Tonya Parker didn’t want to fill her life with any more activities. She worked as a flight attendant and took ballet and yoga classes on a daily basis. Nor was she looking for new acquaintances. She had plenty, having graduated from Atlanta’s Spelman College.
Parker believed that her life was complete because she had two adult children who made her proud.
The Covid-19 epidemic introduced her to golf, a sport she had previously dismissed as uninteresting. She accepted invitations to a few golf outings. She had trouble. However, one day Parker started taking lessons in secret because she was sick of her friends making fun of her golf skills. Her friends soon realized that she was doing better. She also became aware of her own increasing interest in the sport.
Parker remarked, “I never imagined that a 63-year-old Black woman like me would ever find something that I just absolutely love at this point in my life.” For me, it’s opened up a whole new universe.
Parker is not the only one. Activities that were previously unavailable due to systematic racism or that were not considered culturally customary in Black communities are now bringing joy to a large number of Black people. These ventures have come to represent how Black people embrace their freedom and adaptability and use it to escape the demands of their social, political, and personal lives.
According to Linda Goler Blount, president of the Black Women’s Health Imperative, which promotes wellness and health for Black women, the activities also have health benefits, such as preventing the release of cortisol, a so-called stress hormone that influences blood pressure, blood sugar, and inflammation.
According to Blount, an epidemiologist, what these people are doing is giving themselves more purpose in life in addition to something else to worry about. Additionally, it doesn’t have to be a costly pastime.
According to her, her sister uses adult coloring books as a form of escape. Since the brain is where cortisol is produced, finding that joy will let you to spend less time worrying about the other aspects of Black life, which will lower your cortisol levels and improve your health, Blount continued.
Parker seems to be one of those people.
Playing golf and falling in love with it has made me happy, Parker added. It is the lonesome chase that draws me in. Even so, there may be a lot of conversation going on around you because you’re in a group. You continue to be challenged by this lonesome endeavor. I adore that.
After roughly a year of playing, she made an elusive hole-in-one on the eighth hole of the Seminole Course at White Oak Golf Club, south of Atlanta, sinking an 8 iron from a distance of 118 yards. She claimed that was one of the main reasons she loved the game.
However, she added that golf is a significant kind of meditation and escapism. While I’m concentrating on getting that small ball into the hole, I can think of happy things instead of things that are upsetting me.
Parker frequently plays golf with her boyfriend, Tony Hodge, a financial planner who also acts as her virtual coach on the course. Parker has played all around the United States, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. However, she is really happy when her group of 12 or so Black women in Atlanta, who call themselves the Chocolate Chix With Stix, go out most weeks when the weather is warm.
Black women, particularly those my age, find it difficult to make new connections. However, she added, “These women have been true friends and mean everything to me through golf.” It’s invaluable and just one more advantage of this new thing in my life that has made me happy.
Finding joy in the sky
About 3,000 feet above the ground, Baudelaire Fleurant, a Big Lake, Minnesota-based airplane mechanic, has discovered happiness. There, as he gets ready to leap out of an airplane, adrenaline is coursing through his body.
Skydiving has become Fleurant’s means of simultaneously experiencing fear, excitement, accomplishment, and joy throughout the past year.
“I didn’t have a social life because I was working so much,” he remarked. He became aware of fun diving, which is the practice of a lone individual free-jumping from an aircraft and parachuting to the ground.
That’s different, he recalled, I thought. For Black folks, it’s genuinely out of the ordinary.
Fleurant opted to attempt it after learning more about the procedure.
Before making his maiden flight over Minnesota in a tiny Cessna 172, he received rigorous training with the new Veterans Skydive for Life group. On board were three other jumpers. Fleurant was instructed to go first by the instructor.
“All right, I’m fine,” I said. Then the door opened, and he was frightened by a rush of wind.
“What am I doing here?” I asked myself. I was struck so severely by that wind. It was unbelievable to me. Why in the world was I up there?
He collected himself. He stepped out of the door. He cast his gaze downward.
