Love

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From How to Be a Great Lover (1999)

  A few years ago a woman came to me who was very unsure about the prospect of having good safe sex with her new boyfriend. This woman was fifty-two at the time and a fashion designer. Although she and her lover had thoroughly discussed and agreed to be responsible about their sexual relationship, she was recently divorced and was completely unfamiliar with the condom “etiquette” of the nineties. She had many questions including, but not limited to, who was supposed to bring the condom. We ended up talking for hours on the subject, during which time I showed her how to perform The Italian Method. When she finally left to meet her lover for their first tryst, the woman was brimming with confidence, not only in her ability to artfully apply a condom in this manner, but also in the fact that being sexually responsible carries its own heat. Upon arriving for their first intimate encounter, he pulled out a condom (though her overnight bag contained a supply as well) and sheepishly asked, “Do you know how to put this thing on?” The woman looked at him and answered honestly, “Only with my mouth.” He couldn’t believe his ears and asked her to repeat her response. Again she said, “Only with my mouth.” When he questioned how on earth she knew how to do this, the woman explained to him she had taken a class on sexual technique and safety. The reason, she told him, was because she didn’t want to compromise the fun and sensuality of their intimate relationship for the responsible approach they had agreed to take in ensuring that their sex was as risk free as possible. He was overwhelmed by both her mastery of The Italian Method and the effort she had taken to make their intimate relationship so special. Although they’ve been together now for nearly four years, he still says it was what he learned about her character on that day that made him fall deeply in love. As much as I enjoy relating this story, I want to reiterate that I spent a great deal of one-on-one time with this woman, giving her plenty of opportunity to make mistakes in the beginning. The Italian Method does take a bit of practice (I suggest using either a dildo or a cucumber). But you must trust me on this: the effect it has on your lover will be eternal. As a male screenwriter from Los Angles remarked, “The whole thing is hot! I love watching her breasts as she goes down on me and feeling the heat and pressure of her mouth as she makes her way down my shaft. I feel like we’re the stars of our own erotic film.”

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  To the Christian virtues of prayer and love she continually returns. Christian love is compared to the sea, peaceful and profound as God Himself, for "God is love." This passage throws light upon the unsearchable mystery of the Incarnate Word who, constrained by love, gave Himself up in all humility. We love because we are loved. He loves of grace, and we love Him of duty because we are bound to do so; and to show our love to Him we ought to serve and love every rational creature and extend our love to good and bad, to all kinds of people, as much to one who does us ill as to one who serves us, for God is no respecter of persons, and His charity extends to just men and sinners. Peter’s love before Pentecost was sweet but not strong. After Pentecost he loved as a son, bearing all tribulations with patience. So we, too, if we remain in vigil and continual prayer and tarry ten days, shall receive the plenitude of the Spirit. More than once in her letters to Gregory, she bursts out into a eulogy of love as the remedy for all evils. "The soul cannot live without love," she wrote in the Dialogue, "but must always love something, for it was created through love. Affection moves the understanding, as it were, saying, ’I want to love, for the food wherewith I am fed is love.’ "372 Such directions as these render Catherine’s letters a valuable manual of religious devotion, especially to those who are on their guard against being carried away by the underlying quietistic tone. Not only do they have a high place as the revelation of a pious woman’s soul. They deal with unconcealed boldness and candor with the low conditions into which the Church was fallen. Popes are called upon to institute reforms in the appointment of clergymen and to correct abuses in other directions. As for the pacification of the Tuscan cities, a cause which lay so close to Catherine’s heart, she urged the pontiff to use the measures of peace and not of war, to deal as a father would deal with a rebellious son,—to put into practice clemency, not the pride of authority. Then the very wolves would nestle in his bosom like lambs.373

• From Between Us

  Actually, if it is not, the situation may abruptly stop being gezellig. When I love someone , at least in a U.S. American context, I want to share time and experiences with them, say “I love you” and hug, hold, and cuddle this person. The experience becomes a very different one if it is not reciprocated. In all cases, the emotions mark socially (in addition to personally) meaningful and important events, and involve the mutual alignment of people to each other. Any community that provides a set of experiences, understandings of the world, relationship practices, moral sensitivities, and values and goals may shape the emotions we have as individuals. Different cohorts, different socioeconomic groups, different religions, different gender cultures, and even different family cultures may provide emotions with their meaning. I have highlighted the way my Dutch upbringing has shaped my emotions, and contrasted it to my experiences in several North American contexts. I could have chosen any other perspective which undoubtedly helped to shape my emotions as well—as a woman, from a middle-class background, a boomer, the daughter of (secular) Holocaust survivors, a mother, a wife, a friend, or a professor. Meaning and the context of action would have been shaped by any and all of them. Are Emotions the Same Deep Down? So, what about this idea, that once you take the time to get to know somebody from another culture, once you surpass the superficial differences, you will recognize the feelings of people from other