Episode 04: You Are Your Best Thing; Edited by Tarana Burke & Brené Brown
In this episode of the Biblio Therapy for Black Women podcast, host Amaka discusses her new role as a clinical preceptor for nursing students, exploring her feelings of imposter syndrome and the transition into a leadership position. She also talks about her personal experiences with life transitions. Amaka then reviews "You Are Your Best Thing," an anthology by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown, focusing on vulnerability, mental health, and generational trauma in the Black community. She emphasizes the importance of healing and self-awareness, sharing impactful excerpts and reflecting on the collective journey towards breaking generational curses.
Amaka (00:00:14) - Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Biblio Therapy for Black Women podcast. I am your host Amaka and I hope you guys are doing well. I'm recording on a Sunday. I'm sitting at my desk looking out the window. it's a nice day. It's quiet and I am feeling good about getting the day started, about recording this episode early, and about talking about what's on my mind and the book that I want to feature today. So before we dive into the book, I. I started a new job this week, and I have been nervous about this job. I am presenting students, registered nursing students. I'm presenting them for their psych clinicals. They're in, nursing program, a traditional nursing program, and they're at the point where they are studying psych. And I was made aware of this opportunity by a good friend of mine, and I was like, oh, this would be a really good experience. I've never done anything like this before. I've never worked with people in this way, and I jumped on it.
Amaka (00:01:48) - This was maybe a month ago, so it was still very abstract. I was like, oh yeah, this, this sounds great. I'll do it. And then, you know, the week that there was like seven days left and then really counting down and I started to get really, really nervous. I started to really feel some serious imposter syndrome. I'm like, who am I to be teaching students? What? I'm like, I don't know anything. Like, why? What? And I'm like, no, this isn't true. Deep down, I knew I would be okay, but just knowing that I have people that are going to be taking what I say very seriously, they're going to be looking to me as a resource. I was thinking that they would be my peers. I'm like, how? How in the world could I serve as like a leader pretty much to people my age? That was the first part that I got wrong because I'm looking at my group of students. I have two groups of students, and I'm realizing that I'm at least ten years older than these students.
Amaka (00:03:18) - So that's the first, like kind of reality check for me. Sometimes I still think in my mind that I am 20 something in my early 20s. I'm not, I'm not. I am well into my early 30s. And it took me kind of coming home from my first clinical shift on Thursday, after pretty successfully managing the first shift with my students and seven students to the group. So I was nervous about that, too. You know, considering we have limited space and you have to take into consideration Covid precautions. I also wanted to make sure that, you know, they were learning something and that they were having a good experience and that they did not feel like they were wasting their time, like I'm really invested. So that added to the angst and feeling like I am. I am not knowledgeable, which doesn't make sense. You know, when you really think about it, I've graduated. I'm at a place where people can look to me as a reference, as a resource. People can look to me for a very valid opinion when it comes to this field, and I don't really think it has sunk in yet.
Amaka (00:04:45) - I think this was the first experience for me to really sit in the reality that I am at a different place professionally in my life. You know, you grow up, you're a student for so long, your student through your teens, you know, from kindergarten, preschool, you're a student, you're looking up at people. You're looking to them for guidance. You're looking to them. For support through your teens, through your 20s, however long you're in school, and then you get to a point, which is how, you know, mentally, I'm starting to restructure where I am professionally. You get to a point where you are now amongst those who others are looking to for support, for knowledge as a resource. So I'm meeting my students for the first time. I'm getting to know them. We're talking. I laid it out on the table. I was not going to pretend that I knew everything that I was going to do with them as a group. So I was like, listen, guys, I'm going to level with you.
Amaka (00:05:57) - This is my first opportunity and experience as a clinical preceptor. I want to grow with you guys through these next however many weeks of clinical. I want us to work together. Tell me what you want. I know what I know what is important. At least the basics of what you ought to know when you're done. But tell me what you want to get out of this clinical, and I will tailor my guidance for you towards that. So that's the approach I'm taking with this experience. I'm just being honest with my students. I am, you know, reinforcing the fact that we are working together. And the goal is for them to learn something at the end of this clinical experience. And for some of them, they might go into psych as a specialty. They might. And finish this experience and be like, psych is not for me. Totally okay, but I at least want to have them finish with the impression, hopefully, that it was a good experience and that I at least tried, you know, to make it worthwhile for them.
