Soft Return Sunday

A love note to the fierce but tired Black women

This Sunday’s Soft Return is a rested daydream
inspired by the intimate letters between Audre Lorde and Pat Parker,
gathered in Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker, 1974–1989
(Sinister Wisdom/Sapphic Classics).

A whisper across decades.
A love note shaped in ink and breath.
A meditation for the fierce—but tired—Black woman.

Let this moment transport you—
out of urgency,
out of survival,
into softness,
into wonder.

This is an invitation.
A daydream.
A sacred imagining.
A collective call-in to imagine what could be
if Black women shaped the systems, the stories, the future.

So come—
let your shoulders drop
let your breath deepen
and dream with me.

We have all been trying to survive in systems designed to confuse us.
Trying to find belonging in structures never meant to hold us.
Trying to succeed in spaces that were rigged from the very beginning.

But what if we stopped trying to fit in?
What if we stopped molding ourselves to survive?

What if we chose rest instead?

So come—
let your shoulders drop,
let your breath deepen,
and dream with me.

To my sister reading this—
You are not too much.
You are not too tired to dream.
You deserve to belong in a world shaped by your softness.

But what if we stopped trying to survive inside of them?
What if we abandoned the systems—all of them—and chose rest instead?

We would rest to remember
that we are not meant to be contained
by the confines of a system that only seeks to extract and control.

We would no longer strive to rise inside of systems
that tell us how, when, if we can rise.
And still—we rise anyway.

We would rest.
We would daydream.
We would reclaim our sacred right to wonder.

What if Black women designed the world?
What would that world become?

What if we all laid down together and dreamed—
not for equality as defined by our oppressors,
but for something deeper?
A vision that lives beyond comparison,
beyond the binary of “having” or “not.”

What if we created ecosystems
rooted in care, in nourishment, in reciprocity—
systems that carried themselves,
systems that knew:
we all must thrive for the whole to be well.

Rest is urgent.
Our future is calling.
And it needs our creativity—not our exhaustion.

Rest is spiritual.
Rest is power.

This world was never meant for Black women to belong in.
And yet, we have not only survived it—
we have excelled inside of it.

A world that was built to use our magic,
then discard it—erase it.

But we are still here.
And we are dreaming again.

And still we rise.
Not just with excellence or resilience,
but with memory,
with vision.

Because the very fact that we rise is the key—
the breadcrumbs the ancestors left.
A trail back to our true power.
A holy whisper:

You don’t belong here.
Escape.
Rest.
Come home to yourself.

You don’t have to play their game.
You don’t have to earn your place.

Because you can rest.
And when you rise—
not out of urgency,
but from deep restoration—
you and your sisters will create.
A new world.
A soft one.
A sovereign one.
Ours

.

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Daydream Prompt
Set a timer for 3 minutes.
Let your pen move without overthinking. Let yourself dream.

What if Black women created everything?
Let the question open something in you.
Don’t rush. Don’t filter. Just write.

Somatic Cue
Close your eyes.
Place one hand on your heart, the other on your womb.
Take one deep, restorative breath.
Whisper softly: I remember. I imagine. I create.
Let your body lead from there.

Curious to read the letter that sparked this week’s rest dream?
You can explore it here on Literary Hub.

Want to read more of their exchange?
You can purchase the full collection, Sister Love, directly from Sinister Wisdom.

In love and rest,
The Rested Black Woman

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