Black Girl's Healing House Is Changing The Narrative Between Black Women And Wellness

I’m from Mobile, Alabama — the birthplace of Mardi Gras, which most people often don’t know because when we think about Mardi Gras, we think about New Orleans.

My city is rich in culture and history. It’s also rich with beautiful Black women who need healing due to lack of access to care, combined with the stigma behind mental health. Growing up, I saw a lot of Black women in my community dealing with mental illness and trauma due to lack of access to care. Living a soft life seemed impossible. And for me, I wanted to know what it meant to truly live a life of ease and flow. I wanted that so much for the women in my community.

I created the Black Girl’s Healing House Facebook Group to help Black girls that look like me find a safe space where they can feel like they matter in a world that typically overlooks us. My intention is by connecting Black women together, we can heal generations of trauma and inspire a new generation of Black women who can truly live softly.

The inspiration behind starting Black Girl’s Healing House came from my own personal experience with mental health and wellness. When I got out of college, I was on a healing journey. I would look up healing and wellness centers and go. I would be inspired by the classes, books, crystals, herbs, and teas and how peaceful these environments were. However, as peaceful as they were, I noticed they were not created with a girl like me in mind. In fact, I got the vibe that girls like me weren’t welcomed there.

 

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Then the idea suddenly came to me to create Black Girl’s Healing House to have a safe space for Black women who were also on that journey. I wanted to build a network of holistic wellness practitioners.

For me, Black wellness is a part of breaking generational cycles. In my family, we carry cancer, diabetes, mental illness, and heart disease, and we die extremely young. That was mostly because we didn’t value wellness. Wellness looked like attending church instead of therapy, normalizing stress and toxic relationships, and overindulging in fried foods. 

For me, Black wellness looks like “Nah. Let’s try something different.” 

I go to therapy, eat salads, and go to the gym, and I learned to let go. I inspire the members of our group to do the same. We share our latest gym routines, give updates on our therapy journeys, post healthy recipes, and uplift each other in sisterhood. We are doing what has never been done before in our community by normalizing conversations about our holistic health.

Our members absolutely love Costa Rica, and some of our members own wellness retreats there on everything from spirituality, yoga, self-care, and sexuality.

For those who do not have a passport yet, our members love to visit Puerto Rico for food and culture and to connect with spirituality and ancestral roots.

And one of our favorite places to go to feel cleansed and connected to the beach and nature is Hawaii.

Travel is self-care for me, and many people don’t know that traveling helps with spiritual growth. There’s something about changing your environment and opening yourself to new foods and cultures that unlocks your intuition and creativity. In Black Girl’s Healing House, we sometimes host group trips. Traveling helps us create new experiences and learn new perspectives that we can use for our own spiritual growth, and it helps build community.

You can join the Black Girl’s Healing House Movement by joining our Facebook Group here.

Follow Delilah Antoinette on Instagram here.

Related: Meet The Story Of This Unique Black-Owned Wellness Retreat In South America