Realizing you’re ready for love is one thing. Putting action and words towards it takes a bit of courage and lots of patience. — I need some sugar in my bowl. Word to Nina Simone. I’ve known for a while now that I’m ready to fall in love again. Ready. I’ve never been prepared before. I’ve wanted love — craved it even. Ready is a new place. It’s a bone feeling — a spiritual…

For journalism to have a future, it must broaden its definition of audience — “Anybody can paint on a canvas. You can just pick up a canvas and paint what you feel. A mural — from the design to the finish — takes planning. You’re literally combining all those things that schools tell you don’t exist in the same space and time: math, science…

I was so inspired when Lewis Wallace published their application for Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab. It was transparency in action. I knew if I were ever selected to do something similar, I’d do the same. Well, here I am! I have been chosen as one of JSK’s Impact Fellows. I…

The older we get, the more life begins to feel as if it is tightening up around us. You feel the suffocation of responsibilities. We become weighed down by running thoughts of what was, what could’ve been, and what will be, and of course, the great march of time. We…

A few months ago, I found a videotape from my grandparents’ 40th wedding anniversary. It took me up until last week to find the strength (and let’s be honest a working VCR) to watch it. I hadn’t seen this video in probably 18 years or more. I couldn’t even recall…

Last Sunday, at a storytelling event in Detroit — The Speakeasy, I shared a story about the time a man told me he couldn’t date me (after months of dating me) because I was too fat. People came up to me after and expressed shock and sadness. My reaction last…

Yesterday I watched a compilation video of people finding out they would soon become grandparents. It brought me to shambles knowing that even if I wanted children I could never have that moment, especially knowing how much my mother would have enjoyed being a grandmother. That video was a trigger…

Growing up a Black girl raised by her southern grandparents in 1980s Detroit, the sound of the Baptist church choir is as much a part of my memories as any birthday party or the first day of school. I spent my formative years sitting in a pew at Unity Baptist…

When my mother died (10 years ago this week) one of the hardest things in the world for me to do starting almost immediately was finding reasons to get out of the bed. In the first week, I had the funeral and the people. The house was full of people…