We should ask consent for hugs, and it’s okay if you don’t feel like hugging. It’s okay if someone doesn’t want to hug. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s about personal space.
Think about someone throwing a weighted blanket on you and just expecting you to catch it. That’s what being forced to hug people felt like for me.
Instead of rejecting a hug, I’ve found quite the odd way to avoid it all together. Mostly works upon departure. When you’re saying goodbye make it a fact. Make it intentional. Move closer to the door. Express that your intent to go is pretty much it after a goodbye. Idk just get the fuck out forreal
Cause I’m sure reading this you may think I’m holding up my hand to say “no”, but instead it’s all about the demeanor. In this moment I play up being stand offish. I allow my face to nestle between RBF and a faint smile. A smirk even. Not welcoming, surely not approachable.
Hugging, like many girls are taught to do, like many Black girls are taught to do, became a customary form of greeting friends and family. I never felt right being told “go hug your…”. Forced interaction to appease adults around me. Their smiling faces growing wider to present teeth that gnawed at any idea of bodily autonomy.
I didn’t have the word(s) then. And I have no idea what made me choose a different path that day. Upon leaving the house of my grandmother, I refused to hug relatives on the way out. No beef between us! No sour feelings! I just didn’t want to engage in this physical act of holding, crushing, forced intimacy,
I was firm in standing up for myself. Firm in boundaries (a word I and others around me seemed to ignore) and I’ll never forget the words of my mother as she started the car and I sat in the passenger seat.
“Sometimes you can be so rude.”
Lingerie Slayer 
Thoughts?