Amaka (00:07:24) - So the day that I woke up for my that first clinical, I was so nervous. I was like, what am I going to do? I was so nervous, so nervous. But it worked out well, it worked out well. And I came home and I was like one. I think we're even in different generations at this point. I keep forgetting that the people that I interact with there's like a whole generation below me. And I think I forget that sometimes because I don't interact with them often. But yeah, they're out there. And I think this is kind of me really understanding that and relating to them from a place of, you know, more professional experience in this field and being comfortable and sitting in that and being okay with it and embracing it. So I am meeting my second clinical group tomorrow and I'm feeling a little bit better about it. It's a smaller group, which makes me feel better to do something I appreciate. So I feel like having had the experience of the larger clinical group already, I am now taking, you know, what I have learned from that one experience so far and apply it to my second group.
Amaka (00:09:00) - So, you know, send me good vibes. I'm feeling much better. But yeah, I just want to I really, really want to do a good job. So hopefully by the end of this semester I have made a positive difference and imparted some wisdom to these students. So yeah, imposter syndrome can really be something. Sometimes I was like, what? Like, I don't know, nothing. Why did I sign up for this? And then, you know, as I was talking to the students, they were asking me questions about medications and I was answering them. So I remember one of my favorite faculty, you know, as we were closing out my nursing program, she was like, don't even worry. You are exactly where you are supposed to be at this point. And you know more than you think you do. And it you know, it ends up being true. It ends up being true. And then this week too, I was also thinking about seasons and transitions. I am definitely in a transitory.
Amaka (00:10:11) - Part of my life right now, just with transitioning out of my program and graduating and really trying to solidify my next steps. I knew starting off this year, sometimes you just feel that, okay, I'm entering into a transitory season. I'm entering into a time where things might not be as stable. My routine might be shaken up a little bit, where I might not have such concrete direction for a little while. Where things might be a little bit more uncertain. I would say I've had maybe 3 or 4 major transition periods in my life when I graduated from undergrad, not really knowing what I was going to do next. a lot was going on in my family, so there was some uncertainty there. And then all the moves I've moved. In my 20s, I moved five times, six times. So I lived in New York, graduated, moved to Texas. I was in Texas for maybe four months, and then I moved to Delaware for my first job. I lived in Delaware for two years, and then I moved to Maryland from my D.C. job, and then I moved to Philly after almost four years, and then I moved to Connecticut after a year.
Amaka (00:11:51) - So in my 20s, I lived in five New York, Texas, Delaware, Maryland, Philly, Connecticut six. so yeah, I've had a lot of transition periods in my life. I got to the point where I was like, you know, I can't I can't get used to being too tied down to a place I have to go where the opportunities are. I have to go to where the jobs are. And I got used to it in my 20s, but I think getting a little bit older now, I am becoming a little bit. I'm still trying to be open because you just have to be. I think that's just part of our generation. We don't really have the luxury, at least from what I've seen, to get too attached to a certain place. But it can still be hard. And I think I'm saying all this because I'm feeling the difficulty a little bit right now, you know, and I'm just putting out a signal to anybody else who is going through transitions right now, and it's feeling a little bit of the difficulty.
Amaka (00:13:02) - I hope it gets better for you. I hope you start to see more direction and more clarity. And as I'm speaking out, I'm speaking to myself, you know, you just have those seasons where you have to make a lot of big decisions and it can be anxiety provoking. So I'm just putting out positive energy and vibes and love to those who are going through big transitions right now and have to make big decisions. And it's like you feel that energy, you know, that something big has to happen or you're in the midst of it right now. And transition periods hardly follow the timeline you think it should. You think, oh, it'll be a month or two, tops. No transition periods can be six months. They can be a year. They can be more from when you start to when you are finally on the other side. So as I'm going through mine, anybody out there listening who's going through theirs? I'm sending love to you and know that I am thinking about you all because it's not easy.
Amaka (00:14:22) - It's not easy. So, okay, now that I've gotten all the feelings out of the way. Let's talk about the book that I've been reading. So one podcaster that I listen to regularly is, Demetria Lucas. Her Ratchet and Respectable podcast is a regular for me, and she had Tarana Burke on the show some time ago. Tarana was talking about the book that she did with Brené Brown that was coming out, that was called You Are Your Best Thing. and I really enjoyed that interview, so I decided to get the book. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. It's called You Are Your Best Thing. And it's an anthology, a collection of essays from a lot of different black writers and people in the media and just from all walks of life. So I read this book, and having finished it, it was an experience. It really was, because it just took me through everything that. Black people in this country have to deal with what the word vulnerability means within our context.
