Closing Black History Month with an Exhale

As Black History Month comes to a close, I’ve been thinking about the women who came before us.

Our mothers. Grandmothers. Great-grandmothers. Great aunties. Godmothers.

The ones who did not have language for stress. Who did not have language for anxiety. Who did not have language for burnout or grief. The ones who were praised for how much they could carry.

They carried families. They carried communities. They carried movements. They carried silence.

And because they carried it, we are here.

Black History Month often invites us to look backward. To honor names, milestones, victories, and resistance.

I’ve engaged in that invitation, as many of us have. And I’ve also been asking myself: What does it mean to honor them now?

I don’t believe we honor our ancestors only by surviving what they survived. Survival was necessary. It was and is sacred. But it was never meant to be the ceiling of our inheritance.

I believe we honor them by healing.

By naming what hurts. By regulating our nervous systems. By choosing rest without apology. By putting language to what lived in their bodies but was never spoken.

There were generations of Black women who did not get to pause long enough to catch their breath and ask, “How am I, really?” They paved a way so we can pause and ask. That is continuation. That is legacy.

At Exhale, this is the work we are committed to — not just during Black History Month, but every day. Creating culturally grounded mental health support for Black women is not trendy work. It is lineage work.

It is building spaces where our breath can deepen. Where our stories are centered. Where we don’t have to translate ourselves to be understood.

When we breathe deeply, we are not being indulgent.

We are recalibrating systems that taught our bodies to brace. We are shifting what gets inherited. We are healing forward.

And here is the truth: this work only continues if we build it together.

If Exhale has supported you — through a meditation, a breathwork practice, a moment of pause — I invite you to consider sustaining this space.

Subscribe. Share it. Gift it. Not as a transaction. As stewardship.

Because when one of us heals, it ripples. And when enough of us heal, it transforms what is possible for the next generation.

Black History is not ending this month. It is living through us. And we get to decide what we carry forward.

Take a breath with me. Inhale. Exhale.

With you always,
Katara