Hey friends,
This week has, in fact, done too much.
I have been trying to make a room for Black women to gather in Texas. A beautiful room. A cared-for room. A room where we can breathe, eat, move, listen, and be together, without having to explain why we need the space.
And what I met along the way was familiar: the excessive questions, the sudden changes, the contracts that no longer feel steady once it is clear who the gathering is for. The quiet weight of having to prove that our presence will be peaceful, respectable, manageable, acceptable.
This is not new. Black people have always had to think about where we are allowed to gather. Who opens the door. Who watches the door. Who changes the terms once we arrive.
I am not going to pretend the heaviness was not there. I sat with it. I breathed through it. And then I kept going.
This week is also my birthday and my anniversary. In the middle of the moving pieces and the beginning again, I have a husband who quietly took on the details so I could keep holding the vision. I did not have to carry it all. We are so used to being the ones who hold everything. This week, I let myself be held.
And the doors do open.
The brunch is ready. More importantly the October retreat space is locked in with someone who understood the assignment without making me perform the need. A clear yes. A steady partner. Someone willing to open the door and keep the terms in place.
That is what care looks like before the women even arrive.
And it is why Hava cannot stay a single brunch, or a pretty table, or one more wellness brand. Hava exists because we need spaces of our own. Spaces where Black women move through the thresholds of a life in love: rest, return, birth, grief, beginning again. Not as an exception. Not as a special request. Not under suspicion.
One day, Hava will have its own spaces. Not to own buildings for their own sake, but because our transitions deserve rooms built with us in mind from the beginning.Until then, we keep making the room. With care. With beauty. With breath. With love.
And before next week begins, let’s all just take a breath and a moment together.If this week has done too much to you, too, this is your room.
Come breathe in it.
hava
breath. be·hold. begin.