The next time you receive a strange request or an invite you’re less than enthused about, you just may want to accept.
When Kelli Oldham, a single woman in her early 40s based in Durham, North Carolina, “reluctantly” accepted an invitation from a friend to attend a Black professionals mixer, she met the love of her life.
Kelli, now 48, told theGrio that during the mixer she locked eyes with a gentleman across the room. Later, as she was enjoying a plate of shrimp and grits at the bar, the handsome stranger slid a napkin to her and said, “You look like you’re going to need this.” His name was Chiwionne Mason, and the two spent the remainder of the evening engrossed in “good, good” conversation before he walked her to her car. The rest, she said, “is history.”
If that whole scene didn’t already feel taken from a page out of a Tia Williams novel, seven years later, the couple — who now parent four children that Chiwionne, 45, brought to the relationship — is celebrating four years of marriage. They also inspire thousands on social media with their love story, as they affirm why love can be greater later in life.
Chiwionne explained that when you find love later in life, “You’ve lived some years of life when you’ve personally got it right and when you’ve [gotten] it wrong.”
Kelli agreed, adding, “As much as you champion your friends, family, and even strangers to experience love, it can be challenging for that love to be absent from your life. The beauty of that time, though, is that you have the opportunity to learn what worked well and what didn’t for others. You then take those learnings, along with a mature perspective of life, and apply them for the benefit of the relationship when love comes across your path.”
The Masons are also major proponents of couples’ therapy.
“After dating for three years, we recognized that if we were going to create a life together as a healthy unit,…
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