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The purpose of the show is to provide a critical examination of society and culture through the intersectional lens of race, gender, and class, more specifically it seeks to provide a COUNTER-NARRATIVE. The Show encourages a reflective assessment and critique of unique standpoints and their potential contribution to popular discourse.
I need to know everything. Who in the what in the where? I need everything. Trust me. I hear what you're saying, but allegiance. Know what you're telling me. I'm Curious George. I happen to Porsche five and a horse. I'm ready for war. I'm coming for throws to turn it with ghosts. I need to know everything.
So hello and welcome. This is the counter narrative Show. Today in our topic, we will be exploring the strong black woman through the strong black woman interpreted through a wellness lens. Today with us, I have the amazing it's so interesting because I first met Doctor Wade when we were exploring social health determinants, and then from that, another conversation sparked with some other work that she was doing, and she just kind of shared with me a bit about that work and some of the folks that she was working with, and that's kind of how this this time that we have together, it was birth. So I'm just going to get right into reading their bios, and then we're going to jump right into the to the questions. If anyone has questions, feel free to type them into the chat. Feel free to share any of this. Share out to other groups that you're familiar with, and comment and ask questions. Alright, so I'm going to start with Doctor Jeanette Wade. Doctor Wade is a black feminist medical sociologist at North Carolina A and T State University. Her work is guided by the strong black woman idea and how making constant over extensions honorable may act as a buffer from racism and sexism, but create a barrier in terms of health related decisions. Her work includes studies of the Superwoman schema and how it predicts diet and exercise trends, as well as sexual health and healthcare. Dr Wade has a passion for fighting poverty, improving health related autonomy, dismantling medical racism and promote promoting equity for all Americans, and that is Doctor Wade, in a very small nutshell of I'm sure, all of the work that she does. Also with us, we have Doctor Parker. Doctor Parker is a health disparities researcher examining the structural, social behavior and biological factors influencing the transmission, sorry in transmission of infectious diseases, with the primary focus on HIV among African Americans and other vulnerable populations, she examines the interconnectedness of HIV, concurrent sexual relationships, substance abuse, intimate partner violence and gender inequality among criminal justice involved individuals and other high risk populations. We also have Dr Alexander. Dr Alexander is an assistant professor in Food and Nutritional Science at North Carolina A and T State University in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, as an intervention scientist. Her research focuses on the use of community based, participatory research approaches and the incorporation of the strong black woman scheme to improve lifestyle factors, risk factors like diet and physical activity that have a direct relevance to obesity, chronic disease and chronic disease in black women and children, the internalization of the strong black woman typology has been used as a protective barrier to overcome gender and race related obstacles. However, it can negatively impact mental and physical health. Hence, she is involved in a variety of studies that intertwine the CBPR approach and the SBP, I'm sorry. SB, W, ideal develop evidence based interventions that have a holistic approach to improving obesity related outcomes. So much there we will also be joined by doctor, or We are also joined by Dr gisgambe, and I will read her bio. Doctor giscombe is the Melissa and Harry Levine family professor of quality of life, health promotional and wellness. Her program of research focuses on understanding and reducing stress related disparities among African American her research incorporates socio, historical and bio psychological perspectives in I'm sorry, to investigate how stress coping strategies contribute to stress related psychology and physical health outcomes. Doctor gascombe has a particular interest in the potential for integrative approaches to reduce mental health related disparities among African Americans. All of the words, okay, I feel like. I feel like reading you guys' bio is just an exploration of all the words. Which one. Of the things that I want to make sure that we're able to do is just do a bit of meaning, making around some of the some of those words that we're using, and just to make the conversation a little bit more attainable for folks who may not, just may not necessarily have that background and outside of your bio, I really want to ask you each How did you come to this work? I'm going to start with Doctor Parker, how did you come to explore this particular topic, and how did you come to this specific topic of work?
One of the things that was important to me is to understand the plight of African American women. My research focused on mainly around incarcerated women of color, and understanding the struggles that women of color have gone through, and then also being in higher education and having an opportunity to be exposed to other women and their experiences, and realizing that some of their experiences look like mine, and really being able to kind of tap into what does this black Woman schema look like, manifested and how it has played an impact in the lives of black women, and looking to help black women to understand how it's playing a life and they're playing a part in their life. But also, how do we have good health outcomes around this? So how do we deal with the stress and the expectations that are placed on black
women. Expectations. Expectations seems like such a light word, but it's so much particularly I find I feel like when women are carrying multiple roles and multiple relationships, there's like, all these particular expectations with that. And I feel I also find it interesting that the incarcerate incarcerated women is, was your entry point into that? Um, and you know, some of the potential correlations between these expectations and stress and incarceration. I look forward to hearing more about that as we move forward in the conversation. Now for you, Dr Wade, how did you come to to your work?
Well, I trained as a sociologist, and the way we study gender is basically on a spectrum of masculine to feminine. And the more I learned about black women, and when you test them quantitatively with that spectrum, they always fall on the very masculine end. But I was like, you know, I like to get my nails done. I'm a girl's girl, but I am all these traits on this masculinity scale. I'm assertive, I'm aggressive, I'm a, you know, a risk taker, etcetera. So I was just like, there is more to gender than this bem scale and the way sociologists see gender, because for black women, we're on both ends of the spectrum at all times. So I read a quote that was one of those life changing quotes. A little black girl said her parent raised her to be a princess and a warrior. And I was like, That's it, you know? So I moved away from studying gender in the traditional way, and decided to study it in the strong black woman way, because we are feminine and masculine. We are a princess and a warrior, and so the way that relates to health is going to be unique.
Mm, um, I appreciate that sharing, particularly as it relates to how I feel like gender has been like, defined and coded in ways that are very much more. I feel like Eurocentric leaning, and even even more leaning towards a way that that lends itself to me, believing that it's something that is created for and by white men in terms of fragile, you know, being fragile, being soft and dainty, and that's what it's like, and that's what it means to be a woman. So that's, that's, I find that quite interesting. Dr Alexander, how did you come to your work?
