There was a period in my life when I was seeing a white therapist. I was 21, stressed about my first full-time fashion-magazine job, and I’d started experiencing an increase in anxiety attacks. She wasn’t my first choice, not even my second, but almost all the Black female therapists I reached out to did not accept my insurance or any insurance. Still, I shared, I listened, and I learned during our few brief months together but I never felt that I could truly open up about my experiences as a young Black woman dealing with my Black family, Black friends, and the Black men I dated. When I did bring up race and its impact on my life, she never dismissed it, she actually acknowledged it. Yet I wanted more than that. I wanted to know that she had already recognized and experienced these feelings too.
At the time I thought formal therapy was the only solution that could support me in my time of need. My hesitancy to feel comfortable around my white therapist made the experience seem useless, so I just stopped going—something many Black women can relate to.
“We don't trust the health care system, for good reason,” says Jade Kearney founder and CEO of She Matters, a digital health platform for Black moms. “It’s historically not served us well. Our bodies have been violated, our rights have been violated. So without trust, we’re not going to be honest about what we’re really experiencing or we’re just not going to go.” With only 2% of psychiatrists being Black and Black physicians only making up 5% of the medical field, there are large numbers of us who will not have access to Black health care professionals on our wellness journey.
And speaking of wellness: The $4.2 trillion global industry that’s typically characterized by high-paid influencers, self-care retreats, juice bars, group hikes, and luxurious mental health centers has not always been something I felt comfortable with, either. In fact, it was something I referred to as white-people stuff. If you google “wellness influencers,” the dozens of photos that pop up are, truly, overwhelmingly white. White women doing yoga. White women smiling over green juice. White women posed serenely with plants. If you’re a white woman looking for advice about your hair, skin, mental health, lifestyle changes, or self-care, you have a seemingly endless stream of content at your fingertips.
It’s a different story for women of color. If you’re a young Black woman, there are far fewer opportunities to find the type of beautifully curated content on Instagram related to our hair type, skin type, or overall well-being. There are far fewer opportunities to feel seen in the wellness world. The wellness influencers that do cater to Black women have served as a source of refuge and learning for Black women like me, who seek out their knowledge in lieu of or sometimes in conjunction with working with their personal mental health professionals.
Yet despite their impact, the journey to finding these influencers isn’t as simple as a quick Google search. These influencers often don’t appear prominently on mainstream wellness platforms, don’t have multimillion-dollar sponsorships, and are not given the same attention by the media. The lack of visual representation of Black women in wellness had previously discouraged me—and others—from fully exploring what it meant to be well and the various ways that it could be achieved.
“I was surrounded by all-white everything during my first several years of practicing yoga,” says Lauren Ash, the founder of Black Girl in Om. “I became a yoga instructor and started BGIO because I wanted Black women to know that yoga is for us, that wellness is our birthright, that self-care, self-love, and self-empowerment are things that we do.”
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“I think a lot of times when Black women go into spaces where they don’t see themselves, we don’t fully release, we don’t fully breathe,” says Deun Ivory, BGIO’s artistic director and founder of The Body: A Home for Love, a community that uses wellness to empower Black sexual-assault survivors. “In order to really practice mindfulness and be in a space where you can prioritize your healing and prioritize your self-care, it’s important that you feel seen; it’s important that you feel celebrated and heard. You can only do that with a woman who looks like you.”
But thankfully the tide is changing. Thanks to women like Ash and Ivory, the number of women of color in wellness is growing. BGIO has nearly 100,000 followers on Instagram (not to mention followers that attend their weekly Self Care Sunday events, listen to BGIO’s podcast, and read the brand’s blog), and similar platforms seem to be gaining followers every day: Massy Arias (2.6 million followers), Black + Well (40,000), Brown Girl Self-Care (69,000), Therapy for Black Girls (130,000), Alex Elle (576,000), Devi Brown (70,000), Trap Yoga Bae (49,000), Dr. Jess (66,000), Lalah Delia (242,000).
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Wellness companies are starting to take notice too, throwing money behind partnerships with health-focused influencers of color. Francheska Medina, a wellness influencer, YouTuber, and podcaster embarked on a multicity tour with a group of Black female wellness practitioners that she funded with money from brands she’s worked with in the past. “It’s rare for a team of Black women in the wellness space to receive six-figure sponsorships, so that was a pretty awesome way to really solidify ourselves in this space,” she says.
During recent years, it’s not just brands that are investing in Black female wellness leaders—venture capitalists are also beginning to take notice. Naj Austin, the founder and CEO of digital wellness company Somewhere Good, raised a $3.75-million seed round in 2021 led by a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Somewhere Good is the parent company of Austin’s first venture Ethel’s Club, which rebranded from a coworking space into an “immersive wellness platform centering people of color.” Members of Ethel’s Club have access to digital classes, workshops, books, and articles that are curated for and by people of color.
Ethel’s Club’s curation of wellness influencers is an extension of what Naj had begun doing back in 2019 when she embarked on her own experience in the space. “[My wellness journey] has always been driven by people,” says Austin. “I’ve done a good job of curating the right voices. Right now wellness to me, with my curated lens, is Black and is more intersectional in terms of body type, hair type, ethnicity. That’s taken two years of curation to get there.”
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Similarly, Shine, a wellness app that offers daily meditations, self-care courses, and virtual community workshops, has made it a point to utilize technology to better amplify the presence of Black women in wellness. Marah Lidey cofounded the app in 2016, and over 90% of its content is created by Black women. “I think the first part of inclusion is representation, to feel like you can feel seen in a product,” says Lidey. “Unfortunately, there just isn’t a product out there that is representing Black women, and so we intentionally chose to, of all categories of minorities, over-represent Black women."
The recipe of inclusion is definitely paying off for the company. Shine, which raised $8.3 million in venture capital funding, has an impressive 4.7 rating from 37k+ users in the app store. As a Black woman who has dealt with mental health struggles herself, Lidey knew that developing Shine would create a space where Black women could finally have wellness experts that are culturally competent and speak the same language as them. “The beauty of representation is you have to try a lot less hard to understand the issues because we have the lived experience, and our creators have the lived experience,” says Lidey.
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The effects of this shift in support for Black female wellness leaders is not just about bringing more diversity to your feed. Black women are at higher risk of experiencing a stroke, developing diabetes, and succumbing to pregnancy-related complications. We experience higher rates of suicide attempts and report greater feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness. The work that wellness influencers of color do on their Instagram pages and social communities may literally be helping saving black women’s lives.
Although I now have a Black female therapist that I enjoy speaking to and feel comfortable with, I also have significantly more access to classes, media, and other resources created by Black women for Black women in both digital and physical spaces than I did at age 21. I can feel free to express myself knowing that I am not alone, and with the help of one another, us Black women are going to be alright.
Amira Rasool is a freelance writer covering all things Black in fashion, music, and culture. She is also the founder and CEO of The Folklore, a discovery and shopping platform for designer brands from Africa and the diaspora. Follow her @AmiraRasool on Instagram and Twitter.