cultures, and comprehend their emotions? Is it true that we are all the same when it comes to our feelings? No. And we do not necessarily find out how similar we are once we try to communicate, either. When people come to the conclusion that others have feelings just like them, that conclusion may stem from their own projections. Scientists have been as guilty of projection as laypeople. Many psychological and anthropological explanations for cultural differences in emotions come down to saying that people in other cultures mislabel or misattribute their feelings, or alternatively hide them—the assumption being that their “real” feelings are more like ours. As will become clear in later chapters, the very concern for the real, deep, inner feelings of an individual may itself be exclusive to WEIRD cultures. When we communicate, we should do so in the expectation of finding differences, not only similarities. We should also expect to have to explain our own emotions , as they are neither natural nor universal . When I first presented this idea to a group of scholars a few years back, some responded with distress. How can we ever hope to connect to each other, if our emotions do not even line up? Their response made me aware of the idealism that often hides behind the assumption that emotions are universal.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  VIIITheorizing about self-worth is ineffective. So is pretending. Women can die in agony who have lived with blank and beautiful faces. I can afford to look at myself directly, risk the pain of experiencing who I am not, and learn to savor the sweetness of who I am. I can make friends with all the different pieces of me, liked and disliked. Admit that I am kinder to my neighbor’s silly husband most days than I am to myself. I can look into the mirror and learn to love the stormy little Black girl who once longed to be white or anything other than who she was, since all she was ever allowed to be was the sum of the color of her skin and the textures of her hair, the shade of her knees and elbows, and those things were clearly not acceptable as human. Learning to love ourselves as Black women goes beyond a simplistic insistence that “Black is beautiful.” It goes beyond and deeper than a surface appreciation of Black beauty, although that is certainly a good beginning. But if the quest to reclaim ourselves and each other remains there, then we risk another superficial measurement of self, one superimposed upon the old one and almost as damaging, since it pauses at the superficial. Certainly it is no more empowering. And it is empowerment — our strengthening in the service of ourselves and each other, in the service of our work and future — that will be the result of this pursuit. I have to learn to love myself before I can love you or accept your loving. You have to learn to love yourself before you can love me or accept my loving. Know we are worthy of touch before we can reach out for each other. Not cover that sense of worthlessness with “I don’t want you” or “it doesn’t matter” or “white folks feel, Black folks DO.” And these are enormously difficult to accomplish in an environment that consistently encourages nonlove and cover-up, an environment that warns us to be quiet about our need of each other, by defining our dissatisfactions as unanswerable and our necessities as unobtainable.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Frederico,. a member of The Group in his early thirties, describes his struggle to spend more time with his bisexual girlfriend. His story is a perfect example of the dynamic relationship among the four cornerstones and the search for connection: About a year ago I started dating again after being dumped by a lady I lived with for four years. She told me I didn’t have a clue about being intimate and constantly demanded that I tell her how I was feeling, which I thought I did. But it was never enough. After a while I gave up. I was pretty much convinced I didn’t know how to love a woman when I met Audrey at a friend’s party. Our flirting made me feel sexual again. The best part was that she was so friendly. That first night we stayed up until the wee hours getting to know each other and making out on her couch. She told me she had a girlfriend but also wanted a boyfriend. I admired her honesty. And since I enjoy pictures of two women getting it on I thought, hey, she’s just the wild type. Besides, her openness made me feel open too. I liked her more each time I saw her. One night Audrey introduced me to her girlfriend, which was more awkward than I thought it would be even though she seemed nice. Afterward Audrey and I had the hottest sex I’ve ever had in my life. We couldn’t get enough of each other. I wanted to turn her on more than her girlfriend. I even imagined that her girlfriend was spying on us through a crack in the curtains. The thing that blew me away was how much I wanted to be close to her, to tell her everything, all the stuff my old girlfriend tried to drag out of me was spilling out to Audrey and I was loving it. These days it still pisses me off that she decides how often we see each other (about two or three times a week). Most of my friends tell me I’m wasting my time, but they don’t understand what it’s like to be with her. Yes, I’ve considered cutting things off, but I can’t imagine feeling so good with anyone else. What can I say? I’m in love. Frederico’s desire to be close to Audrey is enhanced because he must share her affection with someone else. The fact that he wants more time with her than he can get assures that he has plenty of opportunities for longing. In addition, Frederick’s reference to his friends’ advice suggests that their disapproval strengthens his attachment, underscoring the sense of “us against the world” that energizes so many unorthodox relationship.