Surviving is great, but it's not enough
Brandi Sellerz-Jackson knew there was more to life and shares it in `On Thriving'
Talk about timing. Brandi Sellerz-Jackson's new book, “On Thriving: Harnessing Joy Through Life's Great Labors,” landed on my desk just as I was navigating profound changes in my life. My marriage of 25 years had recently ended. With the family house sold, I moved into a one-bedroom apartment. I've also been thrust into an unfamiliar position at work, left to figure it out on my own. All these adjustments have had me wondering how to thrive and find joy in this next chapter, not simply weather life's jabs.
I'm used to being a survivor and playing the role well. However, that's not exactly living your best life now, is it? In her book, Sellerz-Jackson, 41, draws a comparison between surviving and thriving. “Survival is instinctual. We all want to live. It's in our bones to reach for the sun and oxygen to fill us with life. But thriving is different. It feels different. Thriving is the intentional gathering of all things possible.” We all deserve to thrive. To read Sellerz-Jackson's first book is to understand that if we are willing to do the work, we can not only navigate life's incessant challenges but grow in the process, rebuild and bloom new realities. Sellerz-Jackson uses plant symbolism to illustrate how to move from surviving to thriving.
“I have found that plants serve as an excellent example of a living thing reaching for life itself,” she writes in her introduction, “and gathering (even demanding) what it needs to thrive and grow.
“Like all living things,” she adds, “we humans possess this same resilience.”
A doula who has worked in birth and postpartum situations, Sellerz-Jackson now provides support to clients during major life transitions as, in her words, a “life doula.” Co-founder of the Moms in Color collective and creator of the Not So Private Parts resource, she's also a senior manager of social media for Ergobaby, which sells goods for carrying children. Born in Connecticut and raised in Alabama, she now lives in Pasadena with her husband and three sons.
In her book, Sellerz-Jackson uses her own journey to show what's possible. Written in four sections she describes as the great labors of our lives — relationships, mental health, grief and “othering” — Sellerz-Jackson challenges readers to shed time-worn emotional safety nets for new, expansive tools that can allow us to thrive wherever we are in our lives. Each chapter offers a set of journal prompts and questions to ponder, helping the reader move forward.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q
This book landed on my desk just as I am navigating profound changes in my life. With your help, I am hoping to discover how to move from surviving to thriving.
A
So many of us are in a constant state of survival that it feels like home. We don't know anything else. For me, it was a matter of acknowledging that this isn't the life I want to live. And when we get to that point, something knocks us to a place where it's like a domino. It's like one thing and then another thing and then another, and finally this light goes off. We're not meant to live in a perpetual state of survival. That's not life.
Q
Should I expect to successfully thrive right away?
A
Thriving is not a final destination. It's continual work. I like to quote Gloria Steinem when she says, “The truth will set you free, but first it'll piss you off.” Once we acknowledge that this is not the life we want to live, there is this ingesting of truth and sitting with it, and hating the taste of it, letting it make you angry, feeling all the feels.
I had a really, really, really tough childhood. I saw a lot I should not have seen. My thing was, “Well, no one died.” That was my standard, so I just kind of put it somewhere and told myself it couldn't have been that bad. I didn't realize how bad it was until I talked to my grandmother. I told her, “You know, your house was the place that I could feel ... ,” and she finished my sentence and said, “Safe.” That set me on the path of grieving my childhood. And that's where a lot of our wounds begin, childhood. Once you feel these things, that's where the work begins.
Q
Your book is organized into four parts called labors. Why labors?
A
If you've ever birthed a child, it's labor; it's hard work. Life is like that and I don't think it ever ends. We go through moments in life where it's OK, we're good, we're sipping our smoothie, and then the next minute it's like, oh my god, it's hard. We get to a point where we just need it to stop. And so my hope was to create a book, a guide for when we go through those moments, because it's going to happen. But life keeps going, so how do we thrive in the moments of those labors?
Q
You have 50 plants at home and even give some of your plants names. Why did you choose to use plant life as a metaphor for living our lives?
A
I wanted my house to look like a jungle, so when I started buying plants I started noticing things about them. I had to prune them or take out the brown leaves. A plant would look like it's at the point of dying and then I'd Google and figure out what to do. Plants became my teacher. I read that plants have this ability to bend themselves back upright and to straighten their stems, and I thought about how humans do it all the time. We are resilient in that way — not that we continue to get trampled, but more that we have this power inside of us that we're not easily destroyed.
Q
In the last chapter, you write about being “othered” as one of life's labors, and specifically speak to your experiences as a Black woman. Is the feeling of being othered universal or are there people who don't experience this?
A
That's an interesting question. I think that we're all going to feel it at some point, no matter who you are. If you live and breathe on this earth, there will be a moment when you are “the only” and you feel it. You feel it in your bones. We all have our thing that we're carrying. And that to me, I feel, also gives us a chance to have this beautiful empathy.