Bravo... this is just the truth I needed today.
Thank you!

Life tenderizes you if you let it. And then once it does, tenderness is both an action and a state of being.

Tenderness *is* mighty, but can tenderness be learned? Is it an innate quality that is deep in the swirls of our genes or is it a quality that is earned with hard work through living and longing and loving?

Amen.

Just the other night when I was talking to Kelly I said the one-word philosophy that underpins everything in my coaching practice is tenderness.

These words make me think of my friend Cliff, who, after reading and seeing the tragedy in Haiti cried for several days straight. Now he is organizing his friends together to raise 20,000-- matching his savings up to 10,000 with every dollar his friends donate. His tenderness is rippling out, the tenderness of everyone who is letting themselves be touched is rippling out... mighty indeed.

Have you seen "Holy Smoke", with Harvey Keitel and Kate Winslet? Love that flick and it's all about what you posted.

Amen! I agree so deeply... so emphatically with the idea that tenderness is mighty, I created a site just for tender, sensitive people:

http://www.joyful-work-for-sensitive-people.com/

Where would we be without soft touches? How much more enjoyable is life with MORE soft touches?

such powerful words - tenderness is so often viewed as fragility or even a weakness due to its relationship to raw emotions... but tenderness is truly mighty! It is from tenderness that we bloom and realize our true self. Personally, from tenderness I have been able to learn how to be mighty -- and redefine what "mighty" means to me. When I accepted "tenderness," I was finally able to break down the barriers that resisted the realization that I wanted to be mighty -- and I no longer felt trapped by the labels set by others.

Beautiful, Carolyn! Thanks for speaking so clearly about the importance of redefining.

"and I no longer felt trapped by the labels set by others."

Yeah! Labels are unavoidable, but we can certainly re-define and re-create them:

http://lifeblazing.com/2010/01/15/sensitives-ho...