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  He’s taking my pulse, I realize. “Am I dying, doctor?” I ask quietly. It takes energy to put those words together in the right order, and even while I say them my brain sees a pink spade lying on green, green grass. “Yes,” he says. “We both are. We all are.” “Comforting.” He kisses my forehead. His lips are cold, but his warmth is bringing me back to life. A little bit at least. “When was the last time you let yourself feel?” his words slur like he’s been drinking, but the alcohol is long gone, it’s the cold that makes it that way. I shake my head. For someone like me feeling is dangerous. There is nothing left to fear when you’re already dying. I lift my face to relay my answer without words. His hands find my face. “Can I make you feel? One more time?” I cling to him, my fists tightening on his shirt. My yes. His mouth is so warm. We are shivering and kissing, our bodies firing off heat and desire. We are cold and we are weak. We are emotionally destroyed. We are desperate to feel each other, and to feel hope—to feel one last piece of living. There is nothing joyful or sweet in our mouths. Just frenzy and panic. I taste salt. I’m crying. A kiss unclogged my tear ducts, I think. When we are done kissing we lie very still. His lips move against my hair. “I’m sorry, Senna.” I tremble. He’s sorry? Him? “For what?” There is a million year pause. “I couldn’t save you this time.” I cry into his chest. Not because he couldn’t. Because he wanted to. I think I doze off. When I wake Isaac’s breathing is steady. I think he’s still asleep, but when I shift to change positions, he lifts his hands from my lower back and lets me move around until I’m comfortable again. We lie like that for hours. Until the fire burns out its last flame and I know the night has curved into day, even though day no longer shows her face. Until I want to sob from relief and grief. Until I remember all of the ineffable hurt from years ago that he salved with the tender way he loves. We are going to die. But at least I’ll die with someone who loves me. Isaac is touch. Why have I ever thought anything different? He held me once to soothe me from my nightmares, and now he is holding me to protect me from the cold. He touches right where it hurts, and then all of a sudden it doesn’t hurt. Yes, Isaac is touch.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I try to climb off him, but he grabs my wrists and rolls on top of me, pinning me down. He kisses me slowly with both hands pressed against the sides of my face, all the while moving slowly in and out of me. “I want to be with you,” he says into my mouth. “Stop it.” So I stop it. I let him kiss and stroke and touch and I don’t fight him. We’ve only had sex once; in the rain, on the carousel, with me on top. Now, it doesn’t feel so much like sex. It feels intimate. I’ve never done what we are doing. Not with anyone. Not even with Nick. I’ve never laced my hands in a man’s hair and breathed into his mouth with abandon, and wanted him to be as deeply inside of me as he could—because it felt more real that way. And a man has never buried his face into my neck and moaned, like every movement inside of me is worth a reaction. But we are here on the table, rocking against each other and having the kind of sex that is breathless and tender and hard all at the same time. He is touching me everywhere. His fingers roving over my chest and back and thighs. It makes me feel like I am something beautiful rather than this atrocity that life has turned me into. And while Isaac is inside of me I forget everything. I forget that I am a captive, and that bones have been broken, and that we’ve almost died. I forget that he has a life with someone else. I forget that I was raped and that I have no breasts. I forget that I fight so hard not to feel anything. Isaac is making love to me, and all I feel right at this moment is valued. He carries me up to his bed, and lays me down on the mattress. I can feel him trickling down my thigh as he climbs into bed and stretches out beside me. Hold me, I think. Only words in my head, but Isaac turns his body and folds himself around me. I crush my eyes together. Pitter patter, pitter patter… Fear, light footed, dances around me. She whispers seductively in my ear. We are lovers, fear and I. She calls to me, and I let her in. Go. I tell her. Let me go, let me go, let me go, let me go. “Tell me a lie, Isaac.” His fingertips trace a curlicue on my shoulder. “I don’t love you.” He cannot see my face, but it writhes: eyelashes, lips, the cutting of lines across my forehead. “Tell me a truth, Senna.” “I don’t know how,” I breath. “Then tell me a lie.” “I don’t love you,” I say.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  The relatively few instances in which drugs play a central role in a peak turn-on invariably involve one of the hallucinogenic substances such as LSD (“acid”), psychoactive mushrooms, MDMA (“ecstasy”), or hashish (a highly concentrated form of marijuana). These powerful drugs so radically alter the perceptions and emotions of whoever is under their influence, they’re often seen as coparticipants in the experience. Note how the drug ecstasy is pivotal in Jennifer’s story of love, sensuality, and obliterated inhibitions: My lover and I were vacationing on a beach in Mexico. I wanted him to be in love with me as I was with him, but he was holding back. One afternoon we took ecstasy together. The drug had an almost magical effect, helping us to open our hearts and express feelings that were locked inside. It was overwhelming to learn that he was madly in love with me but also terribly afraid of being hurt again (his ex-wife had dumped him for a younger man). Every touch was a revelation, as if we were discovering each other for the first time. Our senses were drinking in the wind, the sand between our toes, the rhythm of the surf and the penetrating warmth of the sun. We were even more overcome by emotions as we kissed and talked for hours. Back at the hotel my excitement continued to be mostly emotional. He let himself become vulnerable to me. I never realized this man felt so much inside. His openness was a gift that made me want to make love to him without reservation. It was beyond comprehension. I was amazed by how we were both freed of all inhibitions. Verbally and physically he expressed adoration of my body and soul. He took me strongly in a virile, manly way and I also ravaged him. We naturally enjoyed acts we would have avoided before. We knew we could be nasty and still be loved. I knew he cherished me as much as I did him. More than once I cried at the beauty of the moment—the curve of his earlobe, the softness of my skin against his lips. We were all heart, all soul, and all body. Clearly the drug was a catalyst for a remarkable degree of sensual and emotional freedom and intimacy. Naturally, you might wonder if all this ecstatic love was merely chemically induced. Jennifer had a similar concern: When I awoke the next morning I immediately wondered if Eric would be cautious again. Did he mean what he said on ecstasy? Even though we were completely down from the drug, Eric kissed me, held me, and softly told me how much he loved me (he hardly ever said these things before). We live together now and have discussed this experience often. We both agree that the drug removed our inhibitions so we could be completely truthful. The intensity was much greater than normal but the feelings were real—because we still feel them.