I started in, like, really focusing on childhood obesity and utilizing like this family based approach, so incorporating the mothers and the fathers, and every time we would have these programs and these interventions, you would see black women and their children, and they're very much the same as it related to just overall obesity and chronic diseases that they were facing. And my question was, okay, we see this in the children, but what about black women? And so going through the literature and looking at intervention programs specifically designed to improve weight outcomes in black women, you would see that we were miss. We would be technically almost missing the mark. Who would be the least likely to lose weight and the least likely to stay engaged. And I was like, isn't it has to be something there? Why? What? How are these interventions being designed, and what's the missing piece? So everyone's because everyone's not meeting the same mark. So funny story. During our first day of faculty orientation, I met Dr Wade. We random. Sit at a table, and we were just talking about our interest, and I was like, I really want to help black women when it comes to weight and obesity. And she said, I want to help black women too. And so just been on this journey to really understand that how we can improve health, physical and mental health in black women.
Awesome. I feel like it's so it's so interesting these points of entry, whether it's an incarceration, whether it's this misrecognition of what black woman this look like looks like, and being misidentified based on that coding. And then even this, this connection with, you know, obesity, and that being as an entry as an entry point. Dr gisconde, what? How did you come to this work?
Well, I can relate a lot to everything my colleagues have said, and I love hearing that story that Dr Alexander shares about how she and Dr Wade, you know, connected in that way, but similarly concerned about health disparities faced by African American women, particularly adverse birth outcomes, low birth weight, return delivery. We know that black women have higher rates, twice, more than twice the rate and and I think what's also fascinating and disturbing at the same time is that when compared to white women, black women, some research has shown that even when they're college educated, they have those same disproportionately high outcomes and maybe even worse off with college education. So it kind of really spelled myths related to, is this related to SES? Is this related to lack of access? And so we have to look at what social, logical, what psychological, what contextual factors are causing this? And so I've, I've been interested in stress and health disparities. And the more you look at stress and health disparities, you see that it not only affects birth outcomes, but obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, lupus, just a number of different things in the lives of black women. And so similar to what doctor Wade said, you know, what are the nuances that we're missing when we use traditional ways of traditional measures of that are used on other people or to develop for other people? So there was a need to talk to black women to figure out what their perspectives were. And so that's how Superwoman schema was developed from conversations with black women across various age groups, educational backgrounds, occupations, and what we found was that it's consistent across those groups. And so it's something in the water, as they say, or something in society that's causing this. And because it's not biological inferiority, but something sociologic. So in biopsychosocial is what we call it. Some biopsychosocial process needs to be uncovered, and that's what we're doing in our research.
Mm, since you mentioned it, could you speak a little bit more to the strong black woman schema? And just say exactly what does it mean? Like, if you had to, like, define it in terms for for another person to understand exactly what what, what is it and what it what would you say is its origins?
Um, well, there are different terms that people use. And often times we hear the term strong, black woman. The framework I use, I use the term Superwoman schema, which includes strength. So Superwoman schema includes five characteristics, including perceived obligation to present an image of strength, as you mentioned, a perceived obligation to suppress emotions, perceived obligation to resist vulnerability or resist help from others, motivation to succeed despite limited resources and prioritization of caregiving over self care. So those are the five characteristics that arose from my research, but there are other concepts that are similar, that might have slightly different characteristics. But where did it come from? Women talked about maybe there lots of things. So antecedents are distal and proximal. So some of the proximal antecedents were wanting to survive, wanting to provide for their families, wanting to be there for their children, wanting to make their communities better, not feeling like you could depend on other people. So if you want it right, go ahead and do it yourself. But then more distally, they talked about surviving oppression, stereotyping, racism, trauma, all of those things that they needed to do, or their mothers or grandmothers needed to do that then got passed down to them, and are very relevant in their in today's society, so they may not have ever seen their mother cry. So then they thought that they needed to suppress their emotions, or they saw their mother make a way away out of no way, or if they trusted someone, and then were let down. Then they realized, well, that might not be in my best interest to do that, and then a real, pure desire to want to help. Family members and friends, but then there's only 24 hours in a day, so when you're putting putting other people's needs ahead of your own, then there's not a lot of time. Or there's this guilt about centering yourself in in care.
There's so much there to what you said, particularly with that list of things like suppressing certain emotions, not wanting to display that you need help, prioritizing caregiving, um, and and as I hear all of those things, and even here, here's some of the ways in which they are, like, if you're at job, if you're at work and like not crying because you know you don't want to appear as particular way, or, or what have you. I also hear in them the ways in which they are reinforced by other people. Um, for example, if, if in courtship men, you know, I've heard so many times when I ask men, what do you think makes a good wife? And all of it sounds like servitude. She could cook, she could clean, she it's just like, wow. So you need a maid and a nurse and a but those things, I feel like, culturally, I could see how they're also like, reinforced and even worn as a badge of honor. Doctor Parker, would you like to say more about the this particular strong black woman origin? So
I think about the work that I do with women who are part of the criminal justice system, there's this need, especially when you're incarcerated, to wear this mask, this this emotional mask, this mask to be strong and not to feel. And women who are in prison, many of them have children, and they're separated from their children, and just being able to handle those emotions in private, and you don't get a lot of privacy when you're in prison, causes them to put on this mask of being strong and that everything's okay, but then when you have an opportunity to kind of talk with them, one on one, through the research that I've done, a lot of my research is around sexy transmitted infections, which is also related to relationships, which is also related to children and families, and they have an opportunity to exhale and then hear everything that they've been carrying with them, the caring for their families, the economic challenges that they face. And many women are incarcerated for non violent offenses, and many of the women that are incarcerated, are there because they can't pay their probation fees. So there are a number of factors that play into their incarceration, and it creates issues for them when they return to the community and they have to be strong for their mothers and other family members while they're in prison, and then also when they come out, and then there's this stigma around incarceration and the stigma around being a mother and being incarcerated. Mm, hmm, so, so some of the things that have been discussed like trauma, many of them been exposed to trauma, but they are kind of told indirectly. You just kind of hold that in and you just keep it moving. Okay,
you know, one of the things that this comes up for me, because I'm around youth quite a bit, is young girls, like teen, adolescent girls, and the rate at which they are getting into fights, and the way that, you know, everything is changing for them, hormonally, and all of these other ways in which they also guard and want to protect themselves, even from something as simple as being not, not even, I don't want to say simple. Like to trivialize it, trivialize it, but to say it is more common than it should be cat calling, the way, the armor that they need to wear just to get from home to school or from school back to home. And it just reminds me like how this starts early, like you don't just wake up. I'm a black woman. And then this is some some other behavior. This is a socialization and learned behavior that we kind of like adapt and modify as we get older. Doctor Alexander and Doctor gascombe, in some of your work, you talk about a bit about health and how it how the strong, I'm sorry, or how the Superwoman schema predicts diet and exercise. I'll start with you, Doctor Alexander, what have you? What has come up in your our research, or in your reading that has drawn that connection between the strong or the Superwoman schema and diet and exercise?
