🎶 Do you know what today is…? 🎶

It’s our anniversary *somebody play Tony! Toni! Tone!*

This week we celebrated ZORA’s 2nd birthday and we salute all of you — the readers and the creators — who believe in and support ZORA every step of the way. To borrow a phrase from Senior Editor Jolie Doggett: We wouldn’t be two without you. And that’s the unfettered truth.

It’s our birthday, y’all!

Our long distance friendship deepened in the last year as Covid-19 took over the world, and we all gathered online to read, share and affirm our individual yet collective experiences. With community comes comfort, and we touched and agreed upon ways to combat sexism and racism while also bolstering our beauty and our mental health.

➡️ Read: “Celebrating Two Years of ZORA”

We shared secrets about our parents, our passions and our beliefs. We agreed with Nikki Giovanni that Black women are extraordinary yet we disagreed on the actions of the Gorilla Glue Girl. We laughed together, chuckling at interviews with Samantha Irby and The Astronomy Club. We learned together, taking in the advice of artists like Viola Davis, Issa Rae and Janelle Monae. And we are all the better for it.

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ZORA is proud to tell and share your stories. It is an enormous privilege to preserve our point of view for all future generations. Thanks again for playing your part and if you have a favorite ZORA story, please drop us a line and tell us what it is and why. zora@medium.com

Take care,

— Adrienne Samuels Gibbs

Director, Multicultural Content, Medium and Editor, ZORA

⭐️ Mars in Leo Brings Opportunity or Opposition⭐️

What’s written in the stars this week?

Today Mars, the planet of action, passion, and heat enters Leo. If “Hot Girl Summer” needed an official start date, this is it. To find out how this will impact your days ahead, check out this week’s ZORAscope.

✨ The Best of Us ✨

ICYMI, here are some of our favorite recent ZORA stories

Leave Lilibet Alone

4 Reasons Why I Can No Longer Center My Life Around Whiteness

The GRE Causes More Harm Than Good to Women of Color

The Price Ain’t Right

Naomi Osaka’s ‘No’ Is Our Summer Master Class in Self-Care

Gut Check: Do Your Actions and Work Align With Your Values?

Did Greed Derail a Handful of Tulsa Massacre Commemoration Events?

Turn in Your Bonnet Badges, Respectability Police

🗣️ The Last Word 🗣️

“Those that don’t got it, can’t show it. Those that got it, can’t hide it.” — Zora Neale Hurston

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