Living Single was my favorite Black sitcom growing up. It featured four Black women creating full, meaningful lives in the Big Apple. But, there was always a but. Much of the show centered around them finding “The One.” Don’t get me wrong. We had the star of the show, Khadijah who was an award-winning journalist and founder of a magazine. Regine Hunter, the ambitious fashionista extraordinaire. Max, the fiercely independent lawyer. And Sinclaire, the free-spirited butterfly. These were fully developed characters and still their lives were portrayed as incomplete without having a man on their arm.

This was a pattern I didn’t really pick up on until I was an adult. Maybe because for me that was normal and I, too, fantasized about my dream person and dream wedding. Now at thirty years old, that fantasy remains just as it was, a dream. Being a single Black woman is hard, especially in a world that is constantly trying to convince us that we are undesirable or worse, that we need to lower our standards (see: Tyler Perry and every movie he’s made). Regardless, not all Black women are kneeling to that propaganda. Author Minda Honey, who also happens to be the Black Joy editor, is one of those women.

In her debut memoir, The Heartbreak Years, Honey explores the dynamics of some of her most formative romantic relationships. However, this is not simply a book about dating and heartbreak, it’s about wading through the messiness of finding love while simultaneously finding yourself. This IS a love story, but not the one you’re expecting. Honey’s candid, witty and all too relatable stories reminds us that you can want more and also be more than enough for yourself and yourself only.

If you have ever been a person who felt like you had to perform for the affections of potential and current lovers, I feel like this book stripped you bare. I felt naked because I saw parts of my own experience in young, 20-something Minda. What was it like revisiting those moments in your life, where your desire to be chosen and get your happily ever after led to several acts of self-betrayal?

I think people talk a lot right now about healing your inner child and re-parenting your inner child, but I feel like we have to reach back and find love, compassion, grace and generosity for all the former versions of ourselves. So, writing this book gave me an opportunity to kind of look back on myself with a tenderness. I feel like we go through different phases of blaming the other person, blaming ourselves, blaming society, and then and only then can we come back and show our self that love and care and just be like, “You know what, no one has it figured out. You were just trying to do the best that you could do with the tools you’ve been given, unaware that you’ve been given tools from the wrong toolbox.”

The experiences you shared were very detailed and it all felt very in the moment in certain parts. As a reader, I felt like I was there with you as things unfolded. How did you get through that process as a writer, but also as a human being?

I mean, that’s just the craft element of it, you know, that’s the alchemy of turning your life into art. So even though I was able to put the reader back into those moments, and [into] the way that I felt in those moments and how deeply I felt, at this age and as a writer, I have that emotional distance. Some of these pieces I wrote in real time. So, some of these pieces I’ve been sitting with for more than a decade.

I think the most challenging piece to write was the chapter on colorism, “LA Face Oakland Booty.” Because for me, it felt really important to address colorism. But it’s a really touchy topic, and because people don’t speak on it enough, I feel like it would be very easy to make some missteps. And so I just really wanted to make sure that I covered the topic and that I did it as best as I could possibly do it. So, that’s where I had a lot of anxiety and felt like it was really fraught versus writing about my dating life. Not only had I been hashing and rehashing these stories as a writer, but I hashed and rehashed them with my friends, with a therapist. So, the pain didn’t feel fresh to me.

The epilogue feels like a stream of consciousness that’s tussling between the frustration of being single and also coming to a point of acceptance. I would probably describe it as ambivalent and not in a bad way, but as someone who is perpetually single and had many of those thoughts and feelings, it’s really messy. So was that the point of the epilogue to kind of show that messiness? Or was the intention something entirely different?

Yeah, I think a lot of times when we see dating memoirs like this, they end with a bow. They end with the wedding. They end with someone finding that love of their life, and that just wasn’t my story. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t find things along the way. It didn’t mean that I haven’t created a life that I really love and that I hadn’t filled it with people who really love me. And I can be thankful for all of those things and still have that disappointment that I haven’t found that great love yet. Both of those things can be true, and I think that we should be allowed the space to be both thankful and disappointed.

If you don’t get that big job, you want that big promotion, that scholarship, that fellowship people don’t come into your life and go “Well, at least you aren’t living on the streets” because you’d be like, “you’re an a**hole.” So, there’s space to be thankful for the fact like “Ohh I might not have my dream job, but I do have a job that pays all my bills and it’s stable,” and to also aspire to more. I think the same space should be available for people who are single but aren’t necessarily content in their singleness. It’s like, I have a great life, but I still also want this other thing and that’s OK.

My favorite part of this book was kind of how shameless it was. I know I’ve carried a lot of shame about my past as a teen and young adult and there’s so many things I wish I could go back and change. But you didn’t really go into that. I don’t think you went into this memoir with a chip of regret on your shoulder. It felt refreshing. What advice would you give to young Black women who are stumbling their way through heartbreaks and perpetual singleness? What do you want them to know?

That you’re not alone in it. I think it can be easy to feel like everybody else [except] you has found their match [but] you’re not alone in it and that sadness don’t last always. Those feelings come in waves. Sometimes you’re gonna feel a little bitter. Sometimes you’re gonna feel sad. Sometimes you’re gonna feel resentful, but that wave is gonna come in and it’s also gonna recede and allow you the happiness and joy in your life. It’s OK to feel those feels and then let them go and move on to the next thing.

As far as the shame goes, as a writer like I tell my students, your creative practice cannot withstand the weight of your shame. You cannot write something that is honest and true and well written and burden it with shame. You just can’t. So, you have to release the shame in order to create the art. And if you ain’t there yet, don’t put it in the book. There’s plenty of things I’m still ashamed of and they are not in these pages.

Any final thoughts you’d like to share?

I just really hope that Black women pick up this book and that they love it. And that it can just offer them a space of consolation as they’re navigating their heartbreak years.

Buy Minda Honey’s memoir, The Heartbreak Years, at the Black Joy bookshop!