honoring our foremothers through revolutionary self care: leaning into softness — mariah maddox
“if you listen carefully, our foremothers will speak to you. if you tell their story, they will live again. ”
black women have been deemed the blueprint for strength, the paradigm for resiliency, all for the sake of using our fortitude as a means to keep us bound. again and again, black women find ourselves depleted from overextending, over-giving, overwhelming our resources, time, and energy—yet often lacking the act of having our own wells poured back into.
black women have become the framework for strength, expected to carry the weight of this pitied world with grace. but in actuality, this has led to generational curses, tendencies, and patterns. this has taxed us to our very core. ridden us with scarcity to offer, having received little to nothing in return for all of our giving. so when the greatest source of strength has no place to pour from, those spaces and communities nurtured by us, black women, begin to fragment.
black women cannot continue being the buoys for others. especially when we can barely remain afloat ourselves. so what happens when we decide to choose rest? when we take off the “strong black woman” persona? when we turn down societal and cultural expectations, and instead lean into softness?
i believe this is our greatest act of revolution—black women leaning into tender spaces, black women reclaiming their interludes—in ways that our foremothers were not afforded. showing up for ourselves, in a sense, is also showing up for those women who never had the ability to choose rest.
i think of all the opportunities our matriarchs were not given when it came to ease, when it came to leaning into a deep exhale, honoring their interludes. when i make the conscious decision to lean into my softness, i know that my foremothers are rejoicing. and i know that they are leaning in with me. i know that i am redefining the trajectory, and living out the stories of my foremothers in ways that they never got the chance to.
i am all but a woman if i cannot cradle rest, if i cannot exhale, if i cannot lean in.
leaning into your softness looks like:
saying “no” to the need to do it all
believing you are deserving of rest
honoring your interludes
cultivating communal spaces
setting aside time for introspection
filling your cup first, before tending to others
leaning into those who honor you
honoring what serves you, releasing what does not
mariah maddox is a passionate + dedicated creative who, through her work, strives to cultivate beautiful portrayals of the black community and the spaces in which they exist. her work is solely focused on navigating the narrative of black womanhood/sisterhood/motherhood while seaming together her own existence as a black woman, mother, and wife. mariah is a photographer, writer, and author of poetry books “beckoning of the wind: an ode to motherhood” and "to wilt and bloom," which are available on amazon.
BY MARIAH MADDOX
(SHE/HER)
social:
@mariahmaddox_
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