why I’m passionate about entrepreneurship.”) through the adoption of her three daughters and eventual divorce. Despite her desire to share, however, she said she felt protective of the privacy of her family, including her ex-husband.
When discussing this with me, Walters said she was reminded of a lesson she learned from actress Kerry Washington, who released her own memoir, Thicker Than Water, just a week before Walters’ book release. Washington’s memoir grapples with family secrets, too, specifically the fact that she was conceived using a sperm donor and didn’t learn about it until she was already a successful TV star. While Washington reflects on how the decision and subsequent deception impacted her, she’s also careful to hold space for her parents’ experiences, too. “A lot of things she said was that she had to recognize where she was the supporting character and where she was the main character,” Walter said.
This is something Walter worked to do in Nothing Is Missing when discussing her daughter’s struggles with addiction. “I was very intentional about making sure that I did not reveal more than what was required,” she said. “If I say something about someone’s addiction, I don’t need to go into the list of the substances they used, how they used them, what I found. [I don’t need to] walk into a room and paint a picture of what it looked like for people to understand.”
Walters said some of the most vulnerable moments in the book barely made a ripple once it was released. She was extremely nervous to write about getting an abortion, she said. But no one has asked her about this in the months since the book was released. Instead, people have been more interested in quirkier revelations, such as the fact that she once appeared on Wheel of Fortune.
“I have bared my soul about this thing I went through in my youth that has changed me for people, and people are like, ‘So how heavy was the wheel when you spun it?’” she said, chuckling. “It just goes to show that people never worry about the thing that you worry about.”
With the success of Nothing Is Missing, Walters said she still isn’t planning to release a business book at the moment. But, as she navigates parenting a teenager and two adult children while also navigating a relationship with her new fiancé, Walters said she believes she has at least one or two more books to write about her personal journey. “There is sort of an arc of where my life has gone that I know I’ve got something more to say about this that I think is important, relevant and necessary,” she said.
In just three years, Walters’ life has undergone a major transformation. There’s no telling what the next three years will have in store for her, but it seems likely she’ll retain an inspired audience wherever life takes her.
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So, there goes my main motivation for today. Although I will say that even if you are gonna be riding it solo or abstinent this year, there are still several things down below that you can do to show your vagina some extra love — since Valentine’s Day is supposed to be honoring those who you love most.
And you do love your vagina, right? RIGHT? #wink
1. Make a Sugaring Appointment
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During the pandemic (well, more like when we were more cautious about the pandemic, because COVID is still out here, y’all), I got into sugaring because my favorite waxer went MIA for a season. Even though we’re back reunited, I’ve been trying to convince her to train to sugar because two things that I liked about that form of hair removal are the ingredients are all-natural and, after time, it can permanently remove unwanted body hair faster than waxing does. Plus, I personally find it to be a less painful process.
Anyway, the reason why I’m mentioning it here is, that since Valentine’s Day tends to have a lot of sweets associated with it, in following along with that theme, sugaring is a sweet way to get your vulva ready for any plans that you might have in store that day.
2. Write Your Vagina a Love Letter
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Last summer, I wrote an article entitled, “12 Men Told Me What They Love So Much About Vaginas.” When you get a chance, check it out because it’s always nice to hear praise about different parts of us — vaginas included. And since men have no problem affirming that very special part of a woman, why shouldn’t we do the same by also declaring, to ourselves, what we appreciate and adore so much about what does so much for us?
So yeah, consider writing your vagina a love letter. It doesn’t have to be super long or deep. Just take a moment to jot down why it’s so precious to you. You’d be amazed at what it can do for your self-esteem, including your sexual self-esteem, and how it will remind you to treasure “her” (yes, I oftentimes refer to vaginas in that way) always.
3. Buy Her Some Pink or Red Panties
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If it’s been more than 12 months since you’ve treated yourself to some new panties, there is absolutely no time like the present. If you’re not sure what to get, check out “These Are The Kinds Of Panties Your Vagina Actually Prefers,” and then, in honor of V-Day, make sure that at least a couple of them are pink or red. On the color psychology tip, pink represents things like femininity, peace, playfulness, healing, and warmth, while red is all about love, passion, sex, energy, and stimulation.
4. Treat Her to Some Jewelry Too
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If you’re looking for a surefire way to intensify your orgasms this year, why not invest in a clit clamp? If you’re curious about how much pleasure they are able to provide, yet you’d prefer to tiptoe into the idea, something that you might prefer (at least for now) is a clit clip. They are faux piercings that tend to not be as long as clamps and can be worn like…earrings on your clitoris. A pretty one that I recently saw on Etsy (that site is so my jam!) is a hoop with a Swarovski crystal (here). There are also simple pearl clips like this one here.
