We Cannot Demand That Robyn Crawford Separate Herself From Whitney Houston
November 20, 2019By default of being human, there is not an aspect of our lives that exists in complete separation from anyone else. Our stories are tangled and, as a writer, I’ve come to know that intimately. We can spend hours hunched over keyboards, trying to determine what is ours v. theirs, but the deeper you go, the harder that distinction is to manage. Our heads will throb with the effort of trying to find where we begin, where their thread is, except this is more like prying apart fibers than anything else.
I can’t say for certain, but I imagine Robyn Crawford encountered this for herself when crafting her newly released memoir, A Song For You: My Life With Whitney Houston. Within it, the singer’s longtime friend and assistant confirmed the rumors that dogged their steps throughout Houston’s career. They were lovers, perhaps as entangled as two people can be, with Crawford writing, “The love I felt for Nippy was real and effortless, filled with so much feeling that when we talked about ending the physical part of our relationship, it didn’t feel I was losing that much.”