My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
amazon.com
My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
adapt everything you read in this book as your body instructs you to.
LICSW MSW Resmaa Menakem • My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Our very bodies house the unhealed dissonance and trauma of our ancestors. This is why white-body supremacy continues to persist in America, and why so many African Americans continue to die from it. We will not change this situation through training, traditional education, or other appeals to the cognitive brain. We need to begin with the body and
... See moreLICSW MSW Resmaa Menakem • My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Whenever someone freaks out suddenly or reacts to a small problem as if it were a catastrophe, it’s often a trauma response.
LICSW MSW Resmaa Menakem • My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
to a traumatized body there is only now. That now is the home of intense survival energy.
LICSW MSW Resmaa Menakem • My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
choose the dirty pain of silence and avoidance and, invariably, prolong the pain.
LICSW MSW Resmaa Menakem • My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
From the body’s viewpoint, safety and danger are neither situational nor based on cognitive feelings. Rather, they are physical, visceral sensations.
LICSW MSW Resmaa Menakem • My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
when I’m scared, I know enough to let my body tap into its inherent resilience and flow, to help it settle, and to lean into my clean pain. I also have a community of healed and healing bodies that supports me and holds me accountable.
LICSW MSW Resmaa Menakem • My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
With practice, over time, this enables us to be more curious, more mindful, and less reflexive. Only then can growth and change occur.
LICSW MSW Resmaa Menakem • My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Whenever the body senses the opportunity—and the challenge—to mend, it responds by fighting, fleeing, or freezing.