In the preface to her book The gifts of imperfection, Brené Brown says, “It was clear from the data that we cannot give our children what we don’t have.” And that is why I disagree with Ruth, the creator of Barbie, in the Barbie movie when she says, “A mother stands sill so that her daughter can see how far she has come.” If I stand still, what more do I have to give my children?
Interestingly, a friend of mine who read my post about the Barbie movie loved what Ruth says to Barbie. This friend told me that her mother always competes with her and makes her feel small. She just wishes that her mother would stand still and let her forge her own path. My friend has a point. I suspect that if her mother would learn to understand and love herself, she wouldn’t need to compete with her daughter. Imagine, they could both look back together and honour how far each of them has come.
I said in my last blog post that one of the messages from the Barbie movie echoes a theme that runs through the book Women who run with the wolves: integrate Life and Death, dark and light, the beautiful and not-beautiful. This is what we (and my friend’s mother) should do, but how exactly? One way I thought of was to embrace imperfection. This brought me back to Brené Brown’s The gifts of imperfection that I first read just before she became a TED-talk sensation.
Thirteen years later, I read The gifts of imperfection again for this blog post. My experience of reading the book now was very different from the first time. To begin with, I read it through the lens of many new life experiences. I also read it through the lens of my rating criteria and how I structure my blog posts. Not to mention that this time Brené Brown’s voice rang in my head as well.
So, let’s consider what I think is good and bad about the book before I explore cultivating courage, connection, and compassion that can flow out of imperfection.
The Good
Brené Brown tells a good story in simple, accessible language. Not only that, her book benefits from her experience as an educator. Every chapter follows a similar structure that builds from the previous one. Brown uses headings well, makes links backwards and forwards, and ends every chapter with some practical things you can do. Additionally, she provides clever—or annoying, depending on your taste—acrostics to help you remember what you are learning. In other words, you always know where you are and what to expect.
Another benefit of Brown’s experience as an educator is her ability to model what a healthy alternative to shame and blame could be. Without this, many of us would have little idea of how to change our inner dialogue. We also wouldn’t know how to work with the many layers of our stories until we get to the root story underneath. And she reminds us through the stories she tells that every individual is different; what might be courageous for one person could turn out to be cowardice for another.
All in all, Brown does a good job of making her 10 year’s worth of research digestible for everyday people. She groups the qualities embodied by people who are good at wholehearted living into ten categories that she calls guideposts. She gives each quality it’s own chapter which makes it easy to choose to focus on only one at a time. Each guidepost chapter describes the quality as understood by the wholehearted, what barriers the research reveals, and some practical steps you can take towards reaching the guidepost.
Lastly, Brown’s appeal to her credentials as a social-work researcher using Grounded Theory to analyse over ten thousand accounts adds weight to her arguments. But don’t be deceived; there are some flaws.
The Bad
Brené Brown’s deep engagement with her research, and her year in therapy as a result, seem to have made her a bit cocky. The tone of The gifts of imperfection can come across as overly confident and categorical. If you’ve listened to her on podcasts, Instagram, and TED, you’ll know Brown speaks forcefully and her book comes across the same way. Consequently, there is a subtle undertone of judgement that undermines the most important message of her book: worthiness of love and belonging has no prerequisites.
One example of a subtle judgement is the statement that babies should come with a warning label not to trade their authenticity for safety. Crikey! This is a total (categorical) lack of nuance. Brown omits that we develop all the tactics she’s found get in the way of wholehearted living as bids to stay safely attached to the adults we depend on to reach adulthood ourselves. She also fails to acknowledge the trauma that often informs these tactics, or the distress that trying to let go of them can unleash.
So, this book fails in a very important way. It posits that you will live wholeheartedly if you follow the ten guideposts of authenticity, self-compassion, resilience, joy, intuition and trusting faith, creativity, play and rest, calm and stillness, meaningful work, and laughter, song and dance. It doesn’t inform you of the risks linked to embarking on the journey towards these destinations. It doesn’t identify the signs that tell you when you should seek therapy or urge you to do so. It doesn’t mention the preconditions needed to do the work.
