NIcole Goodwin

Return to Issue 12

Softness as Strength

Love can be equated to softness. But no one really examines the idea of “softness as 

strength.” The concept started with Audre Lorde and her written thoughts. Basically, she urged 

Black women to embrace our femininity. This triggered memories deep within my psyche; 

images of strong, sultry Black women who embraced their feminine selves. A self that I spent 

my juvenile years running from—and the last 17 years trying to return to. 

In my younger years, I would have never even considered the idea of softness as strength. 

In fact, I struggled with this concept—tittering back and forth with it, letting it roll across the 

pink flesh of my tongue and out my mouth until it fell upon my brown skin. There it would soak 

itself upon my body until it evaporated. But the question of softness as strength would never 

truly vaporize; instead it would seep into my pores, making its way into my blood, until it 

reacquainted itself with my brain. I could never really shake the thought of it or the thoughts that 

generated behind it. They would follow almost instantaneously the way thunder is always 

promised to follow lightening. Late at night, the hairs on my arm would stand on end awaiting 

an answer. Awaiting a solution that would free me from the loneliness and bitterness of that 

came with being a “Strong Black Woman” in America. 

Now more than ever, I want to be able to be vulnerable. I want to see vulnerability as a 

way of living a kinder life. But the reality of Black women here is we must have our armor on at 

all times, especially while living under White supremacy—as we live in this society with its 

urban settings, cities offering everything to us but love and compassion. Black women must have 

some protection against the world, for it is the world that is killing us—be it quickly or slowly, it 

does this without remorse. And yet the notion of softness as strength nags me, albeit this is not 

new, the feel of it being a possibility of it becoming a true way of living is. Or maybe now that I 

am old it is my desire for it that has rejuvenated freshly within the corners of my mind. 

I truly want my vulnerability to be the key to determining a life that will make me 

stronger. But maybe I mistook the notion of softness that these southern women were trying to 

convey. Maybe it is not about softness by way of command, but rather letting vulnerability 

happen—without fuss, without fight, without objection. What would that be like in my life? The 

idea that I must be open to coming along where these moments would take me no matter what is 

astounding to say the least. 

After experiencing break after psychotic break for the past few years, I have come to 

realize that I am afraid of everyone and everything now. How can softness be a strength when all 

I feel is pummeled by a misguided world? Where did A. Lorde and other Black women find the 

gumption within to continue on this wavery road? How did the Southern Black women in my 

family tree do it at all? 

When I started this essay, I was still institutionalized in a veterans’ hospital in New 

Jersey. I saw no end to my loneliness then, no resolution for peace whatsoever. And most of all, I 

had to forgo the promise of love at the end of my hospitalization. I felt a fury that was unbridled. 

Feeling abused, as if I were a defanged tiger whose battered body was being picked off by rats. I 

was something—no someone who was once mighty brought low; morphed into a mangy dying 

cat. How was I supposed to move forward? I had no one to blame, so I blamed everyone for the 

predicament I was in. I completely rejected the notions of softness, vulnerability and femininity 

as objects of fortitude and perseverance. 

Looking back on this hatefulness is a revelation that until this day, shakes my body to the 

soul. And yet I have decided to continue this journey that my life is on. I have come full circle; 

back to the beginning where I can once again reexamine the purposefulness behind softness, 

vulnerability, and femininity. I have decided to live and find other reasons to love or rather other 

ways of loving and being loved. Even though uncertainty is a part of this adventure, that may in 

turn be apart of embracing softness itself. 

I think of the loss of things that were forged by moments adverse to softness. If I 

embraced softness sooner and considered this my new ritual for strength what would have 

become of the things that came from the “hard” places and times in my life? Such as my sense of 

humor; sometimes dark and biting, other times dry and sardonic. Especially when I’m 

afraid—mostly during times of great change. Will all the good that came from the “hard knocks” 

be eroded, and if so is that okay for that type of change to even occur? 