So really starting that going back with like, understanding and looking at children and from a childhood obesity perspective, where. Seeing how we use food as a reward when food is something that we actually need. And so going back to thinking about how us as women, or black women, may use food almost as a way to kind of cope and a way to hide and to be vulnerable. Because when I think about it, we like wearing these different hats. Is with this, being a strong black woman, being a superwoman, I can be vulnerable with my ice cream because I know that's going to be consistent, but, you know the taste is consistent, but being vulnerable with other people that lack of trust. So it's one of those, almost like a safety net. But it's not the healthiest safety net when we think about chronic disease and how black women are at the top of the charts out of every demographic, we're more likely to be overweight or obese. Dr giscombe can really talk more to that as well.
So Dr gisconde, what? What would you what are some of the things that you're seeing in terms of that connection between the Superwoman schema and diet and exercise?
Yes, I completely agree with Doctor Alexander. There's that using food to cope aspect and also, you know, there's this framework that Doctor James Jackson and his colleagues developed at some of them are at the University of Michigan, but called the environmental affordances theory, and it basically addresses issues related to stigma, with feeling like you may be depressed or anxious or distressed, Not so stigma, but also having access to resources that you can go to for that, or access to healthy foods and neighborhoods where you can work out. So there's all these there's this issue related to accessibility and acceptability. And so then, although there may be a stigma related to mental health, or saying you have mental health condition, or even saying you're stressed, even if it's not a severe mental health condition, there's less stigma, like Doctor Alexander said, to eating, you know, to coming together to eat, or if you live in a neighborhood where the easiest coping strategy you have at accessible to you is smoking or drinking, or, you know, those things might be more and this is not across the board for all African American women, but if you just think about the different places we live, or you may live in an environment where there's no safe place to work out. So that's why that framework is called Environmental affordances. What is afforded to you and in your environment will dictate how you cope with stress. And so then we see more clear, clear, consistent disparities.
Seeing a disconnected, is it stopping for you? For y'all, okay, um, if possible, I would like, Doctor Wait, Could you, could you pick up on that and just talk about because I feel like in some of your work, you talk about those social determinants of health, and it makes me think about people who live in food deserts or food swamps, and how that also impacts health. Could you speak more to that?
Yeah, there's a ton of psychosocial predictors of black women's eating, and that's really what got me into this? It was the intersection of studying gender and health, because we were getting gender wrong. And then in medical sociology, there's a line of research called fat studies, but it centers white women so ways in which the world discriminates against fat white women, and it looks at things from everything from the size of the airplane seat to the promotions you get at work. And I sat through these medical sociology classes and I'm like, why do we send her white women when black women have the highest obesity rate globally? Why aren't we talking about them? But it's it's because it's not about uncovering the promoters of obesity. It's more about ending the stigma around obesity, but for black women, we need to uncover the promoters. Because, you know, on one side, yes, body positivity is important, but on the other side, we're dying. So we do need to have real conversations about the promoters of obesity. So Right? Food deserts, fast food density. If you go to a predominantly black neighborhoods, sometimes there's eight fast food restaurants for every grocery store. If you think about cars, black people have one car for every two cars white people have. So if you live in a food desert and you don't have a car, you eat what's nearby, which is a lot of times convenience store food or fast food. Mm, hmm. Thing I've read about is how black women are the most likely to say they choose food based on taste, where other people might base it on health, calories. Kind of thing, black women are most likely to say taste so I think there comes there's something that can be said about how much control you have in your life and how much freedom you have in your life. And if you go to work all day and face racism and sexism, the least you can do is control what you eat, because you can't control the way people treat you. So you can say, You know what, I'm going to have some delicious fried chicken. I'm going to have some delicious chocolate, and that's going to be my thing. Because I home, I don't have much control at all.
I think that's so real in terms of unhealthy coping mechanisms, particularly or including when we talk about whether or not something like going to a therapist is, is something that you know that is promoted or done, or how frequently that is done, or, I don't remember the the term that doctor Gascon Bay used in terms of, I think you refer to it as some sort of accessibility or availability, in terms of, like, what, what your health care coverage covers, or if you have that health care coverage, and Doctor Wade, you really said something that was just real, that just like, really resonated with me and just came to the top of my brain about this connection, whether it's like body positivity, because there's this you don't want to shame, right? But then I think you said the something promoters?
Yeah, it's the things that promote obesity. We do want to study those things at the same time that we, you know, talk about discrimination and talk about better ways to treat fat people. We also do want to talk about promoters of obesity, especially if there's a particular group of people that are dying. Mm, hmm. One thing in Doctor Alexander and I's presentation, if you look at America globally, it's number 12 in obesity. But if black women were a country, we'd be number three. So it's just like something is going on, and like you said, Doctor, gizconbe, it's not a biological inferiority. Things that we need to talk about.
Doctor, wait, Could you say more about tell us about some of the terms that we're using. So one of the terms is the socio historical Could you define that for us, and also define the bio psychosocial. What are those two terms mean, and why are they important to this particular conversation?
Right? Well, a favorite line in sociology to critique is pull yourself up by the bootstraps. You know, we have this idea that everyone in America has equal access, that there's this dream land where if you dream it, you can do it. But the truth is, there is a socio historical context where we have to think about the way society looked for different people throughout history, and how that shaped who they are today and the opportunities they have today. So things like the strong black woman I did, this goes back to slavery. Things like hiding your emotions. This goes back to slavery. You know, if you're a mother and you give birth and you're 100% sure your child's going to be taken, you can't get emotionally attached to that child. So it's like we have this history of our family being broken, of having stigmas around basically everything we do, the way we look, the way we talk, the way we do gender, it's stigmatized. It's deviant. So you can't assume that everyone has had the same lovely experience that you know, colonists have had or immigrants have had. You know, black people have a unique history. Native Americans have a unique history, so you have to always think about that when you talk about even health today. And then as far as the bio, psycho social stuff, I think it's like the intersection of all of us on the panel. We have a nutritionist, a nurse, a social worker, a sociologist. It's all the ways we see the world and it's all the ways our humanity is, you know, we're not just biology, we're not just humans, we are also psychology. We're mental health. We're not just mental health and biology, we're also sociology. So we exist in a world at a given time, in a given space, whether that's you can look in America, are you from the North? Are you from the south? Are you from the coast? Are you from Midland? So the biopsychosocial is all of you why you eat? Because you biologically need to. You might be psychologically depressed and socially you live in a food desert. So you're headed to Popeyes.
