It seemed there was nothing I could do to make my Editor’s Letter flow this month. Stewing in frustration, I hit “select all, delete” on my entire first draft, one that took days to finish. I was ready to tell the team to run a big picture of something cool and call it a day. Writer’s block, I suppose, but I had a feeling it was deeper than that.

Until literally all but this page of the magazine had been produced, I just couldn’t make sense of my extreme creative congestion. As always, I reviewed the last month in Black Life in America (a news service in my head) to scan for the stuff you care about. I searched my heart for the stories that evoked something in me personally. For example, during the making of this issue, I shed real tears for #SandraBland and #BobbiKristina, for different reasons at the outset but the same one in the end: The familiar tragedy of young Black women and interrupted lives. We all know there were complications in the existences of both women and there are unknown and disputable details about both deaths, but the incidents strike an emotional chord within many of us. It’s just the worst. End of story.

Back to my hesitance to write, I was finally able to understand what had me so anxious: I want to shout from the highest mountain how much I LOVE FASHION AND BLACK MODELS. And there’s a part of me that thinks some of you might not get it—which, of course, I’d get.

Read more in the September 2015 issue of EBONY Magazine.