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 good am I? I can't have kids. I can't cook. I've been divorced three times. Who would want me?
Home is where the heart is, I thought now, gathering myself together in Betty's Luncheonette. I had no heart any more, it had been broken; or not broken, it simply wasn't there any more. It had been scooped neatly out of me like the yolk from a hard-boiled egg, leaving the rest of me bloodless and congealed and hollow. I'm heartless, I thought. Therefore I'm homeless.
Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you.
What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.
Texting has definitely improved the communication between the deaf and hearing communities, but it shouldn't be... a substitute for learning the language to really connect with someone, especially someone you want to date or have a relationship with.
The single most important thing you can do politically for gay rights is to come out. Not to write a letter to your congressman but to come out.
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