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  I have no golden message about the raising of sons for other lesbian mothers, no secret to transpose your questions into certain light. I have my own ways of rewording those same questions, hoping we will all come to speak those questions and pieces of our lives we need to share. We are women making contact within ourselves and with each other across the restrictions of a printed page, bent upon the use of our own/one another’s knowledges. The truest direction comes from inside. I give the most strength to my children by being willing to look within myself, and by being honest with them about what I find there, without expecting a response beyond their years. In this way they begin to learn to look beyond their own fears. All our children are outriders for a queendom not yet assured. My adolescent son’s growing sexuality is a conscious dynamic between Jonathan and me. It would be presumptuous of me to discuss Jonathan’s sexuality here, except to state my belief that whomever he chooses to explore this area with, his choices will be nonoppressive, joyful, and deeply felt from within, places of growth . One of the difficulties in writing this piece has been temporal; this is the summer when Jonathan is becoming a man, physically. And our sons must become men — such men as we hope our daughters, born and unborn, will be pleased to live among. Our sons will not grow into women. Their way is more difficult than that of our daughters, for they must move away from us, without us. Hopefully, our sons have what they have learned from us, and a howness to forge it into their own image. Our daughters have us, for measure or rebellion or outline or dream; but the sons of lesbians have to make their own definitions of self as men. This is both power and vulnerability. The sons of lesbians have the advantage of our blueprints for survival, but they must take what we know and transpose it into their own maleness. May the goddess be kind to my son, Jonathan. Recently I have met young Black men about whom I am pleased to say that their future and their visions, as well as their concerns within the present, intersect more closely with Jonathan’s than do my own. I have shared vision with these men as well as temporal strategies for our survivals and I appreciate the spaces in which we could sit down together. Some of these men I met at the First Annual Conference of Third World Lesbians and Gays held in Washington D.C. in October, 1979. I have met others in different places and do not know how they identify themselves sexually. Some of these men are raising families alone. Some have adopted sons.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  When I asked you about it, you told me that we were all bound by something because we needed something to hold us together. What you wrap around your soul determines your outcome—that’s what you said to me. But I didn’t get it. I though that was crazy, until the day you held my hand, clamped over a knife, and pointed it at your body: both of us cutting into your skin. You bore my burdens that hour. Does that make sense? You took my self-loathing and bitterness, my promise to pay back the world, and you pointed them at yourself. I loved you then. Because you saw me. It’s the very instance that I woke up from a blinding, and knew that I was standing face to face with my soulmate. A concept I didn’t believe in until your soul healed mine. The darkness that formerly commanded me yielded to your light. That’s how I understood your tattoos. The ropes that bound me were no longer self-loathing and bitterness. They suddenly became you, but in a good way. I need those ropes to hold me together. I didn’t want to hurt myself anymore because it hurt you. Oh, God. I’m rambling. I just needed you to know. Every minute you spent getting to know me, I got to know me. Forgive me for not recognizing our soul-likeness sooner, while we still had time. The nature of love is that it conquers. Hate. Even bitterness. Mostly, it conquers self-loathing. I was sitting in a white room hating myself, until you breathed life back into me. You loved me so much that I started to love myself. Who would have thought that day that I was running out of the woods, I was running straight into the arms of my savior? Right out of an ugly life that had me conquered. I did not choose you, and you did not choose me. Something else chose for us. The snow covered me, and you covered me, and in that house—in pain, and cold, and hunger—I accepted unconditional love. You are my truth, Isaac, and you set me free. We are all going to die, but I’m going to die first. In the very last second of my life, I will think of you. Senna I guess I should start at the beginning. In 2012 Nate Sabin met me for the first time and called me, Mud Vein. After my initial shock receded, I realized that Nate was right; I did have a mud vein. It’s my defining feature. Being that this book is dedicated to his wife, I’ll just go ahead and thank the Sabin’s for being the type of people who inspire me and call me out on my shit. My dad, who has leukemia and is not afraid of anything. Thanks for the fearless gene. P.s.