The Soft Life Is Ours: Rest, Pleasure, and the Power of Choosing Ease
By Lisa N. Alexander
Personal Reflection: Church Discipline and the Policing of Women’s Pleasure
It was a Sunday night—because these moments always happened on Sunday nights. Never Sunday morning, when visitors might witness the spectacle and reconsider membership.
But there they stood—my friends—young people I hung out with, now standing at the front of the church, confessing their sin.
They had “given in to the lust of the flesh.” And for that, they were to be sat down. No more choir. No more Sunday School teaching. No more participation in anything that mattered. All they could do was sit, watch, and pay for their sins through outward contrition.
It was always quiet in those moments. The only voice heard was the pastor’s, firm and deliberate, filling the stillness of the sanctuary—much like the Pharisees when they brought the woman caught in adultery before Jesus. Not the adulterous man. Just her.
Somewhere in the silence, the Leslie organ’s spinning cones would slow down, the hum fading into the background. The congregation sat still, waiting. I don’t remember the exact words spoken that night, only the weight of them. And when it was all said and done, the pastor burst into song, and just like that, the church joined in. As if the moment hadn’t happened. As if the burden of public shame wasn’t still hanging in the air. That’s how saints’ meetings usually went. And it was most certainly going to be the topic of conversation on the church parking lot as soon as the benediction was over.
This memory was thrust back into my present with the spread of a viral video. A young woman standing alone at the front of the church, pregnant. Made to confess her sin and receive her correction. There would be no celebration. There would be no baby shower on her behalf. Online uncles and aunties were livid and came together to shower her with love but were rejected. Her mother cosigned and apparently, the young woman did too.
Many couldn’t believe this was still happening.
I could.
I knew the rebuttals.
“God demands holiness.”
“Holiness is still right.”
“Babies born out of wedlock are shameful, no matter what the world says.”
I’ve heard it all before.
But somehow, that same holiness never seemed to apply to the men. The ones who helped create these “shameful” babies. The ones who never stood at the altar, heads bowed in disgrace. The ones who were never denied celebration.
Holiness, it seemed, was only policed in one direction.
Why Black Women Are Expected to Work, Not Lead
From the founding of the United States, Black women have never been granted full bodily autonomy, nor the freedom to exist without expectation. In early America, enslaved Black women were legally classified as property, and forced to labor for both white men and women. Even after emancipation, they remained the backbone of the workforce, whether in domestic service, agricultural labor, or factory work.
In contrast, white women—while also oppressed under patriarchy—were at least positioned as worthy of protection. Black women were never afforded this softness. Instead, we were cast as the mules of society, carrying both the burden of white supremacy and the demands of patriarchy.
Rest, pleasure, and leadership have historically been withheld from us. But the moment Black women begin to reclaim these things, the world takes notice—and not in a good way.
Why Black Women’s Pleasure Is Policed by Christianity & Patriarchy
Black women have always been expected to serve, work, and endure. Rest was a luxury we weren’t supposed to have—but pleasure? That was downright sinful.
Christianity, particularly in its Western and colonial forms, has always had a problem with pleasure. It tolerates joy because joy can be framed as “righteous,” something that comes from service to others or from suffering well. But pleasure? That’s indulgence. That’s selfish. That’s dangerous.
The sin police have been banging at women’s doors for centuries—especially Black women’s. In my recent conversation with Cordelia Gaffar, we explored why pleasure remains so deeply policed and how we unlearn that conditioning.
- Pleasure was deemed sinful for women. Sexual pleasure, food pleasure, body pleasure—anything that centered a woman’s enjoyment was policed.
- Black women were never even granted the option of pleasure. We were forced into labor (physical, emotional, and sexual) without consent, without autonomy, and without reprieve.
- Christianity framed suffering as virtuous. The more a woman endured, the more godly she was. This bled into every system—marriage, motherhood, work, and even how we viewed our own desires.
The result? A deeply ingrained belief that rest, ease, and pleasure must be earned—if they are allowed at all. Or at best, something to look forward to in the sweet by-and-by—a distant reward in the hereafter, because there was never a guarantee of experiencing it earthside.
Yet, there are Black women who have long challenged this narrative. Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry reminds us that rest is resistance, a direct rejection of capitalism’s demand for endless labor. bell hooks, through her writings on feminism and Black womanhood, illuminated the ways systemic oppression keeps Black women from fully embracing our own softness and humanity. Their work, and the work of so many others, continues to carve out space for us to live fully—without apology.
“Black women have been cast as the ‘mules of the earth’ for so long that folks find it unsettling, unimaginable, and sometimes even offensive when we don’t play that role. It is a radical act of self-love, healing, and liberation when Black women themselves abandon that identity and replace hard work with rest and responsibility with pleasure. I want all Black women to be radical in this way.”
— Dr. Nikki Coleman, Licensed Psychologist
Black Women Deserve Pleasure: Taking Back What’s Ours
This is the truth: No one is going to grant us permission to rest, to lead, to enjoy our lives.
We have to take it.
Rest is not a reward. Pleasure is not a privilege. They are our birthright. And it took democracy going up in flames for us to realize—now is the time to embrace it all.
Lisa N. Alexander is the author and founder of This Woman Knows and What Million-Dollar Brands Know. She is an award-winning filmmaker, director, producer, and writer and is the owner of PrettyWork Creative.
