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

I read My Grandmother's Hands a long time ago and it blew my mind, which is I think was your point to be getting people out of their minds.

And now I understand it completely differently because I have been in and out of recovery for 30 years.

So I just keep thinking, okay, I got it now. I know how I'm thinking about this. It's just patriarchy. It's diet culture. It's big pharma. It's wine culture. I've got it. And then I keep not getting cured.

This last round of recovery, I have finally through tons of therapy and whatever allowed it to drop into my body, the recovery and understand that. I don't even know if it's an understanding feel that my problem is just in my past and my parents and their parents in their parents, in the culture.

And it's like all living in my body. So your work to me, it's like our world has all of these terrible symptoms, whack-a-mole symptoms, just what we see the violence, the racism, the wars, the genocides.

I read in my grandmother's hands by Resmaa Manakkem where he says something like they think they're coming to me for answers, but they really come to sit with someone who has a settled nervous system.

And then also Grandma's hand. This is a friend. This is the Bill Withers family. And so he's passed away. But Grandma's hand with Grandma's hands. He's done a book and after he's passed away about it. And so I make sure it gets into as many hands as possible. We build our libraries that way.

this is the Bill Withers family and so he's passed away he's done a book and after he's passed away about it and so I make sure it gets into as many hands as possible we build our libraries that way

Resmaa Menakem's book, My Grandmother's Hands, and his original insights into racialized trauma in all kinds of bodies has offered new ways forward for us all.

Resmaa Menakem's book, My Grandmother's Hands, and his original insights into racialized trauma in all kinds of bodies, have offered new ways forward for us all.

So I've been, I've been taken to a calling. A friend of mine had a Instagram picture up and he had a mask on and on the mask, it said, I'm still dealing with COVID-16-19, not just COVID-19. And that's true for me. The weathering effects of white body supremacy has affected my very skeletal structure, has affected my respiratory system, has affected my cardiovascular system, has affected my mom's cardiovascular system, her mother's. I mean, the effects of racialization and white body supremacy and the weathering effects of it is why COVID-19 has run rampant through my communities and run rampant through the East African community.

Rezma's literary agent reached out and told me about Rezma's book and that Rezma loved my work. And he would love if I would read it and write an endorsement. And I read it.

His New York Times bestselling book, part narrative, part workbook is My Grandmother's Hands, Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.

His book, My Grandmother's Hands, is a completely original contribution, part narrative, part workbook, of old wisdom and very new science around healing racial trauma in our bodies.

And then when I read it in your book, it made me feel like I wasn't crazy.

I've been thinking this my whole life.

That's from picking cotton.

Them damn cotton plants got a burr in them. They got a burrs in them like that. And she goes, I started walking up and down them roads when I was four years old. And she said, As you're walking up and down the roads, you put your hands in them cotton plants, rip your hands up. And so when they rip your hands up, your hands bleed.

The white body sees itself as fragile and vulnerable, and it looks to police bodies for safety and protection. It sees black bodies as dangerous and needing to be controlled, yet also as potential sources of service and comfort. The black body sees the white body as privileged, controlling and dangerous. It is conflicted about the police body, which sees as sometimes a source of protection, sometimes a source of danger, and sometimes both at once. The police body sees black bodies as often dangerous and disruptive, as well as superhumanly powerful and impervious to pain.

I never lose. I either win or I learn.

all adults need to learn how to soothe and anchor themselves rather than expect or demand that others soothe them. And all adults need to heal and grow up.