There is emerging public health research on Black barbershops as mental health spaces.
The researchers are excited about their discovery.
The community is not surprised.
They already knew.
The chair is sacred. Not because of the cut — because of what happens around the cut.
Someone asks how you are doing and actually waits for the answer. Someone tells a story that makes the whole shop laugh. Someone says something true about what is happening in the neighborhood and everyone nods because everyone knows. Someone checks on the older man who has been coming every two weeks for thirty years.
That is not small talk. That is community holding itself together.
Research calls it: Social support. Collective efficacy. Peer connection as mental health intervention.
The community calls it: Where I go to feel like myself again.
The Practice:
This week — go somewhere that holds you. The barbershop. The salon. The church. The neighbor’s porch. The rec center. Your cousin’s kitchen.
Not to accomplish anything. Not to be productive.
Just to be among your people and let that be enough.
Notice how you feel when you leave versus when you arrived.
That difference is medicine. 💎
Today’s Liberation Question:
Where is your barbershop — the space where you feel most like yourself, most held, most known? When did you last go there?
LEGH.org — Love Enabled Growth & Hope. For the people the system was never designed to serve.