Breaking Up with the Patriarchy

Therapist Susan L. Herrmann draws on thirty years of clinical practice to guide readers through a personal and cultural reckoning with patriarchal conditioning. Grounded in the work of Four Arrows (Wahinkpe Topa), who contributes the foreword, the book introduces readers to the Kinship Worldview, the relational framework that sustained human communities for most of our existence, and offers it as a practical path toward healing the isolation, anxiety, and disconnection that define modern life.

This is not an academic critique. Herrmann writes conversationally, weaving client stories, personal narrative, and embodied practices into each chapter. Readers learn to identify internalized patriarchal patterns, reclaim somatic and intuitive ways of knowing, build authentic community, and practice what Herrmann calls Radical Surrender: acting from integrity without attachment to outcomes.

The book sits naturally at the intersection of several strong sections: psychology/self-help, spirituality, Indigenous wisdom, women's studies, and social justice. It appeals to readers of Resmaa Menakem's My Grandmother's Hands, Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, and Four Arrows' Restoring the Kinship Worldview (co-authored with Darcia Narvaez, who endorses this book).

A companion facilitator guide is available for book clubs and group study programs.

Endorsed by Darcia Narvaez (Professor Emerita of Psychology, University of Notre Dame), David Blake Willis (Professor of Anthropology and Education, Fielding Graduate University), and practicing clinicians in somatic psychotherapy, trauma, and decolonizing practice.