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You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience QUOTES

You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience QUOTES

1 " 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. "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

2 " You deserve safety.
You deserve protection.
You deserve love.
You deserve peace.
Breathe beloved.
Let's do it together. Right now!
Breathe in what I'm saying. Breathe out what you were thinking.
We tell the world they don't have to be anything but themselves to be worthy. And then we work until the stress is about to kill us to prove our worth. It's not just you. It’s not just us. It's the paradox of deeply melanated women. But right now I need you to hear me, because if we are still alive, then there is still hope to beat this thing. "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

3 " Systems of white supremacy teach us shame because they have no guilt.
Rejecting shame for Black lives means rejecting individual responsibility for structural failures.
(Unlearning Shame and Remembering Love by Yolo Akili Robinson) "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

4 " At the time, the whispers to keep silent and appear normal were deafening. And so we did.
There is no blame here. We were just trying to survive.
(Where the Truth Rests) "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

5 " The truth always needs a resting place or it will lie down wherever it sees fit. "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

6 " TARANA: That’s so interesting, right? That’s another reason why antiracist work is important. You have to engage with Black humanity, because the expansiveness of our humanity is so great that it reaches to other people. I don’t want to sound all kumbaya and “we’re all just human beings,” but we’re all just human beings whose experiences and environments and these systems have affected in different ways. But we must tear away the layers to reveal the core, then work our way back from that. "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

7 " We’re afraid that the feeling of joy won’t last, or that there won’t be enough, or that the transition to disappointment (or whatever is in store for us next) will be too difficult. We’ve learned that giving in to joy is, at best, setting ourselves up for disappointment and, at worst, inviting disaster. And we struggle with the worthiness issue. Do we deserve joy, given our inadequacies and imperfections? "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

8 " You are simply in this new moment. Grief was here. Now, in this moment, there is laughter. You can welcome both.
-Dr. Byron
(Running Out of Gas from You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience) "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

9 " We tell the world they don’t have to be anything but themselves to be worthy, and then we work until the stress is about to kill us to prove our worth. "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

10 " We are vulnerable even when we are not. We are vulnerable even when we have not chosen to be. The existence of Black women is always under assault. Our hair is an insult and our bodies are violated. Our Black brothers, sons, fathers, daughters, mothers, sisters, grandmothers, aunties are all vulnerable. We can disappear, be assaulted, be murdered under the color of law without recourse. Despite our credentials and accolades, we can be the first to be laid off. We know this and we are reminded of this. We are always vulnerable—living without certainty and at risk. "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

11 " As long as we are not living in our full humanity, we cannot create a world for humanity. "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

12 " I’m writing to you right now because if you haven’t changed by now, I’m afraid of what else might have been added to this list. "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

13 " And in that moment, this moment, I realized that perhaps I’ve scratched at the emotional laceration of shame, of selfishness. But if my mother is right, the itching isn’t coming from infection anymore, it’s coming from the fact I’ve never removed the dressing from the wound. "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

14 " Environmental factors matter a great deal in the ripening of grapes. If, for example, a grape does not get enough sunlight or gets too much light or warmth from the sun, it can cause the fruit to go into “survival mode.” Sometimes the effect is that grapes do not fully mature and balance sweetness with acidity, and they can be too much of one or the other. So the product is much more concentrated. Similarly, as our environmental factors around us grow extreme, we, too, go into survival mode. This can greatly influence our ability to balance and can cause a sort of concentration of our own product. Jessica, right now you may not be able to produce a full-bodied Cabernet. Right now, you may be a port, and that is okay, isn’t it? In fact, it’s wonderful. Allow yourself this moment. The "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

15 " But we miss all that and, in turn, miss the opportunity to be agents of the Spirit’s healing—because we are too deeply invested in certainty as a marker of our faith. Ironic since, by definition, faith requires a relinquishing of certainty. "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

16 " 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. "

― , You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience