Intergenerational trauma / mental illness

The Sopranos (6x17) / Esquire Hereditary review / Moonlight / My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem / Pachinko (1x01) / I Love You, Honeybear (Father John Misty) / Russian Doll (2x04) / Doctor Sleep / Bojack Horseman (2x01)

if you take any requests to make web-weaves, im searching desperately for one about bravery, confidence, and having the courage of your convictions. many thanks :)

i hope this is what you're looking for :))

With Confidence "Voldemort" / Amy Schmidt "Abundance" / twitter @/maryzha0 / Carl Jung / Alexandra Levasseur "Body of Land" / Resmaa Menakem / F. D. Reeve "The Moon & Other Failures" / unknown

Resmaa Menakem

“Love and trust are not concepts or tactics. They are ways of being with someone, ways of being in the world, and ways of being in your body.”

~ Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, Chptr 23

Somatic abolitionism. Because the shit isn't just in our heads - it's in our unconscious reactions, our embodied fears, our habits of using space.

Resmaa Menakem

[“The clinical term for going numb to certain parts of experience as a tactic of psychic self-preservation is dissociation. Not all forms of detachment from experience are dissociative, but they serve the same function: to avoid the discomfort of an experience we feel powerless to interrupt. The detachment that I have experienced from intimate physical acts that I have consented to but which I did not enjoy is not the same as that experienced by someone in a violent highway collision, or a rape victim, or even the deadening experienced by the worker who is submitted to decades of grueling and repetitive labor. But these are analogous. The writers of all these stories must perform a careful and often painful recovery of the memories of those exiled sensations. Just as the trauma survivor must do to the tell the story on which her recovery depends. For the trauma survivor, this storytelling must also happen corporeally. Trauma is described in many ways as an interrupted experience not only in the mind, but also, and perhaps even more profoundly, in the body and its systems. Healing depends upon what therapists who practice somatic experiencing call biological completion. Resmaa Menakem, in his groundbreaking book on healing racialized trauma, My Grandmother’s Hands, refers to it as “completing the action.” The survivor tells the story of their trauma in the body, often without speaking at all, slowly reconstructing the neural progression of the traumatic experience so that it can reach a conclusion. Shamanic practitioners sometimes call this process one of soul retrieval, and the term feels more accurate to me than any clinical language, which by definition excludes the spiritual nature of healing. The essential nature of self that we recover and transform by healing, by revising and completing the story of the past, is often more completely described by spiritual terms.”]

melissa febos, from body work: the radical power of personal narrative, 2022

before you start reading The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma:

list of problems (r/ptsd)

the author was fired from the trauma centre he founded for creating hostile work environment (seattletimes.com)

Famed trauma therapist responds to allegations of bullying: 'It's an outrageous story' (yahoo.com)

Fall from Grace: The Worship of Clinical Leaders (thecounselorscoach.com)

npr podcast where the author says he doesn't think covid caused collective trauma and on the popularity of his book: 'I'm astounded by it. It's a very difficult book to read.' (npr.org)

What if Bessel van der Kolk is right about trauma? (traumathoery.com)

instead maybe consider:

The Body Never Lies by Alice Miller

The True “Drama of the Gifted Child”: The Phantom Alice Miller - The Real Person by Martin Miller (Alice Miller's son)

The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris

My Grandmothers Hands. Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Menakem Resmaa

Pete Walker's books are often recommended along with The Body Keeps the Score but many voiced an issue with him focusing on abusive parents being the main cause of CPTSD when it is not always the case

another widely recommended author is Gabor Mate who also is often criticized (psychologytoday.com)

same with Judith Herman (wildtruth.net)

felt important to share.

from Resmaa Menakem

10 Books to Read in 2024

I wasn’t tagged by anyone to do this but I saw a post I did from a couple years ago and I wanted to challenge myself!

