Credit: Photos courtesy of Hope Venetta
When Hope Venetta began writing “At Mama Feely’s Feet,” she wasn’t simply crafting a book. She was building what she calls “an altar of remembrance.”
Venetta, a Durham-based therapist and storyteller, set out to create a space where the stories of her family, and those of other Black families, could be honored, reclaimed and healed. The idea took root during her graduate studies, where she encountered the emerging field of epigenetics: the study of how trauma and resilience can be passed down biologically across generations.
“I was fascinated by how trauma doesn’t just affect a person, but how it can ripple through time,” she said.
That realization prompted her to examine the stories and silences within her own lineage. One striking moment came when she learned that her husband’s family could trace their ancestry back to 1650. For many Black families, early chapters of family history have been erased, leaving painful gaps.
“If trauma can be inherited, what happens when you don’t even know who your people are, or what they went through?” she asked. From that question, “At Mama Feely’s Feet” was born.
The book centers around the memory and imagined voice of Venetta’s great-great-great-great grandmother, Mama Feely, a figure she describes as embodying “survival and grit.” Separated by six generations, Venetta sees in her an enduring reminder that faith and endurance are not new inventions; they are inheritances.
“When I think of her, I think of survival and grit, the kind that carries families through centuries,” she said. “Her story reminds me that the strength running through my veins didn’t start with me.”
Blending narrative storytelling, faith, psychology, and ancestral reflection, “At Mama Feely’s Feet” invites readers to confront inherited pain while celebrating the resilience that endures.
“It’s both a memorial and a celebration,” Venetta said. “Writing it was my way of saying, ‘We were here. We mattered. We still do.’”
She describes the book as an altar, a place to lay down grief and lift up joy. “Collective trauma can only be healed through collective restoration,” she said.
For Venetta, healing extends beyond therapy sessions into shared spaces: community gatherings, kitchen-table conversations, and moments of vulnerability. “Anger is sacred because it points to something that’s been violated,” she explained.
“Instead of suppressing it, we can learn from it. Healing is an invitation to protect ourselves and to right what’s wrong.”
Though her childhood was spent moving between cities as her father served in the Air Force, Venetta’s family eventually settled in North Carolina during her high school years. There, she encountered the layered complexities of Southern Black life, where lineage, land, loss and legacy often intertwine.
“It’s a strange thing to live in a place where both Black and white families share the same last names, and then realize why,” she said. That awareness shaped her understanding not only of generational trauma, but of generational grace.
For Venetta, grace looks like remembrance, like choosing to look back without turning to stone, holding both the wound and the wisdom at once. “Healing doesn’t mean pretending the pain didn’t happen,” she said. “It means letting the truth come home, finally, and letting it rest.”
In that resting, she believes, lies release, and room to breathe again. Venetta wants readers to know that healing isn’t about holding everything together alone. It’s about allowing yourself to be held, by community, by memory, by God, and by the ancestors who endured so you could exist. “It’s a return to belonging,” she said.
At its heart, “At Mama Feely’s Feet” reminds readers that we were never meant to heal in isolation. We heal in connection.
To purchase the book or for more information, visit www.hopevenetta.com.
Lizzy Nyoike is a Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication student with interest in community stories, investigative and multimedia journalism.