I’ve loved magazines my whole life. My mom got every woman’s mag of her era: Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, McCalls, Women’s Day & Family Circle. She never cooked anything out of them or fixed up our house like them (she did raise six kids, tho, who turned out pretty well despite a home that would never have made a centerfold spread.)

As a teen, I loved Seventeen Magazine, Mademoiselle Magazine, Glamour Magazine and secretly checked out Cosmopolitan Magazine (and then read it religiously through my 20s).

As an adult, I’ve read Sunset Magazine since we moved to California as well as had long and short & short affairs with Martha Stewart Living,  Real Simple & Self  Magazine as well as Newsweek, Time & Businessweek.

As my my career moved into the Tech World, I added Wired Magazine, The Industry Standard, Fast Company Magazine and Business 2.0. As my despair of the tech & business world grew, I sought escape in Travel & Leisure, Yoga Journal, National Geographic Traveller…. and O Magazine.

For the last 15 years, Oprah’s magazine has been a steady and steadying presence in my life. Her milestones matched my own. Her clarion call to a better day and better life helped me through difficult periods. And speaking of periods, the one theme I’ve waited for O to cover is the life cycle of women as measured by their menstrual cycles. From the first cramps of pre-pubescent teenager to the nervous checking of missed dates and ovulation cycles of the child-bearing years to the peri-and post-menstrual periods, women’s lives are bound by blood.

And so, I shed some tears this week saying goodbye to Oprah along with millions worldwide as her eponymous show came to a close. But I am ever so grateful that O Magazine will continue on– giving me monthly spiritual, literary and communal inspiration.  To that magazine collection, I’ve added yet another sign of days of my life: AARP Magazine!

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