Tonya Parker did not seek to add another activity to her life. He traveled the world as a hostess and regularly practiced ballet and yoga. Nor was I looking for new friends. Graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, had a lot.
With two adult children who made her proud, Parker’s life was full, or so he thought.
The Covid-19 pandemic led her to a sport she had considered worldly: golf. She was invited to some golf events and participated. She fought. But one day, thinking about how tired he was about his friends, mocking his golf game, Parker secretly began taking lessons. Very soon, his friends noticed improvements. And he noticed his own growing passion for sport.
“I never thought that a black woman like me, 63, would find something that I love at this time in my life,” Parker said. “A completely new world was opened for me.”
It’s not just Parker. Many blacks are finding joy in the activities that were once inaccessible due to systemic racism or that were not culturally traditional activities in black communities. These incursions have become emblematic in the ways in which black people celebrate the freedom and flexibility they have, and how they are using them to escape the rigors of life, personal, socially and politically.
The activities also have health benefits, such as the avoidance of the release of cortisol, a so -called “stress hormone” that affects blood pressure, blood sugar and inflammation, said Linda Goler Blount, president of the imperative of the imperative of the imperative of the Health of black women, which focuses on health and well -being for black women.
“What these people are doing is not only something else to think about, but also to give an additional meaning to their lives,” said Blount, who is also an epidemiologist. “Nor does it have to be a expensive activity.”
She said her sister enjoys adult books like that escape. “The cortisol piece occurs in the brain, so when finding that joy, you can spend less time thinking and catastrophing about the other things that come with black life, which then reduces your cortisol level, which makes you more Healthy, “Blount added.
That seems to be the case of Parker.
“Discovering and loving and playing golf has definitely brought me joy,” Parker said. “I am attracted to lonely search. Although you are with a group and there may be many talks around you. You still have this lonely search that challenges you. I love that. “
He helped that she has made a elusive hole in one after approximately one year of play, sinking an iron of 8 from the shot of 118 yards in the eighth hole of the Seminole field in White Oak Golf Club to the south of Atlanta. “That was a great motivator for my love for the game,” he said.
“But golf is also a great escape, and it is also meditative,” he said. “I can think of things that are cheerful and not the things that disturb me, while I stay focused on putting that little ball in the hole.”
Parker, who has played in the United States, as well as in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, often plays golf with her boyfriend, Tony Hodge, a financial planner that also serves as her quasi-coach in the course. But she receives abundant satisfaction when her group of approximately 12 black women in Atlanta, La Chix de Chocolate with Stix, as they call themselves, put in a round most of the weeks during the warm climate.
“It is not easy for black women to make new friends, especially at my age. But through golf, these women have been true friends and mean everything to me, ”he said. “It is priceless, and another benefit of this new thing in my life that has brought me so much joy.”
Find joy in heaven
Baudelaire Fleurant, a mechanic of airplanes that lives in Big Lake, Minnesota, has found joy about 3,000 feet on the ground. There, the adrenaline pumps through her body while preparing to jump from a plane.
In the last year, paratrooper has become the way of feeling fear, emotion, achievement and joy, all at the same time.
“I was working so much that I didn’t have a social life,” he said. He learned about the “fun diving”, where a person is free from a single plane and parachute to the earth.
“I thought: ‘That’s different,” he recalled. “It’s really unique for blacks, really out of the circle.”
After investigating the process, Fleurant decided to try.
He underwent intense training in the Upstart Veterans Skydive For Life organization before climbing for the first time on Minnesota in a small Cessna airplane 172. There were three other bridges on board. The instructor told Fleurant that it was first.
“I said: ‘ok, I’m fine.'” But then the door opened, and a wind jet terrified it.
“I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ That wind hit me so strongly.
He gathered himself. He put a foot out of the door. He looked down.
“Everything looked like Google maps,” he said, laughing. “I’m not ready, thinking: ‘Man, this is something else'”.
