MY GRANDMOTHER'S HANDS
Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Resmaa Menakem
Calvary's Ministry of the Month for February, "Healing Hearts, Transforming Nations", a ministry with CRCNA Resonate Global Mission. To take a step beyond financially supporting the work of Healing Hearts, Transforming Nations, we have this book recommendation from George de Vuyst and his words:
"My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem is a practical workbook that helps readers walk through the issues that lie underneath our racial divides in North America. I was amazed as I worked through this book with a group of white people involved in Resonate Global Mission’s anti-racism work. The book focused on dealing with our own pain. That pain was divided between white, black and blue (police) pain. We all carry wounds caused by the circumstances of our lives. Unhealed wounds lead to wounding others. One of the underlying premises of the book is that white people carry particular unhealed wounds going all the way back to the middle ages in Europe. Black people carry their own particular unhealed wounds, especially coming out of slavery. The third category, blue, looks at the particular wounds that police receive and the need for healing in the ranks of our police forces. The role of unhealed wounds in conflict around the world is very much a part of what was discovered to be behind the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the conflicts around Africa, the Middle East and in Europe. In my work in Ukraine, the unhealed wounds from the last 250 years were an enormous part of today’s conflicts and pain. While I don’t agree with everything that Menakem recommends, I do agree with his overall premise. We all need to find healing of our own wounds - personal and collective - in order to move forward toward reconciliation."
