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

This is easily the best book I’ve read on both race and mental health. Menakem’s writing is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. His prose is rich yet easy to understand and digest. He makes it so clear why race relations (and our attempts to improve it) are at a standstill. Yet, there is hope! This book has answered questions I’ve been pondering for years and completely altered how I think about my work in both those fields. I recommend it everywhere I go and have included it in the reading list for a graduate program I co-created. If you are invested in the future of American democracy, you must read and do the exercises in this book. You owe it to yourself and the world.

This is a groundbreaking book in service of understanding the racial tensions of the day. After reading the book, I’m more convinced than ever that one of the best things white people can do is to explore their own intergenerational trauma. Traumatized people traumatize other people if trauma is left unhealed. Avoidance of facing our implicit racial attitudes leads to a denial of our own attitudes towards “white privilege”, leading to white fragility.My Grandmother’s Hands should be is a textbook for Racial Equity groups, as it gets out of the intellectual analysis of racism, and straight into the body where racial tension really lies. The book is not just informational, but also transformative and healing as it interweaves settling exercises to help people understand and process it on a visceral level as they read it. It also leads to more resilience and in-the-moment skills to face the difficult racial issues ahead of us as a society.

Unlike any other book you’ve likely read on racism, this book’s author replaces blame with compassion, hand wringing with wise counsel, and political blather with sound science. We can no longer deny that racism grows out of trauma, that trauma is stored and transmitted in bodies, and bodies white, black, and police will heal when we address our own pain.

This is one of the most insightful books I have ever read. So powerful were the exercises and the invitations to contemplate the inter generational trauma that inhabits all of us, and leads to a fight-flight-freeze or annihilate stance. This book adds such a new and helpful perspective to our work in healing racism in ourselves and our country. If you’re looking for a growth opportunity, read this book.

This book was suggesting in a group to which I belong. She lovingly explores Race Trauma from 3 perspectives: White, Black and Blue. Hear me out. There are other books about this topic that have been very difficult to me to read and digest. This book is different. Resmaa Menakem, MSW explores the trauma that we all have. There is the horrible trauma to the African Black bodies that has taken place and what life is from their prospective. She also includes the trauma to the European bodies. Think of the Inquisition or the witch hunts. If you belief in the possibility of reincarnation, some of us there. If not, the effects of trauma definitely goes down the genetic line. Many of us have had very traumatic childhoods/experiences that will shape the rest of our lives and all the relationships in our lives. The point is, we have to heal ourselves. We have to see what life is like from the other’s eye’s. As one heals and becomes whole, it is possible to stand with our sisters and brothers to right the wrongs so that we can create equality and live in love and respect for each other. My heart sings every time I read this book. Resmaa Menakem is very insightful. She offers a huge gift to the world. Thank you. It’s a must.

If we are willing to stop and listen to the voices of these people, both in the streets and in their writings (for generations now), we will hear them tell us their experience. And their experience is horrific. Some of us will turn away, finding solace in justifications (“He should have complied!”) or distancing (“My family was poor too. None of my family owned slaves.”) But if we care about a sustainable future for our country, if we have the smallest shred of a sense of responsibility for our neighbor, or if (like me) we claim to follow Jesus, the one who taught us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and to put other people’s lives before our own, then we must listen.In My Grandmother’s Hands, Resmaa Menakem comes to this conversation from a different and very helpful angle. He suggests that three groups are clashing in our country today: black-bodied people, white-bodied people and police. He suggests that the animus, reactivity, and often explosive violence between these groups is in fact the result of unprocessed trauma. He digs deep into the story of each of these groups to demonstrate the primary and secondary trauma each group carries. Then he talks about the process of trauma retention and how, if we fail to understand and process our trauma, we inevitably become less flexible, more reactive, and more violent. He suggests that the solution to our problem is not solely in education, awareness or even new policies, but in becoming more aware of our bodies, learning how to handle and process trauma, and becoming more resilient in our interactions with other traumatized people.This is the first book about racial injustice that I’ve read where I finished feeling like I could actually make a difference. I’m not a policy maker. I’m not able to be a regular front-line activist. I don’t have piles of money to spend at Black-owned businesses. It’s easy to feel like my small contribution can’t possibly make a real difference. But Menakem suggests a path that any one of us can walk–coming to terms with our own experience of racialized trauma — and this will open up the path for other ways we can be a part of creating a more just, compassionate, and equal society.

Menakem provides excellent insight into the history of somatic trauma that is embodied.

We all have generations of grandmothers. Mother Earth is the first one!

