Harriet Tubman: Emotional Support        

       "I would make a home in the North and bring [my family] there, God helping me. Oh, how I prayed then, she said: ‘I said to de Lord, ‘I’m gwine to hole stiddy on to you, an’ I know you’ll see me through.”  ~ Sketches in the Life of Harriet Tubman (1868)


Anna Julia Cooper: Meditation   

        "It is well enough to pause a moment for retrospection, introspection, and prospection." ~ A Voice form the South  (1892)                                           

Sadie and Bessie Delany: Movement    

         "Monday through Friday, we do our daily yoga exercises. I started doing yoga with Mama forty years ago..." ~ Having Our Say (1993)

                   

Dovey Johnson Roundtree: Get Help           

        "As I look back upon the great mentors who have shaped me...it is my grandmother I turn to, more than any other person, for it is she who led me out of the darkness, who put the world right, who made for me the way out of no way." ~ Justice Older than the Law  (2010)      

Leah Chase:  Nutrition                          

       "Cooking is like an art. You can use your creativity to concoct new dishes anytime the mood strikes you. The pot becomes your canvas and the ingredients you use can result in a masterpiece" ~ And Still I Cook (2011)


Maya Angelou: Rest  
       "You will find in this book accounts of growing up, unexpected emergencies, a few poems, some light stories to make you laugh and some to make you meditate. ... We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do." Letters to My Daughter ​(2008)


Bylley Avery: Simplify: Say No

       "No is a complete sentence." ~ An Altar of Words (2012)



Tools

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Black Women's Inner Peace​

This resource identifies main ideas and scholarship behind the term "historical wellness" as a conceptual framework for Black women's self-care and inner peace. The outline offers links to recommended reading about legacies of Black women's wellness and stress management, particularly in the field of Africana Women's Studies.  #ALUTACONTINUA

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The sources below show how Black women have written wellness and inner peace into our lives. These healing traditions, from meditation and emotional support to rest and getting help, are outlined in the Black Women's Health Imperative IndexUS report. The tools for "creative survival" are practical actions of self-love and self-care. These tools are imperative to address chronic stress. These elders in their 80s, 90s, or 100s are among the first, most recent, eldest, or most visible  authors who have published memoirs.

ENJOY!

Messengers of Health

A Study of Mental Health, Wellness, and Self-Care

Researchers, clinicians, public health professionals, and policymakers have a responsibility to implement action-oriented steps that may be a catalyst for changes in diverse communities. In particular, we must: ...  Design and establish innovative models and wellness toolkits for prevention of mental illness and the promotion of stigma reduction in ethnically and culturally diverse communities….
           ~ “Transformative Mental Health for African American Women Health Policy Considerations”  

           Daniel E. Dawes and Keisha Braithwaite Holden, Morehouse School of Medicine, 

          Black Women’s Mental Health in Black Women’s Mental Health: Balancing Strength and Vulnerabilities