Why Center Healing as a Black Women Entrepreneur?
Content Notice: This article references depression and mental health challenges (without detailed descriptions).
It is the end of 2018 and I am exhausted, experiencing the second worst depression of my entire life. From the outside looking in, I should be celebrating. I achieved my goal of doubling my business revenue in one year, I raised $20,000 in financing capital, hired contractors, hosted a paid intern, and even paid myself.
But at the time, I could not appreciate this success because I had worked beyond my limits that year. There were evenings and nights where I was so exhausted that I was slurring my words as if intoxicated. I would drag myself to bed and then wake up and do it all over again. I loved my business and being an art entrepreneur, but I was running it at an unsustainable pace.
At the end of 2018 I instituted a 4-weeks-off annual policy from December - January and used my off time to assess and reflect on the previous year. In the first quarter of 2019 I was devastated about having worked so hard while putting my health at risk and not having much to show for it. And at the time “not much to show for it” meant money in my bank account. I had barely enough cash flow to last me two months and I was managing more debt than ever before. I was in the hole and felt a deep sense of shame because of it. I grew up low-income, on and off of welfare as a child. My job was to build economic sustainability for myself. Why was I running myself ragged to be in the hole? I felt hopeless and wanted to give up completely. I thought to myself, “if this is what it takes to run a successful business - then I don’t want any part of it. What is the point of generating a million dollars in revenue some day, if I am in a hospital bed once it is all said and done!?”
I knew I loved being an artist, a creative, and running my own business, but at a sustainable pace. Why was I pushing myself so hard anyway? Was it because I knew I wanted to own a home and have a family of my own some day? What capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal, and intergenerational trauma had I internalized that led me down a path of productivity over all else?
In this moment I vowed that, if I was going to continue this entrepreneurship journey, I needed to figure out alternative ways to do business that were not rooted in #hustleculture or profits or growth at all costs.
I needed to dig deeper. I needed to really unpack my trauma, my intergenerational trauma, and the trauma of capitalism that was showing up in how I did business–how I ran my business for myself, my team, and even my customers/community.
I didn’t realize at the time that my entrepreneurship journey was one rooted in what I now know as Healing Justice. Healing Justice is a political strategy launched in 2006 by the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective (The Kindred Collective) that is rooted in Black Feminist traditions and Southern Black Radical Traditions. It is a framework that encourages movements and organizations to center collective healing from harm and trauma as core to building sustainable infrastructure.
It argues that any infrastructure we build, whether it be a new business, nonprofit, movement, etc. must center our individual and collective healing because we are all indoctrinated in systems of oppression.
This means that if we want to build sustainable businesses, we must first commit to our own healing and self-care, and understand that entrepreneurship is a personal transformation journey. Then, once we build a team, we must also commit to community healing as well.
Cara Page, one of the leading architects of healing justice, in conversation with Adaku Utah, a healing justice practitioner, asks us to consider, “How might we create systems and structures that build wellness, safety, care, and power and depend less on state and systems…What do we need to transform in ourselves and in our organizations to build this kind of world?”
Their inquiry is an entrepreneurial one that Just BE has been in deep discernment about for many years. How do we get compensated to do what we love in a way that does not replicate the very systems that harmed us in the first place?
This question is hard to answer because at first glance it can seem odd and even paradoxical to center healing within business development. Capitalism by definition and history is rooted in extraction; so how can we build anything meaningful within this system? Well our ancestors have done so for generations via mutual aid societies, cooperatives, and communities like Black Wall Street that disrupted traditional capitalism. Meaningful reimagination requires us to be aware of our trauma and how systems of oppression show up in our bodies so that we don’t self-sabotage the very dreams we are transforming into reality.
In the past six years, Just BE has observed time and time again that much of the burnout I described in 2018 is still very much alive for Black Women Entrepreneurs. In our new normal COVID-19 world many of our community members still cite isolation and burnout as their top challenge. We are still stuck in traditional business models that are rooted in slave plantation capitalism. Just BE is here to offer alternative business pathways rooted in a healing justice framework that centers community, healing, spirit, and shared prosperity.
As Black Women, Indigenous, brown, and gender-expansive entrepreneurs it is our responsibility to create sustainable inclusive, restorative, and accountable businesses. One of the best ways to figure out how to do this is in community together. Just BE exists for this purpose. For us to come together and love up on each other, as we navigate creating a better world. Lord knows it is not easy! But we are not in this alone, we have each other. This work was never meant to be done in isolation. Our sustainability framework of community, healing, spirit, and shared prosperity honors this truth. Let’s serve as each others’ guides on this lifelong intergenerational healing journey.
1. "What Is Healing Justice? - kindredsouthernhjcollective.org." https://kindredsouthernhjcollective.org/what-is-healing-justice/. Accessed 18 Apr. 2023. 2. "Healing and Transformative Justice: Imagining Black Feminist ...." 31 Jul. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fDHrgaTmpo. Accessed 18 Apr. 2023.Hope Henson-Lehman
Co-Founder & Managing Director