Blog

By Dom Garrett-Scott, CFJ Director of Community Research and Evaluation

Trigger Warning: This piece contains discussions of mental health struggles, including depression and suicidal ideation, as well as detailed references to police violence, anti-Black state-sanctioned violence, and Black death. Please take care while reading, especially if these topics may be triggering for you. Reach out to your community or support networks if needed.

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote in 2020, during the heaviest, most suffocating parts of the pandemic. In those days, my mental health unraveled, thread by thread, until I felt like a whisper of myself. It took years to stitch myself back together, to feel like even a semblance of who I was, and to this day I am still trying to figure out what it means to be in this liminal space of getting back to myself and finding my new normal. As I revisit these words nearly four years later, I am swept up in a storm of emotions. Tears of joy dance down my face, as a testament to the ever-deepening love I hold for my sister-friends, the women who nursed me back to health when I couldn’t do it alone. To the women who were mirrors and reflections of the best parts of me when life got too dark for me to see myself. All these years later, they are still the wind beneath my wings, my life partners, and I pray we are blessed to grow old together. But beneath that joy, there is an ocean of sorrow—one that feels ancient and bottomless—as I confront the fact that so little has changed.

We are still here, still gasping for breath in a world that refuses to stop. Black people are still dying in front of me. The violence that haunted us in slavery persists in its afterlife – relentless, insidious. And it’s not just here, not just in our backyard, but in Palestine, Haiti, Tigray, Sudan, the Congo—everywhere, where people of color, people oppressed, people forgotten by governments and powers alike, are fighting to survive the onslaught of violence that seems never-ending.

Almost five years later, the pandemic rages on in so many ways—yet we are left without the social safety nets to catch us as we fall. The government has shown us, time and time again, that it will not save us. So we must turn to each other, as we always have. Community care, once a whisper, has now become the loudest call in my life. It’s not just a matter of support—it is survival. It is how we thrive in the face of a world that continues to turn a blind eye to our suffering.

On this World Mental Health Day, I offer this piece as a reminder that we cannot carry this weight alone. We shouldn’t have to. In a world that is relentless in its disregard for our lives, it is the hands of those who love us that lift us as we climb. It is through community that we are made whole again, through shared care that we resist the pull to disappear. I hope these words remind you of the strength that comes in asking for help, the power in refusing isolation, and the necessity of love—deep, unapologetic love—for yourself, for your people, and for our collective healing. May you continue to heal as I continue to heal. And may our healing be glorious. Asé.

Sista Circle: Covid and Community Care as Warfare by Dominique Garrett-Scott

I went to Mississippi looking for something. In hindsight, I recognize that it was healing. I did not know that at the time, cause I was just running. I had been stuck in a one bedroom apartment for days and days and days. And days. I was not well. The plague had wiped so many away. And the numbers kept (keep) going up. We never mourned together. A man had cracked open my chest, took all of my stuff, and walked away with my peace. My older brother was trapped in a cage hours away. My PhD program still demanded reading and writing and reviewing and researching and teaching and responding to emails and all of the graduate student things. 

Black people kept dying in front of me.

And it all happened without my permission. They didn’t care that I didn’t have nothing to give. Nobody gave me a minute to find my footing, to let me catch my breath or my balance. I needed the world to stop. But instead, everyday just got worse. 

I was not well.

I started to hate being awake. I was tired. The kind of tired that sticks to your ribs. Tired to my marrow. But, I could not sleep.  Cocktails of sleeping pills and cheap Franzia wine were my means of clumsily tripping into fitful slumber. But even in sleep, there was no rest. When Black folks say “no justice, no peace,” we are really telling hard truths about ourselves. It’s an act of trying to put the burden on our backs back on you. There was no peace for me. I could not find the comfort I so desperately wanted. My dreams were so vivid. Where, oh where, was the escape? 

Black people kept dying in front of me. 

I was not well.

I continued my unhealthy relationship with social media. I logged on to feel some semblance of human connection, only to be triggered by some grotesque image, video, or opinion. People debating about our access to life. Black men telling me, us, how repulsive we were to them. Videos and pictures of police with knees on necks and batons battering bodies. I would close the app and remark on the violence only to open it again and crawl back into the cycle. 

Black people kept dying in front of me. 

I was not well.

