HOW WE HEAL: A Journey Toward Truth, Racial Healing, and Community Transformation from the Inside Out, a balm of sense and calmness in a troubled time

HOW WE HEAL: A Journey Toward Truth, Racial Healing, and Community Transformation from the Inside Out
La JUNE MONTGOMERY TABRON
Disruption Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$29.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In How We Heal, La June Montgomery Tabron, President and CEO of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, makes a powerful case for hope through racial healing.

From a vivid portrait of her childhood in 1960s Detroit to her leadership of one of the world's largest philanthropic institutions, La June shares her full-circle, American story—a coming-of-age journey where she gains a firsthand understanding of how systemic racism prevents our children and communities from thriving and learns about the transformative role healing can play in helping all of us transcend the legacy of racial inequity.

As she rises to her position as the first female and first African American leader of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (Wikipedia link added), La June experiences the healing power of sharing and listening with empathy. And with the help of mentors and colleagues, she refines the message that will guide the foundation's mission for years to Healing can begin only with truth telling.

Empowered by the mission set forth by its founder to support children and families "without regard to sex, race, creed, or nationality," the foundation explores a racial healing framework that transforms communities and individuals around the world—from small rural towns and big cities across the United States, including La June's own beloved Detroit, to Mexico, Haiti, and beyond.

This book serves as a testament to the power of transformation and a blueprint for how each of us, no matter who we are or how we lead, can use racial healing to bridge the empathy deficits in our communities.

How We Heal illuminates a path that all of us can follow—from trust to empathy, from understanding to repair—one conversation and one connection at a time.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: We are at an inflection point in our development as a society. La June Montgomery Tabron knows this because she has lived through another inflection point: Detroit in the 1960s was on the front line of the Civil Rights struggle as African Americans asserted their right to be full participants in the US civil society that had systematically excluded them. Author Tabron is an MBA holder, thus a thoroughgoing participant in the system she is urging us to fix with her. As a professional administrator, her focus is on practical, achievable differences in one's personal behavior...listening, not simply expecting to be heard, is top of her list.

Given her long background in business, I'd expect nothing else from her. The way she brings readers along on her personal journey makes her commonsensical words all the more impactful. In a political climate of hatred and fear-stoking, of attacks on "DEI" efforts and their abandonment by many corporate entities, it is soothing to hear from the anti-DEI embodiment that is Author Tabron.

I felt I was sitting with my old friend and hearing her tell the whole story of what happened on her path to success as I read the book. It was that sort of personal connection I felt she was working to achieve, and mostly succeeded at presenting. In the moments where it was less successful it was down to not needing to be reminded of some important facts; hardly a sin in the story of a person's life.

What makes Author Tabron's point most effectively is the fact that she is drawing from her own life and her efforts to shift the course of a ninety-five-year-old multi-billion-dollar foundation as the first woman and the first African-American to head it. Her work there is clearly the source material of the book. The power of honest communication, coupled with empathetic listening, is very much the takeaway technique running through the whole story.

It is more important than ever to use our human capacity for empathy and our societally discouraged ability to listen instead of waiting to talk in order to combat the rising tide of politically motivated divisive language and ideas. The reasons for, and the ways to, apply both are in this easy-to-understand, easy-to-read, memoir.

I really hope some of y'all have reason to pick up the book to polish up the skills found inside its story.