Being tender and open is beautiful. As a woman, I feel continually shhh’ed. Too sensitive. Too mushy. Too wishy washy. Blah blah. Don’t let someone steal your tenderness. Don’t allow the coldness and fear of others to tarnish your perfectly vulnerable beating heart. Nothing is more powerful than allowing yourself to truly be affected by things.

Make your hearts tender so that the grace the God of life abundantly grants us will drench you, and you will experience his salvation. Make your hearts tender so that you will not be indifferent to the pain or suffering of anyone.

The experience of tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons, longing, as all individuals do, to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals, can participate in a relationship that, for the moment, is not of two isolated selves but a union.

Three things:
1- Stop letting pride win. Don't let it destroy and unravel friendships and loves. We blinked, and it's the holidays again. How many more laps around the sun are left? Life is slippery and fleeting, and distance so cold. Stay humble and warm. Remember what counts.
2- Be unapologetically in love with everything. People and the cosmos. Poetry and oceans. The growth everywhere from roses to your heart to the messes that brought you to this level. The ground beneath you. The feeling. Any feeling. The fact that you can feel at all- forever a privilege.
3- Stay tender. Always tender.

When things fall apart and we can’t get the pieces back together, when we lose something dear to us, when they whole thing is just not working and we don’t know what to do, this is the time when the natural warmth of tenderness, the warmth of empathy and kindness, are just waiting to be uncovered, just waiting to be embraced. This is our chance to come out of our self-protecting bubble and to realize that we are never alone. This is our chance to finally understand that wherever we go, everyone we meet is essentially just like us. Our own suffering, if we turn toward it, can open us to a loving relationship with the world.

Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong.

Sensitive people should be treasured. They love deeply and think deeply about life. They are loyal, honest, and true. The simple things often mean the most to them. They don’t need to change or harden. Their purity makes them who they are.

Tenderness is the most modest form of love. It is the kind of love that does not appear in the scriptures or the gospels, no one swears by it, no one cites it. It has no special emblems or symbols, nor does it lead to crime, or prompt envy.

There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart,' said she afterwards to herself. 'There is nothing to be compared to it. Warmth and tenderness of heart, with an affectionate, open manner, will beat all the clearness of head in the world, for attraction: I am sure it will.

It’s okay to be vulnerable; it’s okay to show empathy. I think this is what female leaders are able to bring to the table and I would always advise them to embrace it as a quality and a strength. The fact we’re all talking about purpose is so encouraging because it brings a human side out in all of us.

There is something so tender about this to me, about being willing to have your makeup wash off, your eyes tear up, your nose start to run. Its tender partly because it harkens back to infancy, to your mother washing your face with love and lots or water, tending to you, making you clean all over again.

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

Tenderness is the attempt to create a tiny artificial space in which it is mutually agreed that each will treat the other like a child.

The vulnerability we experience allows us a different experience of love. It is an act of generosity to let people be close to us, and we try to understand that they, too, are going through feelings about what’s happening.