Book Appreciation: Loving Corrections, adrienne maree brown
"It is only through relationship that we learn how to be, understand our impact on others, and explore small shifts that may yield remarkable collective change." adrienne maree brown
This line stuck with me while reading adrienne maree brown’s Loving Corrections, because it raises up something that is palpable in therapy. Whether a couple is trying to repair after a hard conversation, or an individual is learning to be with the parts of themselves they'd rather disown, growth rarely happens alone. Growth happens in relationship, and it happens through being corrected, by others, and by our own deepening self-awareness, without that correction sinking into overwhelming shame or expanding into reactiveness.
Loving Corrections from brown's Emergent Strategy series delves into something many of us circle around without ever naming directly: how to hold ourselves and each other accountable in a way that centers love, not punishment.
What the book is actually about
brown opens with a confession that starts as she means to go on: she has been corrected "over and over and over" in her life, and she dedicates the book to everyone willing to help "get her together." That agentic and undefended posture that’s both open hearted and curious runs through the whole book.
The essays are organized loosely around a few interlocking questions: How do we heal from intersectional systems of oppression (like patriarchy, white supremacy, ableism, family wounds among others) without simply replicating the punitive and dominating dynamics we're trying to move away from? How do we apologize well, and receive an apology well? How do we know when a relationship, or a boundary, needs to change? One of the most tender sections is an extended conversation between brown and her two sisters. They work through old family fractures out loud on the page, in real time. Reading it feels like an invitation to sit at the table with them, and experience sistering with aliveness and vulnerability and deep care. They are able to hold space for each other with attunement while speaking honestly about their emotional perspectives. No one is diminished or attacked during reparative connecting, a ‘loving correction’ seems like a tessellation of people taking up their proper space and shape and fitting together.
Why this resonates with the work I do
A lot of what brown is describing overlaps with what I think of, clinically, as the difference between shame-based correction and relational repair. Shame tells us we are fundamentally flawed and pulls us into hiding. Repair asks something different of us: can I stay present with what I got wrong, feel the discomfort of that without collapsing into it, and come back into connection anyway? It takes compassionate strength to feel our errors, the places where we caused some harm, and hold them with others so we can more forward differently in the world.
brown's language for this is a "loving correction," which she distinguishes clearly from calling out or canceling. This book pairs very well with the moving themes of her book We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice. She frames these loving corrections as learning to attend to the quality of connection between people, noticing when something has gone awry and choosing curiosity over rupture. This aligns with what I try to help clients build in their own nervous systems. The capacity to notice a threat response (perhaps a flash of defensiveness or an old shame), and stay in the room with ourselves and with the other person, rather than getting reactive and moving into fighting, fleeing or shutting down.
This important book also weaves in self-compassion as a prerequisite for real accountability. brown is candid about how much of the harm she has caused others was rooted in what she calls "false superiorities” (that she describes as an old belief that she deserved more ease than others for doing less of the work). That clear naming without spiraling into self-flagellation or going on the offensive, models something I wish more of us practiced. It’s possible to hold "I caused harm" and "I am still worthy of belonging" in the same breath. That's not a loophole out of responsibility. It's a compassionate space that makes our prosocial responsibility sustainable. In essence, it compassionately lets us off the hook and puts us firmly on the hook at the same time. This is a relational liminal space: a Schrödinger’s cat of possibility where dialectical change can come through and no one has to be all right or all wrong.
Where it might stretch you
Like all of brown’s writing, Loving Corrections is a vibrant read, and it can meet you where you live if you let it challenge you. brown is deeply informed by movement spaces, and some of the essays engage directly with political and organizing contexts that may feel unfamiliar. A manualized therapy text this is not. It's closer to sitting with a wise, questing friend who is thinking out loud with you, with thought bubbles that alternately warm your soul and dance it into more alertness and devotion.
What I found most valuable is how transferable the underlying practice is to our dynamic humanity in any space. The questions brown asks (Can I stay curious instead of certain? Can I let this relationship teach me something instead of confirming what I already believed?) are just as relevant to a marriage working through a rupture, a parent and adult child renegotiating closeness, or any of us trying to sit with a painful inner part.
A few reflections to sit with, if you read it
Where in your life do you default to defensiveness when you feel corrected, and what would it take to meet that moment with curiosity instead? Could you use that painful defensiveness arising as a signpost to take a breath and pause, and then choose?
Is there a relationship where you're waiting for the other person to apologize first, before you're willing to look at your own part? What would your apology sound like, where you are emotionally accountable for your part? Can you feel into that in a way you could sign your name to? By doing so, do you want to offer it without expectation, letting go of your unfinished business (rather than your truthful apology being contingent on someone else’s agency)?
Is there a boundary have you been avoiding setting (maybe even with yourself) because it’s scary or you're afraid it will look unloving, when it might actually be the most honest offering you have?
Closing Thought
Loving Corrections is a book about staying in relationship, with our own parts, our families, our communities, even when (and maybe especially when) staying is uncomfortable. That's not so different from what happens in good therapy. We don't get free of our patterns by being punished out of them or carving off parts of ourselves or cutting out swaths of our connective social webbing from our lives. We get free by being fully met, again and again, with enough steadiness and care that we're finally willing to look and survive our interconnected truths.
If this kind of inner and relational work resonates with you, it's often exactly the lively change that shows up in the therapy room. We can learn to meet our reactivity with curiosity and compassion, and to offer that same warm open-heartedness to the people we love. Reach out if you'd like support with that growing edge.