Michelle Alexander's "A Gurlz Guide" Brings Lesbians Together

What a difference time and a circle of good friends can make. Michelle Alexander, the founder and creator of the lesbian blog, "A Gurlz Guide" (AGG), found her way back to her inactive site after overcoming the loss of her soul mate almost two years ago, and now seeks to make it one of the top three lesbian sites in the country.

"After Lisa died, I had an overwhelming need to share and give back," said Alexander in a recent interview with EDGE.

"A Girlz Guide" was at a standstill almost two years ago when Alexander's girlfriend, Lisa Lawson, went missing a few days before Thanksgiving 2012. Devastated, Alexander worked effortlessly to find Lawson and to bring attention to the case. But, sadly, Lawson was found dead a month later from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

It was in the midst of Alexander's own healing that she began thinking of ways to improve AGG. She reached out to the Michelle Daniels, creator, writer and producer and Christina Brown, director, of the online lesbian series "Between Women." Daniels and her group had produced a video to bring attention to Lawson's missing person case in the early days of the search.

As she tried to cope with her loss and to come to terms with the sadness, Alexander retreated to find peace. But she couldn't stay away for long. So in the midst of trying to cope with her own pain she continued to think of ways to help others and once again she was steered back to her website. After all, that had been the original mission of AGG -- to help others and to provide an outlet for people to share their stories of pain and overcoming their pain.

"My inbox was flooded with emails about issues of depression and suicide. I realized there was a need for a place, one space that talked about things like that," Alexander told EDGE. "I wanted to talk about real things. I wanted it to be a resource."

Alexander partnered with Daniels and Brown to relaunch her site as they began season two of "Between Women," providing much-needed content. The first month, March 2013, Alexander said her site received 20,000 hits.

"By my standards that was big, and I was so grateful and thankful for the partnership," Alexander noted. "From there it morphed from a blog site to an online magazine with a radio show," she said of her current site and now an online radio show, "A Gurlz Guide On Air" which broadcasts on "Back2Us Radio," an online blog talk radio site operated by her longtime friend, Dr. Annise Mabry.

So far, Alexander has been pleased with not only the results but the feedback she has received about her site. The mission of AGG is to give an opportunity for healing, dialogue, reconciliation.

"I always hoped it had an impact," Alexander said of her blogs and the talk radio shows. "Everything we do falls within this formula. We talk about the hurt and create a dialogue."

A Little Help From Her Friends

Alexander's work on AGG slowly brought her back around, but she couldn't do it alone. She had a circle of friends who helped during this difficult period. Mabry was one of those friends. Mabry recalled how they evolved from acquaintances to almost sisters.

"Michelle and I, I don't remember when we connected," Mabry said. But they always seemed to end up in each other's lives, although they hung out in different circles of friends that seemed to intersect at events in Atlanta.

But the two became real friends when Mabry was diagnosed with a degenerative muscle disease and her daughter was diagnosed with a mental illness. Mabry began sharing her story on Facebook; her so-called "friends" left her high and dry.

In October 2012, Mabry's daughter attempted suicide after being bullied in school. She was in a in a hospital emergency room, cold and scared, trying to text a friend who is named Michelle, but the text went instead to Michelle Alexander.

"That opened up a Pandora's box for our relationship," Mabry fondly recalled. It was two weeks after Mabry's daughter returned home, that Lawson went missing. "She's looking for Lisa, and she's reaching back helping me. I don't know how we made it through, but in all of that it brought us closer together."

Growing Her Site

In the early days of establishing "A Gurlz Guide," Alexander gathered 10 of her Atlanta friends together to moderate a Facebook page. Each day tackled a different theme, from Motivational Mondays to Trans Thursdays. Although the Facebook site fizzled out, Alexander was determined to keep it running. A WordPress page yielded some blog posts, but that also petered out.

Looking back on the evolution of AGG, Alexander is determined to take it to the next level. This year, Alexander will focus on developing partnerships, seeking out organizations that are doing progressive things in the LGBT community. She would like to receive more visibility on a national level.

"I want AGG to be one of the top three go-to lesbian resource websites out there -- that's my goal," Alexander added. So far, her site gets about 3,000-5,000 hits a month. "While it's not thousands, it's nothing to shake a stick at either."

In an effort to re-launch and brand her site, there is also AGG merchandise available on Cafe Press and if you shop on Amazon, AGG is an affiliate with the company. "I'm trying to get to the place where AGG supports itself," she said.

Mabry and her internet radio show, "Back2US Radio," has also been a valuable asset for AGG. The two support each other personally and professionally.

"A lot of ideas don't get off the ground because they can't get matched with the right resources," Mabry noted. Giving back is the philosophy of both "Back2Us" and AGG, so when she started her radio show a year ago, she gave some of the time to Alexander.

Surprised by the offer of free air time and an opportunity to showcase AGG in a different medium, Alexander graciously accepted Mabry's offer. Now "Back2Us Radio" is a fully syndicated radio show, just a year after it was launched in March 2013.

Although distance separates them now, they still continue to keep each other accountable for their individual projects with their weekly accountability phone calls. Mabry said that what makes their friendship amazing it that, "we do it from a place of selflessness."

Despite all the changes in her life, AGG continued to stay in the forefront for Alexander even as she moved from her familiar Atlanta stomping grounds to move to another familiar state with friends in Washington, D.C., this year.

She is about to launch an advice column, "Let's Chat" in TAGG, a lesbian-focused magazine distributed in District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and Delaware. She is also six months away from finishing her book, "Radical Notions of Love: Redefining the Fairy Tale," dealing with tips on love and romance.

A Happy Ending

Since Lawson died, Alexander has healed and found love again. She recently became engaged to Ter�sa Dowell-Vest, a writer, filmmaker and professor. The two met on Facebook.

"So many times they were in the same place, connecting with the same people and yet never actually met," reads their wedding announcement in TAGG Magazine. Pictures taken by mutual friends show the two passing each other, like ships in the night. The mutual Facebook stalking eventually paid off; when Alexander moved from Atlanta to Washington, D.C., it was love at first real sight.

Dowell-Vest has been just what Alexander needed this time around in her life. "She's such an encourager," Alexander said of her fianc�e. "She believes in me, and I've only had one other person in my life to do so." The two plan to marry October 4.

Alexander wishes the same for everyone. She directs readers to "A Gurlz Guide" to find "powerful LGBTQ writers who share their hearts, spirits and personal experiences with the community they love, in an effort to bring reconciliation, conversation, healing and humor to difficult topics."