THIS GOOD WOMAN'S WORTH by India Ame'ye
The "good girl" conditioning is not the same thing as a "good woman." A good woman gives because it is in her nature to live in the overflow of giving and receiving. She is a relaxed, encouraging woman and her light/radiance/warmth can be felt from far away. A good woman is filled up with life and her joy is contagious. She is a good woman, not a "good girl" who tries to please others and desperately seeks to be liked. A good woman is so pleased with herself that her insides radiate outwards and effect change and transformation in those she encounters. -India Ame'ye, Author
What helped free my life force, my actual female chi, that created painless periods, elevated sensitivity, and a high libido (a high flow of love energy), in my body as someone who lives in relationship to my larger multidimensional identity, was when my value as a deeply loving and caring woman was no longer measured by how informed I was about global violence or by how closely I live beside suffering, as though my proximity to pain was proof of my goodness, depth, and care. My refusal to embrace inherited expectations of womanhood, particularly expectations placed on Black women to perform endless endurance, freed so much of my regenerative energy and grounded feralness.
I am the only woman in my female line who has painless periods, has regular monthly cycles and is fertile at almost 50. I truly believe me reclaiming my body, pleasure, nourishment, ability to do hard things like occasional cold plunges, and deep tenderness in very real devotional ways played a role in my path. I returned home to myself (my cells) and stopped trying to do life separate from my very real wellbeing.
What I had the courage to realize was that my goodness does not increase through exhaustion or through having all the talking points. The depth of my compassion is not proven through chronic exposure to grief, fear, outrage, despair, or witnessing. I am no longer willing to believe my humanity is measured by how much pain I can absorb while abandoning my own body, a body that would rather be soaked in a warm detox bath with sea salt than placed in front of a screen watching news while blue light slowly eats away at my eyesight, nervous system, and capacity to hold independent thought.
I do want to be clear that social consciousness itself is not the problem. The problem is the lack of honesty around all the sneaky ways social consciousness can become disembodiment. Or how chronic exposure to fear and collective suffering can settle into female tissues and create very real issues-depletion, weight and mobility issues, and even dis-ease. We don't talk about these things. But I see them and won't pretend.
That is why my good woman-ness lives in how soft and vulnerable I allow myself to be with pleasure. Or in how surrendered I am to present moment aliveness like warm sun on my skin. It is present in how I no longer censor my female erotic vitality and deeply trust my body enough to have 20–30 multiple orgasms back to back without shame, fear, or shut down. It lives in how I allow my body to soften, receive, and nourish itself. I cook my own food most days, even while traveling, because I remain devoted to feeding my body real nutrients and not constantly rely on establishments that could care less about my tissues to feed me real nutrition. And when I do eat out, I eat the few places that do care.
My grown woman goodness lives in my willingness to turn off all screens at night and get into bed earlier. It lives in my devotion to inhabiting joy without guilt. That is because I am no longer willing to be socially conscious at the expense of embodiment, sensuality, softness, nutrition, pleasure, or real erotic regenerative aliveness.
My goodness begins at my root, in the place where safety, vitality, intuition, and empowerment live. It begins where I feel alive enough to inhabit the present moment rather than live exclusively in survival. Survival does not have to be a measurement of worth, especially for Black women who have often been expected to carry resilience, caretaking, political awareness, community labor, emotional labor, and proximity to pain almost as identity requirements.
I do not deny global suffering. I would never deny what is true.
Yet I refuse to prove my humanity, my depth of love, my grown woman-ness, or my phat capacity to care through perpetual witnessing of barbaric acts and collective insanity. I refuse the inheritance that says a loving Black woman must remain near pain in order to remain good. The measure of my open heart lives in my real capacity to feel, receive, soften, nourish, love, and inhabit my body without apology.
That is why I proved my humanity when I made fresh green juices for my Airbnb hosts who had never tasted one before and did not know the nutritional value. I proved my humanity when I gathered my neighbors’ two children into my home so we could make smoothies, call ourselves “Smoothie Queens,” laugh loudly, make a mess in the kitchen, and give their mother, who was moving through heartbreak, time alone with herself.
There are limitless countless ways I prove my humanity every day, especially when I create new body narratives and new global life narratives. I also do it when I muster the courage to be playful and carefree in a world that often champions productivity and endless lies and performance. I prove my deeply loving plumpness as a woman through the beautiful homes I have created over the years and now through regenerative, nurturing-centered spaces for women online where women’s bodies can relax, learn, remember safety, open, release, receive, and expand in real ways.
My compassion is not diminished because I choose the pleasure of placing my warm anointed hands on my sensitive breasts to energize my body’s intuition, wisdom, and aliveness. Perhaps pleasure, nourishment, erotic vitality, rest, levity, and softness are not separate from compassion at all but are expressions of it.
Most women do not want to hear the uncomfortable possibility that reclaiming my body, tenderness, joy, sensuality, and creating a life that truly belongs to me may have played a role in why my experience with my female body has looked different from many women in my family line, most of whom underwent surgeries on their female parts over the years. I cannot pretend. What I know from my experience is that embodiment, pleasure, nourishment, opening up the body (which can be vulnerable and painful in the beginning as you move through discomfort), and the courage to live differently have real lived impact and social purpose that others will be favorably inspired and influenced by.
Perhaps for some Black women, reclaiming our bodies, tenderness, joy, sensuality, consciously curated homes, and lives is the activism. Perhaps it is the repair.
Perhaps choosing aliveness and deeply vulnerable intimacy with our body after generations of bracing is the liberation.
Whatever the case, we are not all the same.
