Good Morning America's Top 20 Pick

**See the GMA Advice Guru tab for updates**

Second Cut Coming Tuesday on Good Morning America


I'll admit it, I've been thinking about this all day. And I know why I didn't make the cut, why my submission had no right to be there. Mine was lacking personality. It was lacking my personality. With the 300 word restriction in mind, I focused more on what I had to offer. I put great pains into making sure I used proper sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling. But I left my personality along side the road in my process.  It was like a slice of white bread without so much as a smear of butter. So I figured I wouldn't be in the cut. But the group we have is somewhat surprising to me.

“Teachers, nurses, hairdressers, bartenders, and stay-at-home moms applied.”

That's what they said after the closing date for accepting submissions. Quite a variety of people, but why not? GMA invited a variety of every day folks to enter submissions. Teachers, writers, housewives, and stay-at-home moms. You got the impression that they wanted the kind of advice you'd get from people that have been through it, not the trained psychologist responses. Having studied some psychology myself, I know there are merits and downfalls to the clinical approaches to things, but over all they are well trained and only want to help people.

I expected to see more bartenders with sage advice, more hairdressers with tales of how others deal with things, more teachers that deal with dozens of children at a time. I didn't not expect to see one lone teacher in a cluster of psychologists, psychiatrists, best selling how-to authors, and advice columnists, all with lengthy resumes, taking the lead. Let's look at our top 20 contenders, then I'll meet you at the bottom of the page..

**UPDATE:  Since the original posting of the blog, I've had opportunity to get to know some of the finalists.  I have started interviews with those interested.  Links to those interviews are included in the description of the finalists below.**

Have A Beautiful Day ~ India Arie

I Wonder What That Means?

I was reading one of my favorite blogs last night when the author said she didn't know where the expression “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” came from. So I decided I would write an article about these obscure little pieces of verbal bricabrack.

I know the bootstrap saying because my parents were very demonstrative. I saw my dad pulling his bootstraps daily. Boots were made, and many still are, with a small strap at the top of them to make it easier to pull them up. There would be days that cowboys were so tired they would grab the straps on their boots to lift their legs off of the edge of their bunks to start another day. There are dozens of origin stories to this expression, but this is the one that I grew up with, and frankly it seems more plausible than the ones that say it means to literally lift oneself all of the way off the ground by nothing but their bootstraps. Here are a few others that I know.

Updated Information ~ Rape

Since posting my article on date rape I have received so many emails with questions and comments that I decided to write a follow up.

In the U.S. a woman is raped every sixty (60) seconds.  Yet, it's still the most under reported, under investigated crime we know. The reasons are as different as the women to which it happens Women don't report it out of shame, embarrassment, and fear. Authorities don't pursue it because unless it's a particularly violent attack they consider it a “he said/she said” incident. It's further complicated by those that do file false complaints.

Latest Update on the Good Morning America Advice Guru Hunt



Juju, George, Robin, & Sam



Good Morning America gave an update this morning on their show. They've moved on to the second stage of their decision making, calling finalists. Not the Final Ten yet, but the last 40 or 50 people. Some candidates have already been called, but according to Bianna Golodryga several more will be called over the next few weeks.

Women Are Beautiful

One of closest friends called me tonight for dating advice. Among the many topics we covered had to do with body image. My friend is a gorgeous woman by any measure of the word, but she doesn't see it.

My gorgeous, brilliant, well educated friend takes jobs that are beneath her and lets herself be reduced to booty calls because she looks in the mirror and doesn't see the same gorgeous woman the rest of us see. One study tells us that 55% of women suffer from some degree of poor body image.  What she, and many other women, don't realize is that 45% of men suffer the same problem. Perhaps if they realized that nearly as many men as women suffer from the same insecurities then they might realize it's universal.

Sadly, despite efforts by such companies as Dove, the perception of the “perfect body” are still in the mainstream. Models are primarily all a size 0, anything over a size 12 is considered “plus size”, and the heavy women that are on TV are in proportion. Real women don't fit in those categories, but they out there by the millions.

Women are beautiful creatures, no matter what their proportions. Even as a heterosexual woman I can see the beautiful design of the female body, Women shouldn't let the media isolate them, single them out as unsuitable. Especially Caucasian women.

Many black women are seen as beautiful no matter what their shape is, white woman should be as well.  Before anybody thinks I'm criticizing black women, stop.  I think it's wonderful that they get the credit due them for their beauty, this happens to be one area where black women got the privilege before white women did.  As happy as I am for their recognition, I wish it could be more universal.  Women are magnificent, if we cold be portrayed that way then maybe more of us could view ourselves that way.

What Are You Fixing for Thanksgiving?

I'm not a natural chef. I love to cook, but I need somebody else's recipes to make anything delicious. Well, that's not entirely true, but I do pretty basic cooking where I taste and add what's missing. I couldn't write a recipe so save my life.

Despite my culinary limitations, I love making a huge meal for my family on the holidays. It's the time when the whole family gets together to talk, cook, goof off, and catch up. This has been the running tradition in my family as far back as I can remember, getting together at Grams', breaking up in groups (men, women, children), and finding out what everybody has been up to. The “women folk” would take over the kitchen. I know to some this sounds completely backward and sexist, but I realize now that it wasn't so much women doing women's work, but women finding their way of getting rid of the men and kids so they could visit! As children, we were quickly shoo'ed from the kitchen, as were the men. But when we girls hit the golden age of adulthood, we were included in the “nest”, helping make home made noodles, slicing and mashing potatoes, and cleaning as we went.

I digress! It's so easy to get lost in the memories of cooking and gossiping with a dozen other matriarchs from my family. This is about the food!

When it comes to finding great recipes that are easy to follow, adjust, and make the best website I've found to date (and I've hunted down a lot of them!) is http://www.allrecipes.com/. I think the reason I like it so well is because the recipes are submitted and rated by the site users, not professionals. Every day people sharing every day recipes. You don't have to buy a dozen cookbooks to get the best 10-20 recipes (which I'm also guilty of!), and they're all right at your finger tips for free!

One thing I never did like about cooking for the holidays has always been how hot the kitchen gets with a turkey in the oven. It was fine back in the day when we had snow on the ground for Thanksgiving, but not now that you can still have 60-70 degree weather then. Here is a great turkey recipe to do on the grill to avoid all of that.

Do you need to figure out a menu? This page is great for that. If you're willing to sign up and create a profile, you can put the recipes you like the best in your own online recipe box. That way your favorite recipes are right there at your finger tips. There is also a nifty calculator to help you adjust serving sizes.

Hhhhmmmm, I started with the intent to share my favorite recipes, but it turned into more of a site support article! What can I say, it wouldn't be fair to share recipes without sharing where I get them. Maybe I'll share my Grams' home made biscuits or noodles, but that's later Go to Allrecipes, you'll love it.

Moms Are Heroes

I'm sure many of you have seen, or at least heard, of this blog. It went viral in a matter of days and was covered by several major news outlets. This blogger, known as Nerdy Apple Bottom and "Cop's Wife", deserves commendation for putting herself in the line of fire to defend her son.

Like thousands of others, I left encouraging comments on her page, but somehow that doesn't feel like enough. She has made it clear from her own confrontation that it isn't just other kids that bully and shame gay teens and pre-teens, sometimes it is the other parents that we trust our children to be around.

We don't know when a child realizes their sexual orientation, some have said that they knew they were "different" at a very early age. But we do know that there have been too many young people, starting as young as 10, that have been left feeling so shamed and despondent that they take their own lives. Now I'm guessing, but I wonder how many of those kids were subjected to the same type of judgmental ridicule that Cop's Wife encountered at her son's school by mothers A, B, and C? Would the Alphabet Birds feel any regret or remorse if they behaved that way in front of a child and that child committed suicide?

I guess if you're a fan of Forbes you might think that the only way to protect your children from hateful, narrow-minded, bigots is to hide from them. Cave and let the Fearsome Threesome dictate what is and isn't acceptable. Yes, that would be best despite the fact that other mothers and the children in the class DIDN'T behave that way. Better that she should have caved because the middle aged "mean girls" tried to apply their version of peer pressure.

So this is for Cop's Wife, the woman that stood up for a child's right to be an individual, whether it was due to being a gay child or just a HUGE fan of Daphne, she was a prize winning Mom for letting him be himself. She is there protecting her son from vicious, judgmental adults that could cause him serious emotional harm. My hat is off to you, Nerdy.

P.S. And for those that were concerned about her posting his picture to 'capitalize' on it. First, she had no idea her blog was going to go viral. Second, he's a four year old that is adorable, but with fairly indistinguishable features and a bright orange wig. Look for another reason to chastize her.


Children, Gayla, Kids, Parent, Tanner, child, help, homophobia, love, mom, people, prejudice, school, tolerance

Fighting Racism, One Flub at a Time

When my eldest two children were very young, my sister-in-law was expecting her first child. I would frequently accompany her to her doctor's visits, occasionally bringing my children along for the ride.
During one such visit, I thought about waiting out in the car with the kids, but my sister-in-law said, "Bring them in, it'll be okay. They have toys in the waiting room."

We went in and the waiting room was packed with expectant mother's and their companions. My children found some toys and sat in the middle of the floor playing, when suddenly my three year old son looks up at me, points to an attractive black woman on the opposite side of the room and asked very loudly, "Mommy, what's that?"

The poor woman turned just as red as I felt, and I called my son over. The only thing I could imagine that confused him was the size of her seventh to eighth month along belly, or depth of the color in her ebony skin. But we lived next door to a black family, and he played with their children all of the time.

