My Grandmother's Hands. Resmaa Menakem
It’s also the pain you experience when you have no idea what to do; when you’re scared or worried about what might happen; and when you step forward into the unknown anyway, with honesty and vulnerability.
Experiencing clean pain enables us to engage our integrity and tap into our body’s inherent resilience and coherence, in a way that dirty pain does not. Paradoxically, only by walking into our pain or discomfort—experiencing it, moving through it, and metabolizing it—can we grow. It’s how the human body works.
Clean pain hurts like hell. But it enables our bodies to grow through our difficulties, develop nuanced skills, and mend our trauma. In this process, the body metabolizes clean pain. The body can then settle; more room for growth is created in its nervous system; and the self becomes freer and more capable, because it now has access to energy that was previously protected, bound, and constricted. When this happens, people’s lives often improve in other ways as well.
All of this can happen both personally and collectively. In fact, if American bodies are to move beyond the pain and limitation of white-body supremacy, it needs to happen in both realms. Accepting clean pain will allow white Americans to confront their longtime collective disassociation and silence. It will enable African Americans to confront their internalization of defectiveness and self-hate. And it will help public safety professionals in many localities to confront the recent metamorphosis of their role from serving the community to serving as soldiers and prison guards.
Dirty pain is the pain of avoidance, blame, and denial. When people respond from their most wounded parts, become cruel or violent, or physically or emotionally run away, they experience dirty pain. They also create more of it for themselves and others.
A key factor in the perpetuation of white-body supremacy is many people’s refusal to experience clean pain around the myth of race. Instead, usually out of fear, they choose the dirty pain of silence and avoidance and, invariably, prolong the pain.
In experiencing this book, you will face some pain. Neither you nor I can know how much, and it may not show up in the place or the manner you expect. Whatever your own background or skin color, as you make your way through these pages, I encourage you to let yourself experience that clean pain in order to let yourself heal. If you do, you may save yourself—and others—a great deal of future suffering.
In Chapters Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, I’ll give you some practical tools to help your body become settled, anchored, and present within your clean pain, so that you can slowly metabolize your trauma and move through and beyond it. (I’ll also give you parallel tools to help you quickly activate your body on demand, for times when that might be necessary.)
It’s easy to assume the way people interact in twenty-first-century America is the way human beings have always interacted, at all times and in all places. Of course, this isn’t so. It’s equally easy to imagine that twenty-first-century American society is somehow fundamentally different from any other time and place in history. That isn’t so, either. Here are some things to acknowledge before we go further:
• Trauma is as ancient as human beings. In fact, it’s more ancient. Animals that were here eons before humans appeared also experience trauma in their bodies.
• Oppression, enslavement, and fear of the other are as old, and as widespread, as human civilization.
• A variety of forms of supremacy—of one group being elevated above another—have existed around the world for millennia and still exist today. Multiple forms of supremacy often intersect and compound each other, harming human beings in profoundly negative ways.
• Race is an invention—and a relatively modern one.
• My Grandmother’s Hands looks at racialized trauma in America, how that trauma gets perpetuated through white-body supremacy, and how we can heal from it. Because of its American focus, some of its insights and activities may not be appropriate for some other countries and cultures.
• White-body supremacy in America doesn’t just harm Black people. It damages everyone. Historically, it has also been especially brutal toward Native Americans, and, often, Latino Americans.
• As we’ll see, while white-body supremacy benefits white Americans in some ways, it also does great harm to white bodies, hearts, and psyches.
So far, all you know about me is that I’m a body-centered therapist who specializes in trauma work, that I lead Soul Medic and Cultural Somatics workshops, and that I’ve published a book that helps couples mend and deepen their relationships. (I’ve also published a book of guidance for emerging justice leaders.) But for you to trust me and stick with me throughout this book, you probably want to know much more. Fair enough.
I’m a longtime therapist and licensed clinical social worker in private practice. I specialize in couples’ trauma work, conflict in relationships of all kinds, and domestic violence prevention. Recently I established Cultural Somatics, an area of study and practice that applies our knowledge of trauma and resilience to history, intergenerational relationships, institutions, and the communal body. I’m also a leadership coach for emerging justice leaders. I’ve been a guest on both The Oprah Winfrey Show and Dr. Phil, where I discussed family dynamics, couples in conflict, and domestic violence. For ten years, I cohosted a radio show with US Congressman Keith Ellison on KMOJ-FM in Minneapolis. I also hosted my own show, “Resmaa in the Morning,” on KMOJ.
I’ve worked as a trainer for the Minneapolis Police Department; a trauma consultant for the St. Paul Public Schools; the director of counseling services for Tubman Family Alliance, a domestic violence treatment center in Minneapolis; the behavioral health director for African American Family Services in Minneapolis; a domestic violence counselor for Wilder Foundation; a divorce and family mediator; a social worker and consultant for the Minneapolis Public Schools; a community organizer; and a consultant for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.
For two years I served as a community care counselor for civilian contractors in Afghanistan, managing the wellness and counseling services on fifty-three US military bases. As a certified Military Family Life Consultant, I also worked with members of the military and their families on issues related to family living, deployment, and returning home.
But here’s what may be most important: I’m just like you. I’ve experienced my own trauma around white-body supremacy—and around other things as well. Sometimes white people scare me. Sometimes my African American brothers and sisters scare me. Sometimes I scare myself. But when I’m scared, I know enough to let my body tap into its inherent resilience and flow, to help it settle, and to lean into my clean pain. I also have a community of healed and healing bodies that supports me and holds me accountable.
Even though I’m law abiding and my brother is a cop, police sometimes scare me. I drive a Dodge Challenger with racing stripes, so police follow me a lot, and sometimes I get pulled over.10 I’m always friendly and polite when this happens, but I worry I’ll get the wrong officer who’s been struggling with his or her own trauma.
I was raised in a family that was sometimes stable, sometimes chaotic. My father struggled with chemical dependency and was violent at times. As a young adult, I was angry, frightened, and confused. It took me a long time to find my place in the world. Fortunately, I had a family, community, mentors, elders, and ancestors who all expected the best of me and encouraged me to grow up and heal.
I want you, and me, and all of us to heal, to be free of racialized trauma, to feel safe and secure in our bodies and in the world, and to pass on that safety and security to future generations. This book is my attempt to create more of that safety.
—BODY CENTERED PRACTICE—
Take a moment to ground yourself in your own body. Notice the outline of your skin and the slight pressure of the air around it. Experience the firmer pressure of the chair, bed, or couch beneath you—or the ground or floor