Barbers and beauticians regularly engage with their clientele, and this connection often takes on a whole new meaning in the Black community. The chair becomes a place of familiarity, where culture intersects with advice, affirmation, laughter, or a place to just vent. It is the place where trust is built. The Shades of Motherhood Network (SOMN) realizes the value of this relationship, and as it aims to become a hub of additional resources, peer support training is a priority. Says Stephaine Courtney, founder of SOMN, “We’re going to create space for our barbers and beauticians to not only take care of themselves, but to also take care of other people.”
SOMN partnered with Northwest Credible Messenger, a community organization located in Federal Way, Washington, that has a behavioral health project for barbers and beauticians. According to their website, Northwest Credible Messenger focuses on the following areas: capacity building, positive youth justice, healing centered engagement and policy advocacy.
“Utilizing the Credible Messenger’s Model, we are focused on cultivating racial justice though the proactive reinforcement of policies, practices, attitudes and actions that produce equitable power, access, opportunities, treatment, impacts and outcomes for Black and Brown leaders, empowering young people and strengthening our impacted communities to collective success,” the website says.
During a week in November, 18 Spokane professionals completed peer support training offered through the Washington Health Care Authority to become certified peer support counselors in the state.
“There’s lots of research that shows the importance of having someone that is from the same background or has the same life experience sharing their story,” Courtney said.
Mental health has become a national crisis. For varying reasons, acquiring support in the Black community presents obstacles, be it cost of care, disgrace, or an inability to find a therapist that fits. Courtney realizes the complicated history of mental health struggles in communities of color. She explains that even during enslavement, those who tried to escape were given a diagnosis of “drama mania” and would be medicated and stigmatized. Generationally, this residue of shame coupled with invalidation has developed into an acute issue within the Black community, with implications around epigenetics. A grass-roots approach to changing this in the Black collective experience equates to building awareness and support; that is what this peer support program intends to do.
“When we think about our barbers and beauticians and the Black community, they are our counselors, our mentors, our guides, our safe space,” she said.
She reflects on years in her youth when she went to the salon for service, watching her own stylist care for people, care that transcended the physical. There is a lot of time spent over years in the chair of a barber or a beautician and Courtney, though her own experiences, realized the leverage of effective training in the hands of those who are already in relationship with their own community. Witnessing how much of themselves they pour into their clients; Courtney speaks of healing the healer by providing a new bridge of service and an additional skillset for professionals.
“Sometimes they are giving out so much, you know, they’re not truly being compensated for what they’re actually doing,” she said. “And so, this program is going to also pay the barbers and beauticians to be peer supports in our community. This is really exciting because it’s going to really address some of the economic stuff that we’ve been concerned about in our barbers’ and beauticians’ space.”
Training involves content delivery and testing, with a letter from the state once scores are reviewed, qualifying participants as certified peer support counselors. The domino effect? Economic power, community power, and community healing, community working together on a larger scale, cultivating more healers in the community.
Courtney anticipates a forthcoming project and art exhibit in the near future to showcase this endeavor.