Even now softness is whispering in my ear: “Not all that is good in you is harsh.” There 

is a side of my humor that seeks tenderness—that is rooted in it even. The way I still watch kids 

cartoons and animated shows as an adult. Seeking out the “good” moments in my adulthood that 

remind me of being a child. Animated shows that take me back to moments of real innocence 

and immense joy. Softness whispers “You need those moments too.” Too, as in an additional 

circumstance not a subtraction. Could it be that softness is trying to work with me in order for 

balance to take some type of hold? But how can me embracing softness as strength balance out 

the harshness, the cruelty in a world that refuses to listen to the cries of Black women? 

I was once asked do I believe in goodness. It was during an argument with an estranged 

friend. At the time the answer was no. I had, once again, forgotten the idea of softness as a 

woman and abandoned all things behind being a poet. The very nature of poetry itself is to not 

only quest for goodness in the world, but to conjure it where it is needed. The worship of 

goodness is what I believe drives the poetry to be written, the poet is merely the messenger and 

not always the origin or creator of the work. I have yet to meet anyone who believes this to be 

false. 

Yet there are so many poets who have indeed given up on the idea of “goodness” existing 

in the world. Because there are times in truth, where language fails to surmise a moment 

properly, yet the feelings that have no language, no label, no description remain. Can my 

resolution of embracing softness help me reconcile this conflict where words and feelings do not 

intersect? Or will this endeavor lead me back to inpatient care, because I have become too 

willing—too vulnerable, too feminine in a world full of uncaring beasts that feed on the 

emotional flesh of Black women? 

The saddest thing about me is that I take too much into my spirit. I am afraid of being 

vulnerable due to this fact. I feel every slight; every sort of slander pertains to me as if the world 

decided that I was unworthy of love and affection. For instance, we live in a America that has the 

audacity to create mega-churches and prayer warriors, yet refuses to help feed the poor and 

downtrodden. Where human kindness is a tax write-off and yet we still don’t muster enough of it 

to produce solutions to homelessness. Where COVID-19 hits Black folks the hardest and in the 

deadliest of ways due to healthcare prejudices and deficiencies. I want there to be goodness and 

softness in this world, but does that mean that “softness as strength” can be a form of goodness 

on a whole? 

Is this a war that grips my soul alone? Like a boa that wraps it body around the body of 

its prey. Is this the plight of all Black women, and those who society has chosen to blacklist and 

blackball? Are we all having the softness choked out of our bodies? America, where I still live 

and breathe; how I have come to love and loathe you. Only because I fear that you do hate me, 

and those like me. And I don’t want this to be so—and yet everyday you prove to me that it is. I 

suppose that is why I must embrace “softness as strength,” in defiance of a life dictated by the 

instincts of a boa. I do not wish to push away softness, I have come to realize that no matter the 

qualms I have with it, abandoning it would be pushing goodness out of my life forgoing any 

concept of love and acceptance forever. 

When I stare in the mirror, I see a new woman. A woman who isn’t as afraid to cry as she 

is to laugh; a woman who refuses to adopt toxic traits from toxic men in order to prove herself as 

viable. I embrace the tender folds of my body, the tender creases in my mind. The nerves that are 

timid and wish to be carefully attended to. The constant affirmation I make to myself and to 

change in the world I live in is that I will not be bullied into harshness. I will take part in that 

travesty no longer. Softness, vulnerability, femininity will have equal baring in my heart. I will 

no longer be swayed by forces who wish for me to become something otherwise.

Nicole Goodwin is the author of Warcries, as well as the 2018 Ragdale Alice Judson Hayes Fellowship Recipient, 2017 EMERGENYC Hemispheric Institute Fellow as well as the 2013-2014 Queer Art Mentorship Queer Art Literary Fellow. She published the articles “Talking with My Daughter…” and “Why is this Happening in Your Life…” in the New York Times’ parent blog Motherlode. Additionally, her work '"Desert Flowers" was shortlisted and selected for performance by the Women's Playwriting International Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.