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Influential Woman Susan Taylor |
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Published Sunday, February 24, 2008
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados
By Leroy Adolphus
 Susan Taylor
(Susan Taylor 2007)
SUSAN TELLS IT ALL
..
"I was a single mother for many years and there were times when I felt suicidal and I would turn around and look at my daughter and see that there is nobody to raise her and say to myself I can't leave her".
Susan Taylor's response to my question about the trials she faced raising a daughter as a single parent could perhaps sum up her life which has been characterised by an approach which gives value to the wisdom of stepping back and taking a view of the bigger picture.
"So who would have thought that I would have been the driving force behind one of the most celebrated African American-owned business success stories of the past three decades," she reflected, adding that this is living proof of the wisdom of her approach.
I caught up with the Editor Emeritus of the world-acclaimed Essence Magazine while she was on a recent visit to Barbados as a guest of the Young Women Christian Association of Barbados.
Sporting a cool orange top and sitting in one of the sofas in of the penthouse at the Crane Hotel on Barbados' east coast, I asked her about her visit to the tropics.
"Let me say that I come to the Caribbean every chance I get, because my roots are here. My grandmother was born here in Barbados, my mother was Trinidadian and my father was from St Kitts so I have a hunger for my family and my community that is Caribbean.
"I am here this time as part of the Barbados YWCA, to help them raise money to build a hostel so that children coming out of orphanages and troubled situations are not rushing out to the streets but they will have a place to go."
As our conversation deepened, Susan told me that as she looks around, the world and even in the Caribbean there has been an increase in the number of women who think less about themselves and who don't value their femininity.
"More than anything women need to have self esteem and we are in a media environment where young women aren't portrayed well and where they are used as sexual objects.
"We lose sight of who we really are from the inside out; it is not just about the aura and what you look like and what you have on and how you glam up, but it is really how you feel about yourself; what you think about yourself; what you are doing with your life and what I want for women is for them to own their power to know that each one of us is human and divine and to love your looks and love your life.
"Don't give yourself to men
I think we have to take inventory of the men we let into our lives and a lot of women, when we are lonely, we allow men in our lives, in our beds who should not even be in our living room. So I think it is important for women to be educated, to understand how money operates, to have and save their own money; be able to take care of themselves and their children well."
Susan adds that one thing she always says to young women is not to become pregnant, at least not until they are able to take care of themselves and a child for a year.
This is because, according to her, nothing throws a woman into poverty quicker than being a mother before she is emotionally and financially ready.
A fourth-generation entrepreneur, Susan was the founder of her own company, Nequai Cosmetics, before becoming Essence's fashion and beauty editor and, in 1981, its editor-in-chief.
She says too that there is something in her that yearns to see the development of the black race.
"You know it pains (me) when I think what African people have contributed to the world when we think of what we have done in terms of empowering European nations.
"Every time I go to Europe and I look at those magnificent cathedrals, museums, great tapestry and I do the same thing in the United States
.. much of it was built on the back of free slave labour that Africa gave to Europe , not for a decade or two or three
but we are taking about over hundred of years.
"Reparations are due. Will they be paid, I doubt it or not in our lifetime," she says.
Taylor says she wants black people to do what they have not done well "we don't love ourselves enough.
"The most revolutionary thing we can do is to love ourselves and to trust loving one another. Love is the only way out," she added.
What's her advice to women of the Caribbean especially who are battered?
"I want to say to all women, single mothers who are struggling because they are overwhelmed and men too, I want to say to them to take quiet introspective time.
"Take time just to be in touch with your breathing, take time to know the God in you, God is not in the sky, in the church, in the temple, God is omnipresent and the spirit is the breath of life that is alive as you.
"You are not here by mistake, there is nothing in your life that is an accident and there is nothing in your life that's wrong."
As she reached for a new zenith, that is the essence of Susan Taylor.
Leroy Adolphus is a junior reporter at the Barbados-based Caribbean Media Corporation. He is a recent graduate of the University of Guyana.
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