PS: And speaking to support systems, I think in a lot of ways this book reads like a love letter to Black women: your sister and especially your mother, who wrote a beautiful letter in conversation with what I think was your first manuscript. How did you come to the decision to include her letter in the book?
CB: So, that letter actually wasn't in response to my first manuscript: it was actually in response to almost a final version of the book. It's in response to the book, but it's really in response to the chapter that precedes it, which is on depression, and some of the more difficult moments of my life.
I was really hesitant about, one, including that chapter at all, and then two, obviously showing my mother it. But once I decided that it needed to be included, I felt like I knew how she would wrestle with it. I knew how she would struggle with that, to the extent that I can know that, and some of the guilt she would likely feel in the wake of it. And I thought it was really important to include that reflection, because I know that people like me in terms of age would be reading it, but I knew that older people would as well, and I wanted anyone who might have children to understand what that relationship can look like — some of those realer moments.
I think that it was also important for me to include her story because my mother and I have had drastically different upbringings and childhoods. And yet, many of those emotions that I felt in terms of being mixed up and feeling in between were clearly emotions she felt as well. They're universal across, in some ways, space and time.
