Our Grandchildren's Souls: Protecting Ourselves and Our Descendants from the Virus of Racialized Trauma
About this book
In his follow up to the New York Times bestseller My Grandmother's Hands, therapist Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America and offers a step-by-step solution--a healing process--in addition to incisive social commentary.Our Grandchildren's Souls guides readers through a process of somatic abolitionism, an anti-racist philosophy and set of embodied practices for individual and collective healing from racialized trauma. Using the same key principles as My Grandmother's Hands, Menakem explores deeper insights that white-body supremacy has the essential characteristics of a virus. The trauma virus is generational and passed down from parent to child to grandchild and affects almost every American. It has been us, literally in our cells, for centuries.Our Grandchildren's Souls provides a step-by-step program of somatic (body-centered) activities to create a set of mental and emotional practices toward a positive vision of the future. It reminds us of the consequences for our descendants' souls if we do not work, separately and collectively, to build immunity to the trauma virus. Somatic Abolitionism is an emphatic assertion that we have the power to reduce the impact of racialized trauma one human being, and one generation, at a time.