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

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My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies is a 2017 nonfiction book by Resmaa Menakem, an American therapist specializing in body-centered trauma therapy. Therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem is working with old wisdom and very new science about our bodies and nervous systems, and all we condense into the word “race. My Grandmother’s Hands is about our human bodies; about how trauma affects them; about how that trauma is passed down through the generations; and about how resilience and trauma interact. 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. This phenomenon often occurs as a result of triggers, in a spontaneous manner, which are considered unintended, and thus may be rationalized after the act.

Today, we Americans, whatever the hue of our skins, have great resilience—but we also continue to carry that trauma in our bodies. Tippett: The Tower of London that we go to as a tourist attraction, and it’s one torture contraption after the other. In this groundbreaking work, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of body-centered psychology. Tippett: That’s that constriction that you heard in your grandmother’s voice when she told you about picking cotton. His New York Times best-selling book, part narrative, part workbook, is My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.And I’m not talking about mystical energy, I’m talking about how this stuff — and so one of the things that happens is: I’m a 13-year-old white boy. The audiobook of MY GRANDMOTHER'S HANDS is now available through 45 different vendors, including Spotify, Apple Music, Scribd, Google, YouTube Music, Overdrive, and many other sites.

And so I’m curious about — so it’s the science of trauma — PTSD, everybody knows that now, but it’s just a couple decades old.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? As a therapist, trauma specialist, and the founder of Justice Leadership Solutions, a leadership consulting firm, Resmaa dedicates his expertise to coaching leaders through civil unrest, organizational change, and community building. An extremely interesting approach and a much-needed paradigm shift in the treatment of racialized trauma.