San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Author, educator finding new strength through surrendering
It started with a tweet. Jessica J. Williams tweeted Brené Brown — the noted research professor and author who studies shame, vulnerability, courage and empathy — saying that she wanted to have a conversation about how vulnerability looks different in Black skin.
“I thought, at most, that Brené would invite me to have a dialogue on her podcast,” says Williams. “In my wildest dreams, I did not expect the invitation to contribute to this incredible anthology.”
That anthology, “You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience,” is now a New York Times best-seller and includes essays by Austin Channing Brown, Kiese Laymon, Laverne Cox, Tanya Denise Fields and Marc Lamont Hill, among others. The collection was edited by Brown and Tarana Burke, founder of the #Metoo movement, and explores “the Black experience with shame resilience” and shares the depth and breadth of Black people’s humanity.
In her essay, “Black Surrender Within the Ivory Tower,” Williams discusses identifying shame, navigating it in predominantly White spaces as a Black woman, and ultimately rejecting that shame in favor of leaning into her own vulnerability. That process, although sometimes painful, was necessary to arrive at a place of new strength and love for herself. She realized that “shame cannot oppress what acceptance has already claimed for sovereignty.”
Williams is a Black feminist, artist and educator working in administration at UC San Diego, and is a co-owner of Golden Peaches, where she conducts workshop facilitation, speaking, and other creative endeavors centered around healing and empowerment. She took some time to talk about her essay, what she gained from the process of writing it, and what it means to be her own best thing. (This email interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version of this conversation, visit sandiegouniontribune.com/ sdut-lisa-deaderick-staff.html.)
Q:
You tweeted Brené Brown during the summer of 2020. What was going on for you at the time that led you to send that tweet?
A:
Honestly, I was like many Black people in America at that time. I was “full” of emotions — grief, anger, outrage, defeat, fear — and I found myself fighting to hold it together. I wanted Brené to realize how every single day was an exercise in vulnerability for Black women and, using myself as an example, looking at Black women in higher education.
Q:
And then, you were asked to share your own vulnerability in a contributing essay for this book. Early in your essay, “Black Surrender Within the Ivory Tower,” you talk about impostor syndrome growing into self-doubt, and how your early drafts found you performing for the White gaze and consumerism. But you were able to find a way to remind yourself that contributing this essay was “a try,” and that you were allowed to do that without expectation. What did that process of tuning out the noise and giving yourself permission to “be and become without expectation” look like for you?
A:
It was isolating and required a lot of faith and trust in myself. No one read this essay before it was with the publisher, not one soul. I wanted to truly lean into the process of telling my truth and trusting my voice and my Self. That process allowed me to become so much more aligned and affirmed, honestly. Now that this one essay was able to do such big things, I can’t help but wonder what else is possible. Gratefully, we are always becoming, so I am excited to continue the practice of surrender and see where it takes me.
Q:
In your process of healing and redefining, you say that you also learned to cultivate new communities and environments that allowed you to be seen and heard for who you are, not just who someone needs you to be. How did you go about cultivating these new communities and environments? What did you insist on, for yourself, that they had to include? And what did they need to leave out?
A:
The best way to find your people is to be yourself. It seems pretty simple, and I am way over-simplifying, but truly, I was just honest about who I was and what I needed when I needed it. I had a sort of in-your-face radical authenticity that allowed me to either be harmonious with people, or really sound like a hot mess of a middle school orchestra, you know? I found that the more I leaned into the things I liked or the things that made me happy, the more I found people who either liked those things or appreciated that version of me. I never apologized for parts of myself. So, if anything, I just insist that we keep the lines of communication open to be able to share our needs as they arise and shift. I am not sure what else you can ever truly promise in a dynamic relationship.
Q:
“You Are Your Best Thing” is now a New York Times bestseller. Congratulations! I’m curious, too: What has that come to look like for you? What does it mean to you, to be your best thing?
A:
It has come to look like surprisingly regular days, haha! I am still working and doing all of the same things I was doing before the essay came out, only now I have this insatiable desire to continue the conversation. I will be honest, I want a book deal, and I know exactly what story I want to tell. I have been manifesting for a while now! I think, to be your best thing is to be exactly who you are, as you are, in any given moment. To forgive yourself a thousand times a day and live in a perpetual state of grace. This essay is my best thing. Not because of the success, but because it was my greatest practice in surrender; it was just “a try,” remember? A wildly, courageous attempt.