Brown never tells us about the life circumstances that enable her research subjects to live wholeheartedly. She writes as if we are individuals who, like her, are white and privileged enough to have a loving family, a stable job, a group of trusted friends, and the finances needed to take on this work. Nowhere in her book does she discuss the social injustices that so many people face daily due to their various identities. The gifts of imperfection never recognises how society traps so many people in not-good-enough boxes not of their making.
These caveats are unfortunate. Forewarned, though, now you can engage with all that rings true, and there is a lot.
The How To
Embrace imperfection
Brown tells us that people who manage to live wholeheartedly are people who embrace imperfection. They know in their bones that they are worthy of love and belonging in spite of their imperfections. Therefore, when they encounter human imperfection (and the shame and fear that comes with it) they respond with courage, connection, and compassion.
How do they do that? To begin with, they know that shame and fear get bigger with secrecy. So the solution is to tell our story. It’s to choose the right person at the right time to connect with courageously. According to Brown, courage means sharing honestly about who we are, our experiences, and how they make us feel. Courage means risking being vulnerable. It means risking making other people feel uncomfortable by setting boundaries, and risking being disappointed by their response.
Still, this authenticity makes us own our story and integrate the part of the story we think doesn’t belong. When we do this, we meet others as our equals and communicate we are worthy of love and belonging. Plus, it makes it possible for us to be present with other people’s darkness and that is the essence of compassion. Finally, by measuring authenticity as our goal, we set ourselves up to still be okay even if the other person chooses not to like us.
So, how did this work for me?
A friend and I had dinner a while back. I laughed in recognition when they showed me the plethora of draft messages in their notes app that they never intend to send. My laugh meant I had to prove that I do the same thing by revealing the four different drafts I have of the same message. After some discussion, my friend reminded me that something good could come of sending the message, but not sending it probably guaranteed I’d poison the relationship as I feared.
The next day, I wrote draft five of the message and sent it while my heart pounded, my hands ran cold, and my nausea rose. Why such a strong reaction? The battle I’d won was to honour my needs and feelings to the point that I felt strong enough to cope with a shaming response should it come to that. After all, my own internal shaming voice was judging me for being ridiculous.
The friend I was writing to had promised to get back to me within a week of me offering to do them a favour. More than a week went by and their silence should not have been a big deal really. In fact, it was their loss and saved me some effort. Nevertheless, it bugged me. So I sat with that annoyance for a while and learnt three things:
- I feel triggered because important people throughout my life have created false expectations or have reneged on their promises. Then I become resentful and distrusting because of it.
- I value the friendship more than I realised.
- I should communicate my boundaries and expectations if we are to have a healthy relationships characterised by respect.
In my message, I explained what was happening for me and how I would like to know what was happening for them. They responded within an hour. They did not ridicule me or question the validity of my need. Instead, they met my bid for connection with an equally vulnerable response. Of course, this reestablished safety and connection for both of us. Now, if my friend had responded differently, I would’ve learnt that I can’t be authentic with them and that would’ve helped me create a new boundary.
Conclusion
Brené Brown’s book, The gifts of imperfection, summarises 10 year’s worth of research amongst people who live wholeheartedly. The book explains how to courageously reach out and connect in our moments of shame to increase the chance of reaping compassion. As these three qualities of courage, connection and compassion emerge in moments of rupture to our relationships with ourselves and others, they gain the power to repair and reinforce love and belonging, which all humans need and crave.
Brown eloquently and adeptly guides us through her research and identifies many practical ways to start putting the findings into practice. Unfortunately, writing to us as if we were her ignores many nuances and risks that people with other identities and life experiences face. These risks and barriers can stymie their efforts to live as if they are enough and worthy of love and belonging right now, just as they are. Brown’s shortsightedness makes her book come across as categorical and overly confident. Even so, many ideas and suggestions ring true. Just remember to have a therapist waiting in the wings as you go on this journey.
Tell us how it worked for you in the comments and tag a friend or share on social media.