2 min read

Healing in the Face of Racialized Trauma

The pursuit of happiness is a human right, and this begins with equal and equitable access to civil liberties. The Black Lives Matter movement has illuminated the prevalence of ongoing strategic institutionalized abuse targeting black and brown people worldwide. Any society that is currently perpetuating oppression and systemic racism is most often rooted in a history of slavery, apartheid, and segregation, resulting in multiple generations of people with PTSD.

Mental health is often a social justice issue.

Dealing with this ongoing exposure to abuse, violence, and oppression inevitably causes anxiety, depression, chronic stress, burnout, unprocessed rage, grief, and compounded trauma. If left untreated, these symptoms often get worse over time.

In the service of disrupting and healing the impact of this intergenerational trauma, Resmaa Menakem, an accomplished therapist, author, and civil rights activist is currently offering a free online course on racialized trauma through the Cultural Somatics Training and Institute.

This course is not a practice of spiritual bypass or erasure, but rather, a grounded, accessible process of acknowledging the impact of racialized trauma and how trauma is stored in the nervous system across generations. This course also provides techniques for building stamina to communicate about racism and trauma within one's communities.

Click on this link or the image below to join the free online course:

Racialized Trauma, presented by the Cultural Somatics Training and Institute.

Resmaa Menakem has also written an incredibly helpful book on this topic entitled,

My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. This wonderful book offers tools from somatic psychology and neuroscience to help your body release personal and generational trauma.

To explore this book and view additional books related to mental health on the Happiness Clinic booklist, you can click here. As always, 100% of profits from every purchase on this list will go to our charity alliance partners: Direct Relief, ACLU, and Action Against Hunger.