It makes me think of ecosystems, and then it I feel like it goes even further than ecosystems, because it starts to talk about the the internal, a very strong internal aspect to this whole thing. If you are watching right now, you are watching the counter narrative show. This is the strong black woman reinterpreted through a wellness lens. I'm going to. Go to the chat really quick because there's a few questions. One of the questions comes from precious she says, How can we address obesity without fat shaming? She also says, How can we dismantle fat phobia, and she says, there's less stigma to coming together to eat, but there is stigma about being fat that is often camouflage and internalized oppression and respectability politics. Ooh, that went fast. Respectability politics. Being fat is not merely about eating an exercise or exercise stress increases certain hormones, lack of street and I'm sorry, sleep impacts weight. So to that, first two parts that she said is, how can we address a obesity without fat shaming? And how can we dismantle fat phobia? Anyone can take that.
I'll take the first part of that with addressing addressing obesity without fat shaming. It's really thinking about, not necessarily from the esthetic, right, but really from that chronic disease. And like Dr White was saying, those underlying promoters to obesity. So when we think about how we're designing it, and from a nutrition perspective, designing these interventions, when we look at the research, it shows that a lot of times black women, if the focus of the study is related to weight and BMI. Black women are least likely to engage but talking about the ramifications and underlying factors that impact the person when there is an excess amount of weight, and how we're passing that information down to our children and our children's children, so really focusing on having a healthy relationship with food and a healthy relationship with ourselves, and I think that's that first perspective, that first part when we really think about addressing obesity without fat shaming, because that's not the focus. That's not the focus at all, but really to be the best version of yourself. Yeah,
anyone else have anything to add to that?
Okay, it's important that we think about the the messages that we send to young girls, especially young black girls, around body image and body shaming. We often do a lot of that doctor, Wade and I are conducting a study just looking at the gynecological healthcare needs of African American women, and some of the things that we ask them about are, what are some of the images around sex and sexuality that you are receiving from social media, and the images that They're receiving around social media deals with body shaming. Hm, and that it really impacts their self esteem and their self worth and value, and that plays into the relationships that they the sexual relationships that they engage in as well, is what we're finding in this particular study.
Mm, someone in the chat asked, and I'll give this to you. Dr Alexander, how she says, How are we defining obesity? Is it by Western standards? Is it excessive weight? How are we defining obesity?
So looking at it really from that scientific approach, when we're thinking about a BMI scale and having a BMI app, research has shown that a BMI at 25 or above puts you more at risk for chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, certain cancers. So when we talk about it in the vein of our study, we're really looking at it from that perspective. And really, obesity is not always an esthetic component, because you can't always look at someone and see if they're at maybe a particular risk for getting some type of chronic disease. And just because your BMI is at a certain point doesn't mean that you're going to get a chronic disease. It just puts you more at risk. And really, also looking at it from a waist circumference, because black women carry their weight in different ways. So just because your BMI might be over 25 how your weight is proportion also plays a role. So also looking at that waist size plays a role too.
When you you mentioned something just just in in terms of black women carrying their weight differently, some of what I feel like, some of what I've seen, I don't know. I don't know how connected it is to shaming specifically, but even a celebration of some of the ways in which black women carry their weight, whether that is big butts, big thighs. So there's like this, also desire to be thicker. How are we impacted by that culturally? And
it's with so thinking about our study and some of the focus groups that we've recently done, we talked about kind of what body image looks like, and they a lot of women in the study. Describe these, I like to say, genetically modified versions of what people may perceive a body looks like. And then that can also put people in a in a space to engage in unhealthy behaviors, because you have some women whose body is not shaped, some black women who are not shaped in a way. That is what I big butt, big breast, little waist, and so they're engaging in unhealthy behaviors, just like someone else who may be engaging in unhealthy behaviors to be a certain size. So really kind of looking at these societal these unrealistic societal standards that people have placed on black women, and going back to being that Superwoman and trying to live up to these unrealistic expectations, and it's putting our health at risk.
Katrina Fox says my this is my first time hearing about the Superwoman schema, but I feel as though it checks all of my boxes. Shawna Murray Brown says this makes me think about ancient healing traditions and insights expressing that unresolved trauma lodge themselves in the body. Someone else says they have a question, Has there been any research conducted that explores the impact of mindfulness in disrupting or shifting the expression of the Superwoman schema. Anyone know about that, if there's been any research conducted, is
doing that she can? Okay? I do research on mindfulness and stress. I know my internet is a bit unstable, so I wouldn't like my colleagues to take the answer. I have books speaking of Superwoman schema. I'm sure. Have children doing activities on the internet? And so it does affect my stability, but yeah, so I love that question and comment as well as the question and comment about healing practices. And you know what? How trauma gets lodged in our bodies? And I think research on interventions of black women,
okay, as she goes out, it
would, it would, yeah. So those are great questions, and I think that's where the research is going. And so right now, I do have an NIH funded study looking at that specifically, and have done research on the cultural relevance of mindfulness for stress related conditions in African Americans, including black women, we need it's a spiritual you know, we think of biopsychosocial. It's also there's that spiritual piece, the essence what we carry our bodies, as Dr waden, Dr Alexander and Dr Parker have expressed, like the history that we're literally embodying, and there's this concept called embodiment, and sometimes we don't we, we're so busy that we're not aware of how much we're literally holding on to. So it will be great for researchers to start looking at that a lot more deeply and to develop culturally tailored interventions that taking a consideration the bio cycle, social and spiritual experiences of black women and what we need to be well,
I think you're so on point with the with the with that piece about tailoring it and including the spirituality piece, because while there may be stigma, particularly for my mom's more so for my mother's generation around let's say seeking mental health, seeking mental health professional, or even doing something as simple as my mindfulness, less interested, more interested in talking to Her pastor, more interested in Bible study, more interested in going and shouting it out, you know. So I think that that is a very important piece. Thanks for sharing that.
