The Courage of Softness with Shannon Tehya – A Feature by BradQuan Copeland

The Courage of Softness

A Feature by BradQuan Copeland

Photo By: Nate Black

The ache of brooding bends through thought as my nerves succumb beneath the weight of haze.

Running on eight hours of sleep across the last forty-eight, I sit deeply folded into myself, my head slumped against the driver-side window as I scope the urban backdrop through elevated eyes. 

But when balance becomes tested through the invasion of pressure, how does one realign themselves with the essence of their true nature? Sometimes the answer arrives not through revelation, but through art. For me, this came through two of the latest releases from rising star Shannon Tehya, who is slowly unraveling the vitality of her upcoming EP, The Space in Between.

Listening to her songs Human and Lovely makes me feel as though I’m inhaling the childlike aroma of wonder as they dance through a beauty so immense that it stuns one into willing submission, a place where peace is all-encompassing and angst is extinct.

Sitting down with her once again, she welcomed me into the soul of her upcoming project, where its philosophies pulse beneath the craftsmanship.

Interview with Shannon Tehya

BradQuan Copeland:
What part of yourself became visible through loving someone that you didn’t fully understand before?

Shannon Tehya:
I think my softer side.

I’ve spent a lot of my life being very hardened. I’ve worked in the strip club for seven years, and that made me pretty jaded toward men. For a long time I didn’t feel like I wanted to be with anyone. I was very protective of my heart and my time.

Loving someone in the way that Lovely describes is really a testament to what can happen if you find someone you trust enough to be your softest, most gentle self.

Lovely was actually written before I met Hunter. It was written back in 2019 during what was, at the time, the best relationship I had ever had.

I was with someone who showed me a tremendous amount of kindness when I was at one of the lowest points in my life, and I really felt like I didn’t deserve it.

I wrote the song for him because it felt like he deserved a love song.

I was with a transgender man, and that relationship became a very important staple in my queer identity because, up until then, I had only dated cisgender men and cisgender women. It was a relationship that helped me feel seen in a way I hadn’t before. 

I think a lot of bisexual people struggle with feeling like they don’t fully belong. There’s this feeling that you’re only halfway in the door, that you’re not straight enough for one group or queer enough for another. That relationship helped me feel more secure in who I was and in the validity of my own identity.

To this day, I look back on that relationship with a great deal of love and fondness. It taught me a lot about who I was, and it shaped me into the person who could become the healthiest version of myself for my current partner.

What both relationships shared was a gentleness that helped me understand that softness isn’t weakness. It’s something worth protecting.

Shannon’s meditations on Human and Lovely reveal a truth often buried beneath the noise of modern dissonance: softness is far from weakness, but courage in raw form. Through love, identity, and the willingness to be seen, she discovered not only a deeper understanding of herself, but the strength that emerges when we allow ourselves to rest in unison with another. If The Space in Between continues to explore such depths, fans may find themselves confronting a familiar revelation: that wholeness often starts with self-embrace.