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  In my family it was: “You’re a Lorde, so that makes you special and particular above anybody else in the world. But you’re not our kind of Lorde, so when are you going to straighten out and act right?” Adrienne: And did you feel, there in the Harlem Writers’ Guild, the same kind of unwritten laws that you had to figure out in order to do right? Audre: Yes, I would bring poems to read at the meetings. And hoping, well, they’re gonna tell me actually what it is they want, but they never could, never did. Adrienne: Were there women in that group, older women? Audre: Rosa Guy was older than I, but she was still very young. I remember only one other woman, Gertrude McBride. But she came in and out of the workshop so quickly I never knew her. For the most part, the men were the core. My friend Jeannie and I were members but in a slightly different position; we were in high school. Adrienne: And so Tougaloo was an entirely different experience of working with other Black writers. Audre: When I went to Tougaloo, I didn’t know what to give or where it was going to come from. I knew I couldn’t give what regular teachers of poetry give, nor did I want to, because they’d never served me. I couldn’t give what English teachers give. The only thing I had to give was me. And I was so involved with these young people — I really loved them. I knew the emotional life of each of those students because we would have conferences, and that became inseparable from their poetry. I would talk to them in the group about their poetry in terms of what I knew about their lives, and that there was a real connection between the two that was inseparable no matter what they’d been taught to the contrary. I knew by the time I left Tougaloo that teaching was the work I needed to be doing, that library work — by this time I was head librarian at the Town School — was not enough. It had been very satisfying to me. And I had a kind of stature I hadn’t had before in terms of working. But from the time I went to Tougaloo and did that workshop, I knew: not only, yes, I am a poet, but also, this is the kind of work I’m going to do. Practically all the poems in Cables to Rage * I wrote in Tougaloo. I was there for six weeks. I came back knowing that my relationship with Ed was not enough: either we were going to change it or end it. I didn’t know how to end it because there had never been any endings for me. But I had met Frances at Tougaloo, and I knew she was going to be a permanent person in my life.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  We have banded together with each other for wisdom and strength and support, even when it was only in relationship to one man. We need only look at the close, although highly complex and involved, relationships between African co-wives, or at the Amazon warriors of ancient Dahomey who fought together as the King’s main and most ferocious bodyguard. We need only look at the more promising power wielded by the West African Market Women Associations of today, and those governments which have risen and fallen at their pleasure. In a retelling of her life, a ninety-two-year-old Efik-Ibibio woman of Nigeria recalls her love for another woman: I had a woman friend to whom I revealed my secrets. She was very fond of keeping secrets to herself. We acted as husband and wife. We always moved hand in glove and my husband and hers knew about our relationship. The villagers nicknamed us twin sisters. When I was out of gear with my husband, she would be the one to restore peace. I often sent my children to go and work for her in return for her kindnesses to me. My husband being more fortunate to get more pieces of land than her husband, allowed some to her, even though she was not my co-wife. * On the West Coast of Africa, the Fon of Dahomey still have twelve different kinds of marriage. One of them is known as “giving the goat to the buck,” where a woman of independent means marries another woman who then may or may not bear children, all of whom will belong to the blood line of the first woman. Some marriages of this kind are arranged to provide heirs for women of means who wish to remain “free,” and some are lesbian relationships. Marriages like these occur throughout Africa, in several different places among different peoples. ** Routinely, the women involved are accepted members of their communities, evaluated not by their sexuality but by their respective places within the community. While a piece of each Black woman remembers the old ways of another place — when we enjoyed each other in a sisterhood of work and play and power — other pieces of us, less functional, eye one another with suspicion. In the interests of separation, Black women have been taught to view each other as always suspect, heartless competitors for the scarce male, the all-important prize that could legitimize our existence.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  of righteousness.403 The desert, like the ocean, has its grandeur and sublimity, and leaves the meditating mind alone with God and eternity. "Paul was a unique man for a unique task."404 His task was twofold: practical and theoretical. He preached the gospel of free and universal grace from Damascus to Rome, and secured its triumph in the Roman empire, which means the civilized world of that age. At the same time he built up the church from within by the exposition and defence of the gospel in his Epistles. He descended to the humblest details of ecclesiastical administration and discipline, and mounted to the sublimest heights of theological speculation. Here we have only to do with his missionary activity; leaving his theoretical work to be considered in another chapter. Let us first glance at his missionary spirit and policy. His inspiring motive was love to Christ and to his fellow-men. "The love of Christ," he says, "constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died: and He died for all that they who live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again." He regarded himself as a bondman and ambassador of Christ, entreating men to be reconciled to God. Animated by this spirit, he became "as a Jew to the Jews, as a Gentile to the Gentiles, all things to all men that by all means he might save some." He made Antioch, the capital of Syria and the mother church of Gentile Christendom, his point of departure for, and return from, his missionary journeys, and at the same time he kept up his connection with Jerusalem, the mother church of Jewish Christendom. Although an independent apostle of Christ, he accepted a solemn commission from Antioch for his first great missionary tour. He followed the current of history, commerce, and civilization, from East to West, from Asia to Europe, from Syria to Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and perhaps as far as Spain.405 In the larger and more influential cities, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome, he resided a considerable time. From these salient points he sent the gospel by his pupils and fellow-laborers into the surrounding towns and villages. But he always avoided collision with other apostles, and sought new fields of labor where Christ was not known before, that he might not build on any other man’s foundation. This is true independence and missionary courtesy, which is so often, alas! violated by missionary societies inspired by sectarian rather than Christian zeal.