August Selection
My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem
When people think about changing their financial lives, they usually begin with the practical things. Make a budget. Save more. Spend less. Pay down debt.
Those things matter, but they do not fully explain why someone can know exactly what to do with money and still have such a difficult time doing it.
That space between knowing and doing is where financial therapy and behavioral finance become so important.
My Grandmother’s Hands is a book about trauma, history, the body, and the ways our nervous systems respond to safety and danger. It is not specifically a book about money. Still, the financial connections are everywhere.
Long before money becomes a spreadsheet, it is connected to safety. It helps us secure food, housing, healthcare, freedom, and the ability to respond when something goes wrong. Because of that, a financial problem may not feel like a simple math problem. The body may experience it as a threat.
This can help us understand why someone might avoid opening a bill, feel panicked when looking at a bank balance, overspend after a painful day, overwork to feel secure, or continue saving compulsively even when they have enough. These behaviors may look irrational from the outside. From inside a person’s history, they may make perfect sense.
Behavioral finance reminds us that people do not make financial decisions as perfectly rational beings. We make them through the lens of our emotions, experiences, families, culture, and what we believe will keep us safe.
Financial therapy invites us to become curious about a behavior before we judge it.
What does spending provide in that moment? What does avoidance protect us from feeling? What does holding tightly to money make possible emotionally?
Understanding the purpose of a pattern does not excuse the harm it may cause. It helps us understand where change can begin.
Reading Is Not the Same as Endorsing
You may agree with everything in this book, some of it, or very little of it. That is okay.
Reading is not the same as endorsing. We can remain curious, think critically, question what we read, and hold more than one perspective at a time. Sometimes the most useful question is not, “Do I agree with all of this?” It is, “What is this helping me notice?”
Each month, I’ll also connect our selection with a theme or practice from How to Heal Financial Anxiety. Some books will be directly about money. Others will help us understand the psychology, relationships, health, culture, and lived experiences surrounding it.
You do not need to finish every page or arrive with a polished opinion. You only need to be willing to read, reflect, and stay curious.
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