My Grandmother’s Hands
Facilitated Study Groups
Groups offered for BIPOC Folks and for White Folks
These groups are offered multiple times every year.
Dismantling the systemic oppression of racism requires collective actions.
These study groups are a potent opportunity
to deconstruct white supremacy from the inside out and
work towards co-creating embodied liberation.
The study groups are not just about unlearning racism.
The study groups are about uncovering the ways that white supremacy continues to live in bodies and
to do the collective work to support necessary changes.
Join together in practice.
Invite your family, friends, neighbors, legislators, fellow board members and co-workers to do this work with you. You can join our upcoming sessions or invite us to facilitate a group in your location.
We have collectively facilitated 12 study groups and are heading into this 4th year ready to begin again, share from our experiences, and keep learning and growing with you. This May-November we are offering 4 study groups for white folks and one study group for BIPOC folks. Help us fill these groups. Many optional learning activities and reading assignments are offered throughout the series to support deepening engagement and integration of the material as you are inspired. |
Summer/Fall/Winter 2023 Many groups forming, Specific dates below Organized by: The Everything Space and The Vermont Kindness Project with Shanda Williams, Abbi Jaffe and Kim Pierce Facilitated by: Shanda Williams, Abbi Jaffe, Amanda Franz, Hazel Turrone Locations: North Branch Nature Center or Hubbard Park, Montpelier VT Featuring: My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, SEP Resmaa Menakem offers pathways to mending our hearts and bodies from racialized trauma in his book My Grandmother’s Hands. Reading this book with others, in a container supported by experienced politized somatic educators, helps create new pathways that can only be forged together. 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 Study Groups offers steps to embody vitally important change. 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 indoor and outdoor classrooms 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. The study group for BIPOC folks will occur indoors in the Fall. For both groups: 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. |
Study Groups for Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) Folks:
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BIPOC Facilitator: Shanda Williams
Sunday nights from 4:30-6pm starting in September 2023 Sept 17-Nov 5, 2023 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.)
Absentee policy:
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BIPOC Group:
Pre-registration required. We will notify you of your enrollment status by Sept 10. We hope to accept all that apply. 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:
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White Facilitators: Abbi Jaffe, Amanda Franz, Hazel Turrone
9 Week Evening Sessions and 12 Week Series Daytime Sessions SESSION 1 = June-Aug Session 1 Monday Evenings 9 WEEK Series Monday nights 6-7:30pm Mondays: June 12-Aug 14th, back up Aug 21 (Off: July 3) Location: Hubbard Park at the Old Shelter Facilitator: Abbi Jaffe Session 1 Thursday Daytime 12 WEEK Series Thursdays 10am-11:30am Thursdays: June 1 -Sept 7, back up date Sept 14th (Off: June 15, July 27, Aug 31) Location: Hubbard Park Facilitator: Amanda Franz SESSION 2 = Aug-Oct Session 2 Wednesday Evenings 9 WEEK Series Wednesdays 6-7:30pm Starting Sept 20th Location: Hubbard Park and will move indoors when its too cold Facilitator: Hazel Turrone Registration Info:
Cost: Sliding scale $150-550
Deposit Required:
Absentee policy:
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Session 1: May-July Pre-registration for Thursday Day by May 25th. Pre-Registration for Monday Evening by June 12th. Session 2: Fall 2023, Starting in Sept Pre-registration for Session 2 required by Sept 10, 2023 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:
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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:
Shanda Williams
Abbi Jaffe
Amanda Franz
Hazel Turrone
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Shanda Williams (she/her)
