Love Letter to Black Women

We’re not going to sugarcoat it; this month has been a pretty difficult one for Black women, and before we rush to push through the many phases of grief, we want to take a moment to acknowledge and sit with what we’re feeling now. Pain. Disappointment. Confirmation. Rage. Frustration. A sense of invisibility. Those are just a few thoughts that come to mind in a sea of mixed emotions. But we also want to pause and check in with you all;

how you are doing…for real? 

With a name that explicitly mentions “Women & Ethnic Studies” we are very obviously a target and have already experienced a very immediate repercussion. As an organization founded by two Black women, with a predominately Black and/or female-identified staff, and whose work centers around the health and well-being of Black women and their families, besides potential professional implications, the current moment has hit us on a very personal and visceral level. The political landscape threatens to turn back hard-fought gains that have been made around so many things that we embody and stand for such as racial equity, women’s rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, environmental justice, immigrant and newcomer rights, and so many more areas that all come down to having basic love, compassion, and respect for all humans, especially those that are systemically marginalized. This will likely have implications for a lot of the work we’ve been doing in partnership with communities in New Orleans and beyond for decades in areas such as maternal & child health, comprehensive sexuality education, healing justice, mental health & resilience, climate resilience, and affordable housing, to name a few. While we cannot predict what is to come and how exactly this will affect us, what we do know is that now more than ever, it is a time for radical healing. 

In all honesty, for a while we had no idea how we would respond. It felt like there was nothing we could say that could adequately address our current reality, but then we realized, we just had to look in. Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, borrowing from ancient wisdom and practices, we began to curate free city-wide wellness-based Red Tent events around New Orleans that embodied two of our mantras, “Art is Medicine” and “Healing Is The Revolution.” During these events we brought together wellness practitioners offering services like massage and acupuncture; musicians and singers skilled in the healing arts and the power of collective song; dancers, yoga teachers and other practitioners of movement-based healing and fitness modalities; and mental health professionals skilled at facilitating group conversations in community-based settings. 

 
 

One other main feature of many of our Red Tents — and now of many of our youth events — was a station for people to write love letters to themselves. Participants could freestyle and take that invitation to go deeper wherever they wanted on a blank sheet of paper, or they could respond to a series of prompts that we provided. We’d ask them to write their addresses on an envelope, and then we would collect all of the letters and mail them off to everyone months later at a random, undisclosed time. So today, what we’ve decided to do is to fill out a Love Letter to ourselves, and when we say “ourselves” we are speaking intentionally about Black women.

We hope these words help you on your radical healing journeys right now; whether that’s to galvanize action, remind you how much you are seen and loved, or to just encourage you to rest. And if it’s helpful, we’re providing a blank Love Letter template in case you want to write one to yourself, too, or share it with a friend. You can either hide it somewhere random and wait until the day you discover it again, or maybe give it to a loved one and ask them to hold onto it and send it to you whenever it feels right. You decide what healing looks like for you.

an unconditional love for ourselves and the unwavering feeling that we are enough, and no matter how others attempt to put us down we will always stand tall, know our own value and worth, fight back when needed, and rest when needed.

 
 

The first step is to pause and take a moment to breathe, be present, and reflect on what we’re feeling in the moment. Through this process, we can get some clarity on what our true purpose is, our true compass, and take actions that align with them. 

Next, it’s important to continue to cultivate strong(er) bonds amongst ourselves, and within our families and community. We have to love ourselves internally and externally, and find strength through our connections so that some of us can step up when others step back, and so that we know there is always someone there to support us, to uplift us, to see us, and to hold space for us. 

It is also important to continue to deliberately find time to receive and share joy. Whether we laugh with friends, share a beautiful meal, go out into nature, or go out dancing, our joy is a superpower that we must not let people take away from us. The arts and our unique and vibrant culture are medicine for our souls, and through them we have survived so many horrific things in this world. Let’s tap back in and continue to root in our own greatness and heal ourselves — individually and collectively — as our ancestors did.

Lastly, we must continue to find and reinforce our boundaries, knowing when to give, when to receive, when to let people in, when to say yes, and when to say absolutely no.

 
 

Tell ourselves we love each other more and more. Let’s celebrate each other in the streets when we see each other and smile, maybe share a compliment. Let’s remind ourselves of our history and our strength and all that we have endured and powered through to this day. Let’s remind ourselves of our wisdom and knowledge of the world, of how to live in harmony with each other, of how to take care of each other, and of how to live in harmony with our environment. Let us remember our ancestors and the resilience they possessed and use that to constantly remind ourselves of our glory. And let’s remember at the end of the day, we are fabulous. We are trendsetters. We are capable of any and everything we put our minds and hearts towards. Our physiques, our hair, our beauty, our phrases, our overall way of being is often imitated, but there is no one else like us. And our “us” is so diverse and rich, we have to embrace all versions of ourselves and love them all.

 
 
 

We will Rest. 

We will Reflect. 

We will Love.

We will Release.

We will Unite.

We will Remember.

We will Dream.

We will Cry.

We will Free Up Ourselves.

 
 
 
 

Nourish ourselves with the things that bring us joy and peace. Family. Food. Traditions. Music. Visual arts. Movement and dance. Connection to nature. Comedy. We have it all within ourselves and as a collective, and from a Second Line to Samba, we know how to take pain and transmute it into the biggest celebrations the world has ever seen!

 
 
 

Now it’s your turn. If you’re interested in writing a love letter to yourself, or sharing this practice with others, you can find a .pdf and a Word version below.

 
Iman Shervington2 Comments