Therapeutic Influences
Resmaa Menakem | Somatic Abolitionism
My commitment to ending white supremacy and healing racialized trauma has been deeply influenced by Resmaa Menakem. He is the author of My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. In this groundbreaking book, Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology. The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society.
He is a senior Fellow with the Meadows Institute, and has been featured on several syndicated programs such as On Being with Krista Tippett.
Resmaa Menakem also developed this Free Racialized Trauma Course. His book is also available on Audible and at many independent bookstores.
Says Resmaa: “Moving from race to culture to creation is important, transformative, and takes work. And a lot of reps. I help people, communities, and organizations find strength in healing that is holistic and resilient. Together let’s set a course for healing historical and racialized trauma carried in the body and the soul. I am a healer. I help people rise through the suffering’s edge. I am a cultural trauma navigator. I am a communal provocateur and coach. I consider it my job in this moment to make the invisible visible.”
Commitment to healing racialized trauma
I am a white-bodied practitioner who is interested in exploring my relationship to historical and collective trauma. If we wish to heal ourselves, our families, our communities and our culture, I believe the path can be found in somatic (meaning of the body) and communal (vs. Individual) healing methods. The more each of us can build our capacity to feel from within our embodied reactions and patterns, the more we can attune to and heal our generational wounds and evolve our humanity.
I am currently coordinating a monthly gathering of white-bodied healers to address and grow their capacity for healing racialized trauma.
I also founded and lead a weekly personal group that has been meeting out of my home since July 2016. We are currently offering free online gatherings to help others learn how to set up their own Healing Racialized Trauma & Undoing White Body Supremacy Practice Group.
If you are interested in learning more about starting or joining a group like this, send Terri a message.
Healing Historical and Racialized Trauma
Historical trauma refers to trauma that is experienced and held not just in individual bodies, but in whole communities and across generations. This includes but is not limited to racialized trauma caused by policies of colonialization, racism, claims of white superiority, enslavement, trafficking, genocide, and other exploitive practices.
Humans have been physically violent towards one another since the beginning of human civilization. In the middle ages, human torture was a sport that you watched in an arena, and public torture called "punishment" was available in town squares. Humans have continued to perpetuate abuse against one another. Some of these methods are state sanctioned and many are just culturally supported.
Much of current cultural trauma is hidden in plain sight. Examples include the language of sexual violence where the discourse names how many victims who were assaulted and programs focused on prevention of being raped (passive voice) vs. how many people committing acts of sexual violence and stopping people from raping (active voice). Words like "inner city" and "diversity training" (code for non-white and not-like-me) vs. efforts to challenge white segregation and structural white supremacy.
This cultural and historical and racialized trauma is passed down in our stories, cultures, laws and policies. It's not just our thoughts but in our bodies. We literally "embody" that trauma. The field of epigenetics is teaching us that traumatic events show up in our dna with gene receptors being turned on or off and those "settings" get passed along to our offspring.