"Bless Your Heart...": Defined.

I called this blog Bless Your Heart... for a lot of reasons. The saying draws its roots from the vernacular of strong southern women. Bless Your Heart... can be used to express genuine sympathy for someone, i.e. "My dog was recently hit by a car." Response: "Bless your heart..." This use of the phrase expresses sadness for the event that has occurred but also lends a kind of silver lining to a grim situation. It provides a sweet and sugary icing on one hell of a day.

Bless Your Heart... can also be one of the biggest F*** You’s you will ever receive. We’ve all heard to be weary of this phrase for this particular reason. If you are unsure of what I am talking about let’s use the example mapped out previously, "My dog was recently hit by a car." Response: "Bless its heart..." Seems nice enough, right? Well, what you don't know is the person handing out this 'blessing' probably didn't like your dog very much; otherwise they would have referenced you and 'your' heart. "Bless its heart..." in reference to the dog would finish something like this, "Bless its heart...that dog was one of the dumbest animals I have ever seen on the face of this earth and thank God someone finally put it out of it's misery." If you were listening with an experienced ear, you would pick up on this right away.

These subtle differences in delivery make a whole word of difference. I am afraid to go into too much detail with the use of this phrase for fear of outing the secrets of myself and the ladies who rely on it to keep them out of trouble. You can decode this phrase by simply listening to the silence that follows the delivery to see what kind of subtext is left trickling through the air. Learning to decode “Bless Your Heart…” is challenging because the phrase poses as such a nice, sweet expression of remorse. My advice: don’t be fooled but don’t be stupid. The ladies using this phrase are not afraid of you so don’t call a sister out unless you can do it using the same sugar coated, back handed genius of “Bless Your Heart…”

The master of “Bless Your Heart…” is my Grandmother, Arleta. She is really the true inspiration for the title of this Blog. This woman is the one that indirectly taught me all the tricks of using this magical phrase...our very own "Hakuna Matata."

My grandmother is a strong southern lady. One of my favorite stories about her is the time she started a bar fight, hit a guy, then had HIM thrown out of the bar. You better believe she was using her “Bless Your Heart…” skills that night! This is the same woman who taught me how to flirt with boys and bought me my first bra. This entry is dedicated to her, the woman who taught me everything I need to know about getting by in this world with a little bit of sugar and a whole lot of sass. I’m sure I will write about Miss Arleta Maye later on in my musings on cyber space.

For now, try and use “Bless Your Heart…” in a conversation today. Put it on and walk around in it. See how it makes you feel. I bet you’ll enjoy it and if you don’t, well bless your heart…at least you tried.

xo



Here she is, the woman who taught me everything. Notice the heels...