The 10 Best Quotes from “You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience”
Recently I read You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience and felt each essay so deeply, so viscerally, so heart-wrenchingly, that I was at a loss for words. In short, this book will move you — it will change your thoughts and your heart and maybe even your life (I hope it does!). I wrote note after note in the margins of this collection; cried tears of pain and recognition and hope; “wow”-ed my way through each writer’s willingness to be vulnerable and, as a result, more free. Now that I’ve finished it, here are what I think are the 10 best quotes from You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience.
This Joy I Have | Austin Channing Brown
"Our joy is in having loved and been loved well. Our joy is in the ties that bind us to one another. Our joy is in the legacy of all that our ancestors have done for us. Our joy is being able to participate in that legacy now. Our joy is in the taste of freedom, regardless of whether we got only a morsel or the whole pie. Our joy is in a shared language, a shared dance, a shared game, a shared song. Our joy is in having left a mark in the world, being able to say, I was here…We will decide not only that we will practice gratitude for the ways we are experiencing joy, but that we will do so with every bone in our body. We will love hard. We will dance with abandon. We will laugh loudly and often. We will declare our right to be in that store, or that school or that neighborhood or that job. We will give our bodies the respect they so richly deserve for carrying us this far.”
The Wisdom of Process | Prentis Hemphill
"We have survived through a persistent commitment to life, by filling simple lives with big love and a commitment to justice. And the truth of the matter is that the need for healing does not disappear because we have found a way to survive. This work of healing waits for us in moments of stillness or intimacy, in the persistence of doubt or shame, in our struggles to find or sustain stories of meaning or risk living into our purpose...Our pain aversion makes this question of healing challenging to approach...It means that we shape the world to outsource suffering, that we create structures to concentrate this pain and mythologies of superiority to justify it. These are the mechanics of oppression. It is the organization and distribution of trauma across a society. Those with more power can choose more of their pain."
"...Healing our lineages is also healing our lives...Rage forms when grief has not been allowed or honored...What are our politics if not the method through which we create and distribute wellness with what we have? What is culture if not our practices of resilience?"
Never Too Much | Marc Lamont Hill
"We must be willing to embrace the various forms of vulnerability that emerge when we disrupt the status quo...Professional vulnerability asks: What jobs are you willing to lose? Social vulnerability asks: What networks and friendships are you willing to lose? Emotional vulnerability asks: Which layers of masculinity am I willing to shed in order to be a better — or really a whole — person?...The people we're defending and the lives that we're affirming are more important than our social comfort."
We Are Human Too: On Blackness, Vulnerability, Disability, and the Work Ahead | Keah Brown
"I don't subscribe to the idea that I can't be emotional simply because our society has no idea what to do with the genuine feelings and humanness of women. 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."
Unlearning Shame and Remembering Love | Yolo Akili Robinson
"When you are raised to lie and hide to survive, if you are not careful you will learn to lie and hide to live."
Black Surrender within the Ivory Tower | Dr. Jessica J. Williams
"Dangerous is the woman who can give herself what she used to seek from others. Limitless is the woman who dares to name herself. The way I see it, shame cannot oppress what acceptance has already claimed for sovereignty."
Steps to Being Whole, On Your Terms | Aiko D. Bethea
“Black women have held one another’s pain forever…When we choose to tell our stories and stand in our values, we disempower white supremacy. We expose injustice, we validate our presence, we affirm our existence. The power of a community that sees us and validates our experiences is invaluable.”
To You: Vulnerabile Mother | Imani Perry
“Can you define yourself in ways that have little if anything to do with how you’re placed in society, but everything to do with what you like, who you love, what makes you laugh, what rocks your spirit, what leaves you satisfied? Can you notice your feelings without judgment? Can you use them as information without layering on evaluation? Can you think about the things that make you and your loved ones, especially your children, beautiful, sweet, joyful, without putting them in comparison to others? Can you decide this all matters? Can we? Please. Together.”
Where the Truth Rests | Tarana Burke
“The truth always needs a resting place or it will lie down wherever it sees fit.”
You should read “You Are Your Best Thing” if you’re looking for a collection of essays on vulnerability, finding one’s sense of self, acknowledging, feeling & releasing trauma and shame, & learning about the ways our limiting beliefs are exacerbated by systemic racism (& sexism & homophobia & misogynoir…).
