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

by Resmaa Menakem

“No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That’s a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything.” TONI MORRISON

“People don’t realize what’s really going on in this country. There are a lot of things that are going on that are unjust. People aren’t being held accountable … This country stands for freedom, liberty, and justice for all. And it’s not happening for all right now.” COLIN KAEPERNICK

“There is no such thing as race. None…. Scientifically, anthropologically, racism is a construct—a social construct. And it has benefits. Money can be made off of it, and people who don’t like

themselves can feel better because of it. It can describe certain kinds of behavior that are wrong or misleading.” TONI MORRISON

“It is entirely up to the American people whether or not they are going to try to find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place … ...

JAMES B...

“A really bad idea, embraced by millions of people, is still a really bad idea.” TONY BLAUER

“One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient.”

CHARLES M. BLOW

“When the color of your skin is seen as a weapon, you will never be seen as unarmed.” SIGN CARRIED BY A BLACK LIVES MATTER ACTIVIST

“This country does not like Black people very much.” BOMANI JONES

“Be careful what you practice; you may get really good at the wrong thing.” TONY BLAUER

“I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.” JAMES BALDWIN

“Take responsibility for yourself, because no one’s going to take responsibility for you.” TYRA BANKS

◆ Getting enough sleep ◆ Good nutrition ◆ Drinking enough water ◆ Regular exercise ◆ Enjoying simple pleasures

“It seems that it’s either pro-cop and anti-Black or pro-Black and anti-cop, when, in reality, you can be pro-cop and pro-Black, which is what we should all be.” TREVOR NOAH

“You can have great regard for law enforcement and still want them to be held to high standards.” JON STEWART

“No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you.” ALTHEA GIBSON

“The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.” MALCOLM X

More than anything, culture creates a sense of belonging—and belonging makes our bodies feel safe. This is why culture matters to us so deeply. We humans want to belong. We experience belonging—or the lack of it—in our bodies. We experience it deeply. When we belong, we feel that our life has some value and meaning.

90 Consider how hungry you’d have to get before you’d eat beetles or moths—even though they’re highly nutritious, routinely eaten by people in other cultures, and, reportedly, quite tasty.

“The triumph can’t be had without the struggle.”

WILMA RUDOLPH

“Forget the R or the D or the liberal or the conservative. Are you for right or are you for wrong? Are you for humanity or are you not? … Are you for brown people to be treated fairly or are you not?” D. L. HUGHLEY

This book is a beginning. It is not a grand solution or magic bullet. It’s a first step into something much, much bigger.

I’m a therapist, not a futurist. I can’t predict what these new cultures will look like—but they will need to be body-centered; they will need to focus on healing; and they will require us, over and over, to settle our bodies, confront ourselves, and metabolize our clean pain.

Remember that trauma is all about speed and reflexivity. Slow yourself down and pay attention to your body. Be curious about what is going on there. Lean into your body’s experiences and sensations. Do the same with uncertainty.

I wish we could all begin with trust and love for each other. But we can’t. There has been too much damage to too many bodies for too many generations.

None of us is ever done with healing or growing up.

“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values…. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

“What a world this will be when human possibilities are freed, when we discover each other, when the stranger is no longer the potential criminal and the certain inferior!” W. E. B. DU BOIS

Most white immigrants to the New World didn’t heal from their trauma. Instead, beginning a little over three centuries ago, they created the concepts of whiteness, of blackness (and redness and yellowness), and of white-body supremacy. Then they blew much of their trauma through the bodies of Africans and their descendants. This served to embed trauma in Black bodies, but it did nothing to mend the trauma in white ones. Much of our current culture—and most of our current cultural divides—are built around this trauma.

That tree, which was planted roughly fifteen centuries ago, now casts a shadow across our entire nation. Today, many of us still feed each other its bitter, poisonous fruit.

Today we’re at a reckoning. We Americans have an opportunity—and an obligation—to recognize the trauma embedded in our bodies; to accept and metabolize the clean pain of healing; and to move through and out of our trauma. This will enable us to mend our hearts and bodies—and to grow up.

That conflict is the battle for the bodies and souls of white Americans. This battle has been fueled by trauma as old as the Middle Ages, and it has been simmering in white American bodies since long before we became a nation. Now the heat has been turned up, and the conflict has reached critical mass.

This does not absolve us African Americans from addressing our own trauma. We, too, need to recognize our trauma; accept and metabolize our pain; mend our hearts and bodies; and grow up. Through this process, we can also fully reclaim our bodies, our resilience, and our place in America and the world.

A few weeks ago, a buddy of mine told me, “Shaun—I don’t think this country is ever really going to give a damn about police brutality until they see it destroying the lives of white families.” I think he’s right. That’s the American way …