My Grandmother's Hands

Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

By: Resmaa Menakem MSW LICSW SEP

Narrated by: Cary Hite

A National Best Seller

"My Grandmother's Hands will change the direction of the movement for racial justice." (Robin DiAngelo, New York Times best-selling author of White Fragility)

In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology.

The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Menakem argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans - our police.

My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not only about the head but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.

Paves the way for a new body-centered understanding of white supremacy - how it is literally in our blood and our nervous system.

Offers a step-by-step healing process based on the latest neuroscience and somatic healing methods, in addition to incisive social commentary.

©2018 Central Recovery Press (P)2018 Central Recovery Press

Anchors, attachments and afflictions

Resmaa Menakem offers profound insight and a practical approach to community and individual healing, alike. The 5 anchors offered in the heart of the text offer a practical system for response over reaction, an extremely useful tool in this crazy world.

A Therapeutic Experience!

I read this interchangeably with the book, Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson. Both books are excellent, scholarly, real, meaningful, deeply painful, encouraging, well crafted, very professional, and inspiring. I greatly admire the ability to reveal the painful truths of their own lives with such objective honesty so that we might learn and understand the poignancy, the urgency, and the responsibility for the condition of the society we inherited. Resmaa Menakem brings to light an essential aspect of an acculturated racially-based caste system. We have all been acculturated to oppression and trauma at the level of reflex and body impulse. He drives the point home that our reactions, as white bodies and black bodies, toward ourselves and each other, occur prior to thought and choice and we must learn to recognize, heal, and reintegrate our own unhealthy reflexes before we can grow up out of our impulses and make responsible choices to create a worthy community. He teaches us to slow down interactions and become mindful of the survival response triggers and defensiveness that overrides our sensibilities so that we can gain enough self control to be better than we have been. The book was an answer to my grandmother’s prayers. Two weeks before she passed, she sat me down and lamented about how her mind and spirit always knew better, but her body was plagued with racist sensations and impulses that kept her from being closer to people with black bodies no matter how much she appreciated and admired them. I felt her pain and it broke my heart. She lived with great kindness and integrity. I could feel that this was the one regret she was taking to her grave and was ashamed to meet God in such a condition. I felt as though she passed that torch to me to find the healing she could not. Much of my life over the last 50 years has been focused on this purpose. I’ve learned and continue to learn this healing path that rebuilds and reprograms us individually and collectively. My Grandmother’s Hands confirms so much of what I’ve learned and is contributing greatly to my continued learning and healing.

Engaging. Moving. Challenging. Insightful.

Highly recommend! This book examines the way trauma lives in the body, and passes along generations and social groups. It also gives concrete steps to confronting the trauma preserved in American culture and history as well as steps to move through moments trauma presents in your body. This author’s work is more timely than ever.

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.

This is a great book. it should be mandatory for all law enforcement and military personnel to read. a lot of times we go through trauma and doesn't understand what trauma is. Facebook can help explain that

I am now a fan!!!!

I had read a lot about white-body supremacy and when I added Audible to my daily routine I decided that I would listen to this book. It is not for those that do not intend to change their ways or look for excuses for their behavior.