“You Deserve Each Other” by Sarah Hogle (I’m 75% done as I’m typing this shhh)

“Twice Shy” by Sarah Hogle

“Purple Hibiscus” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi (reread)

“The Chosen” by Chaim Potok (another reread)

“My Grandmother’s Hands” by Resmaa Menakem

“The Spanish Love Deception” by Elena Armas

“The Samurai’s Garden” by Gail Tsukiyama (yet another reread)

“Healing Your Emotional Self” by Beverly Engel

“The Autobiography of Malcolm X” by Malcolm X

“Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

🩷 I’m tagging!! @sunfortune @kosmogrl @eors @warmhappy @fruitcart @vensulove @cheekblush @beartowns @17fh @onoffon0ff & anybody that I missed and wants to do it!! 🩷

Book Review 50/60

My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem

My previous therapist recommended I read this for help conceptualizing the trauma of being Jewish. It's not about Jewish trauma, it's about African-American trauma, but there's an appalling amount of overlap. It also helped unpack a lot of white guilt. Possibly the most important book I've read this year.

5/5

— Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

Healing

Dunya Mikhail // Mary Oliver // Clarice Lispector //  sunsbleeding //  sunsbleeding // Resmaa Menakem // Hope Moore // Roya Marsh

propagandize in the replies to your heart's content! these are all books i already have physical copies of but havent read yet

Escaping Generational Trauma: Know the Signs

Pic Post by @supstaf on tiktok (not my pics)

TW: informative post on trauma and abuse familial relationships

Generational Trauma has become somewhat of a buzzword in pop psychology, but often the signs and how families tend to trap each other is not discussed. These are some (not all) ways that families may try to keep someone attached to the family and in the cycle of abuse. These actions by the family can be conscious and calculated, but also some may unconsciously act out (because the abusive cycle is all they know and are unaware).

It's important to note that generational Trauma and abuse varies among many family dynamics. Ideologies and cultures are able to influence or enforce these expectations as well.

One of the biggest steps to ending generational trauma is becoming aware of the toxic cycle that you are in or have endured. Here are some beginner books I recommend on the subject.

It Didn’t Start With You: Books For generational trauma Healing and Cycle Breaking by Mark Wolynn

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Books For Generational Trauma Healing and Cycle Breaking by Lindsay G. Gibson, PsyD

How to Do the Work: Books For Trauma Healing and Cycle Breaking by Dr. Nicole LePra

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

The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity by Nadine Burke Harris, M.D

Whoever resonates with this I hope you know that you are not alone and that you can heal from this, even if it feels impossible. Know healing is a process and it's not linear. Hope this information is helpful and can equip you with tools and knowledge of how to heal.

So I'm starting a new book called My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem

I already know this book will change my life much like Ruby Hamad's book.

This was recommended to me by my mother in law who omg I had an amazing conversation with. She has come such a long way since we met from gaslighting me about my own racial trauma to now regularly being part of antiracism book groups and white racial equity action groups like SURGE and participating in climate change activism. Every day she thanks me for having the patience and love for her to get her to see how she was hurting me so we could have an honest open loving relationship like I actually wanted.

This book is part of her book group. Resmaa Menakem is a Black trauma counselor and he has this radical notion that racism is an emotional trauma based response and that the only way to change racism as it is today is to change the culture based on the way racism is talked about. He wants to white people to change from just being a race to an actual culture like the rest of us have but ya'll white people have to do the work okay poc can't change your culture for you. We're too busy trying to survive the obstacles your people have placed upon us.

I don't know if every poc will agree with this approach and that's okay because poc are not a monolith, but it makes sense to me that we can't eradicate white culture. It's here. It's the dominant force. To reactionarily want to erase it is in its way just mirroring the energy that is reflecting at us. And being half white myself I spent a long time being self-hating. But you know I could be self-hating or own my whiteness and be like now I do my part to change white culture to mean something else than what it means today. Cause right now it means the death of other cultures.

But it could evolve into something else if we all made a group effort to make that change. But it takes white people doing the work. Poc especailly black people are not your servants and being like tell us how tell us how removes the burden of work off of you and back onto poc. I am half white but your culture doesn't say that I'm white cause I don't look white enough, and you only use my whiteness to erase the racism I experience. I'd like to be able to be comfortable with my white half again but as of now I don't feel white except when I'm around other poc.

I cannot change the culture alone. If you hate what white culture stands for right now, you have to be part of that change, because if you stand by and let it happen you're as good as cosigning that you're okay with all this.

But it's not hopeless. I know you're probably overwhelmed. We all are. Take a breath, realize that's normal, and think, what's the next step.

If you're white maybe consider contacting your local SURGE chapter to see what you can do in the fight for racial equity.