"You Are Your Best Thing"

(Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience)

-edited by tarana burke & brene' brown

2021

If you're not reading books that are hard to read, you're not reading the right books.

And by hard, i mean kind that hits your stomach and makes you want to run away, because you know it's literally unhealthy to absorb too much of what you're reading, if your heart is open.

This book's subtitle eliminates any need to explain what it's about, except to say that the authors are all of color.

Instead, i'll share my personal resonances. One point the book makes is that the only way for a white person to truly understand black trauma, is by offering love and friendship to a person of color. I have two such recent experiences...and the fact that both of them blew up in my face is perhaps evidence that black trauma is not to be taken lightly. One was a friendship i'd cultivated for five years, a man a bit older than me, and sometimes more conservative and angry. I always knew his friendship was no bargain, but felt he was worth it. We shared artistic tastes, and i held the hope that our familiar friendship would eventually lead to him to share his deepest self. It never came to that, for i recently said something in complete innocence and goodwill, that triggered a huge anger response. Without letting us talk about it, he ended our friendship. I think his rage was significantly about some ancient trauma that my comment made him relive.

And then a more recent acquaintance, a womyn for whom i'd had a breathtaking attraction response. We texted for a few weeks...she said she'd like to get together, but it didn't happen. I kept offering her my new mantra - no secrets, no expectations. I hate texting - it's the enemy of real communication. And i soon realized there was a huge imbalance - i was emotionally open, and she was closed off. I suggested we back off from each other, but she encouraged me to keep writing. I finally wrote something about my attraction response that hit her so wrongly she wrote hurtful words, and walked away. My triggering words weren't anything i hadn't already expressed, but i used language that was more vivid - the word "cock" in particular. Still, her reaction seemed to come out of nowhere.

But it was through reading this book, that i was soon at peace with what happened. This book teaches that the only way to earn someone's trust is to be radically vulnerable...which was exactly what i'd been doing. And i was ultimately grateful she'd felt safe enough to hurt me, as that's a crucial step in healing. Many people who have been traumatized never even feel safe enough to hurt someone.

Feeling safe enough to NOT hurt someone is, of course, the goal.

Would she say that race trauma had anything to do with her reaction? I don't know.

And another resonance, that illuminates how permanently crippling trauma can be. I have a brother who was mugged violently by black men, and it might be fair to say it has forever poisoned his feelings toward people of color. He says and does things that feel more racist than anyone in our family since my grandfather. One specific? He followed the 49ers devotedly his whole life...until colin kaepernick. Just like that, he adopted a new team.

It's all just heartbreaking. And his mugging was NOTHING compared to the thousands of tiny and huge violences people of color absorb every day.

So these things take time. And yes, fellow foolish white people, if black trauma burns you...do your best to swallow it and try again.