Listen up! If you are ever going to listen to the people you come in contact with, this is the day to do it. Wednesday, May 16^th is the eighth annual I Love to Listen Day.

We talked a bit about listening during The Audrey Chapman Show about crucial conversations. Today is your chance to practice what you heard about listening.

Started by Marva Shand-McIntosh, who is based in the Washington Metropolitan Area, I Love to Listen Day is designed to “inspire, inform, practice and create a heightened sense of awareness of the importance and power of listening in our lives.”

I met Marva earlier this year at the International Listening Association convention where, as a Certified Listening Professional (CLP), she helped welcome me into that exclusive group.

Your listening mission for this year: start a listening tradition in your family. Too tough? Then at least spend today patiently, lovingly and whole-heartedly listening to someone close to you. Your spouse/partner, child, colleague, neighbor – anyone will do.

The best thing about putting some effort into listening is that it’s a free gift you can give someone, but it gives back to you in spades.

Happy I Love to Listen Day!

When Love No Longer Works - Signs and Symptoms of Ending

• One of the indications a relationship is in trouble is that it has become a battle ground.  If all you do is fight, that is not a good indication.

• Irreconcilable differences are indications that a relationship is moving towards its conclusion.  When a couple is experiencing irreconcilable differences one of them finds that the area of common ground they once shared is now so small that what occupies that territory is a multitude of differences.

• Boredom is one of the ways you can tell if a relationship is ending in that, one day you may get up feeling depressed, vaguely disconnected, and blue.  When you feel this way, it could be that the essential vitality in your relationship is gone.

• Emotional distance is becoming aware that the person with whom you have been relating to is no longer there.  You try to have conversation but you get no response, or you try to have a conversation and get a consistently negative response.  You have sex that is no longer binding in any wonderful way.  You have sex that doesn’t even arouse a negative feeling in you.

www.daphnekingman.com

Join the conversation by calling 202-319-7810 or 1-855-288-HURN(4876)

On 5/12 The Audrey Chapman Show marks Mother’s Day by encouraging women not to “mother” other people at their own expense. Make time, sisters, to take care of yourselves.

Consider these resources healthy encouragement:

Black Women’s Health Imperative

Dr. Andrea Sullivan

NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness

National Hispanic Medical Association

U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health, A-Z Health Topics

***Do something healthy for yourself May 13-19th, National Women's Health Week.

Find your state health department

Happy Mother’s Day!

The Audrey Chapman Show on May 5th featured a panel of men who are NOT African American who said they are very open to dating African American women. In fact, one of them is married to an African American woman, and they have three children.

5/5/12 Panelists prepare for the show. From left: Jason, William, and Craig. Craig's the married one.

5/5/12 The group of great guys talks Audrey into posing with them. Who wouldn't? Left to Right: Craig, Audrey, Jason, and William.

This may not come as a shock to some people, but Audrey has spent years encouraging African American women to date a "Rainbow Coalition" of men. She's not saying drop your loyalty to to African American men. Just be more loyal to your own search for love which, at times, may mean taking the road toward men of other ethnicities.

All of the panelists, including Kim, an Asian male who joined us on the phone, encouraged African American women to feel more comfortable starting conversations with men of other ethnic groups who they find themselves interested in. Kim even said to go ahead and ask for his number. Why not? Men have been taking that emotional risk since phones were created.

Here's another way of saying it: Stop "mothering" everyone else, and take care of yourself! It really is OK for you to be first on your own list, at least some of the time.

On the 5/12 show, ahead of Mother's Day, Audrey and her guests will remind the women out there to do just that, emotionally and physically.

Tune in, starting at 8:00 a.m. ET. Take things a bit deeper by calling in: 202-319-7810, or 1-855-288-HURN (4876).

And for all the women out there who have "mothered" - in one way or another - Happy Mother's Day!