‘Black Women, Trauma & Therapy: Revolutionising Therapeutic Thought and Practice’

A powerful testimony to the growing confidence and reach of Black women’s therapy in the UK today brings together leading theorists and practitioners to present their radical thinking and innovative work at the cutting edge of intersectionality. Its chapters are hard-hitting, incisive, challenging, shocking, lyrical and inspiring, often all at once. They cover a vast spectrum of issues impacting on Black women’s mental health and wellbeing amid the ubiquity of racial and gender injustice, attacks and invisibility. Here you will find essays on childlessness and infertility, the black empathic approach, maternal health and epistemic justice, group work with Black women, self-care in an unjust society, mixed-race multiplicity, African-centred approaches, healing transgenerational trauma, a black feminist ethics of care, and much more. The contributors describe how they have remodelled, evolved and enriched the tenets of counselling and psychotherapy orthodoxy to better meet their clients’ emotional, cultural, social and political needs. Inspired by the 2022 Community Trauma UK conference ‘Black Women, Trauma and Mental Health’, this book is a revolutionary resource for the counselling, psychotherapy and mental health professions.

Foreword by Yetunde Ade-Serrano

Introduction – Black women revolutionising therapeutic thought and practice by Helen P. George

1. The un-silencing of black women: A black empathic approach by Isha Mckenzie-Mavinga
2. Lively up we self: A portal, some letters and a black feminist chorus by Gail Lewis and Foluke Taylor
3. How we are made ‘mixed-race’: Multiplicity of mind, multiplicity of experience by Janice Acquah
4. The intersectional invisibility of black women and infertility by Helen P. George
5. What gets pushed into us we push down together: Group work with black women re-writing HER story by Anthea Benjamin
6. African-centred therapy: Towards a womanist psychospiritual approach to healing by Rameri Moukam
7. Sharing breath: The personal narrative in black women’s healing by Dawn Estefan
8. Ancestral Constellations: Healing the tears and fears of our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers by Sonya Welch-Moring
9. Birthing trauma, epistemic injustice, and (un)-seeking help: Black women and maternal healthcare in the UK by Dawn Edge and Hannah Gloudon
10. Reclaiming self-care: Thriving as a Black woman psychotherapist within systemically unjust systems by Leoni Cachia

Afterword: Going forward by Natalie Bailey