Photography by Iringo Demeter
On Joy & Tenderness
Words by adrienne maree brown
Sitting in the bath, alone, in a year that completely upended my usual balance of togetherness and aloneness, I start trying to count the number of heartbreaks I have had this month but lose track within just one week of remembering.
The heart breaks in so many ways, for so many reasons. This moment in human history is one of collective heartbreak, of seeing people and places we love be destroyed by virus and virulent decisions.
Some of my heartbreaks are the fissures produced by powerlessness in the work of trying to protect what and who I love. Some are actual losses, most due to Covid, but they’re also due to the truth that most of the people I love are worn down by the oversights and overextensions common to oppression—and of course the combination of both; the way Covid is the final straw for bodies that have held collective distress for too long. Some of the heartbreak is over what I thought I was going to do during these months-slowly-becoming-years, I find myself wondering if those dreams will ever manifest and if I can be satisfied with what is available in the limitations of here and now.
Who is untouched by the overwhelming nature of change right now?
But, alongside this uncertainty and heartbreak, there is so much tenderness. In all of us walking around with such an abundance of pain at the centre of our lives, tenderness has been the great teacher this year.
This other, gentler way of being has slipped into every interaction, a calming tone of voice and softening at the mouth or eyes that feel like hands cupped around something beautiful and fragile. We are giving each other permission to accept and request tenderness. Asking another person, “how are you?” can change the trajectory of a day, a life; many of us are learning to ask each other such formerly innocuous questions with more intention and more spaciousness.
That intentional presence leads to moments of intimate and unexpected joy. My lover comes into the candlelit bathroom and slips into the quiet waters with me. I find community anchors that I return to weekly, where we centre song and laughter, where we articulate new levels of surrender, where we whisper how much we also love the gift of being home, and show off all that we are growing in the smaller containers of our safety.
In the rare moments when I do get to see my loved ones, the preciousness of being with each other brings a new level of ecstatic attention to every breath, every touch, the blessing of getting to make a meal that will cross another’s lips, the fleeting weight of a child in my arms - another tenderness, the wondrous ache of being alive and aware of it.
Now we know: we are all meant to be with each other, what a tender and joyful thing to admit. I sink down into the saltwater and let the heat flood over my shoulders, my breasts, my heart.
adrienne maree brown is an American author, doula, women's rights activist and black feminist based in Detroit.
adrienne is the author of We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, the NY Times Bestseller Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, the radical self/planet help book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds published by AK Press in 2017. She is also the co-editor of the anthology Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements with Walidah Imarisha, published by AK Press in 2015.
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