You Are Your Best Thing summary

Austin Channing Brown looked at her toddler’s reflection in the mirror. They were in the bathroom and her son was standing at the sink, wearing a jacket, hood up. He was so obsessed with jackets that he insisted on wearing one at all times. He especially loved wearing the hood up over his head. When she looked at him in the mirror, Channing Brown saw a miniature version of Trayvon Martin, the teenager who’d been murdered on his way home from a convenience store. And her heart clenched. The excuse the murderer had given was that Martin looked “suspicious” in his hooded sweatshirt. 

Channing Brown experienced a jolt of fear as she thought about what kinds of racist violence awaited her son.

The night that Tanya Denise Fields was almost beaten to death by her partner was the night she decided to finally reject the sense of deep shame that had kept her trapped for so long. Fields was ashamed of the color of her skin, her big lips, and her weight. She was ashamed at having had six children with four different men who never stuck around. And she was ashamed, very ashamed, of being poor. 

But the night she nearly died, she realized how expensive all this shame had been. It had kept her stuck in abusive relationships. It had prevented her from creating the home she wanted for her children. And it had caused her to neglect her health and to demean herself. 

The word “crazy” gets a bad rap. Instead, we’re supposed to use medical terms like “depression” or “anxiety disorder.” But “crazy” is exactly how Kiese Laymon describes himself. He avoids people and has spent much of the last years working and eating in his dark bedroom. When his family calls, he doesn’t answer. When he goes outside, he often has panic attacks and feels like he’s going to die.

But want to know the craziest thing about his situation? His experience of white doctors and hospitals has been so harmful that, for most of his life, he’s felt safer suffering alone than seeking help. 

Prentis Hemphill, who uses the pronouns they/them, became an expert at assimilating and hiding who they really were when they were sent to a wealthy white school on the other side of town. In order to fit in, they pretended that they lived in a fancy house, had a perfect home life, and listened to the same bands as their classmates.

In reality, Hemphill’s family was poor, and their home was unpredictable – erupting in violence without warning. Their parents were battling a legacy of intergenerational trauma and violence. But as much as Hemphill’s parents fought behind closed doors, in public they acted like nothing was wrong. Hemphill absorbed the lesson that maintaining a respectable facade was essential.

Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts remembers Sundays in church – being surrounded by women singing beautiful hymns, like “Love Lifted Me.” 

Church was a sanctuary for her, but it also became a place that betrayed her. When she was just entering adolescence, Lewis-Giggetts was sexually abused. Instead of acknowledging what had happened to her and helping her to heal, her church community covered up the abuse. She was instructed to recite scripture and stay silent. And, to keep the peace, she was sent away. 

When was the last time you listened to the blues – to artists like Etta James, B. B. King, and Muddy Waters? When was the last time you let their voices move through you, pouring out pure emotion through song?

Singing the blues is about getting in touch with all the raw feelings, all the pain, and transmuting it into song. It’s about opening up and sharing your darkest truths. That takes a lot of courage and vulnerability. 

Tarana Burke was working harder than ever – even though she was stuck at home in a global pandemic. As she sat at her desk, dealing with a seemingly endless rotation of emails and Zoom calls, she started to feel exhausted and lay down for an uncharacteristic nap. But, soon after, she woke up in the grip of panic: the whole right side of her body was completely paralyzed. 

After lying there for a while and urging herself to get it together, she finally called out to her daughter. She was taken to the emergency room, where her doctor revealed she’d had a mild stroke caused by stress. 

Laverne Cox is a famous Hollywood actress. She’s also fearful every time she leaves the house. 

Recently, she had to go and pick up a prescription from the pharmacy. She was recovering from an operation and could only move down the street very slowly. That scared her; she was used to walking at a brisk pace while scanning for threats. Now she felt incredibly vulnerable. 

Aiko D. Bethea has used various tactics to armor up in response to the reality of being a Black woman in a racist country. She’s tried assimilating, collecting degrees, and increasing her wealth and social status – all as a way of becoming more accepted in a white world. At other times, she’s tried responding with anger, or fighting off rejection by making it clear she doesn’t need anyone anyway. And she’s tried hiding: flying under the radar and playing small.

These have sometimes been useful survival strategies, but they’ve also prevented her from living wholeheartedly; they’ve stopped her from sharing her full self with the world. In order to learn how to express herself in an environment that discriminates against her, Bethea has spent her adult life developing another strategy: shame resilience.