This story was originally published in ESSENCE’s special 55th anniversary July/August 2025 issue, on stands now.
The last time I published “In the Spirit” in ESSENCE was in 2008. I never expected to return to the column that I began writing monthly in 1981 when I was promoted to Editor-in-Chief of the magazine. “In the Spirit” was a diary of sorts, a sanctuary for sharing life lessons, spiritual awakenings and difficult issues, both personal and sociaI, that I was wrestling with. It was also my way of connecting deeply, heart to heart, with sisters. Surprisingly, over time, our brothers grew to nearly 30 percent of our readership.
My connection to us, to our people, gives me insight and strength. I continued writing “In the Spirit” after I appointed the editors who succeeded me. Overseeing the magazine from a distance, I was able to sharpen my focus on the other ESSENCE properties under my wing—from the televised Essence Awards to branded products to the Festival. When ownership of Essence Communications, Inc., changed hands, tensions arose. Transitions in business, as in life, can be difficult.
By the time 2007 rolled around, I was weary of the strained relationships at the company. But different winds had also been calling me since 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast and our beloved New Orleans. I knew it was time to move on. I’d learned so much over the decades. Given my all. I wanted to be boots on the ground, directly serving our children and communities in crisis. I had spent 37 years at ESSENCE. It was a most beautiful run.
When ESSENCE debuted in May of 1970, I was a cosmetologist and entrepreneur. I’d founded the first company to make custom-blended foundation for Black women, Nequai Cosmetics. Two beautiful Black men, Abdul Raheem Sami and Ron Lucas, told me about an open position in the new magazine’s beauty department. Hurriedly, I made an appointment to interview with Ida Lewis, the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief. She hired me later that year as a beauty writer. In 1971, 26-year-old Marcia Ann Gillespie rose to Editor-in-Chief and promoted me to Fashion and Beauty Editor. It was such an exciting time. The ESSENCE staff was young and ablaze with purpose.
Fueled by fierce determination, we were building in the magnificent light of the Black Power Movement that was illuminating a path forward for African-Americans. Everything was transformed—from how we embraced our history and Motherland to how we were taking on new roles in public and corporate life, and from expanding the ways we worshiped to seeing the breadth of our beauty and style on magnificent display.
Rarely do we grasp the magnitude of the moment in which we’re living, how we are bending history, shaping an unseen future. But we were propelled by mutuality and respect, by rigorous thought and boundless curiosity, by a deep and abiding commitment to the women we served—and the steadfast embrace and support of our readers. These are the values that kept us rising and ensured Essence Communications, which after more than half a century lives on securely—and is again Black owned.
When I was appointed Editor-in-Chief, I stepped onto a landscape that had been carefully cultivated. Brilliant, fearless and precise, Marcia Ann Gillespie, a student of history, insisted we celebrate legacy and elevate our stories boldly and with integrity. We were planting flowers in soil long ago made rich by the deep-rooted wisdom and hope of our foreparents, soil still warm with struggle.
Today, the ESSENCE brand is a constellation of offerings—from the iconic magazine to the beloved Festival to the powerful gatherings that convene our community in purpose and pride. Each offering is a place to uplift truth, refuse silence and, through images and words, bear witness to our dignity and power. Despite bestial brutality and life-limiting economic and social injustices made legal—some existing still—our foreparents clung fiercely to their humanity and envisioned ours. Our ancestral charge is to grow a future worthy of their centuries of sacrifice and dreams.
The current climate of cruelty and chaos is designed to overwhelm us. Like many, I’ve felt the weight of the world pressing against me. The public sorrows amplify the personal ones when we forget the truth: God is our unfailing partner. The Holy Spirit lives in us—is us! We are human and divine. We are God’s beating heart and healing hands, vessels that the Creator inhabits to pour love into our aching, radiant world. We are here to unravel the tangle of pain and promise and reweave it into a fabric of healing hope.
I’ve returned to ESSENCE for this special 55th Anniversary Issue not just to look back but to also look forward. This moment is a mirror and a compass. We are not broken, lacking or lost. These are trying times. We are carrying personal pain, collective pain, the weight of a government’s overreach pressing hardest upon the most vulnerable of all: Black children growing up in poverty. Pain reveals what we may have ignored, what needs tending, what we can transform. Pain comes to visit. But it’s not here to stay. Let our pain shake us awake and compel us to use our power to choose, to heal what is hurting us and our people. Let it awaken us to our power to walk forward with understanding, courage—and strategy.
Each day give yourself to yourself before you give yourself away. Peace, be still. Turn away from the screens. For a few minutes go within, be with the silence and stillness and you will hear the wisdom of the Spirit. Remembering our rituals is key. It is our duty to become our own best friend, to silence the punishing inner critic. It is our sacred assignment to honor the light within, and work every day in partnership with God—and one another. Let love lead the way!