I’ve seen the tools presented in this book work to help me begin to dismantle my own embodied racism. It was so powerful for me, I brought it into my faith community and based a whole worship service around it. I’ve already heard from folks that they’re going to be bringing body-centered practice into their anti-racism work and other work of the church as a result of what they learned from the book in just that one hour. Thank you, Resmaa Menakem for this incredible resource!

As a psychologist who works primarily with individuals in marginalized communities, I see a lot of clients who have experienced historical, intergenerational, developmental and ongoing current trauma, often as a result of systems of oppression (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.). I was very excited to dive into training in somatic experiencing (SE), a “bottom up” approach to trauma treatment that recognizes the ways that traumatic experiences get stored in the body, and therefore need to be healed through the body.However, I was disappointed to find that most of the books on SE, as well as the trainings themselves, rarely if ever mention racism or other systems of oppression and the trauma they cause. This was such a disappointment to me, especially given that racial trauma is so prevalent in the everyday lives of my clients and perpetuated daily by the current political climate.Therefore I was thrilled to discover this book. Resmaa Menakem filled in the gap I was feeling in the SE literature, applying somatic experiencing to racial trauma and the ways that racism impacts the bodies of white people, black people (and all people of color), and those who are charged with “serving and protecting” us, the police. This book was a huge eye opener for me. Not only did it give me compassion for my own white body and the ways that trauma has been metabolized and passed on from white folks to POC through the mechanisms of white supremacy, but it gave me new and more embodied ways to understand the lives of people of color and work effectively with my POC clients. It also gave me new compassion for cops, who, through their own trauma responses and the effects of white supremacy, are now more like soldiers whose mission is to control and suppress black and brown bodies. Although I will continue to feel outrage and grief at every unnecessary police killing of an innocent man or woman of color, this book helped me to remember that we are all impacted by centuries of white supremacy conditioning and that cops need and deserve healing around racial trauma too.I highly recommend this book to therapists and healers, especially those who work with individuals in marginalized communities. Each chapter provides exercises to embody the learning in the chapter, so that healing is happening not just from the top down, but from the bottom up. There are exercises for individuals and groups, for white bodies, POC bodies and police bodies. The book is extremely timely and relevant and should be required reading for anyone wanting to understand more about the history and current conditions of racism in America, its impacts, and how to heal.

All about the book in perfect condition.

My Grandmother’s Hands gives you a deeper look at how our bodies carry trauma every day. We have attempted to have dialog about race in our country but we’ve missed so many key pieces of understanding. Many of us have thought of historical trauma to be limited to African Americans and American Indians but this book & author Resmaa Menakem address white trauma and how that has carried itself epigentically. He doesn’t stop there he weaves in many stories and examples of how this has played out for white bodies and black bodies. He explains and tackles the latest neuroscience which to me was enlightening. Racism is about the body and he gives step by step advice on how to heal trauma. It’s a different approach that is groundbreaking and you should read it yourself. You will grow from this book. You will also catch your body reacting to things and you will have ahhh ha moments. I highly recommend this book, you will be happy you read it. Then you should share it with someone!

I was so excited to learn about this book within the networks of Somatic Experiencing POC group, Generative Somatics and Cultural Somatics. When I found this book I was struggling to allow myself to shift my practice scope. In my being I Knew I wanted to focus primarily on BIWOC and WOC communities but I did not have the concepts formulated to explain the work I was currently doing and was not sure people were ready to engage in this level of healing. Resmaa’s book provided me with the framework I knew in my bones existed. To be honest I was relieved to know he wrote this, cause I sure couldn’t have. I had created my first BIWOC retreat and had not yet figured out how to go about diving into the soul wounds of historical trauma with out overwhelming people’s nervous systems. His book was a God send. It was like I got the call, then the manual appeared. Using his book as a guide with the exercises, I was able to introduce and gently titrate areas participants wanted to explore. I bought this book for my assistants as part of their required reading . The book was able to bring them up to speed, allowing them a level of competency to assist in helping to hold space for others within the retreat. We are so blessed to have this work amongst us. Resmaa reminds all of POC “we are not broken, we are not defected, we are not damaged goods. I say we all are simply a people, America’s afflicted and acting out our internalized racial oppression. Good job and well done Resmaa, Ashe, Ashe!

This is an excellent book to add to the collections that has to do with trauma. I used it in my seminary class, Pastoral Care in Times of Crisis and Trauma and the students thought it to be very helpful, informative and challenging. Although it was used in the classroom setting, Some students did the exercises.

