What I Mean When I Say Tenere
When I say Tenere, I am not naming a brand or a season of life or an aesthetic that can be gathered and replicated, but something quieter and more essential, something closer to the way my hands move through my days, the way I pause before discarding what still has use, the way I keep things longer than it is fashionable, longer than it is efficient, longer than is often advised.
Tenere means to hold, but not to grip, not to clench or possess. It means to hold in the way you hold a sleeping child, aware of their weight, their warmth, the responsibility and privilege of being the one who keeps them safe for a while. It means to hold space, to hold memory, to hold a life without rushing it toward its next becoming.
I chose the word because it carries gentleness and strength in the same breath. Because it implies care without urgency. Because it suggests tending rather than fixing, staying rather than fleeing, keeping rather than discarding. Tenere is the opposite of a life lived at a remove. It is an invitation to remain present with what is already here.
Tenere is how I move through my home, noticing the way light settles on worn wood in the late afternoon, how steam lifts from a pot on the stove, how certain objects…old bowls, linen napkins, a chipped mug, feels like companions rather than things. It is the reason I am drawn to what has been touched before, used, softened by time. I trust what has endured.
Tenere is also how I mother. Not perfectly, not always patiently, but with a deep awareness that childhood is not something to optimize or curate, but something to protect and witness. It is reading the same book again because it matters to them. It is allowing mornings to unfold slowly when we can. It is understanding that love often looks like repetition, presence, and showing up even when you are tired.
Tenere is how I understand beauty, not as decoration, but as something functional and sustaining. Beauty that holds you when life feels sharp. Beauty that does not shout for attention, but waits quietly, confident that it will be found by those who need it. A table set simply. A candle lit for no reason. A meal made with care even when no one is watching.
It is also how I relate to time. I am not interested in racing it or conquering it or proving my worth by how much I can fit into a single day. I am interested in inhabiting it. In letting seasons arrive as they are. In honoring the long middle spaces that don’t announce themselves as milestones but quietly shape who we become.
Tenere allows room for complexity, for joy and sorrow to exist side by side without explanation. It makes space for the fact that a life can be beautiful and difficult at the same time, that tenderness does not mean fragility, that strength does not require hardness. It acknowledges that some things are not meant to be rushed through or neatly resolved.
This space, this journal, this collection of words and moments, is an extension of that philosophy. It is not here to instruct or persuade, but to offer companionship. To say: there is another way to live that is slower, softer, and no less serious. A way that values what is handmade, what is inherited, what is carried forward with intention.
When I say Tenere, I am speaking about a way of being in the world that chooses to hold rather than abandon, to tend rather than consume, to stay awake to the beauty of what is already ours.
It is not a destination.
It is a practice.