We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other.
Interpretation
We must actively learn to nurture kindness and love towards each other, as it is not instinctive due to past cultural losses.
In this quote, Audre Lorde emphasizes the importance of intentionally practicing tenderness and care in our relationships, particularly among Black women. She acknowledges that societal challenges have eroded the natural expressions of love and support that should exist within these communities, and advocates for a conscious effort to restore and cultivate those bonds through habitual actions of kindness and understanding.
In practice
This quote would be great for a workshop on building supportive communities.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.
What do you think deja vu is for?". Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.
Whites, like ourselves, belong to our country. They are compatriots, fellow citizens... we see them as Africans.
Whatever be the qualities of the man with whom a woman is united according to the law, such qualities even she assumes, like a river, united with the ocean.
He, who had done more than any human being to draw her out of the caves of her secret, folded life, now threw her down into deeper recesses of fear and doubt. The fall was greater than she had ever known, because she had ventured so far into emotion and had abandoned herself to it.
Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they're trying to find someone who's going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.
Why shouldn't gay people be allowed to be able to marry? Those against gay marriages say marriage should only be between a man and a woman. God, I of all people know that doesn't always work!
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