The problem is…

Mental health care systems were not designed to care for people of a particular hue

So how do you heal in a system that is designed to perpetually harm you

How do you reform a system that denies its participation in harm and oppression

Filled with people who are tied to an illusion of goodness – when goodness is an obsession

The obsession becomes new reality and people come to believe the lie

But if a tree is rotten from the root, its fruits are certain to die

The problem is…

The lands upon which these systems stand are built over stolen and bloodied home…

And the language the system speaks, for many is not their own

I mean language… more than words…the many ways in which people express

Where is the mental health care that is embedded with the wisdom of Black aesthetics?

The problem is…

Whitestream services do not hold Black people tenderly in mind

And we must remember this is by intention, for it is the way the system was/is designed

Not all who work within the system hold these as their personal truths

But the best nurturance from within is not enough to undo bad roots

The problem is…

There is this message, that Black people we don’t do therapy

But bear with me for a moment while I point out the heresy

Did it ever occur to whitestream society that Black therapy has its own frame

That our healing might look different and therefore called by a different name

The problem is…

The myth of Black people’s absent engagement from their emotional wellbeing has spread

And its time this myth gets cleared up, and properly laid to bed

Black people have had to exist in a world that consistently distorts our reflections

That criminalize and pathologize us based in assumptions of our complexion

The problem is…

There has been an attempt to erase the Black creative healing that we carry in our body and bones

Our ancestors have laid roadmaps that can help us find our way home

Our legacies and lineages are daily reminder of the healing salve that runs through our veins

That we experience joy in a hostile world, that we can laugh though we know deep pain

…is the problem… is…

This is (K)not to say…

When things are complicated and tied up in a knot

It is not enough to say what is, it’s important to address what’s (k)not

This is (k)not a work that is simply Black and white

It does not fit as squarely into this is wrong and that’s right

Complicated melodies are full of contradictions

The same can be said of the fields and systems

That this work speaks about, through and to

About complicated knots that are hard to undo

This is a knot poem to display

What this work is not to say

This is (k)not to say that oppression does not cause harm that demands attention

This is (k)not to say that Black people should not utilize mental health care systems

This is (k)not to erase those who work with/in broken systems and try to mend them

This is (k)not to dismiss the work and contributions of Black scholars and clinicians

This is (k)not to deny that some Black people have benefited from the system(s) to which I speak

This is (k)not to exempt myself as someone who works with/in and dreams of what could be with/out

That there has been a failure to recognize and attend to the Black creative artists and healers across generations is what this is about

That whitestream systems don’t make space or place for Black creative wisdom is the issue to which I speak

My love letter to Black people is embedded and threaded throughout these critique(s)