Shanda is a Reparations Activist and the Owner and Visionary of S D Communications and Marketing Consulting Group LLC. She is a native of Hartford, CT, and a UCONN Alumni. Shanda has worked within the Banking and Insurance industry for a cumulative of 10+ years. Currently, Shanda enjoys collaborating with innovative groups and putting together equity workshops and symposiums to empower and enlighten the underserved markets. Her "Money Matters" financial series is being taught throughout the Central Vermont Region. She is currently collaborating with The Vermont Kindness Project for her upcoming event on October 13th Goddard College, Money Matters II: Eco Feminism + Radical Love which will discuss the link between trauma, resilience, and earning potential. Her goal is to give strength to underserved people by connecting them to the people, places and tools that they need to get ahead and achieve the impossible! Some of the things that Shanda loves doing most when she isn't working hard to feed the masses with "food for thought,” is listening to live music, pet sitting for her friends and furry family members, reading, stargazing, and sun gazing while taking in the natural beauty of Vermont. Abbi Jaffe / AJ (she/they) (White, cis-gendered, queer, Jewish, living on unceded Abenaki land in Montpelier Vermont) Abbi is a politicized somatic movement educator/therapist, social worker, trauma informed bodyworker and is training as a Real Dialogue Specialist. 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 (she/they) (White, 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 (she/they) (White, 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. Shanda Williams (she/her), is a Reparations Activist and the Owner and Visionary of S D Communications and Marketing Consulting Group LLC. She is a native of Hartford, CT, and a UCONN Alumni. Shanda has worked within the Banking and Insurance industry for a cumulative of 10+ years. Currently, Shanda enjoys collaborating with innovative groups and putting together equity workshops and symposiums to empower and enlighten the underserved markets. Her "Money Matters" financial series is being taught throughout the Central Vermont Region. She is currently collaborating with The Vermont Kindness Project for her upcoming event on October 13th Goddard College, Money Matters II: Eco Feminism + Radical Love which will discuss the link between trauma, resilience, and earning potential. Her goal is to give strength to underserved people by connecting them to the people, places and tools that they need to get ahead and achieve the impossible! Some of the things that she loves doing most when she isn't working hard to feed the masses with "food for thought,” is listening to live music, pet sitting for her friends and furry family members, reading, stargazing, and sun gazing while taking in the natural beauty of Vermont. Shanda Williams (she/her), is a Reparations Activist and the Owner and Visionary of S D Communications and Marketing Consulting Group LLC. She is a native of Hartford, CT, and a UCONN Alumni. Shanda has worked within the Banking and Insurance industry for a cumulative of 10+ years. Currently, Shanda enjoys collaborating with innovative groups and putting together equity workshops and symposiums to empower and enlighten the underserved markets. Her "Money Matters" financial series is being taught throughout the Central Vermont Region. She is currently collaborating with The Vermont Kindness Project for her upcoming event on October 13th Goddard College, Money Matters II: Eco Feminism + Radical Love which will discuss the link between trauma, resilience, and earning potential. Her goal is to give strength to underserved people by connecting them to the people, places and tools that they need to get ahead and achieve the impossible! Some of the things that she loves doing most when she isn't working hard to feed the masses with "food for thought,” is listening to live music, pet sitting for her friends and furry family members, reading, stargazing, and sun gazing while taking in the natural beauty of Vermont. |
“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
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
Testimonial
"The information and guidance Resmee Menakem shares in My Grandmother's Hands is hugely relevant to our collective moment- a paradigm shift on how we approach racial justice and the social/cultural/personal/ancestral healing we all so deeply need in our hearts, communities and bodies.
Abbi Jaffe embodied the ethos of this movement with utmost care as she led our book group, modeling careful listening, gentle presence and deep commitment to this work. I've learned so much from her and hope to continue.
The group provides an intimate space to do the tender work of being with our own discomfort and learn from our body's wisdom, while in connection with a consistent support network, so that we may slowly discover how to show up in a gentler way on this earth. The experience deepened my sense of belonging to the human experience in all its complexity, wonder and grief.
Some weeks I felt overwhelmed trying to make it to the group, but once I sat down on the land and was offered space to calm my body, I recognized it was a very wise choice to have made it. Honestly I'd love to do the study group again!" ~K, 2022 participant