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  It goes beyond and deeper than a surface appreciation of Black beauty, although that is certainly a good beginning. But if the quest to reclaim ourselves and each other remains there, then we risk another superficial measurement of self, one superimposed upon the old one and almost as damaging, since it pauses at the superficial. Certainly it is no more empowering. And it is empowerment — our strengthening in the service of ourselves and each other, in the service of our work and future — that will be the result of this pursuit. I have to learn to love myself before I can love you or accept your loving. You have to learn to love yourself before you can love me or accept my loving. Know we are worthy of touch before we can reach out for each other. Not cover that sense of worthlessness with “I don’t want you” or “it doesn’t matter” or “white folks feel, Black folks DO.” And these are enormously difficult to accomplish in an environment that consistently encourages nonlove and cover-up, an environment that warns us to be quiet about our need of each other, by defining our dissatisfactions as unanswerable and our necessities as unobtainable. Until now, there has been little that taught us how to be kind to each other. To the rest of the world, yes, but not to ourselves. There have been few external examples of how to treat another Black woman with kindness, deference, tenderness or an appreciative smile in passing, just because she IS; an understanding of each other’s shortcomings because we have been somewhere close to that, ourselves. When last did you compliment another sister, give recognition to her specialness? 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. But we can practice being gentle with ourselves by being gentle with each other. 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 toward perfection and encourage her attentions toward fulfillment. Maybe then we will come to appreciate more how much she has taught us, and how much she is doing to keep this world revolving toward some livable future. It would be ridiculous to believe that this process is not lengthy and difficult. It is suicidal to believe it is not possible.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  It means being able to recognize my successes, and to be tender with myself, even when I fail. We will begin to see each other as we dare to begin to see ourselves; we will begin to see ourselves as we begin to see each other, without aggrandizement or dismissal or recriminations, but with patience and understanding for when we do not quite make it, and recognition and appreciation for when we do. Mothering ourselves means learning to love what we have given birth to by giving definition to, learning how to be both kind and demanding in the teeth of failure as well as in the face of success, and not misnaming either. When you come to respect the character of the time you will not have to cover emptyness with pretense. * We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created. As we fear each other less and value each other more, we will come to value recognition within each other’s eyes as well as within our own, and seek a balance between these visions. Mothering. Claiming some power over who we choose to be, and knowing that such power is relative within the realities of our lives. Yet knowing that only through the use of that power can we effectively change those realities. Mothering means the laying to rest of what is weak, timid, and damaged — without despisal — the protection and support of what is useful for survival and change, and our joint explorations of the difference. I recall a beautiful and intricate sculpture from the court of the Queen Mother of Benin, entitled “The Power Of The Hand.” It depicts the Queen Mother, her court women, and her warriors in a circular celebration of the human power to achieve success in practical and material ventures, the ability to make something out of anything. In Dahomey, that power is female. VIII Theorizing about self-worth is ineffective. So is pretending. Women can die in agony who have lived with blank and beautiful faces. I can afford to look at myself directly, risk the pain of experiencing who I am not, and learn to savor the sweetness of who I am. I can make friends with all the different pieces of me, liked and disliked. Admit that I am kinder to my neighbor’s silly husband most days than I am to myself. I can look into the mirror and learn to love the stormy little Black girl who once longed to be white or anything other than who she was, since all she was ever allowed to be was the sum of the color of her skin and the textures of her hair, the shade of her knees and elbows, and those things were clearly not acceptable as human. Learning to love ourselves as Black women goes beyond a simplistic insistence that “Black is beautiful.”