Members of GirlTrek, a "a national health movement that uses walking and fellowship to motivate thousands of Black women towards personal and community improvement." - GirlTrek.org
Hey there, person not named Sean Spicer who is therefore winning at life.
Welcome to another round of Mental Health Monday, your weekly dose of stories, resources, and motivation for your everyday life. On last week's Mental Health Monday, info on how mindfulness exercises help Black women, words for Black queer men considering suicide, some ideas for handling seasonal affective disorder, and much more. Check it out.
THIS WEEK'S GOODNESS:
Jay-Z Just Summed Up Why Therapy Is a Great Idea for Pretty Much Everyone by Sarah Jacoby [Self]
It also impacted the way he thought about racism. "You realize that if someone's racist toward you, it ain't about you. It's about their upbringing and what happened to them, and how that led them to this point," he says. "And once I understand that, instead of reacting to that with anger, I can provide a softer landing and maybe, 'Aw, man, is you O.K.?'"
Why 116,000 Black Women Are Walking Throughout the U.S. by Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez [AlterNet]
It all began with two friends taking walks together in the streets of Los Angeles in the late 1990s, but now it’s a nationwide movement that has more than 100,000 black women walking for wellness and social justice.
“GirlTrek was just me and Morgan holding ourselves accountable and supporting each other in sisterhood and love,” says co-founder Vanessa Garrison about how she and co-founder Tanya Morgan Dixon met in college and bonded over shared beliefs in radical acts of self-care.
It Took 20 Years to Share My Mental Health Struggles. My Silence Could Have Killed Me by Aliya S. King [Very Smart Brothas]
I’m transparent now (for the most part). But I’m also 40 plus with 20 years in my field. And I just got to this transparent space a few months ago. If my 20-year-old daughter told me she wanted to write about anything involving her personal life—nope. I don’t care if it’s mental health, addiction or just her love of making cupcakes. If it’s anything that can be perceived as a weakness, I want her to shut up about it.
I kept my mental health stuff a huge dark secret for 20 years—even to myself. I didn’t tell my parents and I only hinted to my siblings and friends.
Anxiety Ain't Shit: the worst place to have a panic attack by Erma BreAnn [Erma BreAnn]
I was embarrassed. Soon after I calmed down and more people had filtered into the foyer to see what was wrong, that’s when I heard “ain’t nothing wrong with her, she’s just running from the Holy Ghost.”
Mental Health: Don't Feel Guilty For Checking The F*ck Out When Needed by Erin White [AFROPUNK]
You ain’t gotta stay at peak wokeness 24/7 for every moment of the rest of your life. It’s not your individual responsibility to organize so hard that fall into poverty and self-destruction. To feed the world before feeding yourself. In the AFROPUNK community, there are so many of us who want to help others, help each other, with our artistry, time, money, platforms, whatever we have as we hold tight through the Trump storm, and blatant socio-political attacks of White Supremacy. But doing so for too long, to the detriment of your mental health and your relationship with yourself isn’t a good thing for anybody.
Why I'm Speaking Out About My Mental Health Journey by Sinclair Ceasar III [The Mighty]
The sessions have been good. They help me get outside of thoughts that tell me I’m unworthy. I get guidance with being less fearful. I receive tools to help me navigate a depression that tells me there’s no reason or meaning to any of this. Yeah, it gets real. I’ve had days where I haven’t wanted to leave my bed. I’ve had moments where I can’t even send an email, make dinner or start my car. I live with trauma and irrational thoughts. I battle them. I go into the dark places and face ugly things.
Mental Health and Dating in the Black Community by Mike McGee [Dallas Examiner]
When The LAB, a local community think tank, created the forum “A Mental & Emotional Fitness Discussion on Dating in the Black Community,” founder Michael Guinn envisioned the meeting as an opportunity for citizens to cordially ask questions, voice concerns and discuss experiences about a health issue he said was usually ignored by African Americans.
“The reason why these forums are so needed and so necessary is that we don’t often as a community come together and talk and then pool together resources in regard to this type of issue,” said Guinn, a spoken-word artist with a masters in Social Work and CEO of the nonprofit Uplift Your Life Inc.
If you have a mental health resource, event, or piece of content we should know about, step into our office. You da bess.
