Rooted in Justice and Joy: What Black Mothers Are Telling Us
By Teon Hayes
Founded in 2018 by Black Mamas Matter Alliance, this year’s Black Maternal Health Week invites us to imagine what it truly means for Black mothers to thrive in lives rooted in justice and joy.
Historically, systems and policies affecting Black women have too often been shaped without their voices and ideas from inception through implementation. The danger in this approach is clear: solutions that fail to meet the needs of those they claim to help because those solutions flatten lived experiences into statistics, headlines, or policy debates and ultimately miss the depth, nuance, and everyday realities that should shape those decisions. When Black mothers are not centered, their full humanity is reduced to simplified, incomplete, and inaccurate representations.
What would it look like to build a world where Black mothers are not only heard, but deeply listened to and respected? A world where systems and policies are built with their voices at the center?
My candid conversations with eight of the Black mothers in my life provide some of those answers. Their reflections and raw responses consider what joy feels like, what justice means, and what it would take to truly thrive. As one mother said:
“To feel truly safe, supported, and to experience justice would require something like a cosmic heart transplant in the soul of America. Even if I were given a magic wand and the power to enact sweeping legislative and societal change, it would still not be enough. Laws matter, but the deeper transformation must happen in the hearts and minds of people. So many things would need to change.”
