I recently listened to Katherine May interview one of my most beloved poets, Ross Gay, on her podcast The Wintering Sessions. During their conversation, they talked about our human inclination to berate and judge ourselves instead of leaning into the compassion and tenderness we more readily offer to others. Gay acknowledged a deepening capacity to be gentle and more forgiving with himself as a part of growing older, willingly embracing what May referred to as “the softness of being male.”
It’s a quality he pays tribute to in “Coco-baby,” a moving essay about the ritual oiling of his body from his collection “The Book of Delights.” Referencing both the essay and such stereotypically uncharacteristic softness in a male in his interview with May, Gay, remarked:
“It's such a sorrow that we don't hear about that and that we're often compelled not to express it or to withhold that very obvious part of ourselves. What a loss, what a loss. Part of the loss I think is it requires that we inflict all kinds of damage on other people. When you can be, like, ‘Hey, I'm soft, I'm tender, I'm' hurting’ ... that helps me not defend and in [not] defending being all the other things — stupid and violent and brutal.”
I’ve been thinking about these words for so many reasons.
Because lately I’ve had the opportunity to facilitate in several healing and wellness spaces with male participants — and I admit that my initial reaction the first time I entered such a space and saw the group comprised mostly Black men was “What will they think of my approach? The gentleness of my voice. The slow, relaxed pacing. My quiet invitations. The way I bring my own tenderness to this work.”
And yet that seemed to be exactly what they needed and what they were grateful for — the space to be vulnerable, to allow their softness to surface and express themselves in ways that traditional masculinity may prohibit, despite our increasingly gender-fluid world. However they showed up in other areas of their life, here was a space where they could echo, in their own way, Gay’s words: “Hey, I'm soft, I'm tender, I'm hurting.”
I’ve also born witness recently to the extreme opposite, the brutality and violence that erupt in the absence of permission to feel, the affirmation of softness, when 14-year-old Nicolas Elizalde was gunned down and killed in my neighborhood last week. He was one of five teens caught in an ambush when a group of juveniles opened fire on them as they walked to their locker room following a football scrimmage at my local high school. Four of the players were wounded but Nicolas — described by his mother as so gentle he would never stand up to a bully or kill a bug — died in her arms.
Many have pointed to apathy as the reason for the pandemic of violence in Philadelphia, where I live, but that is too reductive an answer.
Neither is this the full antidote, but I often wonder in these tragic instances about our sense of connection to our communities and the living world around us. How are we offering care and nourishment to each other and ourselves? What are the structures, systems and policies that keep us all from having adequate resources to support our healing and living well — and how can we reimagine them? How can we unburden ourselves of the stigmas, the stereotypes, the shame that keep us from saying, “I hurt. I’m scared. I’m lonely”? What if we embraced our vulnerability as a sign not of weakness but of our shared humanity?
I believe cultivating the kind of tenderness Gay so often writes about and embodies as a tall, Black man is part of that healing, undoing and reimagining. That we need more spaces and conversations, for men especially, where strong and sensitive, and tender and brave, can co-exist.
Spaces and conversations that my dad didn’t have when he was growing up and certainly not when he became a man. Yet he was one of the most sensitive men I’ve ever encountered, bold and charismatic and as quick to anger as he was to discipline, yet inherently, deeply tender.
When I cried over sad movies as a kid, he let me know it was OK to cry. When I didn’t have a date for the prom, he offered to take me, though, embarrassed by the thought, I immediately declined. Years later, when my parents separated, and he returned to St. Lucia, he would meet me at the airport when I visited in a sweeping hug, tears in his eyes, as he fluttered kisses across my face. And to this day, I don’t know that anyone has ever infused an endearment with such balm as when he called me “Darling” or “Coco,” his childhood nickname for me that still slipped into greetings in our adult conversations.
There was much my dad kept inside, stuffing feelings and stories that found their way out in harsh and inappropriate behavior that he later came to regret. But he was also a cryer, wore heartache in the lines of his face and, like so many of us, had never learned how to carry the grief of his childhood, been encouraged or thought even to lift the lid on the ancient sorrows that filled him.
As I approach the 10th anniversary of my dad’s death this month, this is the man I’m holding close. It’s his softness I want to honor, the bared heart and unapologetic tears he left me, my inheritance of moving through the world in a way many men aren’t invited to — and being part of the change that says, yes, your tenderness, your sorrows, your humanity, all of it is welcome here.
COME CARRY YOUR GRIEF WITH US
On October 15, the 10-year anniversary of my dad’s death, I will be in Clark Park, 4300-4398 Baltimore Avenue, Philadelphia, for Carrying Our Grief Together, A Community Processional. This is the second annual processional presented by Salt Trails, an interdisciplinary collective I co-founded last year to honor grief through gatherings, rituals and art. Together, we will move with our grief, accompanied by songs, beauty and ritual, knowing we do not have to carry it privately or alone. That making grief visible is part of healing and transforming not only our grief-phobic culture but a culture that still upholds and celebrates so much toxic masculinity.
Find out more and if you’re in Philly, sign up to join us here.
Dad, I dedicate this year’s processional to you.
LOOKING FOR A SAFE AND GENTLE SPACE TO TEND YOUR GRIEF?
Join me for six weeks of grief support, starting Tuesday, October 25, at 6 p.m. EST. This facilitated group will include wisdom from my own journey as well as tools and resources to support your own walk with grief and space to share what’s on your heart.
Investment: $150. Sign up here.