My Grandmother's Hands. Resmaa Menakem
act. Furthermore, that ability is often seen as something learned or acquired in childhood—the result of supportive parenting, the presence of other caring adults, and so on. But the full picture of resilience is much broader and much more organic.
First, resilience is both intrinsic and learned, a combination of nature (what you’re born with) and nurture (the circumstances you encounter, especially as you grow up). Second, resilience manifests both individually and collectively. Sometimes it does take the form of a personal, individual act. Often, however, resilience is expressed communally by a group, a family, an organization, or a culture.
Suppose you’re running a marathon. Halfway through, exhausted, you trip and fall. Your legs ache and you’re bleeding from both knees. You pull yourself to your feet and decide it’s time to quit the race. Then five of your friends and family members show up beside you. “You can do it!” they shout. “You finished last year; you can finish this time. Go for it!” Next thing you know, you’re off and running again.
Clearly this required resilience. But the resilience wasn’t just inside of you. It also came from the words and actions of people who care for you, and from your relationship with them. Ann Masten, one of the leading researchers on resilience in children, expresses it this way: “I like to say that the resilience of a child is distributed. It’s not just in the child. It’s distributed in their relationships with the many other people who make up their world.”26
Third, resilience isn’t just about responding to—or getting through—a difficult experience. Resilience also manifests in a form that’s more about being than doing. This aspect of resilience helps us stay grounded and settled, no matter what happens to us. It enables us to sustain and protect ourselves—and each other—over time. It’s a way for our body to access possibility and coherence, regardless of the circumstances. It’s not so much a response as it is a way of showing up, a way of tapping into the energies that surround and move through everything in our world.
Resilience can be built and strengthened, both individually and collectively. We African Americans took pains to build resilience in ourselves and our children for many generations; if we didn’t, we wouldn’t have survived. For 400 years, with many successes and many failures, we have sought to counter new and old trauma with both the resilience we were born with and the resilience we grew and taught each other to grow.
I often tell people that resilience is not a thing or an attribute, but a flow. It moves through the body, and between multiple bodies when they are harmonized. It is neither built nor developed; it is taken in and expressed as part of a larger relationship with a family, a group, a community, or the world at large.
Notice how this takes place not just in the cognitive mind, but in the body, and in the minds and bodies of others, and in the collective body of people who care about us.
Here are some especially good pieces of news about resilience: recent findings in neuroscience reveal that the human brain always has the capacity to learn, change, and grow. It is genetically designed to mend itself. While trauma can inhibit or block this capacity, that effect is not permanent; once the trauma has ceased and been addressed, growth and positive change become possible once again.27 Later chapters will offer a variety of activities to help your brain and body heal.
One morning, as my mother and I were taking a long walk together, she said to me, “Resmaa, you’ve written about my mother’s hands, but you haven’t said a word about her feet.” My grandmother had feet that were small and thick, like hobbit feet, but I’d never thought much about them. She liked to take her shoes off and put her feet up, but that had seemed completely normal to me, especially for an older person.
“What’s special about her feet?” I asked.
My mother paused, then looked at me. “You don’t know, do you?”
I shook my head.
“You know those hands of hers—her thick fingers covered with calluses? Her feet were the same way. What, you think she had shoes to wear when she was little? When she was four years old, she was out in the fields, barefoot, picking cotton. The fields were full of thorns, and they cut her feet up, day after day, until she grew calluses all over them, just like on her hands.”
Over generations, many of us African Americans have developed thick emotional skins in a variety of ways.28 This has served us well, protecting us from a great deal of damage and pain in a dangerous world. This is how resilience works. It doesn’t always create full healing, but it may build protection and prevent (or blunt) future wounding. It can create in the body a little more room for growth and development. This, in turn, can create an opportunity for passing on caring, context, and growth to other bodies—especially the bodies of the next generation.
—BODY AND BREATH PRACTICE—
Go to a quiet, comfortable place where you can be alone for about ten minutes. Sit down and take a few deep, slow breaths. Feel free to either close your eyes or leave them open.
You are about to invite the presence of an ancestor. You don’t know who this will be. You also don’t know how he or she will appear—as an image, a memory, a sensation in your body, an emotion, or a flow of energy. All you know is that this person lived at least three generations before you and died before you were born. They might be a great-grandparent or an ancestor from the distant past. You do not get to choose who this person will be; he or she will choose you.
Just sit quietly, following your breathing, and invite this unknown person into your presence.
Don’t plan to converse or interact with this ancestor. Don’t try to identify or figure out anything about him or her. Simply observe this person’s presence and notice how your body responds.
If your ancestor doesn’t appear quickly, that’s fine. Just continue sitting and breathing. Give the person up to five minutes to make an appearance.
If he or she appears as an image, what does he or she look like? Is the person female or male? How old does he or she appear to be? What is he or she wearing? What expression is on his or her face?
Does your ancestor seem safe and settled? Happy? Fearful? Distressed? If your ancestor is moving, what is he or she doing? Is the person alone, or with a companion?
Whether your ancestor appears in an image or in some other form, how does your body experience his or her presence? Does it feel comforted? Welcomed? Loved? Relaxed? Wary? Afraid? Constricted? Does it want to move toward or away from your ancestor? Does your body want to touch or hold the person, or push him or her away?
When you are ready, thank your ancestor for visiting you. Then get up and continue with your day.
If, at any time, your ancestor’s presence feels threatening, gently but firmly send him or her away. Then take a few slow, deep breaths to return yourself to the here and now. Orient yourself to the room by slowly looking around, especially behind you. If you still feel an uncomfortable presence, leave the room.
RE-MEMBERINGS
• Trauma can spread from one body to another, like a contagious disease—through families and from generation to generation.
• When someone with unhealed trauma chooses dirty pain over clean pain, he or she may try to push his or her trauma through another human being, by using violence, rage, coercion, betrayal, or emotional abuse. This only increases the dirty pain, while often creating trauma in the other person as well.
• When one settled body encounters another, there can be a deeper settling of both bodies. But when one unsettled body encounters another, the unsettledness tends to compound in both bodies. In families and large groups, this effect can multiply exponentially.
• Over months or years, unhealed trauma can become part