Welcome to staging-blacklove.kinsta.cloud! Two years ago, my husband, Tommy, and I created the Black Love television series which airs on the Oprah Winfrey Network. It has meant the world to me to be able to travel with my husband to city after city talking to married couples about their relationships and their journeys through love. What happens when we do not see ourselves positively represented in entertainment and in the media is that we believe what we are told about who we are. It was so important to me to impact that narrative, that we created the series with our own money and edited the first season at our dining room table –– before OWN picked it up. We will forever be indebted to the couples who told us their stories without knowing what the end result would be. And even through that beautiful journey, we always knew that the show was just one small glimpse into our love stories. With that truth in our heart, my husband and I, along with our incredible team, have now created staging-blacklove.kinsta.cloud, a new space to gather and share even more of our stories.   Black Love features married couples talking about what it takes to make a marriage work, but it doesn’t take long to realize that “success” in relationships requires a lot of us. It requires maturity. It requires perspective. It requires patience, forgiveness, compromise, humility, and self-love. If we’re lucky we develop those traits long before we meet “the one” –– but it’s never too late to be the happiest, healthiest version of yourself. Photographer: Christian Adkins II With this in mind, we hope we’ve created staging-blacklove.kinsta.cloud as a place where each of us can explore who we are even more deeply. Our backgrounds, our challenges, our pain, and our lessons connect us, but we are nothing if we do not learn from them. Tommy and I set out to build a place that is “360 degrees of Black love” –– as he puts it. We’ve gathered voices who inspire us and those we admire to share their journeys. Our aim is that these voices empower each of us to be the best version of ourselves and equip us with the tools and information mainstream media doesn’t tell us. Want an example? Start with the myth of the Black Marriage Crisis. You, our Black Love community, have been so generous with your feedback. You talk about Black Love, the series, on your social media, and when we’ve been on the road with Black Love, you have shown up in droves to tell us what it means to you. Please, don’t stop there. Check out staging-blacklove.kinsta.cloud, tell us what you love, what you hate (we can take it), and what you’d like to see. You can even become a contributor by submitting your own story. Together we can provide a healthy foundation for our relationships and our families. With so much love, Codie Elaine Oliver @codieco