You Are Your Best Thing

1. Shame, Vulnerability, and the Black Experience Intertwined

Because white supremacy has added another layer to the kind of shame we have to deal with, and the kind of resilience we have to build, and the kind of vulnerability that we are constantly subjected to whether we choose it or not.

Unique Black experience. The Black experience with shame, resilience, and vulnerability is uniquely shaped by white supremacy. This adds layers of complexity to these emotions, making them distinct from the experiences of other groups. It's not just about individual feelings, but also about the systemic forces at play.

Contorting to fit in. Black individuals often feel the need to contort themselves to fit into existing frameworks, especially in spaces where whiteness is the norm. This can lead to a sense of disconnect and a struggle to see oneself reflected in broader narratives. The book aims to provide a space where Black individuals can explore these experiences without having to compromise their identities.

Unsafe vulnerability. Trauma, including the systemic trauma of white supremacy, makes vulnerability dangerous and life-threatening. This creates a culture where Black individuals are afforded less vulnerability, impacting their ability to experience joy, belonging, intimacy, and love. The book seeks to create breathing room for Black humanity, allowing for the exploration of vulnerability in a safe and supportive context.

2. The Burden of Black Humanity

I don’t believe your antiracist work is complete or valid or useful if you haven’t engaged with Black humanity.

Antiracism and Black humanity. Antiracist work is incomplete without engaging with Black humanity. It's not enough to simply address systemic issues; there must also be a focus on understanding and valuing the experiences, emotions, and humanity of Black individuals. This engagement is essential for creating meaningful and lasting change.

Breathing room for humanity. The book serves as a space for Black individuals to explore their humanity, providing a platform for stories, experiences, and emotions that are often stifled or overlooked. It's about creating a soft place to land, where vulnerability can be expressed and shared without judgment. The goal is to validate the struggles and needs of Black individuals, fostering a sense of community and understanding.

Compassion and love. Compassion and love are central to engaging with Black humanity. It's about seeing the breadth and depth of the Black experience, recognizing the shared struggles and needs, and approaching the work with empathy and understanding. This requires a shift from intellectual understanding to feeling work, where the heart and head are in tandem.

3. Resilience as Resistance

Joy is an act of resistance.

Joy as resistance. In the face of systemic racism and oppression, joy becomes an act of resistance. It's a way of reclaiming humanity and refusing to be defined by the pain and trauma inflicted by white supremacy. Leaning into joy, despite the knowledge that it may be fleeting, is a powerful declaration of self-worth and resilience.

Paradox of joy and pain. Black individuals often live at the intersection of joy and pain, acknowledging the reality of racism while refusing to let it permanently drown out their capacity for joy. This requires a conscious effort to practice gratitude, love hard, dance with abandon, and laugh loudly and often. It's about declaring the right to be in that store, that school, that neighborhood, that job.

Shared resilience. The Black community has historically relied on spirituality and a shared sense of humanity to declare that their joy cannot be taken away. This resilience is rooted in the legacy of ancestors who persevered through horrific oppression, finding joy in love, community, legacy, and hope for the future. It's about recognizing that even the darkest depths of human evil cannot snuff out the experience of joy.

4. The Messy Affair of Rejecting Shame

Rejecting shame is a messy and nasty affair. Dirty business.

Shame's insidious nature. Shame is a liar, a thief, and a murderer of dreams and vision. It's a manipulator that stifles self-love and respect, leading individuals to concede that they are trash cans, only good for receiving the worst from others. This internalized shame can be inherited, nurtured, and force-fed through passive words, casual slaps, and cyclical violence.

Reclaiming inherent worth. Rejecting shame requires a conscious decision to reclaim what is inherently yours. Joy, happiness, health, safety, love, and abundant community are not things that need to be earned; they are inherent rights. This shift in mindset is critical for breaking free from the cycle of shame and embracing a life of worthiness.

