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What It Takes to Heal

How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World

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What It Takes to Heal

By: Prentis Hemphill
Narrated by: Prentis Hemphill
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About this listen

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From one of the most prominent voices in the trauma conversation comes a groundbreaking new way to heal on a personal and a collective level, showing us that we don’t have to carry our emotional burdens alone.

“I love this book.”—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

What It Takes to Heal asserts that the principles of embodiment—the recognition of our body’s sensations and habits, and the beliefs that inform them—are critical to lasting healing and change. Hemphill, an expert embodiment practitioner, therapist, and activist who has partnered with Brené Brown, Tarana Burke, and Esther Perel, among others, demonstrates a future in which healing is done in community. Hemphill weaves together stories from their own experience as a trauma survivor with clinical accounts and lessons learned from their time as a social movement architect. They ask, “What would it do to movements, to our society and culture, to have the principles of healing at the very center? And what does it do to have healing at the center of every structure and everything we create?”

In this life-affirming framework for the way forward, Hemphill shows us how to heal our bodies, minds, and souls—to develop the interpersonal skills necessary to break down the doors of disconnection and take the necessary risks to reshape our world toward justice.
Activism & Social Justice Mental Health Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Social Sciences

Critic Reviews

“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
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