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Welcome to Module 2: Anti-Oppressive Frameworks

In his book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies (2017), Resmaa Menakem shares his work on racialized trauma, highlighting the ways that systemic racism harms everyone, the oppressor, and the oppressed. He approaches the topic as a therapist, identifying the ways that trauma lives in the body and, as we explored in section two of this course, how our bodies can wire themselves into patterns that operate from fear. Resmaa Menakem’s (2017) work is useful as we continue into the course, and supports us to think about why we would ever engage in such complex, often painful, and uncertain work:

Healing involves discomfort, but so does refusing to heal. And, over time, refusing to heal is always more painful

In my therapy office, I tell clients there are two kinds of pain: clean pain and dirty pain. Clean pain is pain that mends and can build your capacity for growth. It’s the pain you experience when you know, exactly, what you need to say or do; when you don’t want to say or do it; and when you do it anyway. 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 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 we approach the topic of race with more depth, our nervous systems might become activated. Notice your breath, and remember the work of Norma Kawelokū Wong from Module One of this course; short, shallow breath activates the amygdala and our fight/flight/freeze responses. Focus on grounding yourself regularly and returning yourself to the present through the breath and your senses.

Remember that this work is deep, heavy, and long.

References

Menakem, R. (2017). My grandmother’s hands: Racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies. Central Recovery Press.

Wong, N. (2024). Norma Wong: Facilitating transformation. https://www.normawong.com/

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