My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

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white-body supremacy lives in our BODIES; it's in our blood, dna, flesh, and the pre-cognitive parts of our brains (aka the lizard brain). unexpected and untagged visualizations of stressful or traumatic situations, which is a poor decision for a book that purports to work respectfully with trauma; Tippett: One thing that occurred to me, reading your work, is one reason that elders are so comforting and healing — and children understand that — is because — not everybody becomes an elder; some people just get old … Menakem, Remaa (2017) My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies , Central Recovery Press. While dealing with the subject of clean pain, the author introduces the Five Anchors , the process for moving through clean pain and when someone senses conflict building.

The healing that results on an individual and group level can be taken into the community, for each of the groups that receive focus in the book, as well applying to the greater community. Now, if you get reps in with that — not just do it one time or just when I tell you to — what you may notice is that you have a little bit more room for other — literally, for other things to happen that can’t happen when the constriction is like that.

Trauma Healing

Menakem: So one of the things about the animal part of the body is that even though me and you are in this room — this nice place— there’s a part of the body that’s saying, “Yeah, but what else is gonna happen?” And the reason why — especially when I’m working with bodies of culture, one of the first things I have them do is orient; orient to the room, not orient in the mystical way but actually literally. Because many times the bodies of culture are waiting for danger. Even though you know nothing’s behind you, letting the body know it actually helps some pieces. Now, if you get reps in with that, not just do it one time or just when I tell you to, what you may notice is that you have a little bit more room for other — literally, for other things to happen that can’t happen when the constriction is like that. He also includes some activities that I strongly urge anyone who reads this book to do. As a white person, I struggled at first with the concept of how racism would live in my white body, as I have not suffered from it. What became so clear to me, however, is that the trauma of the history of white bodies perpetuating the harshest, most inhumane forms of racism absolutely lives in our bodies -- as does the ways in which our present-day commissions of micro aggressions and reinforcement of white supremacy, and the trauma that our presence as white-bodied people can cause BIPOC just by existing. If we as white-bodied people want to show up more completely and effectively as allies and in proactively working to be anti-racist and pro-equality, we have our own healing to do.

Menakem also challenges the myth of white body fragility and pain sensitivity that too often distracts attention from the problem of racism and elicits cautious caregiving from other white enablers and BIPOC bodies that have been conditioned to sooth and comfort white bodies. Menakem: So the other thing that I say is that when people talk about the 13 colonies, the 13 colonies were filled with colonized white people. So what ends up happening is that when you have that level of brutality for all that time, and then right after the Bacon Rebellion is the first time you start to see, in law, “white” persons — not landowners, not merchants, “white” persons … Menakem, Remaa. (2020) “Why We’re All Suffering from Racial Trauma (Even White People) — and How to Handle It.” Ten Percent Happier Podcast with Dan Harris. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/ podcast/why-were-all- suffering-from-racial-trauma- even-white/id1087147821?i= 1000482826916 Tippett: I feel like — one way I’ve thought about this time we’re living in — I was born in 1960. So I feel like those of us who lived through the ’60s — although I was a child, but still, it’s in my body, too — there was a lot of progress. It felt like a lot of progress was made. A lot of new laws were passed that were revolutionary, in their way. And certainly, it’s true in many areas, including with gender, with the relationships between men and women, but it’s absolutely true around race. And I felt like we changed the laws, but we didn’t change ourselves. Resilience can also be passed intergenerationally, although resilience is a combination of what is passed down as well as what we learn. It can be manifested on an individual or communal basis.Tippett: Resmaa Menakem has a clinical practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and teaches and presents widely. His books include the New York Times best-selling My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Kalliopeia Foundation, dedicated to reconnecting ecology, culture, and spirituality; supporting organizations and initiatives that uphold a sacred relationship with life on Earth. Learn more at kalliopeia.org. On Being is an independent nonprofit production of The On Being Project. It is distributed to public radio stations by WNYC Studios. I created this show at American Public Media. Menakem: That’s exactly right. That’s why what you see now is like the flower of the seed of that. That’s what you’re seeing right now. And so when you say little things, the body hears, “Yeah, that’s right. They ain’t human.”