Editor’s Letter: August 2019
I remember writing to Kailah last December and talking about how Rookie had finished up and how near and dear I had held that magazine to me throughout my teens. I told her that I longed to find, or possibly, create, something to fill it’s shoes/follow in its footsteps, and I knew she wanted that too. It wasn’t until mid-July that she came to me like, ‘We’re really gonna do this,’ and asked me to be one of the angels. Kailah, you are so beautiful and so talented. I am forever grateful to have met you and so honoured to be a part of this. I was in before you even told me the idea.
July has been a whirlwind for so many reasons, one of them of course being that I am now an executive editor of Mid-Heaven Mag! I think if you had told me a month ago that I would get published on Gurls Talk and The Loud Journal AND become an editor for a magazine I would have told you to SHUT UP! But it’s real and it’s here and I know because I am turned towards it like a sunflower to the sun.
After all that’s happened, it’s easy to get caught up in the future, wondering what it holds, where this path is gonna lead. I’d like to believe that it’s bright, that it will lead us into the rose garden, that something good will come of it. But thinking about the future is dizzying at best and terrifying at worst, at least, that’s how it is for me, so I’ve been trying to stay grounded in the present moment and remind myself that what’s meant to be will be.
Right now, I’m sitting on the couch in my dressing gown, listening to Joy Crookes and drinking ginger tea. My thoughts are racing at such a speed that it’s hard to tell if I’m actually thinking anything at all, and catching them is like trying to capture a butterfly in your bare, cupped hands. But I still try, just so I have something to set free.
It feels so strange sharing my thoughts with you all here. It’s like, because I know it’s for an audience — however small — I get stage fright. And I know my mom is somewhere in the audience (hi, Mom!) and that makes me even more self-conscious than if it were just a crowd of strangers (even though I could literally write an eighteen page essay on why I hate Ross Geller and she’d still eat up every word). But all that aside, I know this is what I want. I want to share myself with you, otherwise I wouldn’t have followed Kailah so blindly into mid-heaven.
The other day, she left me a voice message saying that she knows how many magazines there are out there, ‘so what makes Mid-Heaven unique? What stands out about us that sets us apart from all the others?’
And to be honest, I’m not even sure we know yet. All we know is that we are here to uplift and to nurture the voices of those who aren’t always listened to, who aren’t always taken seriously, yet who are undeniably the ones influencing/defining 21st century culture.
When I think of the word ‘mid-heaven,’ I think of the space between heaven and earth — a place that’s far enough away from the world we know to make us feel lighter in our beings, and close enough to heaven that our souls can feel at peace. Literal meanings aside, ‘Mid-Heaven’ is, put simply, the space in between. We know that we are not the first magazine of our kind, and we know that we won’t be the last. But we are here and we have so much heart and we intend to pour every last droplet of it into this magazine for you all to hold.
We hope you feel a sense of belonging here, as ‘Mid-Heaven’ is just as much yours as it is ours. We are the ones you will hear about in the future. We are the future. And this is only the beginning.
Love,
Sarah