And just along that line, in our focus groups, if I cut off, just take over. But in our focus groups, I was I ended up writing a paper with a different title, but I wanted to write a paper called Down by the riverside, because we have focus group participants who talked about that freedom to emotionally express in church, where everywhere else they had to hold it in. And so spirit means so many things. It can mean religion, but also means, you know, this, this, this level of energy that has integrated in our bodies, that can be addressed. You know, no matter what religious group a person is from, but women in our studies have talked about laying down their burdens in church and that that's the safest, only place that it's okay to break down and cry, and people don't look at you like you're weak.
Can I add something I just want to it goes back to the question about, How do we avoid fat shaming, to the question of, how do we avoid promoting these, you know, Instagram bodies and then hearing the past enjoy when doctor gets convey talks about. Spirituality, another key is just diversity in academia, because we're all black women who have diverse bodies, diverse religious beliefs, diverse life stories, but what we have in common is that we love black women and we want the best for them. So the intention of the researcher can have such an impact on the way the research affects people. The center of our study is not shaming fat women. It's not shaming curvaceous women. It's not saying everyone has to be spiritual. It's just saying, let's understand that these are black women's lived experiences, and let's help them. We called our grant, navigate your reality. Let's help them figure out how to navigate their reality. So I just wanted to add that I think a key is diversity in higher ed,
right? Talk about implications in education. There
someone? Yeah, please. I think it's real important that we also continue to raise awareness around this and the messaging that mothers and aunties are sending out to their daughters and their nieces around body image, especially today in the world of social media and so much bullying taking place On social media around body shaming with young women. I think it's really important we continue to kind of bring awareness to this and be able to have these healthy conversations about, how do we change the narrative of what we've been told?
I feel like that piece Dr Parker, and I feel like there's so much to as as as youth develop, and I, and I think of my own 12 year old daughter, there's also, I don't know if it's borderline or shame, but just an awareness that this young person is developing in In ways that could attract unwanted advances and the ways in which mothers, I know my mother, did shut stuff down, where I wasn't even trying to emote or express those things, but she was just like, and then I I've even felt it in myself, like I wanted to, like, put my kid in the basement, wrap her up and bubble wrap and not let her out into Much later. I wonder how some of that also shows up for the mother as well as for the daughter, in terms of what we're telling them about their body, you know, and who's responsibility is it for them to there were times in my development, in my training, that I felt like it was my responsibility to make sure that I didn't get raped or assaulted. I had to do things. I had to dress a certain way, be a certain way, and I didn't necessarily hear the same messages being given to my brothers, like, don't be raped. Don't Don't rape Don't be rapey. Don't do this. But there was definitely close your legs, just like this. Like there was just all of these things connected to, connected to how I should show up in this body. And I wonder if, similarly to how Doctor discombe mentioned in the church, you are free and and feel free to express in ways where you have to be tied down. I wonder if some of that is an expression for young people, whether it's on social media or going to the club, where, in all of these other places they have to be, you know, hold it tight, keep it tight, and then to be able to get out and do all the things. Is, that is, how does that show up? You know, is one of the things I wonder. Anybody have any insight on that?
So are you saying, like the club or social media as a Finally, be sexy in a world that polices sexuality, yeah, like
to be, to be celebrated, Mm, hmm, and encouraged, and all of those unhealthy things being encouraged. You know, these, like,
what doctor Parker keeps going back to about social media might be the elephant in the room, because we all grew up where 18 to 25 year olds were sexy at the nightclubs. I mean, that's been going on for decades, but there's something different now, and that is the fact that what you do there, it used to be like Vegas. What you do there stays there. Now it's like what you do there gets posted, gets retweeted, gets screenshotted and laughed at. You know, it gets critiqued by the masses. So you want 18 to 25 year olds to be able to explore their sexuality, but the idea of them doing that on a stage with all their peers and peers they don't even know that's what it gets to be unhealthy. And that's when we have girls that are in our focus groups talking about how they want surgery, and if they can't afford it, they would rather just nap all day because they're not happy. And we, you know, we actually did a follow up focus group. We talked to these young women before COVID And since COVID and I brought up, you know, before COVID, you guys really prioritize being feminine. And beautiful and sexy and all. How's it been now? And there's been like, a split some are like, they just feel free to finally be able to not do anything to look good. And then some feel like, well, I still get my lashes done and I still get my hair done, just because, you know, so I feel like there's just this weight for these 418 to 25 year olds of today, because they're obligated post, and you're obligated to be your best self when you post.
I also wonder how comfortable parents are in terms of exploring on social media pages of this of their kids, and are they having these conversations? And what I'm getting from the women that I'm talking to when it comes down to image around sex and sexuality, they're pretty much told, don't have sex, wear a condom, and they're not getting the content around relationships. Mm, I spoke to a young lady who had a horrible experience around sex and sexuality, and what she said to me, if somebody would have just talked to me and just not tell me to wear a condom or not to have sex, because it's much more than that, and that impacts their self image, and it also impacts their behaviors, and many of them result back to things like bint eating and things of that nature.
Thank you for sharing that. Someone in the chat asked Dr gisgambe, have you found all the people you need for your research? I
think they are
in the process of recruiting. We'll be recruiting for our current study in January. So
Alright, y'all heard it, and at the end, Dr giscombe will let you know, share whatever information, whatever ways in which she likes to be contacted, whether that's Instagram or Facebook, for the person who wanted to do that, who was interested in that. Doctor Wade, can you tell us more about your work with unpacking the strong black woman ideal?
Oh, well, I guess it's more about textualizing What it means to be a strong black woman and the the cost of it. Um, that's why I like to partner with other health professionals, because we can talk about what it means to be a strong black woman, all the traits, the care for others. And then there's other things that have come up, as far as like you have a unconditional self love, deep sense of ethnic and gender pride, which are things that I question as I read them, because we can't all be Tamika Mallory like that gets exhausting. We can't be the spokespeople for our race all the time or for our gender all the time, but we are, and that's a true statement, and another way that we're depleting ourselves and even the unconditional self love, I wondered if that's healthy, because can you critique yourself? Can you have a honest look in the mirror? If I'm good as I am, I'm good to go. You know, if you're this is really all an act, because we're surviving. We're adapting hell, so to speak. So we we convey that we have this unconditional self love and we're happy as we are, but we all need to critique ourselves sometimes. So I really just get fascinated with the traits that go along with being a strong black woman and their cost. So it's like Liz. That's why it seems diverse that I have a study of sexual health and a study of diet and exercise, but they all have the same underlying issue, and that's we need an outlet, because we are basically caged. We need an outlet, and we don't have a healthy one. And how can we change that?
