I haven’t taken Valentine’s day too seriously since I was a kid, but I’ve noticed a lot more of my friends leaning into “holidays” like these as a chance to dress up, hold intentional time and space with friends, and be a little sillier than most days. From full-blown Galentine’s gatherings to creatively curated pink and red outfits, this year it seemed like all of my friends understood the assignment.
The little group of girlfriends I’ve cultivated here in Belfast held a Galentine’s brunch with mimosas, French-toast, heart-shaped cookies, cupcakes, and purple tulips. Galentine’s is the day before Valentine’s Day and is specifically for celebrating your girlfriends and plutonic love. The first time I celebrated Galentine’s was back in high school with my best friend at the time, Elena. I don’t remember many details, but I remember the feeling of holding that intentional space to celebrate what we often don’t think twice about or maybe even take for granted. We made a little vegan meal to share and probably mused about friendship and art— what we usually did back then as kids at a creative arts school. Galentine’s with my friends this year felt like that— just really heartwarming to notice, Yes! I have a really sweet and life-giving community of friends.
I left Galentine’s brunch feeling uplifted, and on a mission in the name of love. My friend Sarah’s long-distance boyfriend DMed me over Twitter a few days before asking if I could help him get flowers and chocolate to her for Valentine’s day because delivery was difficult to the place where Sarah lives here in Belfast. My answer was, of course! I’ve heard bits and pieces about Sarah and Andrew’s relationship as I’ve gotten to know Sarah, and they are sickeningly sweet with each other in the best way. And Sarah is the kind of friend who will go out of her way to be intentional and accommodating even when it’s difficult for her, so I was happy to play a little role in making a day special for her. So I was off to fetch a half dozen roses from a flower shop across town, and I arranged for our friend Paul, who lives in the same building as Sarah, to help on the back end of the delivery. Needless to say, the mission was a success!
Later that day, I also had the privilege of co-chairing an event with my friend, Jamie Lukas. It was a conversation between Dr. Mary Philips and Ericka Huggins, a former leader in the Black Panther Party. Mary has written a book “Sister Love: Ericka Huggins, Spiritual Wellness, and the Black Panther Party,” coming out later this year, documenting Ericka’s time with the party, her imprisonment, and the work she’s done afterward, specifically at the intersections of political dissent and spiritual care. Jamie Lukas and I were given largely free reign to ask whatever questions we were curious about, especially as Black scholars in training and as students involved in community advocacy.
From historiography concerned with and rooted in social justice, reframing history to give power to the marginalized, rest and self-care practices as resistance, and making sense of your place in community and history as Black women’s stories are too often erased from the collective memory— we could’ve talked endlessly.
I love getting to talk with women who are older than me. Especially older Black women. I love understanding the ways lives are shaped; how people love, build community, and find purpose. I love life lessons and collecting all the wisdom I can from those around me. So it was a treat getting to hear from Mary, who is doing the kind of work I hope to do one day as a professor and writer, and Ericka, who has lived out a calling that I feel, too, to community, and has answers to tensions I’ve felt as a leader, advocate, and a Black woman.
I think this love for connecting with older women is really about seeking validation in my own journey. I have written a little about the loneliness and the silo-ing that speaking up can do— especially in smaller communities where advocating may be about something relatively small, in the grand scheme of things, but still have significant consequences, especially in how you are then able to show up in and experience that community, but I don’t think I’ve said much about the challenge in confidence and the spirit-chipping that playing the role of the “truth-speaker” or the “challenger” brings. Black women, I know, are too often the ones who must play these roles in our communities, and I’ve found it challenging to find people who really understand the weight of this. But when I do, it’s life-giving and validating. It reaffirms the purpose in the work. And thats what Ericka and Mary did for me earlier this week.
At dinner with them, Ericka’s family, and a few of my professors here at Queen’s, we we talked far and wide, but what I remember most are these:
We all could do with practicing courage a bit more in our daily lives.
Bravery does not mean not being scared.
Intention and presence are anchors in our day-to-day and they’re gifts.
Ericka was serving in leadership roles in the Black Panther Party when she was my age. She dispelled some of the myths of the media and the common narratives of the BPP by explaining how the BPP was simply responding to community needs. Children needed breakfast before school, so they set up community networks to ensure they had access to food. They did not know how to do this, no one necessarily had experience doing this kind of organizing, but there was a need that needed answering, so they found a way.
So often, I think people my age get caught up in the idea that advocacy and community organizing must happen on a large scale. It must be grand and radical. We get so caught up in this feeling that the work we’re doing must be immediately world-changing that we let it stop us from doing anything at all. But Ericka reminded me of a lesson I keep returning to: that courage is a muscle, and vulnerability is power. We could all do with practicing acts of courage in our daily lives and in our communities more often.
I’m also reminded of Deepa Iyer’s Roles in a Social Change Eco-System graphic. Not everybody has to be (or even can be) the one leading the charge on the streets or being the voice that calls out the problem (as just two examples.) Under Deepa’s framework I find myself often taking on roles between a Disrupter and Builder. (If you’re familiar with Clifton Strengths, you’ll probably agree that this aligns with my Activator and Maximizer strengths.) But I know advocates and leaders who lead with weaving or who are naturally inclined to advocate through caregiving. All are important and take courage and vulnerability. In Clifton Strengths training we’re told that knowing your weaknesses are important, but not nearly as important as leaning into your strengths. We all have the power to be advocates and leaders, we just need to practice leaning into what we’re good at and finding our places in the larger ecosystem of justice work.
