Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast.

Kelly here.

And today I want to talk about softness.

How to opt out of harsh living and harsh interactions and opt into soft living and soft conversations

and experiences. There's a quote from one of my favorite plays, and it's from Lorraine Hansberry's

A Raisin in the Sun. It's been done

3,000 times. You can catch it many different ways. Danny Glover's been in the play. Denzel

Washington's been in the play. It's a phenomenal play. If you have not seen it or read it,

I also recommend reading it. That's how I've come to love this play. And there are a

lot of themes going on in that play, but the one line in the play that stuck with me, and I read

this play, we're talking 20 years ago, was this line where it's between a husband and a wife and they have this exchange

about the relationship and how it's gone downhill and the character says how do we get to a place

where we scared to talk softness to each other.

And I remember sitting probably in my bedroom reading this line and thinking,

how do we talk softness to each other?

How can we have soft interaction?

What is it about our culture as black folks that makes softness so difficult? And yet what are the tools that can get us there and how do we change our mindsets

to understanding that softness is made for us, particularly as black women, that that's to understanding that softness is made for us, particularly as black women,

that that's part of our inheritance along with joy and beauty and love.

It's also softness.

And that's what I want to talk about today.

How we, I feel, culturally, have been pushed into harsh conversations, harsh interactions and harsh

...