And it's so interesting, the ways in which the strong black woman being called by other names presented. Let's repackage and celebrate it. So whether it's Superwoman schema, which sounds very positive, strong black woman that sounds very positive, black girl magic sounds very positive in the literature, I see a lot about resiliency and black women's resilient resiliency. And, you know, I wonder about that balance, and how we navigate that balance of celebrating our accomplishments and even ability to overcome some of these things, but not to, not to, like put it as this is the norm, and this is what I should be dealing with, like I should know how to center everyone else needs before my you know, like these concepts of what makes a good a good woman, knowing how to make $1 out of 15 cents and make. Ways out of no ways and things like that.
With these mortality rates, black women's strength is so expected. Doctors don't even give us the right medicine. Doctors don't even think we feel pain. So I mean, we see in real time that although we have adopted the title superheroes and strong and magical. It's because the other option is cry. However, the cost is now we have men, white folks, Asian folks, whoever, seeing us as superheroes, invincible superheroes, and we're humans, and so we need to, we gotta change this whole rhetoric so that everyone else understands we have needs as well, right?
And I hope I can get through this without cutting off, but that's one reason that the Superwoman schema was designed well. Really wasn't designed to be multi dimensional, but that's what we heard from the women. And then when we sampled women and we were able to do psychometric testing, we found that it was five different characteristics, strength being one of them emotional suppression being so there, you know, we that's part of the unpacking. And now that we have this scale, we're able to start seeing that everything's not equal, that it may be that being strong, there's nothing wrong with being strong, but if you're strong, you suppress emotion and you prioritize caregiving, that might be a issue, a motivation to succeed despite limited resources. There's nothing wrong with making $1 out of 15 cent, but if you do that and you can't be vulnerable to somebody in your life, that might be problematic. So it's how do these different characteristics intersect for different people? And so Amani Allen is a researcher, African American scientist at University of California, Berkeley, and she and I and some other colleagues at research on allostatic load, which is like your risk, like literally looking at blood values of different things like inflammation and looking at blood pressure and a lot of other factors that predict cardiovascular risk and diabetes risk. And what we found was that which she looks at racism, and so women who exposed to racism, who were struck, who who were high on strength, that was protective against allostatic load, but emotional suppression and race. And actually, in her study, emotional suppressions was her study was actually also protective, but that prioritization of caregiving and the vulnerability resistant vulnerability and racism was a was more predictive of our static load. So I'm working with other researchers who are showing, depending on what outcome you're looking at, those it's like, just like anything else, some things are very adaptive, and sometimes it's problematic. And so helping women to see there's this psychologist, Doctor Regina Romero, who said, an overuse asset without critical analysis of how you use it, runs the risk of becoming a liability. But we just use these assets, like, all the time, and then we're like, waking up, and we're like, we have high blood pressure, but maybe strength is not so. And I've seen like on chats where people say, Well, what's wrong with being strong now people are saying we shouldn't be strong. And no, I don't think any of us are saying we shouldn't be strong, but what is strong mean? Mm, hmm. And if you're strong, can you also find a circle to trust and rely on. Can you also find time to make time for yourself so that you can be more harmonious you can balance? Is probably not a true state for any of us at any one given time, but just so you can be more intentional about how you utilize these characteristics in your life.
Thank you for that. Felicia McConnell says a strong black woman was thrust upon me as sort of a default. I came from a long line of her words in quotations, mammies. So it was very easy to take on that mindset. It to that I feel like there are ways in which I have showed up in in corporate environments as like a or professional environments as like a mammy um. And what I mean by that is just there's this way in which I prioritize the work of whatever the organization was over work, in my home, in my like, in my home and domestic life. And saw that my my domestic life suffered for but I was a superstar at work. You know, they love me at work. And then another way I feel like, in which it shows up as, as what I call the like corporate mammy is I was always exhausted. Would come home and just be like, super fussy once I got home. So I think that that's definitely a, definitely a real thing. Um, someone asked the question, Has there been any research conducted that explores the Oh, no, I already read that one. Already read that one. Okay, someone. Says, in Chicago, house music and originally, hip hop disrupted that narrative. Not sure where, where this came in, as at, house music also allowed sisters to come as we are, and it was very much about the freedom of dance and movement. Hip hop was like that as well. Originally, someone's asked, you have any advice for and I'm going to bounce this to Doctor Parker, uh, do you have any advice for educators of adolescents and pre adolescent black girls around interacting with social media and developing their own healthy body messaging and image?
One of the things that I think we're challenged by, and I'm gonna invite my other colleagues to kind of come in on this as well, is the individuals that youth follow. So what we're being told is that youth are following certain images, and if we're following these images that are unrealistic unhealthy, that's not going to be helpful to the particular population. I think that one of the things that concerns me about social media, in the same vein, is how much information that's shared out there. We live in a generation where many people are sharing many aspects of their life. One of the things that I try to do on my social media is to follow healthy creators. Mm, healthy creators around positive messages that are being sent. Healthy creators about positive messages around body image and not body shaming, but how do we get healthy for us? Because that's what we want to do. Um, so I look to creators on different platforms that are sending those type of messages, and I encourage the youth and the young people that I'm working with to follow those individuals. Mm,
I think that matters, because that, you know, determines, like, who regularly shows up in your timeline and that sort of thing. Dr Parker opened up, if anyone else wanted to add to that, not in particular, okay, um, someone shared, unfortunately, in my immediate sphere, there are a lot of young mothers who are trying to get theirs so as far as teaching young women how to conduct themselves sexually has been practically non existent. Ty says, I appreciate the nuance and balance that doctor giscombe Just saying. I appreciate that too. One of the things that you mentioned as you were like identifying these things, like, there's nothing wrong with being strong, but if you're being strong and you're strong and you're also engaging in this behavior, how that just kind of shows up. Man, it's so much here, so many questions, so much more to get through. Doctor Alexander, in your work, you mentioned how the internalization of the strong black woman typology has been used as a protective barrier to overcome gender race related obstacles. Can speak to more of how it has served black women as a protective barrier.
