Today, we are giving you Part II of Dr. B‘s Q&A segment for Mental Health Awareness Month. Below the break, you will find Dr. B’s insightful answers to your questions about relationships, depression, and social anxiety, among others.
Thank you so much to those who sent in questions and a very, very special thank you to Dr. B for her thoughtfulness and care in answering them.
As promised, our Mental Health Awareness month collaboration with Dr. Brittany Blackmon, a.k.a. Dr. B, is here! Dr. B is an LGBTQ affirming Clinical Psychologist and the owner of the empowerment-based organization, Dr. B Cares. She has graciously used her expertise to answer some of your toughest mental-health related questions.
In this first installment, Dr. B addresses topics such as coping with a breakup, how to know if you should seek therapy, and raising children with ADHD. Read on for more!
Ya Gay Aunties is a podcast hosted by Hanifah and Red, two friends who have taken it upon themselves to guide baby queer POCs in the right direction one episode at a time. They discuss topics such as relationships, pop culture, and politics and they also have special guest interviews. Their episodes are always thoughtful and sometimes controversial but at the end of the day, what’s important to them is reaching people by providing a different voice. This contribution to the community is priceless because many of us don’t have access to getting advice from those like us who have been in our shoes before.
Check out the interview below to learn about how Hanifah and Red began Ya Gay Aunties and how they deal with daily life as well as manage and curate such an important podcast.
Shannon and Shanika, our next “Femme Voices” spotlight, are a femme couple living and loving in their native island, Jamaica. Shannon, a nursing student, and Shanika, a musician, are best friends and consider themselves to be twin flames after being reconnected via one fateful Instagram DM. They talk to us about their dreams and aspirations as individuals and as a couple. Their view on relationships and their energy-focused self-care methods allow them to have the capacity to love one another effortlessly, in the midst of an environment that isn’t exactly receptive to who they are. Shannon and Shanika share the things they are passionate about and their inspiring love story below!
Credit: *D,Irvin Photography
Stephanie Raymond is a designer and founder of LezBReaL Fashionz and the subject of our next “Femme Voices” feature interview. She is a proud Haitian lesbian woman who puts all of her perspectives into her art. Stephanie is a true hustler, constructing custom designs for her clients while finding time to publically amplify her brand by exhibiting her work in fashion shows and representing her designs at events for various causes. She is extremely goal-oriented and gives some amazing advice on how to have faith in yourself and find your creative passions, even when the dream seems far away.
Read Stephanie’s full interview below!
Wedding Day, 2014
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Joy and Brandy are our very first couple spotlight for “Femme Voices”! Their couple’s page, @lovejandb, caught my eye because of how they seamlessly come together as a unit, while also representing their own branding for each of their careers. After interviewing them, I was delighted to find out that this was no different than how they function in their relationship. They are able to nurture their partnership and work on furthering their careers as they flourish in their unique identities. In our interview, Brandy and Joy share what makes their creative minds tick and how they keep the love alive in their marriage.
Read on for more of this beautiful couple!
We’ve all been here before: You meet someone. You immediately feel seen, exposed, and vulnerable in ways that you’ve never been before. You question everything you thought you knew about love. You make space for each other’s emotional traumas. You meet each other’s blood and/or chosen families. You book a Caribbean vacation, have incredible sex, and profess your love for each other under the moonlight.
You make the big leap to move in together and even though your partner has a beautifully renovated pre-war apartment with south-facing windows, you decide to sign a brand new lease together for the sake of fresh starts and equal partnership. And one day, when y’all are doing your joint laundry, commiserating about your cycles (which are now synced, by the way), you look at your beloved and think, “Damn, this has been the best four months of my life.”
Thanks to religion, colonization, sexism, systemic racism, and homophobia (honestly, the list could go on), queer couples — especially black + brown queer couples — historically make it their business to secure safe spaces to express themselves and their glorious love for each other. While its history is rooted in solving seemingly basic logistical issues, U-Hauling is a mainstay in queer relationships.
Whether or not your relationship is doomed, I’m rooting for you, sis. I’m only here to wax optimistic, illuminate some truths you’ve been hiding from, and ask all the hard questions. So based largely on my personal experiences and the stories my femme friends are kind enough to share with me, here is a list of four reasons that brown femmes U-Haul:
