As I was driving home from my daughter’s ballet class last night, my best friend said: “10 years have gone by so fast. I remember when you were in your room, cutting out magazines when you first started.” She is right. In some aspects, this has gone fast, so fast that I have forgotten a lot of what has happened.

On June 15th 2014, Black Ballad went live when I was in a very different place in my life. I was an energetic twenty something who was willing to battle anyone over anything. I was selfish in my desire to succeed and if I’m completely honest, I had low self esteem, felt depressed about not breaking into the journalism industry. Black Ballad was born out of my failure. I thought I would create a little blog and a year later get a job working at a mainstream glossy. While this may have been the plan, as you can see by reading this, it was not the outcome.