I want to say somewhat we've I know Doctor Wade and Doctor gizmo Bay hit on it, but just really thinking about going back to slavery, and how black women have had to be there for everyone, for white men, white women, white children, that black our children, and then even black men. And then you think about incarceration rates, is when with black men and black women have had to step up almost to the plate and take on the role of a male, take on the role of a female, and that has been that has helped us kind of overcome and we've been revered for our strength, but yet, and still, all of these different hats at one time can be problematic in the sense of, it's just like a machine. It's it's great, it's perfect. But if it's if the car is being pushed without stopping to get the oil change, without getting your car service, it's gonna fall apart at some point. And I'll pass that on to my other colleagues as well, so they can talk, talk more to that.
Oh, quickly thinking about our recent study, we asked black women like, what would they want to intervention to look like? So they told us things that can be tied directly to the strong black woman or Superwoman ideas, and one I'll just speak for you, Doctor Alexander, because she really eloquently wrote about how black women need to care for people. Mm, always say they want an intervention that involves group settings. So she said, you know, not only does a group setting create a sisterhood, but it allows us to feed that need to care for people, because you never go to a group and just be quiet. When another sister is spilling her beans, you always give her feedback if she needs a babysitter, if she needs a meal. So you're able to help yourself as well as help her. So a way that, you know, once we can really understand these traits, we can make them assets easily. We can definitely use them for our long term improvement. You know, if we love sisterhood and we love coming together and we love caring for each other, we just need to change what that looks like, you know, to change what the food is that's served or, you know, little things we can change but still use our strengths at the center. Sorry, doctor.
I Doctor Wade, you summarize what I was going to say about our strengths and bringing them together collectively. Sometimes we hear that black women can't support each other, and this is definitely just the opposite depiction of what people say. We definitely support each other around our research, our careers in so many different ways, and I'm just so proud and thankful to be a part of a positive group of black women, and that kind of helps me to keep moving, and help me to be strong, but also recognizing that I can also be vulnerable.
I completely agree. Um, they helped me today. I was resting from a busy week, and I was like, Oh, we have to go on at six o'clock, you know, because, you know, sometimes I have to turn all the way off on the weekends because of the week and the work that we do, not only our work, but that support and then that advocacy. And, I mean, it's just, it's amazing, and, but then when we you have a group like this, we can pass the baton, right? It doesn't. We don't have to each be on 24/7 because we know, because we know we have colleagues and sister colleagues that are also in this work together and and it goes back to what Dr Wade said earlier, like we need more black women scientists, because they call these problems, these disparities wicked problems, because they've gone unresolved due to what Dr Alexander and Dr Parker were saying. Because, you know, we have all these disparities because we haven't had enough opportunity for black women to bring their expertise to disentangle what's going on so people putting solutions on it that weren't made for us. But when you bring black women into the research world, and you not only bring them in, but support them to thrive, give them the resources we need to be able to do complex research and also complex work with educating the next generation, and I think that's when we're going to see these disparities get resolved.
Good, good, good stuff. Someone asked the question, Does anyone have any insight about the value of black women relationships slash sisterhood? And concepts and and concepts show up. I think we just kind of talked about that a bit. They also asked also any insight around how gender expression impacts the prevalence of alliances to these characteristics. And they use the example of non binary and trans women. So I read that question again, partially for myself, they ask, Do you have any insight around how gender expression impacts the prevalence of Alliance, of alliance to these characteristics? You
know, we've actually heard we I don't want to make a big conclusion based on the small amount of women that we've talked to who weren't heterosexual or cisgender, but what I've heard is that no black woman is exempt from the strong black woman script, because when you're you know zero to 18, and you're at home and you're given these responsibilities that other people aren't given, Just like black boys are taught how to handle arrest, black girls are taught how to not be the angry black woman in public. You know, there's so much, so many things that are just at the basic core of being a black woman in society that I think transcend gender expression or sexuality in general, that I don't think any black woman is free of the strong black woman script. Now, I'm sure it gets more complex and nuanced when you think about the ways that feminine women or masculine or androgynous women are received by the world. Of course, that's going to be more nuanced, but I would say we're all sort of burdened with that obligation to not be emotional and to look like we've got it all under control.
I wonder, too, how much of that is connected to being black period, because I feel like with black males, they're not encouraged to have emotion.
I just had this talk in my race class last week. Um, it's different. Different. You know, for black women, we can't cry, and for black men, they can't get angry. And there's so much research that shows if a black man and a white man had the exact same cards, dealt the same card, if a white man got angry about it, it would make sense, if a black man got angry about it, he'd be threatening, as we see with all this police brutality, as we see just with the 911 calls black men and women are not allowed to be emotional. There is a cost for both, absolutely.
So much. Okay, alright, let's
think. I just want to add what I think of I my transgender sisters in the work that they do and the advocacy around the LGBTQIA community, they have some of the same struggles that we're that we're talking about, around being strong, being black, showing emotion, not being able to show up motion, Looking for pockets of areas where you can trust, and also in this, you know, it's a matter of where, where can you trust? Who can you trust? To be able to be vulnerable, and a part of this is being able to be vulnerable, which we could also help with our emotional and mental health, because we sometimes carry so much. I often tell my students, I think of Erica Badu, and she has a song about the bag lady, and I asked them to name the different bags that they're carrying on their back. And a lot of it relates to what we're talking about. And I feel like our transgender sisters are carrying some of those same bags. Mm,
hmm. Yeah, it's so interesting. I feel like the more roles and relationships we have, the heavier it gets. I feel like I started to feel it early. Feel some of these things early on. I was the eldest sister of five children to a single mom, so like de facto parent. So that shows up. And then there was even some, for lack of better word, I don't want to say Tension. Tension is the best word I come with up with it now, when I finally did have a child from my siblings, because they were like, you're not going to have time for us anymore. And that was a weird experience for me. I was just like, whoa. What? What is happening? They were just like, you know, for us anymore. You're not and it was just like, Oh my gosh. Y'all have like, been my kids, you know, all of my life. So some of that, um, someone says you're preaching now. Doctor gascombe, uh, another person said, Thank you for that. Doctor Wade, we need to care for people our Felicia McConnell says, damn Shane, can we just be free? Ty says, Okay, so when is part three? They're counting the social determinants of health with Doctor Wade is part one, then this is part two. Asia Maxson says real talk. That's why I hate the phrase, get out your feelings. Nope, I'm going to let myself feel it, even if it makes you uncomfortable. I know that's right, sis, this has been so amazing and wonderful. I don't want to let any of you go. I want to talk more, but I want to thank you all for being here. But before I let you go, I want you could just let people know how to contact you in all of the ways that you feel most comfortable being contacted with. And please do share your links under this video. Dr giscombe, I think someone already shared an article that you wrote under this video. So if you have links to any of your work to share, or if you have anything coming up or anything else like that, please share it. I'm going to go ahead and start with Doctor Wade. How can people get in contact with you on the webs and share whatever you got coming up next?
