“Healing from white-body supremacy begins with the body — your body. But it does not end there. In order to heal the collective body that is America, we also need social activism that is body centered. We cannot individualize our way out of white-body supremacy. Nor can we merely strategize our way out. We need collective action — action that heals.”
— Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands
Rebecca is joined by healer, author, and trauma specialist, Resmaa Menakem. Resmaa helps people, communities, and organizations find strength and healing that’s both holistic and resilient. He’s authored 3 books and today’s discussion is centered around his most recent: My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.
Resmaa shares that in order to mend racialized trauma we need to move the conversation from race to culture and cultivate a somatic abolitionist mindset and community. And a big part of that work lies in doing our own reps to learn what to pay attention to and then doing the reps with each other’s nervous systems so we can create a culture that knows what to pay attention to. Otherwise it’s just strategy.
As you’ll discover, the wisdom within the book is ancestral, it has always existed and was both nurtured and drawn out of Resmaa by his elders over a long period of time, through repetition, through admonishment, through being held, and loved, and corrected.
This interview was recorded in July 2019, before the shootings in Gilroy, CA; El Paso, TX; and Dayton, OH.
Resources:
Connect with Resmaa: resmaa.com
While these discussions will guide you into the Connectfulness Practice, the podcast is not meant to be a substitute for counseling from a licensed provider. Reach out. Initiate the ripple. Learn more about my connectfulness counseling practice and our collective for therapists in private practice at connectfulness.com.
This episode is brought to you by Therapy Notes. Therapy Notes is a simple, secure, EHR platform that keeps you organized and creates a container for all details that run a private practice -- so you can tend to what really matters. Use the promo code connectfulness and get two months free when you sign up at therapynotes.com
And if you’re local to New Paltz, NY and are interested in the deep community work Resmaa guides us into in My Grandmother’s Hands, contact Rebecca so we can coordinate local meetings.
