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

This acronym stands for “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.” This broad term is used to discuss the experiences and concerns surrounding marginalized groups.

Code-switching refers to when people change their language or behavior to assimilate to a group. People of color often use code-switching to navigate racial communication.

Austin Channing Brown introduces the idea of foreboding joy in her essay, “This Joy I Have.” She cites Brené Brown’s book Daring Greatly in which Brené Brown describes the concept as a sense of dread that experienced joy cannot last. Brené Brown argues that humans have difficulty allowing themselves to feel joy, especially when their histories have left them feeling dubious of the emotion, and Brown supports this idea with her own experiences.

Brené Brown’s work centers on the themes of shame and vulnerability. This guide utilizes Brown’s construction of the term shame. On her website, Brown defines shame as the pain caused by the belief that one is imperfect and, therefore, not worthy. Unlike guilt, shame is not rooted in reflection or the discomfort a person feels when their actions do not align with their values. Instead, shame is founded upon a lie that a person does not deserve to feel joy. She explains that shame can sever the individual from love and belonging by making them feel they do not deserve it. A common misconception of shame is that it is helpful to one’s productivity and creativity. Brown denies this understanding of shame, and argues that shame is destructive.

Somatics is a form of movement therapy that helps patients to identify their internal physical perception and to examine how trauma manifests within their bodies. Somatics uses movement and other performative techniques to help the patient develop a new relationship with the body.

In his essay, “The Blues of Vulnerability: Love and Healing Black Youth,” Shawn Ginwright identifies structural vulnerability as the laws and policies that oppress marginalized groups, forcing vulnerability upon them. Ginwright explains that structural vulnerability causes collective harm. This differs from emotional vulnerability, referenced throughout You Are Your Best Thing as a key element of Brené Brown’s work.

Systemic racism, also called institutional racism, describes the structures of racism that pervade all aspects of society. Systemic racism can be found in the laws, politics, and practices of various institutions. One example of systemic racism is the housing and lending market in the United States. Bank loans and homeowners’ associations have historically leveraged their power to discriminate against Black homebuyers.

Brené Brown describes vulnerability as a person’s engagement with risk and uncertainty, particularly within their emotional space. Shawn Ginwright refers to vulnerability as “emotional vulnerability,” distinguishing it from structural vulnerability. Brown’s definition of vulnerability contributes to her other work on wholeheartedness. She suggests that those who live wholeheartedly live with vulnerability. They take emotional risks and offer parts of themselves, even when they do not know what the outcome might be. In “This Joy I Have,” Austin Channing Brown explains that people of color often have a form of vulnerability forced on them which exposes them to tragedy. These two perspectives on vulnerability offer an interesting duality: a forced vulnerability and a chosen one. The writers in You Are Your Best Thing highlight these two forms of vulnerability. They determine that choosing to live vulnerably in a world that seeks to undermine and devalue them is extremely difficult but is also the key to resilience.