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Tara Pringle Jefferson | Bloom How You Must

Black Women and Mental Health

A conversation between author Tara Pringle Jefferson and Toledo-Lucas County Minority Health Department coordinator Keianna Wimberly on Black women's mental health. Presented by the Art Tatum Center.

Books will be available for sale from the author after the talk. 

ABOUT THE BOOK | Bloom How You Must: A Black Woman’s Guide to Self-Care and Generational Healing 

A self-empowering wellness guide that celebrates the roots of self-care and community care as a sustaining force for generations of Black women. Bloom How You Must is a love letter to the millions of Black women who want a less stressful life but don’t know where to begin. 

Self-care isn’t a trend among Black women; it has always been a throughline in our heritage. Consider Coretta Scott King, who along with fellow activists Betty Shabazz and Myrlie Evers-Williams, would enjoy “girls’ trips” to take a break from the stress of the Civil Rights Movement. Remember their contemporary Rosa Parks attended (and led) yoga classes while on the front lines for Black rights in Detroit.

Think of the enduring friendship between Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King, a sisterhood in which they have leaned on each other for nearly forty years while thriving in the glaring media and entertainment spotlight.

Picture Toni Morrison’s overflowing gardens and lush houseplants she tended while writing classics like Beloved and The Bluest Eye.

Recall Audre Lord’s enduring declaration written after her second cancer diagnosis: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

Bloom How You Must explores and expands on this self-care legacy and shows how it can help every Black woman today.

Tara Pringle Jefferson excavates the roots of self-care and community care as a sustaining force for generations of Black women and transforms her findings into a blueprint women can follow in their daily lives. A blend of guidebook and journal, Bloom How You Must explores several distinct pillars of wellness, featuring:

• Research from leading wellness experts
• Interviews with women aged 19–99
• Stories of personal experience
• Overviews and explanations of each component of self-care
• Dedicated pages for readers to reflect on each chapter
• Exercises to put wellness into practice
• Easy-to-follow explanatory graphics and sidebars

With its diversity of insights, practical skills and multigenerational focus, Bloom How You Must is a love letter to the millions of Black women who want a less stressful life but don’t know where to begin. Bloom How You Must gives them the tools they need to improve their health and their daily lives. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR | Tara Pringle Jefferson

Tara Pringle Jefferson, a certified breathwork facilitator and wellness advocate, she is the founder of The Self Care Suite, a digital wellness community for Black women. Over the last decade, Jefferson has brought her wellness expertise to corporate audiences including WW, SiriusXM, Wayfair, and Priceline. Her voice has been featured on New York magazine’s The Cut, Black Enterprise, and Essence. When she’s not writing, she finds peace among her houseplants and flowers. A Cleveland native, she lives in northeast Ohio with her husband and two children.