A Compilation of her
Letters from the Editor
1998 through 2000
From Radiance
Winter 2000
Dear Friends,
Well this is it! With this issue we cross over to the
year 2000. As I write this editorial, I find an excitement bubbling up
inside. It’s a thrill to experience the start of a new millennium
together.
Thanks for your feedback about our Fall 1999 issue,
the start of our fifteenth year in print. Over the past few months,
Camryn Manheim has sent us lots of new readers by recommending Radiance
in her book, Wake Up, I’m Fat. Welcome to all of you newcomers!
We have a good supply of back issues
available to help you catch up on our many years in print. Our Web site
is also full of articles, essays, and interviews from editions past and
present, so “bookmark” us and visit our site often. We’re
continually adding new material and features to our site at www.radiancemagazine.com
.
This Winter 2000 issue has been quite fun to put
together. Thanks especially to Catherine (our senior editor) for
carrying the flame of enthusiasm about the millennium and planning this
issue before my energy had been ignited! We’ve chosen four themes to
carry us into 2000: dance, travel, activism, and style. You’ll also
read quotes from leaders in the movement about what they wish for us in
the coming years. We’ll continue our millennium celebration throughout
2000 with other special features.
Coming in Spring, you’ll be amazed by Sheryl
Haworth, the seventeen-year-old world weight lifting champion! Also in
Spring, an assortment of essays and reflections from a variety of
perspectives, on finding love, intimacy and relationships, and on living
single. We’ll have poetry, fashion, and resources for all areas of our
lives. Watch for us around April 5.
On a personal note, these past months have brought a
bunch of changes, professional and personal, to my life. New office
staff, new art staff, new roommate, new personalities all around me.
Interviewing, hiring, training. Perhaps most significant, I have been
working to rebuild family relationships that reflect who I am now and
how I want to relate to my most intimate others.
I had been waiting to feel inspired in order to write
this column, to have something positive and upbeat to share with you.
But it didn’t come. Recently, I saw an Oprah show on depression; I was
amazed that it is such a common experience for so many women, and I
recognized some of myself in these women’s stories. Over this past
year I began counseling to look at some of the areas in my life which
were giving me problems: Come in, sit down, kick off my shoes, arrange
the couch pillows, grab some Kleenex, and begin talking! Through our
weekly sessions I grew to trust my therapist with my heart. I’ve come
to see a lot about myself, why I am like I am, what hurts, why, what’s
hard for me, why. I also see more clearly the bright parts of who I am.
My therapist helped me gain insight into the messages my dreams were
bringing me and provided me with a safety net as I walked through and
explored my life from all angles. She helped create a place for me to
feel my pain without shame.
I’ve also increased my time outdoors in the pool—evenings,
after work, and a day or so on the weekends. Being in the water has
been, and continues to be, one of the best things I do for myself. I’ve
developed quite a network of friends in the pool and we talk, or not, as
we go back and forth in our slow lane! I’ve also made a point of going
out more, becoming more social, with my sister Amy and her family who
live an hour south of me, with members of the size-acceptance community
in our Bay Area, and with different friends.
And I’m going to start taking some time off for
R&R, real vacation time. I’ve rented a vacation home for a few
days on the coast with a friend, for relaxation, reading, hanging out,
and good food. Especially wonderful will be the hot tub on the deck
overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I can hardly wait.
I plan to bring more fun and activity back into my
life bit by bit, more meals and walks and nights out on the town with
friends, more cultural events and live theater (which I’m always so
inspired by), day trips throughout our greater San Francisco Bay Area,
and short trips to visit pals around the country.
Almost serendipitously, as I found myself coming out
of down mode and with better understanding of depression, I started
getting more e-mails and letters from readers new to Radiance,
who were very down. Some were feeling desperation (most weight-related,
some not), and had found our Web site in the middle of the night while
searching on-line for support. I could relate to what they were feeling.
I had been there. I could tell them there is hope, that feelings and
situations do change, and that there are steps we can take to help
ourselves along.
If you find yourself going through a dark time, do
what comforts you and helps you think things through. Listen to music,
grab your journal, call your friends, send a letter (even an SOS!). And
don’t hesitate to find a support group or professional therapist to
talk to. I know many people who have gotten the relief they needed to
identify new solutions and see life clearly again through a course of
antidepressants and professional guidance.
The hype as well as the genuine excitement about a new
year, especially a new millennium, can heighten all of our emotions; we
can either be inspired or overwhelmed by this. On one level, it’s just
another year. On another, it’s an especially good time to take stock
of what in your life you like and what gets in your way.
For the year 2000, please do what you can to recognize
more of yourself, your needs, abilities, joys, strengths, pleasures, and
yearnings. Make a plan, take some steps, bring more of yourself to
light.
With this, I welcome you to our Winter
Millennium 2000 issue.
With love,
Alice Ansfield
Founder, Editor, Publisher ©
Remember,
this is only a taste of what's inside the printed version of the
magazine!
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