5. Try a Tube of Vaginal Lipstick
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Kissing tends to happen a lot on Valentine’s Day. Well, in honor of Kelly Rowland’s throwback “Kisses Down Low” (receiving) and Usher’s “Good Kisser” (giving), if you want to get your lips down below ready for a few kisses of its own, Medicine Mama is a brand that carries something known as VMAGIC Lips Stick. It’s an all-natural vulva moisturizer that contains ingredients like honey, beeswax, olive oil, avocado oil, and sea buckthorn (which is a great vaginal lubricator). Soft and smooth lips (up top and down below) are always a Valentine’s Day delight…right? If you’re interested, you can get it here.
6. Sip on Some Red Wine
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Does nothing make you happier than sipping on a glass of red wine? If so, and you’ve got a significant other this year, red wine has a solid reputation for being a pretty reliable aphrodisiac. Some of the reasons why is it stimulates arousal, increases (natural) vaginal lubrication, and can help to intensify your sexual experience overall. Plus, red wine contains antioxidants that can keep your vagina healthy on a myriad of different levels.
7. Enjoy Some Dark Chocolate
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Next to red roses, probably the first thing that comes to people’s minds as it relates to Valentine’s Day gifts is chocolate. Well, if you like dark chocolate, your vagina will certainly thank you for it. Not only does it also have a lot of antioxidants in it, the magnesium that it contains will also help to keep your libido high as well as help to stimulate blood flow down to your vagina — and that helps to bring orgasms abundant into your direction.
8. Apply a Hydrating Mask to Your Pubic Hair
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A part of the reason why I penned the article, “Here Are The Pros And Cons About Different Types Of Pubic Hair Maintenance” last summer is because it is my personal opinion that, for a lot of us, pubic hair does not get the kind of TLC that it truly deserves. Case in point: when’s the last time you’ve given yours a hydrating mask? Yeah, exactly. I mean, if the hair on our head could use a conditioner to keep it soft and manageable, why wouldn’t our pubic hair as well? You can apply a hair conditioner to it for five minutes and rinse.
You can create a hydrating mask of plain yogurt, some aloe vera gel, and vitamin E, leave it on for 5-7 minutes and rinse. You can also combine an egg white, a teaspoon of shea butter, and a few drops of lavender oil, leave it on for 10 minutes, and rinse.
All of these moisturizing recipes will soften your hair down below. Just make sure that you focus on the outside of your vulva so that your vagina doesn’t get irritated by any of these ingredients in any way.
9. Bathe Her in Some Rosewater and Rose Petals
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Rosewater contains antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties that help to soothe eczema and psoriasis, speed up the healing process of wounds, help to bring relief to headaches, bring you out of a sober mood as well and strengthen your immunity. And since it’s so good for your skin and it contains anti-aging properties (and yes, vulvas and vaginas do indeed age; check out “Vaginas Age Just Like Everything Else. You Can Slow It Down, Though.”), soaking in some homemade rosewater can be a great way to pamper “her” — as well as the rest of you.
While you’re at it, since roses are the signature flower for Valentine’s Day, why not toss some rose petals into your bathwater while you’re at it? Just make sure to thoroughly rinse the petals beforehand in the skin in order to remove any pesticides, dirt, or dust particles that may be on them.
By the way, a recipe for how to make rosewater is located right here.
10. Speak Your Vagina’s Love Language
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Words of affirmation. Physical touch. Acts of service. Quality Time. Gifts. When it comes to these love languages, how do you prefer love to be expressed to you the most? Whatever that is, why not give that same kind of lovin’ to your vagina? I’m dead serious.
- For words of affirmation, we covered writing a love letter to your vagina.
- Physical touch? How about doing a self-exam or some vaginal mapping?
- Acts of service, schedule a professional vaginal facial appointment.
- Quality time? Make a meal out of some foods that are proven to be good for your vagina.
- Gifts? If a clit clip isn’t your thing and panties aren’t what you need, perhaps indulge with a bottle of Fur Oil.
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Again, with all that vaginas do for us and with all of the “work” that it will be puttin’ in for so many on Valentine’s Day, I thought it was imperative to give our girls a special shout-out.
Show her some extra lovin’ on V-Day. How could you not agree that she’s earned it?
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