Shadow work and community. Rejecting shame requires serious shadow work to unhinge yourself from the manifestation of hundreds of years of foolishness. It involves being uncomfortable, experiencing emotional pain, and wanting to crawl out of your skin. An abundant community that reminds you of what is on the other side, that loves on you, that pours into you, that holds you and sometimes shakes the shit out of you is essential.

5. The Dangers of Doctor-Crazy

I do not want to be killed by a white doctor in America. I think I will be killed by a white doctor in America.

Medical mistreatment. Black individuals often face mistreatment and dismissal in the medical system, leading to a deep-seated fear and distrust of doctors, particularly white doctors. This fear is rooted in historical and ongoing experiences of racism and discrimination in healthcare. The author expresses a personal fear of being killed by a white doctor, highlighting the severity of this concern.

Crazy-making experiences. The author recounts experiences of being labeled "crazy" for expressing concerns about racism and mistreatment. This highlights the ways in which the medical system can be used to silence and invalidate the experiences of Black individuals. It also raises questions about whose "crazy" is used to shield them from consequence and whose "crazy" is used to justify disciplining and humiliation.

Head needs help. The author emphasizes the importance of tending to mental health, particularly in the face of systemic oppression and trauma. The author acknowledges that their head needs help and that any love they purport to have for any human in this world is not nearly as radical or tender as it can be as long as they fail to give their head help.

6. Healing Generational Trauma

Healing this generational trauma requires an end to what continues to traumatize us: police violence, the violence of generational and systemic poverty.

Political backdrop of healing. Healing sits against a political backdrop that doesn't allow us to simply individualize healing or imagine that it could ever be an apolitical endeavor. For Black people, many of the tools and technologies used by our ancestors to heal have been taken or suppressed. The extent of the traumas we have experienced has been constant and collective, overwhelming our efforts and our resources to address.

Collective healing. Healing generational trauma requires an end to the systems that continue to traumatize Black communities, such as police violence and systemic poverty. It also requires a commitment to feeling, ritual, and process that will make us anew. On the other side of healing is not a return to what has been, but instead renewed purpose, deeper relationships, and dignity for the collective.

Healing and politics. Healing and politics are intertwined. To understand uprisings or protest, you have to understand emotional repression. You have to understand that there are feelings that we have not allowed. Rage forms when grief has not been allowed or honored. What I have experienced in the streets is the convergence and expression of grief that spans generations, grief that has been silenced and unacknowledged but lives on in us.

7. The Church: A Refuge and a Source of Shame

Love absolutely will lift us. But there are generations of Nanas, Mamas, and Baby Girls looking for something else to help. The church has so much more than shame to give us.

Duality of the Black church. The Black church has historically served as a refuge and source of strength for Black communities, but it has also been a site of shame and control, particularly for women. This duality stems from the church's embrace of patriarchal values and its use of shame as a tool for maintaining order. The church has created a space where Black women have been able to adapt to our diminishment in a way that feels like there is some reward on the back end for doing so.

Shame and certainty. The church's unwillingness to surrender certitude often becomes a driver for the shaming that happens in the church. We have to be right. About the tenets of our faith. About the way God shows up. About the rules and regulations we wield to keep the “flock” in line. Because what does it mean to not know for sure? Can we still believe if we lean into the mystery of God and accept that maybe there is more than one answer, more than one interpretation, more than one way to embrace faith?

Love as a counter to shame. Nurturing love, as opposed to the transactional way we often experience love, is absolutely a way to counter shame in the Black church. The healing that comes from it is also a kind of resistance against the narratives that try to diminish Black women elsewhere. The shift that needs to happen is one that aligns with the gospel the most. Embracing mystery leaves room for our own mysterious emotional responses and allows love to fill us up in ways that our certain faith never could.

8. Unlearning Unhealthy Masculinity

We measure our humanity against the humanity of those who seek to kill us, our families, and maybe most of the planet.

