LETTER FROM THE FOUNDER
My sisters, When the not-so-novel idea came to me to do a Valentine’s issue about love, I was excited! My excitement continued to grow as I realized that, in spite of what the media shows us, I’ve known so many couples who have stayed together for a lifetime – like Mr. and Mrs. Mack and Rose Crawford who were married for 69 years — and former Mayor Elzie and Mrs. Ruby Odom, who have been married for 76 years! What excited me even more is that I was able to talk to some of these couples about where they started – allowing me to feel all the energy surrounding their first meeting, their journey from strangers to friends to spouses, their pride for the families they have created, and how, after all these years, they would choose each other again and again. Since I’m “amongst friends,” I can also admit that there was a moment after we started 4
prepping this issue when the “gremlins” stepped in and almost made me secondguess my place in this conversation. After all, I’m a divorcée who, by society’s standards, has never quite gotten it “right.” I swear I could hear Halle Berry’s character in Boomerang (the 90’s movie) poking me in the head and asking, “But what do you know about love?” I also wondered how our many, many single, divorced, and widowed YANAsisters would feel about this issue. After all, it wouldn’t be great for an organization called “you are not alone” to make our members feel even more alone... By then, we were halfway through the interviews so there was no going back – only the option to keep pressing forward to see where this journey took us. And now, having completed this very special THIS WILL BE (AN EVERLASTING LOVE) issue, I’m so incredibly glad we did.