To clarify, I started with, "She's pregnant, like Aunt Aggie, she has a baby in her belly."

"NO," he insisted, still quite loud, "Her skin."

Not ever wanting skin tone to be an issue with my children, I thought this might be a good opportunity to explain what a minor difference skin made, so I explained to him, "Well, you know my skin is darker than yours, right?"

"Yeah...."

"And Granny's skin is darker than mine, right?"

"Yeah...."

"Well, her skin is just darker than Granny's, that's all."

I seemed to get nods of approval from the surrounding audience, even from the still blushing mother-to-be across the room. Then, with the innocence only a three year old can have, he asked me at full volume, "Her darker?? But why???"

Thoroughly flustered, I shushed him and asked, "She's black, just like Shay and her family. Why are you so confused?"

While looking at me as if I had just flunked a major test, he informed me, "No Mommy, Shay is brown, not black."

I guess I should have added Shay to my "degrees of darkness" example. Luckily, he did learn the lesson that skin color wasn't relevant to who a person was.

Is It Too Late To Find Love?

I've received several letters from people asking about dating, finding Mister or Miss Right. Rather than having multiple responses I decided to compile it into one response.

The common theme I have seen has been individuals devaluing themselves. Fears that if they aren't in the process of planning a wedding by the time they are 25-30 years of age that they will never marry. There was even a letter from one 18 year old girl/woman that was worried that she would grow old alone because she wasn't already in a serious relationship!

The door to happiness doesn't slam shut when a person hits the age of 20, 30, 40, or even 50. You really do have the luxury of waiting until you've met somebody you're truly in love with as opposed to settling for the first one that shows interest. Settling is just setting yourself up for a messy divorce on down the line, and several years of depression until the divorce happens.

It is not uncommon in today's society for people to wait until their thirties ,or even forties, to settle down and start a family. People are living much longer, healthier lives than they did even thirty or forty years ago. Women are having children in their thirties and forties.

Be patient, don't be afraid to date a few wrong people in order to find the right one. Just don't settle on the wrong ones.

Speak Out Illinoisans!

I try to avoid political topics because of the extreme reactions to the very subject, but on this instance I can't sit silent. Budget cuts. Specifically budget cuts in Illinois, my home state.

At the moment they are trying to decide how to handle the budget crisis in Illinois, and the options on the table are to defer pay raises for state employees or to lay off state employees. I'm sure many readers are thinking either option seems feasible, you have to do what you have to do. What does that have to do with me?

It depends on what services you utilize on how, or if, it affects you. If you receive child support in the state of Illinois, there will be fewer case workers to help you secure your support. If you receive public assistance, public education, services from the Department of Transportation, Department of Children and Family Services, probationary services or services through the State Police you will be affected.

Both of the leading candidates for governor are proposing lay-offs or deferring pay raises for state employees. These state employees were only getting a 12% raise over a four year period, and they are being asked to allow 2% to be deferred. This comes after several state employee lay-offs and hiring freezes that have occurred over the past six years. Our state offices, working class level, are slashed to the bone already. We currently have individuals handling the caseloads of 4-5 people because of being short staffed in various offices.

My question, my complaint, is why are working class people making less than $60,000 a year asked to postpone their raises, or possibly lose their jobs, while our elected officials once again neglected to vote against their own pay raises? Why are retired legislators getting full pensions that are worth ten times as much as they paid in to their pensions, while the working class state employees are barely getting back from their pensions the amount they paid in? That's right, their raises are automatic if they don't vote against them, and it is the legislators' pensions that Governor Quinn spoke of honoring earlier this year.

Being an Illinois legislator is technically considered a part-time job, yet they receive $67,836 yearly salary plus $139.00 per day they are in session. So even if they're only in session 100 days of the year, they are paid $81, 736 for a part-time job without even including what they are also paid for the various committee chairmanships and leadership posts they serve on.

Only four other states have higher base pay for their legislators than Illinois. Pennsylvania ($78,314.66), New York ($79,500), Michigan ($79,650), and California ($95,291). We are heading for the same type of financial disaster that we recently saw California suffer, I personally don't think that thousands of of working class state employees should be the ones to suffer instead of legislators that are making all of these poor financial decisions for us.

A small disclaimer here, as many Illinoisans, I don't discriminate between Republican or Democrat when it comes to criticizing our governors. We have had pathetic governors from both parties, and this election season we are choosing between two poor selections when it is narrowed down to the two primary parties. Our political options have looked like the pickings from a third rate dating service over the past several years, with party being of little consequence.

I believe that if legislators want to convince our state employees that we all have to sacrifice to help our state, they should be prepared to set an example by cutting their own salaries, cutting their own pensions. Legislators from the other 45 states can manage on less income from their constituents, ours should be able to as well.