So, I packed a suitcase, filled my gas tank, and hopped on I-35 North to Jackson, Mississippi. I went back to this place to fill myself up. If you had told me three years ago that I would be coming here looking for healing, I would have thrown a belly laugh in your face. But home is complicated that way. In 2017, I ran from Mississippi. After years of activist and organizing work, the white terrorists with their cops and their courts ran me up out of there. They chewed me up, spit me out, and never thought twice about it. A past self vowed to never return. And yet, here I was, on I-35, trying to find my way back. I called my best friend, Jas, to tell her that I would be arriving around 11 PM. I showed up on her doorstep limping, barely upright, with a heart so heavy.

 I was not well.

I needed my community. Not the family forged through birth and blood, but the one I carved out on tables of bones and spades. My sista circle. I slept on that couch and let my community nurse me back to health. Pull me back from off the ledge. Lift me up from the dark place that I had waded into. I was hip deep in something so sad that even now I still don’t have a name for it. 

I wanted to be well.

That weekend, we rode around four deep in my little two door car screaming Big K.R.I.T. lyrics as we darted around potholes. I lay in a hammock in a backyard surrounded by wonder women. Healers in the thick of a plague. My medicine women. Soothsaying soul savers. My God, my God. I filled my time with belly laughs and lip gloss exchanges. Freestyle circles and styrofoam cups of Kiki (my homegirls’ name for tequila). Homemade meals and long drives through back roads thick with trees. I cooked breakfast – that’s how I say I love you – and swayed to Marvin Gaye. We talked about ancestors and alters and gods and revolution. We watched Real Housewives of Atlanta for hours and hours. They showed me how to work a professional camera. I shot my first photoshoot. 

I stayed on that couch for 2 months.

My friends saved me. 

From what, I don’t want to name it, because I don’t know what to call it. It’s not that I wanted to be dead, but being alive felt harder than it was supposed to be. I wanted to lay it in somebody else’s hands and let them have it for a while. I needed help with my healing. 

They helped me get well.

The dangerous imbrication of constant displays of anti-Black state sanctioned violence combined with a global pandemic handled by a grossly negligent government and the pervasive misogynoir in popular media sucked the light out of me. In A Burst of Light: And Other Essays Audre Lorde states that “caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” But what happens when our stores are too low to preserve ourselves? What do we do on the days when it is easier to wither away? How was I supposed to self care my way out of that place when I could not take care of myself? The social isolation made self preservation impossible. I had to ask for help. I had to get back to a place where I could take care of myself.

I write this piece as an ode to my sista circle. I am ever grateful for the abundance of love they pour into me. I thank them for their ever present recognition of my humanity and the stickiness that comes with it. I appreciate their grace and gentleness as they make magic hum from the mundane. Thank you my sisters, from the thickest parts of me. 

I hope that these words also serve as a call in to other Black women and femmes out there who need to ask for help. This The Super Black Woman stereotype violently excises our humanity. This ideal Black woman who, like Atlas, can hold the weight of the world on her shoulders. She is the primary caretaker, the breadwinner, the one who can endure beating after beating and still stack her back to simply take it. She is not you. She is not who we should strive to be. You should not do this alone. We are stronger together.

This is an excerpt from Dominique Garrett-Scott’s forthcoming chapter titled “Sista Circle: Covid and Community Care as Warfare,” which will be published in World Making in Nepantla: Feminist Ideals for Pandemic Times by University of Texas Press in 2025.

About the Author:

Dom Garrett-Scott is an award-winning writer, researcher, and storyteller, currently serving as the Director of Community Research and Evaluation at Californians for Justice (CFJ), where she leads critical youth participatory action research to amplify the voices and experiences of marginalized youth. As a proud Black feminist sociologist and native Texan, Dom’s work is driven by a profound commitment to exploring and elevating the interior lives of Black youth. Before transitioning to academic and research work, Dom was deeply involved in student, community, and labor organizing across the Deep South. These experiences continue to shape her perspective and approach to research, as she sees her role in the long Black Freedom Struggle as an educator, radicalizer, and truth-teller.

Working within the intellectual traditions of Ida B. Wells and Shennette Garrett-Scott, Dom bridges the gap between data and lived experience through research and storytelling, making data accessible and human. She believes that data should not only present facts but also carry the weight of Black people’s humanity and history, ensuring their voices are centered in every story she tells. Whether through social media, academic writing, or community-based projects, she works to ensure that the often-overlooked narratives of Black youth are centered, validated, and valued.