Reading Books With Side Tangents

Call me pedantic, but my response to any and all "radical kindness is punk" type posts is still that you should just call yourself a hippie. Like that was the actual radical kindness movement. I'm not even saying that to be derogatory, I think the hippies were cool! I'm Californian, I owe a lot to those guys!

We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native was stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other. But we can practice being gentle with each other by being gentle with that piece of ourselves that is hardest to hold, by giving more to the brave bruised girlchild within each of us, by expecting a little less from her gargantuan efforts to excel. We can love her in the light as well as in the darkness, quiet her frenzy towards perfection and encourage her attentions towards fulfillment... As we arm ourselves with ourselves and each other, we can stand toe to toe inside that rigorous loving and begin to speak the impossible—or what has always seemed like the impossible—to one another. The first step towards genuine change. Eventually, if we speak the truth to each other, it will become unavoidable to ourselves.