Thank you for this wonderful piece. I’ve heard chatter about B.B being “called in/out” and I’m not sure what to make of it, and these types of conversations that frame black women as a monolith and lack the nuance of intersectionality.

I’m a fat, cisgender, black Iowan with many complicated identities, such as being a former foster youth, teen mother, and victim of severe childhood abuse. I have a vision impairment and multiple health concerns. Yet, I live a middle class life in the suburbs, and benefit from most of the unearned privileges that a fair skin, educated, articulate (often told I talk white) black woman can receive in the Midwest.

Working at a predominantly white university for a decade with years of code switching while battling systematic racism, on top of running from my childhood trauma and refusing therapy (cause I was a strong black woman 😂), ultimately shutdown my body and mental health.

It was BB’s work about vulnerability that guided me away from the toxic myth of the “strong black woman”. A myth created only to serve everyone but black women. A myth that had been the generational playbook handed down to me as a single homeless teen mom that would have rather lit herself on fire than be caught being vulnerable.

Through BB’s platform I was able to connect to all types of women that wanted to LIVE their lives as people with needs that they didn’t hide or deny. This lead me to Tarana Burke and their book together called “You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience” which set me further down a healing path.

So this is all a long winded way of saying, from my singular perspective as a black Iowan with the warehouse of identities and experiences that I have, Dr. Brown’s research has been immensely useful for me, and I’m confident that she will take in this feedback and rise to the challenge.