Amaka (00:16:06) - Because Tirana, having collaborated on this book, editing this book with Brené Brown, she mentioned that it came from a conversation of her and Brené them talking, and Tarana kind of bringing up how it's hard to see herself in Brittney's work, and it might be worthwhile kind of going through this and embarking on this project to create a piece of work that includes the theme of vulnerability, but from the lens of people like me and you, you know, black people, people of color. so reading the stories, reading the accounts of the authors in this book, I just. It was heavy. It was sad. It was joyous at times. And it just wanted. It just made me want so much more for us in terms of being able to have the luxury to. Sit and really process our feelings instead of feeling like we can't do it, instead of feeling like we don't have the luxury to do it. Instead of not giving ourselves the time to do it. There were a lot of stories in this book that talked about underlying mental illness that was never diagnosed, which really ate at me.
Amaka (00:18:18) - And, you know, it's nothing new. Mental illness has always been stigmatized. It's not it hasn't always been understood the way that we are starting to understand it now. So in this book I'm reading about folks my age or more so older than me, who are talking about their experiences in childhood at a point where I was not even born. And, you know, living with their parents and their grandparents and living with the experiences and perceptions of their parents and their grandparents, who had no space to think about mental illness or think about feeling anxiousness or feeling depressed. And now you're a child growing up in this environment, and you're not being given the space to really turn inward, look within, and you don't have the words to explain what's happening to you. I saw that a lot in the book. I read that a lot in the book. I'm going to pinpoint more specifically a story by Darren Young when their child came home from school and was sad because somebody told him that brown kids are not as fun to play with as other kids.
Amaka (00:19:56) - And just reading that alone, my heart sunk, because there's always a point where you can't protect your kids from that anymore. You can't shield them from that. You know they're born and you are their protector. But it gets to a point where you know they have to go out. They have to build their social skills. They have to meet other kids. They have to know what it is like to interact and be able to do that adequately. But that does not come with challenges. That does not come without challenges, and its own obstacles. So, so in this case, this young boy, Darren Young, came home and told his parents what happened. And in reading their account, even though this thing which was so terrible happened, I was so happy that the child felt safe enough to express that to their parent. And be able to have the words to relay how they were feeling. And a lot of the authors in the book did not have that growing up. But one thing that I was happy to read about and appreciated was them realizing this at a point and working through going through the process, having gone through it, or are actively going through the process of finding those words and giving those parts of themselves that they haven't been able to connect to a voice.
Amaka (00:21:57) - And essentially breaking generational curses and being the change agent and the pivot point for their future generations, which is a personal goal of mine to that's why I'm always actively trying to figure out ways to make myself better and be better, and interrogate the feelings that may come up that don't feel good. I always ask myself, why am I feeling this? Is there something that I haven't dealt with? And you know, that's really a luxury when you think about our lineage, our mothers, our grandmothers, our fathers, our grandfathers all going as far back as we can. They didn't have that luxury. It was more so about for many people, it was more so about just surviving. Who has time to think about their feelings? Who has time to name what they're feeling or question their thoughts or interrogate their thoughts? Right now it's about making it to the next day. And that trauma that needing to focus on survival and not being able to thrive, I believe it, it's passed down. It's passed down.
Amaka (00:23:32) - And. If there is not a level of self-awareness, it can continue. But something that gave me hope from this book was that many of us are actively trying to be more aware, be more self-aware, be more aware of that trauma, deal with that trauma, heal that trauma so that it does not continue. And the children that come after us do not have to shoulder that burden too. There were a lot of examples in the book about how. Disassociation is used as a survival tactic, which when you think about history and just how sometimes you need to navigate the world, disassociation is, is like the sometimes the quickest way, sometimes just the easiest way to remove yourself from your current reality. And there were, you know, a lot of different avenues that were used by the authors. You know, sex, smoking, drinking, what have you. Isolation, just whatever felt familiar and was available to them and had worked in the past was employed over and over again just to be able to not completely go crazy.
Amaka (00:25:24) - Because of what was happening around them, because of their internal battles that they weren't really able to. Fight and defeat and come out on the other side. And it brought me back to our previous episode of What Happened to You, where disassociation is a very prominent tool that is used in environments where there is instability and there is constant moments of traumatic experiences where your body is just trying to keep yourself safe. And it may employ this strategy to just completely mentally remove itself as the world, as the environment is crumbling around that person. So I saw that theme threaded throughout many stories in this book, you know, which made me sad. I know myself, I have employed disassociation in negative ways at times. I like to think that I do it more positively now. You know, when it comes to the end of the day and really trying to bring come back to myself, you know, disassociation in the form of meditation, in the form of reading and kind of letting go of whatever happened in that day.
