The Weekly Vol. XLIV (feat. Disclosure, Rapsody, SBTRKT, Jean Deaux, and more)

This playlist was inspired by #100HappyDays. Get your weekend started with this musical therapy specifically curated to make you happy AND dance. Don't forget to always make time for extraordinary music!

Here's last weekend's playlist: The Weekly Vol. XLIII (feat. Kodie Shane, Sunni Colon, Daniel Caesar, Lorine Chia, and more

Alex's latest for Very Smart Brothas: "Please Stop Inviting Everybody to the Damn Cookout"

That time Alex wrote a thing for Very Smart Brothas about wanting our easily impressed brethern to be more discerning with the damn cookout invites:

"Look, I know blackness is the gift that keeps on giving. I know how awesome we are, and can understand why sweet potato pie tops pumpkin pie, that we effortlessly create and inform pop culture, and why folks set aside their good sense and pride to get next to us or be like us. And I also know that in these anus-mouthed-gargoyle-electing times, the smallest acts of humanity—even the most fleeting abandonment of ain’t-shitness—can feel like a sign of kinship, a victory, a mark of someone deserving of trust.

I get the fatigue from contending with normalized terribleness and buffoonery and reading about and coexisting with people who vote for professional life ruiners. Truly, I do.

But stop inviting everybody to the motherfucking cookout. Love yourself and respect your blackness a little bit more. For the kids, the community and the perseverance of the already limited supply of ribs. As I told Tonja Stidhum (one of the writingest wimmenz I know), I’ll be damned if I miss out on the macaroni and cheese because you niggas are out here inviting everybody who smiles at you and hugging Nazis at the cookout. Go-go gadget: higher standards."

Read the rest over at Very Smart Brothas.

Mental Health Monday #33: Coping skills from Jaden Smith's 'Neo Yokio,' Black women & eating disorders, Indigenous queer mental health, etc.

Kaz from Jaden Smith's Netflix series Neo Yokio 

THIS WEEK'S GOODNESS:

YouTuber JustLatasha had a great chat with the brothers from The Black Boy Joy Show about Masculinity, Mental Health, and the woes of being Black and wonderful in this hateful society.

If you're in or near St. Petersburg, Florida, Dr. Carlean East, Clinical Psychotherapist, Licensed Mental Health Counselor and professor of psychology is hosting a very necessary event intended to help church leaders and members with approaching mental health issues among those in the congregation, "I Need More Than Prayers" -Mental Health In The Church. For more info, go here.

"Depression Steals Your Soul and Then It Takes Your Friends" by Patrick Malborough [VICE]

A depressive hibernation is not so much a purposeful exile, as a slow-paced locking of doors. When your mind feels groggy and your day is a looping cycle of inaction and despairing thoughts, it can be hard to work up the strength to go to a friend's gig, grab a coffee, or reply to a text. In my own experience, the disease does so much to convince you of your awfulness, that you start viewing your absence from friends and events as a deformed favor.

"4 Self-Care Resources for Days When the World is Terrible" by Miriam Zoila Pérez [Colorlines]

The onslaught of news about violence against people of color seems to be endless these days. In the midst of all of this we remember the words of writer and activist Audre Lorde, who famously said that self-care is both an act of self-preservation and political warfare.

"4 Surprising Mental Health Hacks You Can Learn from Netflix’s ‘Neo Yokio’" by Sophie Atkinson [High Snobiety]

While Kaz is as devoted to the internet as you’d expect for a character voiced by wunderkind Jaden Smith, his character’s obsessiveness about it all suggests how harmful tech can be when we’re in a fragile place. So, without further ado, here are the mental health hacks to learn from Neo Yokio.

BEAM's Healing & Accountability Wheel

Yolo Akili's BEAM (Black Emotional and Mental Wellness Collective) has created a guide for "how to build loving relationships." Download this and other resources here.

"What Black Women Need to Know About Eating Disorders" by Carolyn C. Ross M.D., M.P.H. [Psychology Today]

Although Armstrong’s experience is consistent with research in that binge-eating or emotional overeating is often used as a way to cope with difficult emotions triggered by past trauma, like childhood mistreatment, the medical field rarely assumes that eating disorders are a problem for black women. 

"Black Rainbow: Mental health and the Indigenous queer community" by Leigh Hill [Out in Perth]

“Black Rainbow operates as a platform to highlight and positively reinforce to the Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Community who identify as LGBTI, that is it OK to be who they are and that they do have a place in the broader community. Where we stemmed from really was that there was a lack of visibility in the LGBTI space and in general for the Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Community Queer population.”

Our latest episode, "KweliTV and Chill (feat. Deshuna Spencer from Kweli TV)"

If you have a mental health resource, event, or piece of content we should know about, step into our office. You da bess.