Opt Into Softness As A Strength
Black Girl Burnout
Kelley Bonner
4.7 • 762 Ratings
🗓️ 7 March 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of the Black Girl Burnout podcast, host Kelley Bonner discusses the importance of bringing more softness into relationships and reframing softness as a strength rather than a liability. She dismantles the myth of the 'strong Black woman,' urging listeners to embrace vulnerability, intimacy, and tenderness to create deeper, more fulfilling connections. Kelley shares her personal journey of becoming more cuddly and setting healthy boundaries, emphasizing that softness and strength can coexist. More, more, and still more is within your reach in 2025. Tune in today and prepare yourself to engage in realistic strategies that can help you with opting into a life filled with abundance and joy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast, Kelly here. And today I want to talk about how to bring more softness into our relationships and how to view softness as a strength versus a liability. |
| 0:23.6 | This is the theme of the Black Girl Browenow podcast. |
| 0:26.5 | It's all about opting into joy, opting at a struggle, and cultivating a well-rested, |
| 0:31.9 | but a soft life. |
| 0:33.6 | This is my personal life's journey, and I know it's so many of yours. |
| 0:45.0 | And so we cannot have a conversation about rest and relationships and love without talking about softness. |
| 0:54.1 | And so this episode is all about how to reclaim softness, vulnerability, and tenderness as a foundation to restful love. |
| 0:59.6 | Because through softness, we create more deeper and more fulfilling relationships. |
| 1:07.8 | Now, I've talked about at length the myth of the strong black woman and how that myth has really undermined and eroded black women's access to an expression of |
| 1:13.5 | softness. The need to be trapped in a cycle of anger, a cycle of pushing, a cycle of pulling, |
| 1:22.3 | a cycle of never sharing you're having a bad day, feeling like you have to go put on your cape to rescue someone |
| 1:28.9 | or something doesn't really leave a lot of room for softness and actually equates softness with |
| 1:37.5 | weakness. And this is especially true for black women. It's really hard to reject the trope of being a strong black woman in that |
| 1:47.0 | myth because so many of us have been conditioned to be proud of it, to feel like it's something |
| 1:52.5 | that we should brag about. And the truth is it's anything but I will stand by that. I know that's |
| 2:00.0 | an uncomfortable thing to say, but it's true. |
| 2:03.7 | The strong black woman trope, myth, lie is killing us. And the truth is, we just need to |
| 2:11.4 | reframe being a strong black woman. So the question to sit with this episode is, what would it look like to be both |
| 2:20.0 | soft and strong at the same time? How would that improve my life? And for the purpose of this episode, |
| 2:28.4 | how would that improve my relationships? So what does softness do for us when it's in a relationship? It does a couple of |
| 2:38.3 | things. It invites intimacy and connection. When I think about people who are soft with me, |
| 2:45.8 | I want to be next to them. And that doesn't be necessarily romantically. I mean, think about the most |
... |
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