Dear U.S. Black Women,

I dedicate this love letter to you on Valentine’s Day. Why? Because it is time we start making Valentine’s cards for ourselves.

I want to recognize and appreciate how deeply we have loved—especially others in our lives. From the period of enslavement to the eras of emancipation, Black women have always loved fiercely. In Margaret Walker’s Jubilee, do you know why Vyry Brown refuses to leave her children behind to escape with Randall Ware? Because, like many Black women in both fiction and real life, she would rather endure the cruel punishments of slavery than be separated from her children.

Do you know why Sethe Suggs tries to kill all her children in Beloved? Paul D. calls it “thick love,” but Sethe knows that if her children return to Sweet Home, they will be violated just as she was under its cruel, hellish conditions. Similarly, in Sula, Eva Peace throws herself out of a window to receive disability money so she can care for her children.

Or consider how Nettie Johnson watches over her sister Celie’s children while on a mission trip to Africa in The Color Purple.

Also, the necessary love that Meridian shows Truman in Meridian when she repeatedly hits him with her bookbag after he tells her he wants her to have his Black babies.

We see Black women’s love in the form of sacrifice—hiding in an attic for seven years just for a chance at freedom. Harriet Jacobs’ slave narrative continues to impact us today, reminding us that while her time in that attic was traumatic, it was worth it. She and her children escaped to the North. Once freed, Jacobs took control of her own story, recorded it, and left behind one of the most powerful slave narratives of her time.

Historically, through both fiction and reality, Black women have not had the privilege or right to rest. Our bodies, spirits, and souls have always been at stake. We have also rarely been afforded the privilege of hiding. But now, as time moves forward, we find ourselves at a critical moment in U.S. history. It is our time to hide and rest.

After November 4th, many Black women began to see how our labor—our fight for voting rights, our commitment to democracy—has been exploited. So many others have relied on us to carry elections, to secure the win of the first Black and Indian female president. And, as always, when democracy stood at a precipice, threatening to shift in ways that would harm us most, we showed up in droves to vote for Kamala Harris.

But this time, the disappointment was different. This time, some of us realized—despite our love for this country, this country does not always love us back. When I saw the election results and the breakdown of which demographic voted for Harris the most, I decided it was time to convince more Black women to step back—to hide and to rest.

For so long, I believed I did not deserve rest. That my mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being should be sacrificed—just as my foremothers, great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers, and aunties had done—to not only preserve our culture but save it.

We cannot preserve or save our culture if we throttle full speed to the ground, accelerating our deaths.

Black women, I am not saying we should give up or surrender to oppression. What I am advocating for is a new renaissance. A renaissance that Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, bell hooks, Adrienne Maree Brown, Tricia Hersey, and other Black women—including myself—see on the horizon.

We must break free from wake work by embracing rest work.

One cannot save even a part of the world if one is no longer in the world. I am proud of my fictive and real-life Black sisters for loving in the best ways they know how. Black women’s love should be recognized as sacred and honorable. And to keep it that way, we cannot allow those who are careless with our love to desecrate it—to exploit us for their privileges and power. We cannot build a true collective until we recognize that we, too, are deserving of self-love.

Ultimately, Black women, I see you. I love you—because I am you. Yes, we have a complicated past, a lot of challenges in the present, and uncertainties about the future. But what I hold onto is this: we are learning to recognize, realize, and reflect on the importance of loving ourselves and each other. We must all admit that all we got left is each other.

And maybe, that is what we always had. US.

Your Be Mine Valentine,
Sophia

Sophia Flemming is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies with an emphasis on rhetorical studies. Generally, Flemming studies African American public address, specifically focusing on Black feminist and Womanist rhetorics from the 18th to the 21st centuries. Her research examines the topics Black women communicate about, their communication styles, how voice manifests in their experiences and epistemologies, how they interact and engage within and outside their communities, and, most importantly, how they communicate interpersonally and in public spaces.