What It Takes to Heal

“I love this book. Prentis Hemphill offers us a visionary, personal, compassionate, empowering guide for our healing as individuals, within the histories of our families and deep within the broader contexts of our communities, societies, and the world at large.”—Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score“In a time when so many of us are being trained in cynicism, this book stands in necessary defiance.”—Cole Arthur Riley, author of Black Liturgies and This Here Flesh“A powerful, prescient, incisive book that helps us better understand ourselves, our relationships, and how to fully be in this world, all while creating the next.”—Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering“This book reckons with our major issues—trauma, race, social upheaval—and opens us up to the possibility that everything actually could be different. And it does so one gorgeous sentence after the next.”—Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands“This book will be both the ‘aha’ moment and the balm for so many people who are saddled with vacant platitudes that don’t give them a way forward. It is what we need in this moment and will be foundational for generations to come.”—Tarana Burke, author of Unbound“Hemphill teaches us where healing begins, and how crucial our healing is for the worlds we want to conjure.”—adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism“In the tradition of James Baldwin, Hemphill invites us in close and personal to experience life, pain, beauty, injustice, and healing. I’ll read this again and again.”—Staci K. Haines, author of The Politics of Trauma

Prentis Hemphill is a writer, embodiment facilitator, political organizer, and therapist. They are the founder and director of the Embodiment Institute and the Black Embodiment Initiative, and the host of the acclaimed podcast Finding Our Way. Their work and writing have appeared in The New York Times, HuffPost, You Are Your Best Thing (edited by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown), and Holding Change (by adrienne maree brown).