He laughed as he stated, “Everything looked like Google Maps.” Man, this is something else. I’m still not ready.
Fleurant finally fell silent. He claimed that once he was in the air, the parachute was the only thing on his mind. Because he was on a static line, he didn t have to pull the cord; the parachute deployed on its own after just a few seconds.
“It’s frightening,” he remarked. However, it’s a huge relief when the chute comes out since you’re at ease.
Fleurant took in the scenery as he descended, but he was mostly concerned about landing safely, which he accomplished.
He said, “I landed on my back.” For a full minute, I just lay there and gazed up at the sky. I felt good. Completed. My adrenaline was so high.
After five or six jumps, the fear had eased and had been replaced with the urge to flip and twist in the air.
I feel like a bird then, like I can fly, he said, I m totally relaxed. That s a good feeling. It s a huge stress relief, gets me away from work and politics and other stuff that can get to you.
That escape is invaluable, said Ten T. Lewis, a professor of public health at Emory University in Atlanta. It s important that we do things that are not always about the hustle and grind, especially during difficult political, social and economic times, she said. We have to think about ways to add joy and lean into it, because otherwise the stress of the day will kill us. And that s not hyperbole.
Fleurant, who is of Haitian descent, said jumping does not come without its mishaps. Once he missed his zone and almost hit a house in Phoenix. On his seventh jump, he said, he fractured his wrist from a bad landing.
But he continues to jump despite objections from his daughter. Fluerant became certified with 25 jumps and plans to earn a classification that would allow him to jump out of hot air balloons and helicopters.
I wouldn t say I m addicted, Fleurant said, but he doesn t see himself walking away from it. He is looking forward to teaming with other Black skydivers who are part of the groupsDiversify OutdoorsandMelanin 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 ultimate Black joy for me.
Going deep to find joy
At 5, Jennifer Henry s son Jackson said he wanted to become an astronaut. A few years later, he learned astronauts trained as scuba divers. So he wanted to do that. When Jackson was 10, Henry called a scuba company about lessons. But fearful of the water, she came up with reasons for her son to stay on land for two years.
Finally, when he turned 12, I swallowed my fears, Henry said, and signed up Jackson for scuba lessons. The catch: He needed a dive buddy someone to go into the ocean with him. His mom decided it would be her.
Although claustrophobic and apprehensive, I wasn t going to let anyone else do it, she said.
And so began the journey in Southern California of mother and son becoming certified scuba divers together in the last year.
It is scary, but the joy I get out of it is being in a completely unusual place, said Henry, 41. It s beautiful down there and I am glad I have done this. I m doing something that I never imagined, let alone my parents and their parents. I live my life with this whole idea of being my ancestors wildest dreams. And so, I think of that all the time when we re underwater. That is the victory, that s the freedom. And really I love seeing Jackson pursue his dream. That means everything.
When he was a kid in elementary school, Jackson wore his astronaut costume everywhere he went, including to see the New York Philharmonic. Everyone noticed, including the performers. He was invited backstage. That was fun for Jackson, but nothing like being underwater with his mom.
It s pretty cool that we ve done this together, said Jackson, now 14. Most moms wouldn t do this.
Underwater, he likes that it s zero gravity down there. It kind of simulates a space environment. So that s one of my favorite things about being underwater.
Seeing beautiful fish and vegetation thrills Jackson, too, as well as the escape. It s a whole different world down there with all the fish and the coral and different scenery. It feels like an alien world.
The duo has ventured into a kelp forest, an underwater area dense with brown algae that supports vast swaths of marine life like sea otters and whales. In Jamaica, Jackson came upon a deep drop-off covered in coral that looked like an unknown place.
These experiences, often with theSoCal Black Scuba Divers and Snorkelersin San Diego, thrill them.
This is not just his joy for Jackson and for me, Henry said. My parents and his grandparents are feeling this joy, too three generations of joy, because every time we dive, we send videos and photos to family. They call. They ask questions. They re excited. Cousins want to know about it. So this joy expands across generations and through our entire family. And that s pretty special that this Black family that started off without much can now have this shared joy.