Denene Millner is an author, journalist and editor of the award winning blog she founded in 2010, MyBrownBaby.com. She has written 18 books of fiction and non-ficiton including co-authoring two #1 New York Times bestsellers, Straight Talk, No Chaser and Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, both with Steve Harvey. She was also an editor at both Honey and Parenting magazines, where she is still a columnist. Denene is mother to two perfectly baked girlpies and the wife of equally talented author and journalist, Nick Chiles, with whom she has penned several of her best selling books.
This month on Forty Firece we are talking to Denene about how she manages her many hats, parenting and the fabulous (and not so fabulous) over 40 life.
You are now recognized as the guru of bringing up Brown babies because of your award-winning site My Brown Baby, but unlike many other bloggers, you have a whole history as a writer and journalist. How did you get your start?
Yes, I’m a long-time journalist. I got my first check as a professional writer at 17 years old. Writing has always been a passion. I started at the Associated Press as a News and Politics reporter, and then I left there and went to the New York Daily News as an Entertainment and Politics reporter. When I left the Daily News I went to Honey Magazine (remember Honey!?). I was the Features Editor at Honey under Amy Barnett who was the Editor and Angela Burt Murray was the Managing Editor (Mitzi Miller – current Editor-in-Chief of Jet Magazine was an intern back then). When I left Honey I was recruited by Time Inc. to join Parenting Magazine. At the time, I was the only Black woman on the editorial staff, and it was such an awesome experience because I was a young mother with two daughters. I just felt like it was this humungous opportunity and experience as a mother, not just as a journalist, but also as a mother because as an African American woman I never looked at those magazines as a place for me. I didn’t feel like they spoke to my experience or that they even bothered to put children who looked like mine in the pages, let alone talk about the experiences that we go through as we journey through this life with this skin. And so me being at the magazine presented an opportunity for me to put my mark on it and guide the conversation towards the experience of mothers who weren’t necessarily white, who weren’t necessarily stay-at-home moms with husbands who make a lot of money, not to say that those aren’t the experiences of Black moms, but our experiences tend to be different and that wasn’t showing up in the pages. As a result, when I left Parenting, they gave me an advice column, which made me the only African American with a column writing for a major {mainstream) magazine in the country. I gave advice on how parents could better raise their children. We talked about ethics. We talked about parenting. We talked about relationships. People would send me questions, and I would answer them from my perspective as a parent and all of the time with the voice of an African American mom. When I left Parenting I felt like that voice was still missing, particularly in the motherhood space – particularly in the online space and how it had transformed itself from magazines to online. Mom blogs were sprouting up everywhere, and these communities were happening organically, but none of them were talking about African American parenting so I was just like If y’all won't do it, I’ll get it done! I had the backing of Parenting, my experience as a journalist and the know-how of how to talk emotionally about parenting because of my column. So I started mybrownbaby.com in 2008.
What I look forward to is the response to things that happen in Black culture from the perspective of a Black Parent and the way you connect it back to Black parenting issues. For instance, there was a recent article on Beyonce being called a ‘whore’ in a mainstream London newspaper after her performance at the Grammys and you connected that to a conversation about how to watch things like that with your child or figure out how to not watch them with your child. That’s the benefit to me of the site because it always comes back to raising Black children.
You are multi-talented and carry several titles – author, journalist, entrepreneur, and blogger. Which do you prefer?
I really love blogging out of all of them because when I write books I’m usually writing for other people so it’s really taking their voice and trying to figure out how to translate their message into book form, but it's not necessarily all of my ideas or all of my message because I’m writing if for other people. With magazines, I write for Ebony, Essence, Jet and others, and I’ll do anything from relationship stories, to as told to stories to entertainment. They really let me fly in that regard as a journalist, and I do enjoy that. But I think that the freedom of being able to be totally me and to really be able to speak to my own experience is invaluable. I always wanted to be a columnist. The one thing I always said I wanted to do as a young journalist was to be a columnist because I felt like that was a way to be a voice for people who don’t really have one in a media space. So, being able to do that every day in a space that I created for myself – there’s nothing like that.
Our site is about being in your 40s and you are 45 years gorgeous. Did you feel like there was a point for you professionally or personally where there was a shift for you to bring you to where you are now?
