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by Vanessa Smithers (Author)
Oh to Be Tender isn't a perfect little healing manual. It is not a "rise and grind" optimism book, either. It's a collection of reflections and thoughts for folks who feel deeply, hold a lot, and still have to show up anyway.
You know the ones.
Hey, you probably are the one, & that's why you're here.
This is the kind of book you open when you are trying to name what is happening inside you without turning your life into a performance. When you're grieving something you can't fully explain. When you're in love, but also tired. When you're proud of yourself, but still a little wrapped up in what it cost. When you're learning how to be honest with what you need, without dragging yourself through the mud, wondering if it's "too much."
This book is a compilation of reflections, poems, and lived insights about feelings, experiences, and all the heart things we pretend we're too busy for. The grief. The loud joy. The in-between seasons. The lessons that show up as body memories. The love we want. The love we're learning how to receive. The ways we abandon ourselves just to keep the peace. The way we come back anyway, because something in us still believes we deserve better than survival.
Read it in order. Read it out of order. Read it like a snack. Read it like a late-night voice note to yourself. Read it like a small ritual before you start giving your energy away for the day. Open it to a random page when you can't find language for what you feel, but you know you're feeling something.
This isn't a book that'll ask you to "choose happiness" while your life is on fire. It's a book that says: name what's real, and then decide what you want to do with it, chile.
With tenderness, but with backbone too.
Oh, to Be Tender is for the ones rebuilding.
For the ones unlearning.
For the ones who want to keep choosing softness, even when the world keeps trying to make it feel unsafe.
You're safe here; I promise.