I am currently reading ‘My Grandmother’s Hands’ by Resmaa Menakem, everyone this book has no color, this book is for everyone, Please get yo copy.. I say again please get your copy, This is a well written undertaking/understanding treatment of trauma as it exists. My reflection on the concepts Resmaa point out the pain and and really if you conceive what the book is saying it can heal, bottled up feelings. It’s so important to understand trauma and how it impacts every moment of life. This book will help us understand feeling then and now. This book will help you release the tensions. I can go on and on about the book , you must get a copy.

It is a powerful conversation on racial trauma with exercises for healing. In addition to addressing the trauma of the victims of oppression, it also addresses the trauma that created the abusers. Eye opening.

Resmaa Menakem’s, in My Grandmother’s Hands, with humility, delivers a beautifully written story, a page turner that I couldn’t put down, that is at first disguised as an easily accessible book on trauma but is actually no less than a clear step-by-step process for ending racism, class prejudice, oppression and violence in all its forms.“Trauma-informed” is everywhere now – and thank god that is the case. Van Der Kolk’s Body Keeps the Score got the physiological processes of trauma out there in a big way. His recommendation however was for people who have experienced trauma, some combination of medication, therapy and yoga could heal them. Van Der Kolk falls short though in that he is focusing on people who have experienced trauma with a capital T, like rape, or war, or car accident – these people know that they have experienced trauma, which is only the tip of the iceburg. His #metoo-ing not with standing, I’d say read it, or at least listen to his interviews. Then read My Grandmother’s Hands. You’ll need some understanding of how the mind and body are a single entity to join Menakem, as he brings his lucky readers to the epistemological root of the trauma problem. That we are all carrying inherited cultural trauma and if we don’t begin to heal ourselves, we will just continue to blow it through each other, through our kids, through our grandkids, white, black, rich and poor. And blow it we do.You’ve probably also got to get yourself out of your head with all of this. If you don’t understand what I mean by that or when I say that Descartes got it wrong, you may want to stop reading. However, Menakem is way more patient and generous than I am. Which is probably my privilege talking – no it is my privilege talking. His exercises move us into our viscera, although I would argue that only the worst of the wounded are willing to go to this place, it takes practice to feel where we feel offended, or scared, or entitled. He brings us to the bridge between mind and body and in that bridge ushers his readers to acknowledge and name their bodily sensations. In so doing, epoche’ happens, that is, the old patterns are briefly paused and new learning can emerge.Unfortunately, healing involves pain he points out, but so does refusing to heal. Over time, refusing to heal is always more painful. Menakem, reminds us of just how painful and violent this refusal to heal manifests in the black skinned bodies of Trevon Martin, Sandra Bland, Philandro Castillo, a never ending list. Yes, this book needs to be read. Whether it was an event or multiple micro aggressions that we endured, or it was second-hand trauma, or inherited or intergenerational, left unhealed, only exposes more people to our trauma. It ensures that our children will repeat our history – they will have no choice, it is in their DNA.

Resmaa Menakem’s book is a timely, easy to access manual for healing at the crossroads of somatic psychology/trauma skills & racism in the United States (and beyond). Menakem writes with kindness and clarity from decades of lived experience and pragmatic healer consciousness. His extension of DeGruy’s work on ‘Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome’ to include the older roots of European trauma appropriately calls white Americans to task in the cultural healing of our times. Menakem does this without shaming or rigidity and without pulling any punches. It’s (past) time to sink into this working of healing the legacies of racism that live in our bodies. Highly recommended for therapists, activists, military and law enforcement, and anyone ready to courageous embrace the clean pain and relational healing called for in cultural healing.

This is an unflinching look at racism through the lense that does not accuse but implores us to be responsible and settle our bodies. This is helpful for all.

This book is a long overdue and missing piece to the discussion of trauma. Finally, a book that seemlessly clears up the way racialized trauma is embodied by people and how it effects the way we move through the world. It will be a must read for my students. It is an essential piece of writing for our times if we are to genuinely move forward in the path of healing individually and collectively. Thank You Resmaa for this invaluable contribution to the discussion and experience of what it means to be a human being living in a racialized world. Do not sleep on this book or think twice about ordering it.

This book is a wondeful read and an excellent dialogue to get the conversation started to bridge the gap of systemic racism. I highly recommend this book as a tool for black, white and law enforcement to come together to mend our racial divide and start the healing process and mending of fences. Well done, Brother Resmaa Menakem.

This is a must read. It allows you to put patterns and behaviors into perspective. The book also has exercises for you to do throughout reading. Lots of ah-ha moments. I often recommend this book to others.

We are reading this book as a work team. Rotating the facilitation with questions and the grounding exercises. We are ALL impacted by racism and white supremacy culture. We can learn and change one chapter at a time. Book speaks volumes as we are transformed and our understanding taken to another level

Besides learning more about the challenges of being Black in America I also learned how to rethink my won ideas of white supremacy. I highly recumbent this book for everyone.