Well, I guess LinkedIn is my best or Instagram. What is my Instagram account? It is Doctor, dot j dot Wade, yeah, LinkedIn, Jeanette Wade is also a great way to get in contact with me. What I have going on is the ongoing research with these ladies, our study of the strong black woman idea and how it relates to diet and exercise, and I'm really excited about our 2.0 revisit. Two days ago, we had a focus group, and a young girl inspired me deeply. We asked, What does it mean to be a strong black woman in 2020 and we listed all the hell black women have faced in 2020 and she said, You know what it means? It means I'm free from being a strong black woman. She said, I'm over it when I want to cry, I cry. She said, for the first time in my life, my mom cries. My mom calls me to check on my mental health. I call other black women to check on their mental health. And it was just like the gates of heaven opened, you know, because I have the same experience, I didn't, I didn't put words to it. You know, there have been a couple faculty meetings where I'm like, You know what, guys, I'm not okay. There is no yoga for this. And just to know that we're all going through that, and we're all there, that is freeing. It took white guys and white women to sort of go through the hill of COVID to just universally, as a nation, be free to have emotions no matter who you are. So I just hope this opening doesn't shut back down. I hope now that black women are starting to feel safe to be vulnerable and to express the complex nature of their lives. I hope we can just keep doing that, because all it can do is improve our mental health and our overall happiness.
Thank you for that. I do feel like there's something about 2020 I think you mentioned this earlier too, in terms of just the performance and shield that we have to wear when we go out into the world, whether or not you wear lipstick or makeup. I have a friend. She's just like I have not gone abroad in months, and it's been great, just that, just that desire to be free. So thank you for sharing it. Dr Parker, what are you up to, and how can people connect with you?
I am doing wonderful research with these women, so I'm happy with that. One of the areas that I'm really interested in is we're doing a study looking at the OBGYN needs and second health care of African American women really wanting to dig a little bit deeper around relationships and messages that African American women are given by their parents and family and social media. And how does that impact their decision making in terms of who they choose to have sex with? And why? How does that impact, that sexual health, mentally, physically and emotionally. So I'm looking forward to that body of research. I can be reached at on Twitter, at Dr Sharon D Parker. I can also be found on LinkedIn. And my email address is S, D, P, A, R, K, e3, at, n, C, A, t.edu, thank you if I got that right,
sure, absolutely, and Doctor Alexander.
So what I'm up to continuing to do work with these, these dynamic women, I always get excited when we have meetings and get on calls, because it's just so much love. And you can feel that through the research. And then, like Doctor Parker was saying before, like, this is a safe place too, so we can take off all of our hats and be vulnerable and talk to each other. And so I'm excited about the work that we're doing to develop to some programming so all of this information that we're getting from these ladies stories and our focus groups. How can we design a program that's the best fit for you and to support you, and kind of what this community lens we would love just to see, to help you thrive. So you can take this information and pass it on to someone else behind you, so you don't have to be in the program, but you'll get this information from someone in our programs and in our interventions. And so I'm excited about what the future holds as it relates to much of the work that we're doing, individually and collectively. And you can find me on I'm on Instagram. My handle is, it's Doctor, so Dr, underscore, underscore, so, underscores, ra, R, A, A, H, or you can just type in my name, Rameen Alexander. And I think I feel like I'm the only remain Alexander out there, so I will come up, and I'm also on LinkedIn, but I'm doing some updating to that page, so the best way to get to me is on Instagram.
Awesome. I feel like you exemplify what I don't know if it was Dr way or Dr Parker mentioned around Black Women's need to help people. I feel like you like, even in when I'm even as I'm asking you, tell us what you're up to, blah, just like, well, this is how we're going to help you. And that sort of thing that definitely resonated with me. Appreciate that. And Dr gisconde,
and, yeah. I echo what everyone is saying. I'm really excited about our collaborative work, and I can be reached at Dr Cheryl Gascon Bay on LinkedIn, Dr Cheryl Gascon Bay on Instagram and Twitter and cheryl.gascombe@unc.edu on email.
C, H, E, R, Y, l, right, yes, okay, just making sure. And
can I add one thing before please? I think I'm speaking on behalf of my colleagues, and they're okay with this. One of the things that we are also interested in doing is that we want other black women to see themselves doing what it is that we're doing in their own way. Mm, you know, we we spend a lot of time mentoring black women, and we want them to know that they can also become scientists.
And with that one group that I've come to appreciate that I didn't know that I needed, and then I saw and it was like, of course, I need this group. And it is, Dr Wade is in there. You all are probably in there also, but blind black women, for the scientific study of black women, something along those lines. It was just like, I would not have known to search for this. You know what I mean, I would not have thought that it exists, but it's just like, Yeah, of course, I needed this. So thank you for that. Thank you to all of my guests for being here. Dr gisconde, were you about to say something? I
was just going to thank you for having us, oh, for facilitating this, this conversation, and thank you for all that you do and your contribution to well being. Thank
you. I appreciate that. I appreciate y'all. I appreciate y'all showing up and being here on a Saturday night. You did not have to be here and do this, but you prioritize this and chose to show up in this space. And I'm ever grateful and appreciative, and I also appreciate, beyond me, all the things that you're out there doing for black women like it gives me hope, and I hope that we're able to do this again. So once y'all do some more research, or whatever, or you have a topic, and you're like, oh, I want to, I got something to say about this, send it to me, and I really want to read all the articles, so please send me the DOI link so that I can read up on alright. Thank you to everyone who has participated in the chat. Falicia McConnell, Asia, Maxton, Shawna Murray. There's so many other names that have already passed that I can't see anymore. Katrina Fox, yeah, so many, so many others. So thank you all. Uh, Lily Bernard says, wonderful dialog, and thank you. Katrina Fox says, Thank you sister. My Felicia McConnell says, Yes, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, that could be for you. Ra, and it could also be for me. I go, I'm I'm called Raw, too. Yeah, wonderful dialog, okay, wellness. To each of you. Thank you for this great conversation. All right, this has been the counter narrative show, and we have discussed, what have we discussed? We have discussed the strong black woman reinterpreted through a wellness lens. Thank you so much for watching.
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