Right Within: How to Heal from Racial Trauma in the Workplace
September 30, 2021
While workplaces are still struggling to figure out how to incorporate and support diversity, Harts has advice for those who are figuring out how to cope with racial trauma inside and outside of work.
Right Within: How to Heal from Racial Trauma in the Workplace by Minda Harts, Seal Press
In 2019’s The Memo, Minda Harts offered women of color advice on how to overcome obstacles at the office. She proved herself a fierce and resilient mentor in that book and on her active and engaged Twitter account, so when she begins Right Within with a sensitive look back at the difficulties of last year, I’m immediately paying attention. Society has always been skewed away from women and people of color, and yet Harts asserts “I had never felt worried about being a Black woman in this country until 2020.”
Right Within came together both despite and because of the stressful and triggering year. While workplaces are still struggling to figure out how to incorporate and support diversity, Harts has advice for those who are figuring out how to cope with racial trauma inside and outside of work:
Too often, workplace burdens will other you in some way, shape, or form. And while you can’t control everything, you can center yourself and find ways to heal.
Harts’s new book allows room for weakness, starting from scratch, and reconceptualizing what healing from trauma looks like. Led and joined by an equally empathetic and exasperated guide, Right Within gives women of color permission to unpack their baggage. Harts reveals the workplace traumas that almost made her give up on her goals, how the church can both give strength to and fail Black women, and the positive power of therapy on her mental well-being. The stories she shares are both personal and from other women of color, providing a variety of situations in which readers can see themselves and their traumas in the guide.
Right Within is a book to make readers feel seen and encourage them to see others:
Because success is not a solo sport, let’s make sure we get this book into the hands of anyone who has ever experienced racialized workplace trauma. We can’t be the only ones receiving our healing—friends don’t let friends weigh themselves down with bags of trauma.
Harts is genuine in her words, immediately making readers feel validated. And reading about her and others’ overlapping stories of attempts to ignore or navigate injustices will make a reader of any race reevaluate the way they interact with their coworkers and community members. (GMC)
About Gabbi Cisneros
