The Freedom to Be Soft
Written by Jasmine Linder
Juneteenth is celebrated around the United States as the actual date of freedom of enslaved people. But this year, I am reclaiming it as a day of independence from the trope of the strong black woman. We are more than our ability to suffer, more than our incredible endurance, more than restrained smiles and hidden emotions.
The photo “Blue Monday” by Annie Lee has hung in my grandmother’s home for as long as I can remember. I vividly remember asking her about it and her answer.
“That’s me. I know all of her sorrows and joy… you’ll understand one day.”
Representing not just the struggles of a Monday come too soon and too early but the heaviness and weight every black woman feels upon her shoulders from the moment her eyes open until the moment her eyes close after a long day. The woman in Blue Monday is every grandmother, mother, sister, and Aunt getting ready to face the storm of the day and the endless ache of an injury society has gladly picked at until it is both gaping and oozing. Always hustling, constantly grinding, making something out of nothing. That is what most of the world sees when they look at a black woman. We can endure and withstand every single onslaught of disrespect thrown at us, and yet we thrive. But what if we didn’t? What if we woke up and refused to be strong, resilient, and take every emotional beating life threw at us one Monday? What if we chose to be soft?
One day, “me” came at about age twenty-five. I was working sixty-plus hours a week struggling, trying to cook, clean, maintain my friendships and relationship, and my body just gave out. I physically could not go on any longer. My partner looked at me and asked if I wanted to stay home to relax for a little while, and after much internal debate, I said yes. But what was the foundation of my internal debate? The insurmountable pressure a black woman feels to be superwoman, to have it all, to rely on no one, and always be in her bag. The fear of being accused of being whitewashed for prioritizing my mental and physical health above all. How long will misogynoir be used to justify our mistreatment, both within our community and outside of it? The math is not mathing sis. We are deserving of rest, love, protection, and peace.
Five years later, I am still at home, still resting, and I’ve got to say I’ve loved burning my cape. I interact with everything in life for my pleasure only. I never realized that most of my girlfriends and I didn’t have hobbies for fun, unlike our white contemporaries. It never occurred to me that something I liked to do shouldn’t be something I could make money from. But it’s liberating to create or engage with no need for results outside of my satisfaction, and I am not alone in this discovery.
Scroll through Tik Tok, and you’ll find the #softblackgirl has over four million views and its sister tag #blackwomanbareminimum has over two million. The everyday black woman is also taking back her femininity by doing the least while still being the MOST. If we want to be, we are damsels in distress and give the main character in a rom-com energy in all the spaces we occupy. Online groups are dedicated to uplifting and celebrating the softness of black women who have changed their lives to be more serving them and not the other way around.
So I am here to tell you, if no one has said it to you yet, having a peaceful life or being a soft woman does not mean you are without the strength it takes to be a black woman in America. In fact, in my opinion, it means that you have taken back what America and society have tried to take from you, and that makes you better than strong; it makes you impenetrable, and it makes you whole. You are a woman first. Before you are a mom, wife, sister, daughter, and lover, you are a woman who deserves to embrace her femininity if and when she chooses to. Life should be the practice of joy. So whether you find that satisfaction in the aisle of Target, unboxing a luxury handbag, or just sliding between clean sheets on a Friday night with a glass of wine, I want you to celebrate it. Steep your soul so well that when life tries to grind down the softness inside you, it cannot because you are overflowing with it. Burn the cape.
