Journal

The organ is playing, low and mournful, and the sound settles into the stone walls, remaining there. I am standing at the front of a cathedral, looking down at a woman I used to be. Her face is still. Her hands are folded. She looks peaceful in the way that

There are words I return to when I'm standing at a crossroads. They belong to Hillel the Elder, a Jewish sage who lived over two thousand years ago. He asked three questions that have echoed through centuries of interpretation, and they surface in my mind whenever I need

I was raised by the most beautiful woman in the world. Eartha Kitt, Dorothy Dandridge, Diahann Carroll had nothing on my mom. Neither did I. That's what I believed, anyway. I'd absorbed the message that lighter was better, that her golden-brown skin sat higher on some