“One of the many things that I love about plants is their will and determination to live by any means necessary,” Brandi Sellerz-Jackson writes. “What if we all dared not only to reach for the sun but to take up space while doing so?”
In On Thriving: Harnessing Joy Through Life’s Great Labors, Sellerz-Jackson draws inspiration from the plant world as she shares how she’s moved from existing to thriving. As a birth, postpartum and life doula, and as a blogger and founder of the Black-mom collective Moms of Color, she has coached others through their biggest challenges. On Thriving offers guidance for flourishing in relationships and with one’s self.
Sellerz-Jackson has faced devastating challenges of her own from the time she was a hyper-vigilant child whose instinct was to hide every sharp object in the house so her abusive father couldn’t do greater harm to her mother or himself. So when she references a plant’s journey, she’s not making light of traumatic human experiences. Instead, she’s drawing an analogy between the inner work she’s completed and the plant life that inspires her. On Thriving blends memoir and self-help, with Sellerz-Jackson excavating her own experiences and prompting others to examine the ways they’re holding back.
Most chapters conclude with questions or journal prompts meant to guide the reader back into conversation with themselves. Brief, poetic interludes provide a pause in the midst of often-heavy reflection. Throughout, and especially in the book’s final section, Sellerz-Jackson examines ways being othered has affected her identity and healing. As a Black woman and a mother, she has wrestled with the expectation of being a “goddess”—which she says, “robs us Black women of our humanity and plays into the strong Black woman archetype.”
Some may have been othered in different ways, and she encourages them to examine how that experience has affected the ways they move through the world. Sellerz-Jackson uses a conversational, direct tone and tremendous empathy to guide all readers to live as the best versions of themselves.
