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My Grandmother’s Hands
​8-Week Facilitated Study Groups
Groups offered for BIPOC Folks and for White Folks

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Summer 2022, Many groups forming, Specific dates below
Organized by: Shanda Williams, Abbi Jaffe and Kim Pierce
Facilitated by: Opeyemi Parham, Abbi Jaffe, Amanda Franz or Hazel Turrone 
Location: North Branch Nature Center or Hubbard Park


Featuring: My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, SEP

Join together to engage deeply with Resmaa Menakem’s potent book My Grandmother’s Hands.  Experienced facilitators will guide important conversations and somatic practices. 

To dismantle racism we must collectively address the racial trauma held in our individual and collective bodies.  Learn how all bodies are impacted by the collective trauma of racism, though each body is impacted differently and disproportionately. My Grandmother’s Hands offers steps to embody vitally important change.  This facilitated study group will offer a container to do this necessary work.     

Many of these study groups will occur at North Branch Nature Center.  Thank you North Branch Nature Center for the generous donation of your beautiful outdoor classroom for this vitally important work. Please consider joining them as a member.  Learn more here.

Covid-19 Expectations: The study groups for white folks will occur in-person, outside and physically distanced, with 12 people maximum per group.  Everyone is required to wear a mask at all times when not able to maintain at least 6 feet distance from other people. Do not attend the study group if you are feeling ill in any way or have been exposed to Covid-19. The study group for BIPOC folks will occur indoors in the Fall.  We will provide covid expectations soon.

Study Groups for Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) Folks:

BIPOC Facilitator: Opeyemi Parham
Sunday nights from 4:30-6pm 
Sept 11-Nov 6, back up date Nov 13,
*not meeting on Oct 9

8 Week Series
*Childcare may be available.  Please inquire with Abbi.


Location: North Branch Nature Center, indoors

Cost: free  (The cost is being covered by gifts of reparations from the participants in the study groups for white folks and from a grant from the Montpelier Community Gospel Choir.)
  • Pre-registration required by Aug 28th.  
  • We will notify you of your enrollment status by Aug 31st.  We hope to accept all that apply.
 
Absentee policy:
  • We ask that you do your best to attend ALL sessions. 
  • Please email the instructor to let them know if you will be missing a session. 
  • To keep the integrity of the learning container, we ask that you miss no more than two sessions. 
  • If you miss 3 sessions, our policy is to ask you to stop attending the group.  Some exceptions apply.
BIPOC Group:  Sept 11-Nov 6 

Pre-registration required by Aug 28th. 

​We will notify you of your enrollment status by Aug 31st.

​We hope to accept all that apply.

Register Here for BIPOC group


​Questions? Please contact Abbi Jaffe with any questions.  Abbi is a facilitator for the study groups for white folks and is a main organizer of this project.  abbi.jaffe@gmail.com  Email is best or text/phone call at 802-318-3927.  She can also get you in touch with Opeyemi if needed.


HOMEWORK for first group meeting:  Read through page 36 in My Grandmother’s Hands.  Please also listen to this podcast of Resmaa Menakem.

Study Groups for White Folks:

White Facilitators:  Abbi Jaffe, Amanda Franz, Hazel Turrone 
8 Week Series 

Session 1 Monday Evenings:
Monday nights 
6-7:30pm 
June 6-Aug 1, backup date Aug 8
Off: July 4
Location: North Branch Nature Center
Facilitator: Abbi Jaffe


Session 1 Tuesday Afternoons:
Tuesdays 1-2:30pm
May 17-July 12, backup date July 19
Off July 5
Location: Hubbard Park

Facilitator: Amanda Franz

Session 1 Tuesday Evenings:
May 24-July 19, backup date July 26
Off July 5 
Location: North Branch Nature Center

Facilitator: Abbi Jaffe or Hazel Turrone

Session 2 Tuesday Afternoons:
Tuesdays 1-2:30pm
Aug 30-Oct 25, back up Nov 1st

Off Sept 6
Location: Hubbard Park

Facilitator: Amanda Franz 

Session 2 Tuesday Evenings:
Tuesdays 6-7:30pm, October dates will meet 5:30-7pm
Aug 30-Oct 18, back up Oct 25
Location: North Branch Nature Center
Facilitator: Abbi Jaffe or Hazel Turrone

Registration Info:
​
  • Session 1:  May-July 
    • Pre-registration for Session 1 required by May 4th.  
    • We will notify you of your enrollment status by May 6th.  
  • Session 2:  Aug - Oct
    • Pre-registration for Session 2 required by Aug 22nd
    • We will notify you of your enrollment status by Aug 24.


