My Favorite Quotes from You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

I felt ashamed of being dark, of having a broad nose, of my big lips, of my prematurely developed body, and later of my fat body with its rolls, saggy titties, hanging belly, and stretch marks. I have felt a deep shame for not going to a better school, for not getting a good traditional job, for my struggles, for my literal hunger, for having six babies with four men who abandoned us. Sometimes, I was ashamed of being the one who stayed. ~ Dirty Business: The Messy Affair of Rejecting Shame, Page 22

I needed to feel that I could be upset by my family, be hurt. I needed to honor the truth of what I experienced while processing the magnitude of the systemic impact of trauma on my family, how long and for how many years things had tried to break us apart. ~ The Wisdom of Process, Page 49

In the first months without my mom, I was learning how to be with both. How to be with all of me - the whole. I ended my call with Dr. Byron and started up my car. I drove toward Baltimore. It was 9:45pm, time to go to bed. I looked down at the fuel gauge, slightly concerned. No worries. I would make it home. My gas tank was full. ~ Running out of Gas, Page 143

Sometimes I have to wake up and remind myself: There is nothing wrong with me. I have patterns to unlearn, new behaviors to embody, and wounds to heal. But there is nothing wrong with me and the core of who I am. I am unlearning generations of harm and remembering love. It takes time. ~ Unlearning Love & Remembering Shame, Page 154