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “Then we’d all die. Are you ready for that?” I’m not. I want Isaac to live because he deserves it. I wish he could tell me what to do. I was wrong about the zookeeper. I didn’t expect this. I profiled my kidnapper, but I never hung the face of Saphira Elgin on him. She changes everything; because of her knowledge of me, she has the ability to outplay me. I clutch the syringe. I can’t see the house, but I know the direction it’s in. So I walk. I walk until I see the logs. Then I walk running my frozen hands along the logs until I reach the door. I swing it open and collapse on the bottom stair, shivering. It’s warmer in here, but not warm enough. I climb the stairs. Isaac is in his room where I left him. I add a log to his dwindling fire and crawl into the bed with him. He’s burning up; his skin is the heat I crave so badly. I press my lips against his temple. There is a lot of grey there now. We match. “Hey,” I say. “Do you remember that time you showed up every day to take care of a perfect stranger? I never really thanked you for that. I’m not really going to thank you now either, because that’s not my style.” I press closer to him, cup his cheek in my hand. The hair prickles my palm. “I am going to do something to take care of you for once. Go see your baby. I love you.” I lean over and kiss him on the mouth, then I roll out of bed and climb up to the attic room. I feel nothing… I feel nothing…. I feel everything. I look at the needle for a long time, balancing it in the palm of my hand. I don’t know what will happen when I do this. Saphira could be lying to me. She could have a more sinister plan now that Isaac is out of the picture. What’s in the syringe could kill me. Maybe it’ll make me sleep and she’ll leave me here to die. I’d be grateful for that. I could fight back. I could wait and push this needle into her neck and take my chances with getting Isaac out of here myself. But I don’t want to risk his life. He has no idea Saphira is responsible for bringing us here. Her taking him out of here and getting him help will put her at the risk of being discovered. I push the needle into the vein in my hand. It hurts. Then I stand with the back of my knees pressed against the mattress, spreading my arms wide. This is what it feels like to love, I think. It’s heavy. Or maybe it’s the responsibility that comes with it that’s heavy.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  But we are here on the table, rocking against each other and having the kind of sex that is breathless and tender and hard all at the same time. He is touching me everywhere. His fingers roving over my chest and back and thighs. It makes me feel like I am something beautiful rather than this atrocity that life has turned me into. And while Isaac is inside of me I forget everything. I forget that I am a captive, and that bones have been broken, and that we’ve almost died. I forget that he has a life with someone else. I forget that I was raped and that I have no breasts. I forget that I fight so hard not to feel anything. Isaac is making love to me, and all I feel right at this moment is valued. He carries me up to his bed, and lays me down on the mattress. I can feel him trickling down my thigh as he climbs into bed and stretches out beside me. Hold me, I think. Only words in my head, but Isaac turns his body and folds himself around me. I crush my eyes together. Pitter patter, pitter patter… Fear, light footed, dances around me. She whispers seductively in my ear. We are lovers, fear and I. She calls to me, and I let her in. Go. I tell her. Let me go, let me go, let me go, let me go. “Tell me a lie, Isaac.” His fingertips trace a curlicue on my shoulder. “I don’t love you.” He cannot see my face, but it writhes: eyelashes, lips, the cutting of lines across my forehead. “Tell me a truth, Senna.” “I don’t know how,” I breath. “Then tell me a lie.” “I don’t love you,” I say. I sink beneath the weight of it all. Isaac stirs behind me, and then he is leaning over me, his elbows on either side of my head. “The truth is for the mind,” he says. “Lies are for the heart. So let’s just keep lying.” I kiss the man I lie to. He kisses me with truth. I am set free. [image file=image38.jpg] Two days later Isaac gets sick. It’s the kind of sick that scares me. At first when I question him, he tells me that nothing is wrong. But then the tiny beads of sweat start to collect on his brow and upper lip like condensation. I narrow my eyes at him as we eat. He’s clearly forcing down his food. His skin looks like wax—shiny and colorless. “Okay, doctor,” I say, setting down my fork. “Diagnose yourself, and then tell me what to do.”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “I had a flight booked, Senna. On Christmas Day. I was supposed to leave that morning and go home to see my family. I was on my way to the airport when I turned my car around and went home. I don’t fucking know why I did it. I just felt like I needed to stay. I went for a jog to clear my head and there you were, running out of the trees.” I stare at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” “Would you have believed me?” “Believed what? That you went for a jog instead of hopping on a plane?” He leans forward. “No. Don’t make me feel stupid for thinking that there is purpose. We aren’t animals. Life isn’t random. I was supposed to be there.” “And I was supposed to get raped? So that we could meet? Because that’s what you’re saying. If life isn’t random then it was in someone’s plan for that bastard to do what he did to me!” I am out of breath, my chest heaving. Isaac licks his lips. “Maybe it was in someone’s plan for me to be there for you…” “To keep me alive,” I finish. “No. I didn’t say—” “Yes, that’s exactly what you’re saying. My savior, sent to keep the pathetic, sniveling, Senna from killing herself.” “Senna!” he slams his fist on the table, and I jump. “When we found each other we were both pretty dead and defeated. Something grew despite that.” He shakes his head. “You breathed life back into me. It was instinct for me to be there with you. I didn’t want to save you, I just didn’t know how to leave you.” There is a long pause. Not even Nick did that. Because Nick didn’t love me unconditionally. He loved me so long as I was his muse. So long as I gave him something to believe in. “Isaac…” his name falls flat. There is something I want to say but I don’t know what it is. There is no real point in saying anything at all. Isaac is married and our situation leaves little room for anything but survival. “I need to go get some wood,” I announce. He smiles sadly, shakes his head. I cook dinner that night. Red meat; I don’t know what kind it is until I smell it in the skillet and know it’s some type of game. Who took the time to hunt these animals for us? Bag them? Freeze them?