Cost: Sliding scale $100-350
  • The cost pays for experienced facilitation and includes a gift of reparations to cover the cost of the Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) My Grandmother's Hands study group and a donation to a Vermont based racial equity cause.  
  • If you are able to pay more on the sliding scale, your fee will support our groups to run, including our scholarship fund.  
  • The Montpelier Community Gospel Choir is offering scholarships for their members.  No one will be turned away.  
  • Scholarships may be available.  We want this work to be accessible and will do our best to support your attendance.  No one will be turned away. 
  • If applicable, please bring a check with you to the first day of the group.  
 
Deposit Required:
  • $50 Non-refundable deposit required for all participants.  
  • Thank you for your commitment to this group. Your deposit secures your spot and is non-refundable.  Your deposit ensures that we have enough people to run the group and ensures that an event can still run when people cancel.  Thank you for your understanding. 
  • If the group you are applying for is already full when you apply or if the group does not run, your refund will be returned.
  • Deposits for applications NOT accepted WILL be refunded. 
  • TO PAY DEPOSIT: You can send a check written to Abbi Jaffe to 64 Main Street, 3rd Floor, Montpelier VT 05602 or pay via Venmo to @Abbi-Jaffe

Absentee policy:
  • We ask that you do your best to attend ALL sessions. 
  • Please email the instructor to let them know if you will be missing a session. 
  • To keep the integrity of the learning container, we ask that you miss no more than two sessions. 
  • If you miss 3 sessions, our policy is to ask you to stop attending the course.  Some exceptions apply.




Session 1: May-July

Pre-registration for Session 1 required by May 31st.  

We will notify you of your enrollment status on June 1st.  

Deposit required.
Register Here for white folks Group Session ONE


​​Session 2:  Aug - Oct 

Pre-registration for Session 2 required by Aug 22st. 

This group will run, so please sing up even after the deadline.


Register here for white folks group session two

​Questions? Please contact Abbi Jaffe with any questions.  Abbi is a facilitator for the study groups for white folks and is a main organizer of this project.  abbi.jaffe@gmail.com Email is best or text/phone call at 802-318-3927



HOMEWORK for first group meeting:  
  • Read through page 36 in My Grandmother’s Hands.  
  • Please also read White Supremacy Culture for our first meeting
  • ​Optional homework:  Podcast with Resmaa Menakem.


​Info about purchasing the book: 

  • Check the author's website.  
  • Order from your local bookstore  
  • Look for the book on INDIE BOUND
  • Find the book on Amazon.  


Thank you to our partners:

This study group series is supported by:
  • The Montpelier Community Gospel Choir
  • North Branch Nature Center
  • ​S D Marketing and Communications Consulting Group 
  • The Vermont Kindness Project
  • The Everything Space (Abbi Jaffe and Amanda Franz)


​Meet the Facilitators:

Picture
Top Left: Opeyemi, Top Right: Abbi, Bottom Left: Amanda, Bottom Right: Hazel
Opeyemi Parham 
Opeyemi is a family physician who moved from feral to rogue status over her 22 years of conventional doctoring. For the last 16 years she has advocated for health consumers to explore the gaps in their wellness strategies: 
–adding more sensuality
–acknowledging the roles our sexuality and our spirituality can play in health/disease
— owning our suicidal/homicidal tendencies (e.g. WAR), 
She “edu-tains” as a healing artist and an artist, healing, happily retired and living in Montpelier.