Toxic masculinity. Black men often model manhood after those who oppress them, measuring their humanity against the humanity of those who seek to harm them. This leads to the embrace of toxic masculinity, including hypermasculinity, hypersexuality, homophobia, misogyny, and violence. Anytime we deviate from this script, we feel less masculine. And when we feel less masculine, we feel less human.

Vulnerability and accountability. In order to unlearn unhealthy masculinity, we must run toward our fears. We must be willing to embrace the various forms of vulnerability that emerge when we disrupt the status quo. Accountability requires that I resist unhealthy masculinity in real time as it takes up space.

Emotional vulnerability. Emotional vulnerability can cut deep. The world hasn’t created space for us, particularly Black men, to say, “What you said hurt my feelings” or “What you said made me feel insecure or inadequate.” “I miss you.” “I love you.” These are things that we’re not allowed to do. All of our emotionality has to come through the lens of those hypermasculine traits like anger, violence, and sexuality.

9. Black Women: Vulnerability and Strength

The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.

Black women's unique vulnerability. Black women are often forced inside boxes and stereotypes—stoic and strong, never showing the toll that motherhood, sisterhood, spousal support, education takes on us. Change has to come, and not because we long for Black women to “save us” but because Black women deserve the chance to be who we are fully—magic, real, human—without apology or sacrifice.

Emotional expression as resistance. To cry and be emotional as a Black woman is an act of resistance. It's a refusal to subscribe to the idea that Black women can't be emotional simply because society doesn't know what to do with their genuine feelings and humanness. I will feel, be, and do as much as I want proudly for the rest of my life. To be vulnerable and emotional as a Black woman is to live in power, which I take back every day, not apologizing for who I am or the space I take up as I move throughout the world.

Resilience and ambition. Black women are resilient because they are ambitious. They are resilient because every time someone has told them they could not, they did. I am the daughter of Cheryl Brown and the granddaughter of Vera Mae Brown, two of the most resilient Black women I know. We lost my grandmother in 2009, and twelve years later, I can still feel her guiding hand when things get tough.

10. The Power of Names: Identity and Transformation

My names, all four of them, have been teachers for me, and I’m thankful for each of those people I was because they led to who I am today.

Names as identity markers. Names tell stories and speak of the journey of someone who has transformed so many times in her life, taking ownership of who she is in the world and creating sacred spaces for herself. My names have been my affirmation, and I’m grateful.

Name changes as transformation. Name switches often occur in moments when one is about to make leaps, often in fear and often quickly, as if one's spirit knows it’s time. And each instance has led to meeting who one was meant to be. Each name change is a reflection of a shift in priorities and a commitment to a new version of oneself.

Roots and lineage. Even as names shift, it's important to maintain a connection to one's roots and lineage. This can be achieved by keeping a family name or by honoring one's culture and heritage in other ways. It's about finding a balance between embracing change and staying grounded in one's identity.

11. The Blues of Vulnerability: Love and Healing Black Youth

The blues is about life, the good and the bad.

The blues as a metaphor. The blues is about the soul opening up and pouring out whatever is inside—without shame, blame, or polish. Done well, it is raw, gutbucket truth-telling, but to get there requires a depth of emotional risk-taking and big doses of courage. The artist has to dive headfirst into some murky emotional waters with real honesty about the trouble that’s been rattling around deep inside, and then put it on display for all to see.

Trauma and vulnerability. Black young people disproportionately experience higher rates of violence, poverty, and trauma than other racial groups. These traumatic experiences inflict a psychic wound that shows up as depression, despair, hopelessness, fear, anger, and pain. Vulnerability can be one of the most important pathways to well-being among young people.

Healing-centered engagement. Healing-centered engagement is akin to the South African term “ubuntu,” meaning that humanness is found through our interdependence, collective engagement, and service to others. The healing-centered approach comes from the idea that young people are not harmed in a vacuum, and therefore their healing cannot happen in one. Healing comes from sharing our stories and holding space to hear one another’s pain, and joy, without judgment.

Last updated: April 14, 2025