I cheated this year. During the final edit of stories for this year's Women's Issue, I joked with the copy editors there was a preponderance of black women in the issue.
"I'm the only Negress around here," I said.
I'd like to say it's an accident or coincidental that so many black female faces stare and smile back at you from their accompanying stories, but it was really by design. These women of color are my friends, and they represent different areas and eras and perspectives of my life.
They are, in the kaleidoscopic prism of my life, me. Their stories speak for who I was or aspire to be.
I met Renee Johnson through my oldest brother years ago when I was confused and depressed and her hours of non-judgmental listening and conversation was like a gust of wind between my ears. In her "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady," I am that friend she says called her Howard Hughes.
With Renee, the scales fell away from my eyes and, through our friendship, I came to an entirely new and frightening level of womanhood I didn't know I could even handle or achieve.
Likewise, Vinnie Ray is a friend who introduced me to my sassy self. She taught me, unabashedly, that it's all right to be whoever I am on any given day. And, deliciously, I don't necessarily have to apologize for myself.
See, I'd spent too many years apologizing. Vinnie taught me that apologies are for the guilty.
Mina Jefferson is my best friend and has been since the fifth grade at Forest View Elementary School. We're like war buddies -- we've seen, heard and experienced so much together. There's a place set for me at her family's table.
She is my sister, my family. That she is now the mother of twins is like a sweet bookend to my life. She once told me in high school that we're what the other is not. As much time as I've devoted to analyzing, defining and understanding our friendship, that phrase, in Mina's typically succinct and lawyerly manner, said it all.
Devin Parrish is my younger sister. She's a gifted and muscular writer who surprised even myself with her frankness and brevity. Her quest for herself mirrors my own when I was her age.
Tracy Walker is my talented co-worker who could be a writer if she put her mind to it. She never lacks ways to communicate her experiences, which, in turn, makes them important to anyone who reads her story.
The other writers -- Darlene D'Agostino, Katie Moser and Maria Rogers -- are current or former co-workers and friends. I knew they could handle the task of disseminating and navigating other women's stories and, in Darlene's case, charting her long and winding path to womanhood.
Finally, we asked women readers to submit brief stories of their personal journeys on the verge, and I was amazed to receive 60 pieces. I wish I could print several dozen, but space constraints forced me to choose five.
These are all stories about women emerging from one life and oneself and finding themselves perched on the cusp of newness. Hence, they've all got that new life smell. Some merged into their new selves when they found or left a man, had a baby, changed careers or found God.
I'm proud of this issue because it's been like assembling an all-star team. It's funny, but whenever women talk honestly about their lives, the tone comes very close to that of a New Age rally. That's because women don't fear the truth of emotions, and I chose the women I did because I knew them each to be fearless.
Besides my usual column in the front of the paper, an open letter to Angela Leisure, I opted out of writing a first-person piece for this issue. I'd like to give some feel-good explanation for this, but after reading everyone else's work I realized there was little else I could add that would enlighten readers.
I was going to tell you about my eight-day trip to Amsterdam and how it changed my life and made me this brand new woman. Mostly it made me sick and tired, so that's that.
What I hope you do take from this issue is that these women are nothing and everything, just like anyone else. But their stories could be those of your own mothers, sisters, wives and lovers. And if you haven't been listening closely to those women in your lives, perhaps these strangers will help you better appreciate the women you heretofore regarded as arm candy.
If you don't have at least one good woman in your life, you need to be about getting one. And if you're put off by my blatant use of nepotism, get over it.
The women I know are smart, vital, vivacious, funny and significant. Just like me.
They speak for me, and I hope they speak to you.
