In this video Dr. Jameca Cooper introduces her book I Am My Sister's Keeper: The Brown Girl's Guide to Radical Healing and explains the concept of radical healing for women of color. She defines radical healing as a framework that simultaneously acknowledges the systemic racism, discrimination, and intergenerational trauma experienced by women of color while also centering their unique strengths—resilience, faith, and hope. Dr. Cooper emphasizes that healing is non‑linear, marked by both setbacks and victories, and that it must operate on two levels: individual self‑care and collective community transformation. She outlines five core components of the radical healing model: (1) testimony—sharing one’s story to reclaim voice; (2) ethnic pride—cultivating pride in cultural identity to boost wellbeing; (3) radical hope—drawing strength from ancestors’ survival of oppression; (4) self‑care—viewing personal health practices as radical acts against a society that expects women of color to prioritize others; and (5) taking action—leveraging personal healing to advocate for policy and practice changes that benefit families and communities. The talk concludes with an invitation to join the Radical Healing Series and to subscribe for further resources.
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Hi, this is Dr. Jameca Cooper, and today we're going to talk about the topic of radical healing for women of color. First, I would like to introduce you to the title of my book, I Am My Sister's Keeper: The Brown Girl's Guide to Radical Healing. In this book, we talk a great deal about radical healing and how effective it is in the lives for women of color. So what is radical healing? Radical healing is really a focus on the experiences of women of color in this country, which takes into account racism, discrimination, and many of the challenges that women of color have experienced for generations in this country. So it takes into account your experiences, but it also takes into account your strengths as an individual. And what are the strengths that could be unique to women of color? You can think more about things like resilience, faith, hope, um, but those are different elements that would definitely be a part of this whole model of radical healing. So why is radical healing important? Radical healing is very important in the lives of women of color because it is an opportunity to focus on strengths as well as some of the challenges that we have experienced. And what we know about healing in general is that it is usually not a very linear path. So if you look at the lives and the challenges and struggles of many women of color in this country, you can see a bit of a kind of up and down pattern to a graph. It's not always straight across. You're going to see challenges as well as some wins when you look at the lives and experiences of women of color. So we want to highlight— when we talk about radical healing, we are wanting to highlight the strengths as well as the challenges. A really big component of radical healing is not just the individual healing of the person, but it's also community healing that we have to focus on. Because when you think about women of color, especially African Americans, there's always a big collective and community component. So what does healing look like for the individual? The healing for an individual could look very different than what community healing could look like. Individual healing could look like you taking better care of yourself on a day-to-day basis, whereas community healing could really encompass things such as a change in policies and practices and laws in one community that would then impact the healing of the community as a whole. The components of radical healing for women of color involve testimony, which is the opportunity for women of color to be able to tell your story in a way that gives you voice and in a way that makes you feel empowered about your experiences. Ethnic pride is also a component of radical healing. Studies have shown that individuals who feel more ethnic pride also have overall levels of wellness and wellbeing that are higher than those who do not have those same levels of ethnic pride. Radical hope is also a component of radical healing. And when we think about radical hope, I want you to really focus on some of the experiences of your ancestors. If I think about my ancestors and some of the experiences that they endured in relation to Jim Crow laws, discrimination, racism, slavery, sharecropping. I have to think that my ancestors were quite resilient. I can't imagine having to endure, endure some of the situations that they lived through, but I would like to think that it was all for a purpose. And knowing what they experienced and what they overcame gives me a sense of hope that is radical. It's greater, it's more powerful than just regular hope. So in the book, we call this radical hope. Another part of radical healing for women of color is self-care. And the way that I like to tell my patients is that anytime we're talking about caring for yourself, if you are a woman of color, that in and of itself is a radical move. Because society will tell us that all we do is care for other people. We care for our children, our spouse or our partners, our parents, our families, we care for the communities in ways that other groups of women aren't expected to. So when you think about women of color caring for themselves and taking the time to prioritize their health, that is a radical move. Another component of radical healing is taking action. So as I said before, healing does not just involve healing on the individual level, but it also involves healing on a community level. So what we want to enhance by radical healing in this case is taking action. So now that you feel like you've made some steps regarding your own individual healing, what are the things that you can do to take action for your community? What are the things that you can do to take action for your families? These are all things that are part of the radical healing model in my recent book. If you're interested in learning more about radical healing, please tune in to our Radical Healing Series. And as always, please make sure that you subscribe.