Finally, Fleurant Lept. He said his only thought once he was in the air was on the parachute. Because I was in a static line, I didn’t have to pull the cord; The parachute was deployed by itself after just a few seconds.
“It’s scary,” he said. “But you are relaxed once the channel comes out, that’s a great relief.”
On the way down, Fleurant admired his eyes, while mainly focusing on making a safe landing, which he did.
“I terrified backs,” he said. “And they lying me there, I just looked at the sky for a good minute. I felt good. Accomplished. My adrenaline was so high. “
After five or six jumps, the fear had decreased and had been replaced by the impulse to turn and turn in the air.
“I feel like a bird then, as if I can fly,” he said, “I am totally relaxed. That is a good feeling. It is a great relief of stress, I get away from work and politics and other things that can reach you” .
That escape is invaluable, said Tené T. Lewis, professor of public health at the University of Emory in Atlanta. “It is important that we do things that are not always about hustle and routine, especially during difficult political, social and economic times,” he said. “We have to think about ways of adding joy and supporting us, because otherwise the stress of the day will kill us. And that is not hyperbole. “
Fleurant, who is of Haitian descent, said that the jump does not come without his mishaps. Once he lost his area and almost hit a house in Phoenix. In his seventh jump, he said, the doll of “bad landing.”
But he continues to jump, despite his daughter’s objections. Fluerant was certified with 25 jumps and plans to gain a classification that would allow him to jump from hot air balloons and helicopters.
“I wouldn’t say I’m addicted,” said Fleurant, but he doesn’t see himself “get away from him.” It is anxious to associate with other black paratroopers that are part of the groups diversify outdoors and melanin base camp.
“I really want to jump with black people,” he said. “Those groups are really unique. I have to do that. That will be the best black joy for me. “
Passing deeply to find joy
At 5 years, Jennifer Henry’s son, Jackson, said he wanted to become an astronaut. A few years later, he learned from astronauts trained as divers. Then he wanted to do that. When Jackson was 10 years old, Henry called a diving company on lessons. But fearful of water, it occurred to him reasons for his son to remain on the ground for two years.
Finally, when he turned 12, “I swallowed my fears,” said Henry, and enrolled Jackson for diving lessons. The capture: I needed a diving partner, someone to go to the ocean with him. His mother decided that it would be her.
Although claustrophobic and apprehensive, “I wasn’t going to let anyone else do,” he said.
And so the trip began in the south of California of mother and son becoming certified divers together in the last year.
“It’s scary, but the joy I get is to be in a completely unusual place,” said Henry, 41. “It’s beautiful down there and I’m glad I did this. I am doing something I never imagined, much less my parents and their parents. I live my life with all this idea of being the wildest dreams of my ancestors. And so, I think about that all the time when we are underwater.
When I was a child in primary school, Jackson had his astronaut costume everywhere, even to see the New York Philharmonic. Everyone realized, including artists. He was invited behind the stage. That was fun for Jackson, but nothing like being underwater with his mother.
“It’s great that we have done this together,” Jackson said, now 14 years old. “Most moms wouldn’t do this.”
Under water, he likes “that is zero gravity down there.” It simulates a spatial environment. So that is one of my favorite things about being underwater. “
See beautiful fish and vegetation excites Jackson too, as well as the escape. “It is a completely different world there with all fish and coral and different landscapes. He feels like an alien world. “
The duo has ventured in a seaweed forest, a dense submarine area with brown algae that supports large stripes of marine life such as otters and sea whales. In Jamaica, Jackson found a deep coral fall that “looked like an unknown place.”
These experiences, often with Socal Black Scuba divers and divers in San Diego, excite them.
“This is not just his joy for Jackson and me,” said Henry. “My parents and grandparents also feel this joy: three generations of joy, because every time we dive, we send videos and photos to the family. They call. Ask questions. They are excited. The cousins want to know. So, this joy expands between generations and through our whole family. And that is quite special that this black family that began without much now can have this shared joy. “