Abbi Jaffe / AJ  
(White, she/they pronouns, cis-gendered, queer, Jewish, living on unceded Abenaki land in Montpelier Vermont) 

Abbi is a politicized somatic movement educator/therapist, social worker, community builder and embodiment activist.   Abbi co-runs The Everything Space, a somatics studio dedicated to social and environmental justice in Montpelier Vt.  Abbi stewards Reciprocity: Vermont Embodiment Center in Underhill Vt.  Abbi co-created and co-teaches the professional development course Growing Resilience: Being Trauma Informed.  Abbi is a former Parallel Justice Specialist for Victims of Crime for the City of Burlington.  As a long time wilderness guide, Abbi has been leading people on expeditions in the wilderness and within themselves since 2000.  

Abbi is a certified Somatic Body Practitioner, a certified Somatic Movement Educator/Therapist through ISMETA, and has a Bachelor's of Social Work from the University of Vermont.   Learn more here.  


Amanda Franz
(White, she/they pronouns, cis-gendered queer, Germanic and Czech ancestry, living as a renter on unceded Abenaki territory in Vermont)  

Amanda is a politicized somatics educator/therapist, embodiment activist and changemaker working at the intersections of somatics, the trauma informed movement, social justice, environmental justice and cultural co-creation.   They/She is a certified Somatic Body Practitioner and is an  ISMETA certified Somatic Movement Educator/Therapist, as well as a certified Level II Collab trainer and facilitator.   She/They collaboratively run  The Everything Space, a somatic education studio weaving together personal growth and dynamic social change, co-creates/facilitates curriculum on Growing Resilience through being Trauma Informed, and co-leads a collective community Garden Project that reimagines community through tending the non-human Alive and growing food and medicine together.  

Amanda is committed to learning and unlearning the lived and woven places of privilege and oppression, embodied and enacted in each of the sites they hold influence.  Guided by their positionality and through trauma informed/resilience oriented, anti-racist and decolonial practices, Amanda is invested in re-culturing whiteness, redistributing power, and re-centering relationship to address the past and present harms they have perpetuated.  Her work weaves together many revolutionary forms as threads of a deep listening to the self as body in service of the Great Turning.  She holds a BA in Visual Arts from Oberlin College and forever holds the big skies of Missouri (lands of the Osage, Kickapoo, Peoria and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples), the place of her birth, dear to her heart.

Hazel Turrone
(White, she/they pronouns, European descent)

Hazel is a massage therapist in Montpelier VT.  The past 25 years of study of alternative healing has led them to get curious about all that our bodies hold and how to support releasing these layers and reconnecting to who we truly are.  The study of trauma and ancestral healing are significant threads they continue studying and weaving into their practice.  In all the complicatedness of our world and how deeply entrenched the patterns of oppression and disconnection are, how amazing it is that perhaps the most significant work we can do starts right here in the sacredness of our own bodies.

​
“The first self-help book to examine white-body supremacy in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology. The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze. 

My Grandmother’s Hands is a call to action for Americans to recognize that racism is not only about the head, but also about the body.

Menakem introduces an alternate view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide and takes readers through a step-by-step healing process based on the latest neuroscience and somatic healing practices. "

- Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, SEP, from My Grandmother's Hands

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  • WORK WITH US
    • Amanda Franz, RSME/T >
      • Re-Embodiment Training
      • Tending our Farmers
      • Polyvagal for the Poly People
    • Abbi Jaffe RSME/T
    • Somatic Movement Education Sessions >
      • SME- what to expect
      • Cost Structure
    • More Embodiment Services
  • Classes/events
    • Somatics for the People!
    • Finding each other again: CI 9 weeks
    • My Grandmothers Hands Study Group
    • Re-Embodiment Training
    • Tending our Grief: community grief rituals
    • Polyvagal for the Poly People
  • Garden
    • Positionality Statement
    • Our Values >
      • Equitably Inclusive
      • Justice work - Food, Environmental, Social, Bodily
      • Practicing Community
      • Everything is Alive! Everything is Connected!
      • Active Practice of Learning
      • Deep/Somatic/Embodied Listening and Awareness
      • Centering Ancestors
      • Healthy Accountability to Commitments and Responsibilities
      • Emergent Education
    • Garden Vision
    • Scopes of Involvement
    • Garden Support
    • Gratitudes >
      • 2019
      • 2020
  • About
    • Blog
    • Embodiment Activism
    • Trauma Informed
    • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Recommend Practitioners
    • Resources
  • Contact
    • Feedback
    • Public Disclosure