This book is a must read for those of us living in communities struggling with racism. Resmaa Menakem has created a masterpiece of storytelling, restorative justice, awareness raising, and healing. The writing is just excellent, and the clarity with which Menakem lays out the evidence for racism and what to do about is brilliant, and the impact is disturbing, as it should be. The chapter on race and police brutality is a strong example of that, of how black bodies create fear in white bodies. He writes about how people of color sacrifice parts of themselves every day to stay safe, and sometimes they don’t succeed. He writes about how this fear of the other is in the body, and it takes a body-centered approach to heal it. We must self confront and stop talking about it; we must feel it, and practice healing approaches. Each chapter has exercises for us to practice to heal ourselves, black and white. He recommends self confrontation as a form of “clean pain,” versus the “dirty pain” of avoidance, denial and blame. The examples in the book are so true and riveting. I highly recommend this book, and the practices within. A page turner. I could not put it down.

One of the most helpful and necessary reads I’ve engaged regarding paths to racial justice. The body-focused practices in this book are helpful in addressing many forms of trauma, even beyond racialized trauma. Highly recommend!

Before reading this extraordinary book, I was persuaded that African Americans live in a trauma basin framed by historical impacts of slavery and contemporary assaults of injustice and deprivation. I wanted to launch a meaningful community-based response and engaged some highly esteemed Black Psychologists who brought great insights and hearts of commitment to the task. After reading this work our efforts were enhanced in a powerful way. I want to buy out the national stock and distribute to every citizen of our land.This is a well written compelling treatment of trauma as it exists in bodies of every description across our land. My reflection on the concepts Menakem introduces of clean and dirty pain resulted in a breakthrough in a key relationship headed for the rocks.Get it. Read it. Pass it on!

That is what this book leads to. It enables Americans – tainted and scarred by their respective experiences of trauma – whether in Europe, Africa or here within our borders of the North American continent – to overcome our pain and our fear, and prepare ourselves to actualize the Spirit of our Founding Documents. This book will help us to “form a more perfect Union,” if we are willing to acknowledge how brutality and violence and fear have shaped our day-to-day experiences getting here, and living here. I think it should be required reading by every American high school student, along with To Kill a Mockingbird, and a few other important history books. If only Americans would READ more. We’d all be better off. Thank you, Resmaa Menakem, for saying what needs to be said.

As an educator for social justice, I read a lot of books to help keep my theory alive and to help guide my practice in the classroom. I had no idea that this book would impact me the way it has.Our concepts and the “mental labor” we do around equity falls short of the embodied change work requires of us. Mr. Menakem’s book steps in here and guides us through the in-body, somatic skills to take our work even further. I can not recommend this book enough, it’s a MUST READ!!

Another book about white fragility and how POC have to maneuver in this world for respect and recognition without white people stealing your ideas, etc. A great read to understand white mental and physical fragility!

I would have to say that this is an interactive book. As I was reading this with a group, reading one or two chapters at a time, it was possible to do all the exercises. I did not do them all, but must say it was an eye-opening experience. The basis premise of the book is that we carry trauma in our bodies, and that we respond to issues of race, first and foremost, in our bodies, as a visceral response. And, as so many of our experiences originate early in life, these responses are often immediate and unconscious, and thus, this book requires a great deal of interior work. It’s worth every moment of it. I remember clearly, that before I had finished the introduction, I felt rage- actual rage. And for a person who considers herself balanced and rather low-key this was quite astounding. And this rage continued to surface. Let me just say that this book makes you explore unexamined parts of yourself, if you will let it. Expect to feel uncomfortable, and if you push through it, you may be different when you get to the other side…

This was the book for my book club. It’s been great so far. Definitely some things to work on, experiences to view differently, and lived the tangible steps to take

As a trauma therapist, I want to say that Resmaa’s book is very well organized with clear descriptions of the most current understanding of trauma physiology and healing. There is a lot of preparation for the reader to help support us in our journey through difficult material, including how to manage difficult thoughts, emotions and sensations as they arise. There are a lot of wonderful exercises that people can use to learn how to work with racialized trauma in every chapter. As a white-bodied person, it has changed the way I relate with stories of racial violence. The idea is to metabolize our historical trauma so that we can make room for something new. For example, when I hear about another black-bodied young man being shot, I take a moment and feel the feelings that come up, rather then pushing them away or feeling helpless to change anything. I allow myself to feel the hurt and shame that my ancestors perpetrated atrocities on black-bodies that were perpetrated against them in historical times in Europe. If I can process these feelings, I might be less likely to recreate them in the present and future. Healing is an incremental process and an ongoing one.

