Choosing Softness

We have always known how to carry. It lives in our posture, in our instincts, and in the way we as Black women step forward and hold things together. For generations, we have been the architects of survival; building movements, families, and futures with a strength that feels both inherited and expected. We have learned how to be the strategy, the steady hand, and the emotional center. And there is pride in that; there is lineage and beauty in knowing where we come from. But there is also a fatigue that comes from being the constant, and from carrying responsibility so long it begins to feel like identity.

The words Malcolm X spoke decades ago still linger; “The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.” The sentiments of this statement still live in how our labor is celebrated while our needs are minimized. And yet, our anger is feared, and resilience is praised without anyone asking what it costs us.

I’ve been reflecting on what happens when we allow ourselves to imagine more than survival. Through my work with Wellanin Psychiatry and by witnessing the Wellanin Journeys: Journey to Now retreat, I watched Black women arrive not as caretakers, leaders, or problem solvers, but simply as themselves. Women who are so often the answer for everyone else stepped into a space where nothing was required of them. What I witnessed was relief.

Journey to Now, December 2025

When rest is no longer something you earn, but something you remember, the nervous system softens. That stillness allows layers to fall away that were never meant to be there in the first place. The need to prove ourselves diminishes, and the body remembers that it is allowed to exist without performing. Rest then becomes revelation.

I’m constantly learning that softness is not the opposite of strength, but what strength was meant to protect. I want, for myself and for my sisters, is to achieve a soft life. To return to ourselves and to the truth that we were never meant to be hardened by what we carry. We can honor the women who came before us without repeating their sacrifices as an obligation, and we can hold gratitude for their endurance while choosing something gentler for ourselves. Survival was never the destination; to live was.

Black women are expansive. We are layered. We are allowed to be serious and joyful, firm and tender, ambitious and rested. We are more than what we produce, more than what we hold together, and more than what we endure. This Black History Month, I am choosing softness as affirmation. It is a declaration to myself that we deserve ease alongside excellence, rest with responsibility, and care without condition. We are worthy beyond our usefulness.

The Black women in your lives are not only here to carry others forward. We are here to breathe, linger, and live fully. And by choosing softness in a world that has long relied on our endurance, we remember those who came before us, while making rest a radical act of liberation.