Amaka (00:27:05) - But in the case of these stories, you can see it being used as a means of survival. But. What many people would think would be like, you know, unhealthy ways, ways that in the long term may not be beneficial to you from a mental place, from a physical place. but what gave me hope through all these stories is the fact that everyone was trying to be better. I don't know how old the authors of these essays were. I think that most of them are probably like millennials, like me. And I was just thinking about how, just in my experience, I'll speak for myself. I feel like with a lot of people that I've met, we're just trying to not perpetuate the mistakes that were made before us. I feel like there is a collective of elevation in self-awareness, and a collective shift of self-awareness to a more positive place. And I felt that in this novel. Sorry, I felt that in this anthology, and it gives me hope. It gives me a lot of hope for the generations to come after us.
Amaka (00:28:53) - I feel like. We are trying not to be so hard on ourselves. We're trying to give ourselves space. We're trying to give ourselves grace for where we fall short, and we're really just trying to do the best we can. and there were a couple of quotes. That really resonated with me that I think I'll just highlight. So. The story by the essay by YOLO Akili Robinson. They started their essay with this sometimes I wake up and I have to 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. I feel like this is the kind of thing where, like, you wake up and you turn to the page and you just speak it to yourself as a constant reminder, because as I'm reading it right now, it just. My body, my my mind just receives it.
Amaka (00:30:28) - Every single word. So that was definitely an excerpt that I read and I'm sure will stay with me. There is another one on page 136. First of all, my favorite essay in this book was Running Out of Gas by Sonya Renee Taylor. I took something from all of these stories but hers. It was. If I were to compare this book to a roller coaster, her story would be the part of the roller coaster where you're just going through like five loops at one time, where you're just going loop after loop after loop, like once you feel like you've processed the first part of her essay, she hits you with another one and she keeps saying you and she keeps hitting you. It was just so emotionally gut wrenching what she was going through. And then her get like, detailing it to her therapist and her therapist, just being there for her and just the whole metaphor of running out of gas, but eventually getting to the point where she felt like her tank was full, I, I finished this essay and I just closed the book.
Amaka (00:31:56) - I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't continue what I was that I had to take a break. It was, it was, it was a lot. But in like such. Such a good. Wow. Wow. The title of the essay is Running Out of Gas, and the last sentence in the essay is no worries, I would make it home. My gas tank was full. You'd have to read the essay to really, like, get why that last sentence just punches you. but there is an excerpt that I want to read from her essay. It's the first paragraph on page 136. For three years, I screwed quasi to abandon myself like my mother had abandoned me. I was at Sean's house for the same reason. I would have gone to Caseys. But Sean was a lesser drug methadone instead of heroin. Regardless, every person I'd ever slept with was supposed to replace my mother. They did not. And tonight I was going to let Sean inside me because my mommy was dead. In every city of every nation on this planet.
Amaka (00:33:13) - And that truth bulldozed me because she left me at center stage with all my shit and nothing to hold on but her ashes. I slept with people all sorts of people, because it was what I'd learned to do with the sorrow in the marrow of my bones. Tried to disappear it.
(00:33:37) - Who?
Amaka (00:33:40) - And that's just a piece of the essay. So yeah, this book goes deep. I don't want to give too much away, just in case you want to pick it up for yourself and read it. there were some that I enjoyed more than others. I enjoyed all of them. But some of them, like, you know, this one I am highlighting right now was my favorite. It was my favorite just because of how raw she was. And they were all very raw stories. Just to kind of give you an idea. Hopefully that excerpt was just like a little snippet of what I'm talking about. But yeah, it was great. It was a great book. Very emotional. If you tend to cry, if you're a cry, you might cry at some parts.
Amaka (00:34:34) - But I would recommend it. So I'm going to end this episode here, having read that excerpt. And it's kind of bringing me back to reading that essay, and I think I need to do a meditation. But yeah, I'm going to end the episode here. I don't want it to be too long. I want to thank you guys for listening to this episode. I want to thank you for listening to The End. If you want to reach out to me, please do. I love to hear back from my listeners and have it be shared with me. How the episode affected you, you know, impacted you. Please reach out to me via email at B2B w podcast at gmail.com. Again, that's BT bw podcast at gmail.com. Please share the episode. Recommended. Share the podcasts. Let the people who you think might like it know so that they can, you know, start listening and and hopefully feel connected and and come on this journey with us as well. So again, I want to thank you guys for listening and I'll talk to you guys soon.
Amaka (00:35:57) - Thank you. Bye.