• From Between Us

  Managing to understand other people’s emotions is not the same as sharing their experiences. Interestingly, approximating others’ feelings often means understanding how emotional episodes are tied to a context different from one’s own. It means to be aware of the incongruence of your emotions with the emotions of someone else. Christine Dureau eventually gained insight into the motherly love among Simbo women, not by projecting her own notions of love, but by trying to grasp how their love was situated in the conditions of child mortality, poverty, and hardship on the island. Empathy in a cross-cultural setting is unpacking another person’s emotions by tying them to their (social) realities. Importantly, recognizing these differences allows you to see the similarities as well. Even as you realize that you may never experience or do emotions in the same way, there can be resonance with people from other cultures. This resonance means that you humanize another person, trying to find meaning in their emotions, and in this way bridge some of the distance. From Cultural Competence to Humility Joop de Jong is a Dutch transcultural psychiatrist who is one of the driving forces of rethinking the Dutch mental health system to accommodate an increasingly multicultural clientele. He knew of my early work on culture and emotions and asked me in the mid-1990s to contribute to a volume on cross-cultural psychiatry and psychotherapy. How did my work on cultural differences in emotions speak to the psychotherapy and mental health context? I did not know, but the question intrigued me. A flurry of books on migrants had saturated the Dutch market at the time, all telling their white Dutch readers how to understand, and talk to, a growing immigrant population. Attention to diversity and inequality was much needed, then and now, both because of the demonstrated mental health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities, and because of the inadequacy of mental health provisions. In practice, however, what was known then as “cultural competence” consisted of bits of knowledge about the values, beliefs, and attitudes of ethnic groups. In the U.S., these were the ethno-racial blocs that had been created by the U.S. Census—African American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Latinx, American Indian and Alaska Native, and White. Clinicians learned to think about these “blocs” in relatively stable, essentializing terms. Cultural competence was treated as set of concrete skills for mental health workers—a domain of expertise to which I had wanted to contribute a fact sheet on emotions.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Nick was wrong about me. Having a mud vein didn’t kill me; it saved me. My vein drew Isaac. He was the light and he followed me into the darkness. He became the darkness, then he carried my burdens so I wouldn’t have to. Isaac saved me from myself, but in the end, no one could save me from cancer. I’m terminal. That’s a funny word. Cancer can kill my body, but it can’t kill me. I have a soul. I have a soulmate. We are vapors; here today and gone tomorrow. But before tomorrow comes I want to see color—the color threaded throughout Italy and France and Sweden. I want to see the Northern Lights. And when I die, I know there will be an invisible red thread connecting me to my soulmate. It can tangle, and it can stretch, but it can never break. When I die, I’ll be in the light. And someday Isaac will find me, because that’s what he is. I put the letter in my mailbox and flip the little red flag up. Dear Isaac, I finally understand your tattoos. I never voiced how much they bothered me, but sometimes in that house in the snow, you’d catch me looking and I’d see the hidden smile on your face. You knew I was trying to work it out. When I asked you about it, you told me that we were all bound by something because we needed something to hold us together. What you wrap around your soul determines your outcome—that’s what you said to me. But I didn’t get it. I though that was crazy, until the day you held my hand, clamped over a knife, and pointed it at your body: both of us cutting into your skin. You bore my burdens that hour. Does that make sense? You took my self-loathing and bitterness, my promise to pay back the world, and you pointed them at yourself. I loved you then. Because you saw me. It’s the very instance that I woke up from a blinding, and knew that I was standing face to face with my soulmate. A concept I didn’t believe in until your soul healed mine. The darkness that formerly commanded me yielded to your light. That’s how I understood your tattoos. The ropes that bound me were no longer self-loathing and bitterness. They suddenly became you, but in a good way. I need those ropes to hold me together. I didn’t want to hurt myself anymore because it hurt you. Oh, God. I’m rambling. I just needed you to know. Every minute you spent getting to know me, I got to know me. Forgive me for not recognizing our soul-likeness sooner, while we still had time. The nature of love is that it conquers. Hate. Even bitterness. Mostly, it conquers self-loathing. I was sitting in a white room hating myself, until you breathed life back into me. You loved me so much that I started to love myself.