When I was in my late 30s right around the time we decided to move to Atlanta and I decided to become a freelancer and I decided to leave my full time job, there was a shift in my thinking that was about my family. When I turned 40, though, that shift became more about me as a woman and what I’m doing to make myself happy. And it’s a journey. I’m still not there – I’m 45, I’ll be 45 in October and I still have moments like Okay, for real what do I really like? What makes me happy? What should I be doing to make sure I’m putting the oxygen mask on my face first before I put it on everybody else’s face? And it’s not easy after 40 years of being told that you are supposed to cater to everyone else as a woman and your job is to be there for everyone else and be sure that they are taken care of to then do this total 180 and figure out how you’re gonna make yourself happy and what you’re gonna do to make yourself responsible for your own happiness. So the shift for me was that Denene needs to start taking care of Denene, and that shift happened around age 40. And I think that was because I started realizing like Oh, you kinda good at what you do! you know, because my entire life I had been taught to be humble about what you do and I still think that I’m very humble about what I do. You won't see me going around bragging and boasting. I let my work speak for itself. But I was raised to keep my head down, to be quiet, to kind of accept what’s given to me and be grateful for that. So the idea of saying No, that’s not good enough. No, that’s not what I want. I want this. Yes, I am very good at what I do, and because I am very good at what I do, I deserve this, and you’re going to give it me or I’m going to go that way. –that didn’t kick in for me until I turned 40 and until my girls got a little older and could understand the words coming out of my mouth when I said, No. It didn’t kick in for me until I realized that yes, its great to be a supportive wife and make sure that he feels catered to but you deserve to cater to yourself, too. I would say when I turned 40 that shift happened, and I started thinking of things differently. And it’s still a journey. Five years later, that shift still manifests itself in different ways, but the forties is my decade. Because it just made me realize that Okay, Denene’s kind of a bad sister, and it’s okay to say that.
Do you have a personal mantra that helps to keep you present and helps you to remember these things?
I have a bracelet that I wear all of the time that is a leather cuff and it has the last line of Nikki Giovanni’s poem “Ego Trippin” on it and it says, “…I mean I can fly like a bird in the sky.” To me those words and the words of "Ego Trippin" specifically, are just… I mean that poem is about how dope Black women are and how we have a history of soaring at anything we touch. In the end it's almost like she’s saying all of these sisters came before you and did the damn thing, and I believe "I can fly like a bird in the sky" – in other words you are just as amazing as all of those women who came before you. And so when I see that and I wear that, it’s almost like a cape putting that bracelet on. If I wasn’t so afraid of ink, I would get it tatted on me, because I really do believe that I finally figured out in my forties that I can fly like a bird in the sky. There’s no reason why I can’t identify something that I want to do and then go and do it. There’s nothing stopping me. I’m still strong. I’m smarter than I’ve ever been. I’m wiser than I’ve ever been, and I’ve been through a myriad of experiences that really sort of laid out what my strengths are and there is no reason why I can’t identify something that I really love and really want to do and then fly like a bird in the sky and go get it. So that’s my mantra. If there’s something that I want to do, I’m going to get it done and that’s just who I am as a person. And all of these years up until 40 I thought that these things sort of happen by circumstance or someone giving it to me, but the fact of the matter is now that I’m 45 I can look back at it I see that really there was some thought that went into the things that I did and there was some effort and creativity and intelligence that went in to my ability to get what I had. I may not have been looking at it that way then, but there is a way for me to look at it that way now and understand that there was some thought and intelligence that went into it what I did and there’s no reason why I can’t carry that into the rest of my life. I’m 45 and I’m still young and I believe I can fly like a bird in the sky.
That’s a perfect way to end our chat! You are so immensely inspirational to me and I know you will be to our readers. A few last “getting to know you” questions:
Maxine or Rajean: Maxine
Five inch stilettos or three inch wedges: Five-inch stilettos (I’m 5’1 ½ and the ½ is important!)
Mary Higgins-Clark or Stephen King: Stephen King (he still scares the hell outta me!)
Collard Greens or Kale: Both! (can’t pick one!)