Mother Teresa once said, “I realized a long time ago that I had a Hitler within me.” Likewise, this is the first text I’ve read of its kind which confronts white supremacy by focusing on the generational trauma that lives in all of our bodies; even white ones, even police ones. It gives me a powerful point of entry to not only awaken and bear witness to the consequences of white supremacy in society but to also seek and find the trauma inside of me that exacerbates the white supremacy that stubbornly still exists in me.

Use this book to begin conversations about race, unconscious bias, white privilege, police brutality, and racial trauma with your friends and family. Learn ways to accept racial differences, acknowledge racial bias ( whether conscious or subconscious), and move past the extremely uncomfortable feelings most white Americans feel whenever the topic of race is bought up. Yes, you CAN start the uncomfortable conversation with your family and friends. This book will help you!

I read this book in June, directly after I heard an On Being with Krista Tippett podcast with Resmaa (Notice the Rage; Notice the Silence). I am still processing it, I still have chills. Mr. Menakem put into words the trauma that the body holds in a way that brings it home. If you have read “The Body Keeps the Score,” this is the response to that book with a focus on our history of race and racism. His story telling, his trauma training, and his heart put together a path of understanding (and healing, if you will let it) what we are holding, what we store in our bodies, and how we can begin to let it go. This book deftly moves between audiences – people of color, people in white bodies, people in law enforcement. You can find yourself here as well as finding others, and Resmaa does this with a perfect combination of intellect and real love. This pain of silence – the pain I may have in a white body – is particularly useful; Resmaa is able to put to words what we are perhaps feeling and – more importantly – how we can begin to better understand, relate, and grow. Additionally, there is considerable effort placed on DNA and how our trauma may pass down and continue if we do not heal it.This book is incredibly meaningful and lays bare what we need to understand about race and racism in America today.

I purchased a hard copy of the book and a Kindle version. This book was deeply transformative for me who has studied race and racism for years. The framework for the book moves beyond our cognition and what we “think” of racism and white privilege and points to how it shows up in our bodies. A wonderful resource for anyone in any stage of their development.

This book is so much more than literature, it is an experience. Resmaa Menakem offers a way of healing historic trauma quite literally from the inside out. Such an amazing journey learning about what happens in my own body as a result of trauma and what may be happening in other bodies as a result of trauma. Everyone needs to take a look inside and understand themselves, what seems the most simple is often the most profound and complex. I will continue to read this book time again because of the practices and daily reminders to wake up and stand up against white body supremacy. If you haven’t read it, buy a copy for yourself and one for someone else. We all need to be humbled by our experience and use that to show up for others. Spread these teachings and spread peace and love.

I found this to be an excellent book. The information and awareness about racial experience is put forward in a very regulated and compassionate manner, without the hateful kind of blame that can shut down a conversation and understanding, and with an underlying understanding of the way the experiences of people of color, whites, AND those in law enforcement are rooted in the physiology of threat and safety. This is an important resource for anyone who is striving to find their way through race relations.Another book that was written by this author is “Rock the Boat”, which addresses couples from the same framework. One of the best books I have read for couples!

If you only read one book about becoming trauma-informed and resilience-oriented for individual and/or collective healing, this is the book to read. It is based on solid neuroscience and real lived experience. And you get the benefit of practical, productive ways to settle and calm oneself that can lead to individual and collective healing and the possibility of racial reconciliation that begins with the body and embraces the mind and spirit for good. Thank you Mr. Menakem for sharing this guidance and wisdom. Together, Minnesota can show the rest of the nation how to build peace in our communities as we bravely and boldly name psychological trauma, settle ourselves, and find our way through to healing and racial reconciliation. This is #Peacebuilding.

Reading

This is a great book. I have not found any other book that adressesthe issue of race and white body supremacy, not from a cognitive perspective, but through the body. Trauma therapists know that you can’t just think your way out of amygdala responses. You have to become attuned to your body in real time. This book is compassionate and non judgemental, yet it challenges people to take responsibility for their emotions and reactions- like adult. I’m so glad I found this gem.

Resmaa digs deep into the racial divide in America. He addresses the problem from an historical, subliminal, and soul-deep perspective. A great book for the healing of the national and individual spirit.

I’m a firm believer in recycling, reducing, & reusing. One of my favorite used items to buy are books! Support small businesses and save the planet. There’s enough stuff in the world! The book arrived clean and in most excellent condition, with minimal markings though I even appreciate reading and seeing former owners markings in the pages. Thanks for an excellent purchase!