MORE THAN ENOUGH by ELAINE WELTEROTH

From having Oprah Winfrey as her imaginary aunt to becoming the first black Editor in Chief of Teen Vogue at the age of 29, Elaine always knew she was destined for greatness. She was born as the second child to Debra and Jack Welteroth, a black mother and white father. Growing up in the suburbs race wasn't an issue to her until she started attending the school where she always found herself in-between because she was always considered too white to be black and too black to be white. 

Elaine attended a predominantly white kindergarten and middle school where caramel skin wasn't considered beautiful and being white was the basic standard of beauty, till she got to high school, where she was thrust into a whole new world and all of a sudden she had to deal with attention from boys. She also had to navigate racial issues such as, black table and deciding between joining the track team or the soccer team.

 In her Junior year of high school she started dating "First love", but this relationship was far from your typical high school romance. And like all other women in the early nineties, she felt like the relationship was a "ride or die" affair and that she constantly had to prove her loyalty to First love, and in a bid to be the perfect ride or die chick, Elaine makes a major life-changing decision- she changed her preferred choice of College to the one First love was attending.

In her freshman year of College, Elaine breaks up with First love, and now more than ever she is confused about her identity because college proves to be a much more difficult place to navigate compared to High school, and for the first time Elaine is truly alone and more confused about her identity, she realizes however painfully that one does not need an invitation to black, but that blackness comes from a shared experience of exclusion. 

In her sophomore year of college, she developed a mentor-mentee relationship with one of her college professors which helped to set her on track. While interning with Ogilvy & Mather, she discovered a different kind of white and Noninclusivity which was a culture shock and this made her feel invisible and belittled. But despite the not so peachy experience, she found her calling and passion for magazine journalism.

Senior year of college brought a wave of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety about the future, but Elaine being raised in a black church household that had imbibed her with firm beliefs in God. Elaine knew she had faith, so she waited for a sign, and after finding a magazine clipping of Alicia Keys' and a trip to Chicago Elaine knew she was on the right path.

After Graduation she got her dream job, interning at Essence Magazine, but as the date would have it she ended up working with Ebony Magazine instead, and so Elaine packed up and moved to New York. She started her Job at Ebony and gradually built her way to the top, one brick at a time, making do with what was available. She got her first promotion, interviewed THE Oscar De la Renta, got backstage passe to Donna Karan and Carolina Herrera at Fashion week in New York.

Elaine's early 20s came with a lot of ups and downs, a major change in the hierarchical structure at work, a lot of love affairs that led to nothing, job changes, and a long relationship that quite literally ended in tears. 

Her late 20s, however, saw a lot of welcomed changes in Elaine's life both professionally and personally, she got her dream job, became the boss, and found the love that had always wanted. And even though Elaine's story was far from over she knows now that she will always be More than Enough.

Photo credit: Penguin Random House 

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