There’s also a quote from Coraline (my favorite kid’s movie/book only second to Matilda) where Neil Gaiman writes, “Being brave doesn’t mean you aren’t scared. Being brave means you are scared, really scared, badly scared, and you do the right thing anyway.” These two things— practicing more intentional courage and bravery not being without fear and worry— go hand in hand. I think fear can be a good indicator when something really means something to us.
Much of the “good trouble” that I’ve gotten into (from the community pushback from trying to change the name of my school to the investigation into the false allegation of harassment… lol) has come from acts of love— love for my community, care for those in it, significant sensitivity to injustice in any form. It always starts without much more thought than just knowing what is right and what is wrong. I am never fearful of doing the right thing. I am never fearful of standing with those who deserve solidarity. Fear comes in when I understand the stakes, the potential loneliness, the losses, and the pushback of opposition to justice. And those stakes, that loneliness, and the losses involved are sobering real, so I understand why people are hesitant to put themselves out there as advocates. But bravery rewards the heart and the soul. Even when I have not won, I have always been proud that I stood with courage.
There is something about aligning with justice and standing in your courage that just cannot be taken away, even as your spirit is chipped away. It’s about intention and presence, which brings me to the last big thing that really stood out to me in my time with Ericka and Mary. It is harder for me to define the power of intention and presence, but it is a truth I know somehow. Intention is about purpose and focus. And I think its harder to give and receive focus today, which makes it such a powerful gift. Especially when it is directed to the self.
And I inherently understand purpose: I seek it, feel for it, and hold onto it. To be intentional is to show love. To say, this moment is worth being lived in its full speed, not just to be rushed through and onto the next. And presence is to say, this moment, this space, and these people around me deserve my full attention. How little we really receive the full attention of anyone in any moment these days? Even when we are alone with just ourselves. Intention and presence are, like courage, like creativity, like all the practices that are truly life-giving and that we are tuning further and further away from with technology and the attention economy, a muscle.
So I’m working on that one. It has been a long and winding journey— practicing intention and presence in my life, especially with myself and the time I spend alone with myself. This newsletter-meets-blog was born out of the desire to practice that and here we are.
I spent the rest of my week feeling love all around me. On Valentine’s Day, I had no boo-thang to curl up with, but instead focused on treating myself to little acts of love, something that too often falls to the wayside in my day-to-day. A coffee between hours in the archive, taking a longer lunch to go home and make myself my favorite meal and eat it where I’m most comfortable, calling my family and friends, and taking time to read leisure books without guilt… all small but important acts of self-love.1
This lesson of the week— the power of holding space with others, taking risks with vulnerability and courage, and giving love through intention and presence with yourself and others, also came through in my friend’s first book club. Because we accidentally mis-scheduled our dinner reservation a week too early for, none of us had read the book yet, but we decided to meet for dinner anyway. And because it was Valentine’s Day week and still book club (duh!), I challenged everyone to write poems inspired by love (or an anti-love poem if they felt so inclined). I expected them to give me hell about it and refuse, but they surprised me by happily taking on the challenge.
And finally, bookending my week of love in its many forms: I got to catch up with my friend-tor, Morgan, who is working towards a PhD in Florida, over FaceTime. I love Morgan for many reasons, but especially because she is my biggest teacher in what it means to be intentional. She has taught me so much about protecting time and energy just by watching her set boundaries with others in professional and personal settings. I have watched her practice significant self-advocacy while doing intentional community-based work, and making space, empowering and uplifting others. She’s in a different life chapter than me, but she’s another one of those women who are just a bit further ahead on the path from me and whom I love to learn from.
This week’s reminder was that almost nothing is urgent. Practicing intention, presence, and self-advocacy also means discerning what requires immediate action and what can receive your attention a bit later. And most things, especially when it’s another email rolling into your inbox or a task at the end of your work day, can wait until tomorrow.
So that’s all from me today, but I’d love to know: How did you spend this week practicing and experiencing love? How will you show up in your communities with intention and presence? What does courage mean to you? Let me know. :)
I also went on a really sweet date in the middle of all of this. I don’t know if I will ever get to connect with him again, but it reminded me of even the power of love in temporary moments. The kind of love that is there to remind you that you can be loved, that someone will love you, and that it is worth seeking, giving, and receiving love. Anyway— details on that one are in my journal just for me :P
I led two tours on V-Day, and unexpectedly framed some of the remarks about love: the slavers marrying for money in the 19th century, the complicated love by the GWC women of ("Uncle") Clark Murphy, the authentic love of Mary Judson for her students, etc. F had also just started preschool/daycare, so we were shocked that he had a bag full of Valentines candies and gifts already.
it's a pleasure to exist in the same realm as you, asha. teach me more about courage; thank you for modeling it.... MWAH!