Cultivating Gentleness When the World Feels Hard: Practices for Preserving Your Tender Heart

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from trying to stay open-hearted when the world feels like it's constantly testing your capacity for compassion. The news cycle alone can be enough to make anyone want to build walls around their heart—not to mention personal losses, systemic injustices, and the more minor daily disappointments that can accumulate like sediment.

Yet here we are, still choosing tenderness. Still believing in the radical act of maintaining our gentle nature. How do we preserve our hearts while interfacing with the loud messages of closed-heartedness out there, near and far? And should we?

Image: Michaela 💗/Pixabay

The Courage in Vulnerability

After Queer Studies Conference this past weekend, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to preserve tenderness when what is around us seems to be hardening. It's easy to mistake gentleness for weakness, but I've found the opposite to be true. There's immense courage in choosing to remain vulnerable in a world that often rewards armor and detachment.

Audre Lorde- who was quoted a few times at QSC- reminds us that "caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." I've been letting that sink in more and more. I'm constantly talking up self-care because of hard-earned lessons around the concept in my own life. Self-care is not optional to do the work I love and cultivate the capacity I need to be with the beings in all aspects of my life. And. There's still a lot of space for choice within it. I bring in my creativity, and where it used to feel like a chore, practicing self-care today usually energizes me with joy. Balance is an ever-changing thing. As I seek more balance, I try to challenge my own perfectionism, and one way I do this is to remind myself (often) that sometimes I will unederestimate the care I need. And sometimes my down-time will cross the line into self-isolation. But, there's no reason to judge myself. It happens! We get to learn and adaptas we go.

Nurturing our tender hearts—our capacity to feel deeply, to empathize, to remain touched by both beauty and pain—feels equally important to our survival.

Practices for Preserving Tenderness

So how do we do this? How do we keep our hearts open when closing them feels like the only way to make it through another day?

And by the way, a shutdown day is absolutely necessary sometimes. Things often have shifted or moved after what I call the Sacred Unplug—that intentional time of withdrawal that allows our systems to reset and reorient. Honor those days when they're needed. I take one every week.

Here are some practices that have helped me and others I've worked with:

1. Create a Tenderness Sanctuary

Designate a physical space in your home where you can retreat when the world feels too harsh. Fill it with things that remind you of your connection to openness—photos of loved ones (animal companions included!), meaningful objects, comforting textures, calming scents. Make it a place where you can reconnect with your capacity for softness.

2. Practice Heart-Centered Reiki

When you feel your heart beginning to harden in self-protection, place your hands over your heart center. Take three deep breaths and imagine the universal life energy flowing through your hands directly into your heart space. Set the intention: "I choose to remain open without being destroyed. I choose to feel deeply without drowning."

3. Tend to Your Inner Child

Our inner children are often the first to feel the impact when the world gets harsh. Take time to check in with yours. What does your inner child need to feel safe enough to maintain their tender nature? Sometimes, it's as simple as acknowledging their fears with compassion instead of dismissing them.

Ask yourself: "What would make little me feel seen right now?" Then offer that gift to yourself.

4. Find Your Gentleness Anchors

Identify the people, places, activities, or practices that help you reconnect with your tenderness when you feel it slipping away. Perhaps it's walking in the woods with your dog, creating art, engaging in spiritual practice, or connecting with a friend who sees and honors your compassion.

When the world feels particularly harsh, deliberately engage with these anchors. They're not indulgences—they're necessary lifelines.

5. Create Boundaries to Protect Vulnerability

Sometimes, the most loving thing we can do for our tender hearts is to create boundaries that protect them. This doesn't mean building walls—it means creating thoughtful filters that allow the good in while keeping harmful energies at bay.

Many of us might remember this tool from the pandemic. Taking charge of what information you access and when can be empowering without being escapist. This might look like limiting news consumption or only focusing on news at certain times of the day for a limited time, saying no to environments that demand you armor yourself, or distancing from relationships that repeatedly wound your vulnerable places.

Community Care as a Practice of Tenderness

One of the most powerful ways to sustain our open hearts is to create communities where vulnerability is valued and protected collectively. When we come together in mutual care, we create spaces where tenderness doesn't feel so dangerous.

In these communities, we can take turns being strong for each other. We can remind each other that our gentle nature is not just acceptable—it's essential to the world we're trying to create.

The Revolutionary Act of Preserving Tenderness

In a world that often feels designed to harden us, choosing to one's heart open is a revolutionary act. The ancient wisdom of the Tao Te Ching reminds us of this fundamental truth in Chapter 78 from the Stephen Mitchell translation:

"Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid."

This isn't just poetic imagery—it's a profound truth about the nature of strength. Maintaining tenderness is not a declaration of weakness but a declaration that we will not let the harshness around us determine who we become. It's a commitment to preserving the very qualities that make us human—our capacity for compassion, empathy, and love.

And it feels crucial to clarify: no one owes tenderness to a harsh world, especially in the face of violence, oppression, or systemic harm. We don't owe an open heart to those who cause and perpetuate harm. Sometimes the most self-honoring choice is to protect your heart through distance or boundaries. The gentleness I'm advocating for is primarily about how we relate to ourselves—creating an internal ecosystem where our own hearts can remain receptive to our own needs, joys, and griefs.

Even speaking this aloud as I wrote it held some power: My heart is open to me for me, not as a requirement or service to anyone else.

The practice of gentleness extends not only to how we interact with the world but also how we relate to ourselves. Another way of approaching this practice recalls the words of brilliant poet Nayyirah Waheed:

"and i said to my body. softly. 'i want to be your friend.' it took a long breath. and replied 'i have been waiting my whole life for this.'"

Perhaps these hearts of ours have been waiting their whole lives for us to befriend, protect, and honor their vulnerability as strength.

May we find ways

to remain gentle without being destroyed to stay receptive without being depleted to preserve our tender hearts in a world

in a collective

in a body

as a soul that needs the wisdom

of those hearts more than ever.

I wonder how you nurture your tender heart in challenging times. Share your thoughts in the comments below or reach out for a Reiki session with special attention on heart healing and protection.