Brittany Packnett Instagram – words are hard but when they come, they come. it’s humbling to be a vessel of some thought or idea or turn of phrase that might help somebody get a little more free. that might help somebody help us all get a little more free. i’ve been writing this book for a long time, and I’m far closer to the end of this process than the start. in these pages you find the evolution of a woman who began wresting with the idea of power and justice years ago and has come to some bitter, sweet, instructive discoveries. the most important discovery I’ve made is one I couldn’t have made on the originally scheduled deadlines. I hadn’t lived enough. hadn’t learned enough. hadn’t cried enough or corrected enough. i hadn’t read enough, or been challenged enough. I hadn’t grown enough or birthed enough. but with the testing came clarity that can now stand in the center of what I didn’t even know I was building at the time. because now? now I know that none of this is just about challenging old power. it’s about building a new power. in the image of justice. all by ourselves. all for ourselves. my thesis evolved as I did. because writing it all down and revisiting it again and again and again derives precision and accuracy. It makes you whittle down the unnecessary and keep only the bare-faced truth. It makes you mold the idea and shape the idea and get perspective on the idea and take inspiration about the idea and erase the idea and write the idea anew until you get it just so. and then, your Black girl editor, your partner comes along in patient curiosity, making you better than you are, to be of more service than you can be alone. she protects the work of your hands that are but the dropped seedlings of your ancestor’s trees. and, if i do my job right, and God says the same, someone else will come alone and read the words I wrote—and mold them some more, far beyond my capacity. this is the least that I owe: the inward expectation that I plant a seed worthy enough to be planted, watered, and sprouted for someone else to bear new fruit—and plant new forests beyond what I can imagine. tldr: the words are clearer. the book is coming. @nicolecounts is a real one.