Source: Noam Galai / Getty
#MeToo Founder Tarana J. Burke is getting ready to be a married woman.
The 46-year-old Bronx native, who created and started using the #MeToo hashtag way back in 2006, announced on her social media on Valentine’s Day that she was engaged. In her announcement of sorts, she opened up about how she had been hesitant in the past to talk about her present relationship, noting that at one point she went public with a guy and things didn’t work out, leaving her embarrassed. However, after she and her unnamed beau got their engagement photos back, she was reminded how much Black love needed to be celebrated and couldn’t keep her happiness to herself.
“I’ve kept my relationship relatively private for a lot of reasons,” she wrote. “So much of my life is public now that it’s nice to have something just for us. Also, years ago I went ‘public’ with another relationship and was so embarrassed when it ended and I was faced with questions about it. When I got these pictures back I so loved them because they capture us at our best – carefree and in love. We took them on Highbridge, the oldest bridge in NY located in the Bronx neighborhood of the same name where we both grew up. It was a beautiful afternoon filled with beautiful, Black love. When I showed one of my girls and shared that I was debating going public she said ‘Black love is to be celebrated’ and that resonated with me. So today I’m celebrating my love and all of the love spread from my timeline across the world. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
The photos are definitely beautiful. The couple are together in the middle of the bridge with the sun seemingly setting behind them, her fiancé on his knee with her engagement ring in hand in one photo, the pair sharing a kiss in another. Burke looks genuinely gleeful about being loved on by her man:
And while she plans her nuptials and floats on cloud nine personally, Burke’s social activism continues as she leads the charge to expose sexual abuse by people of big and little power in society. She most recently shared her thoughts on Harvey Weinstein, whose misdeeds were a big part of her #MeToo hashtag going viral, being found guilty of a criminal act in the first degree and rape in the third degree this week.
“This case reminds us that sexual violence thrives on unchecked power and privilege. The implications reverberate far beyond Hollywood and into the daily lives of all of us in the rest of the world,” she wrote on the Me Too website on Monday.
“Whether you are an office worker, a nanny, an assistant, a cook, a factory worker— we all have to deal with the spectre of sexual violence derailing our lives. And, though today a man has been found guilty, we have to wonder whether anyone will care about the rest of us tomorrow. This is why we say MeToo.”
