The Urgent Need For A Wellness Industry Designed For & By Black Women

by Kathleen Newman-Bremang for Refinery29

Over the past few weeks, as I’ve been scrolling past both harrowing stories of Black death and uplifting images of resistance on Instagram, every now and then I’ll stumble upon a message urging Black people — women especially — to take care of ourselves. Poet and activist Audre Lorde’s famous quote stares back at me often: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." This is a radical feminist statement for Black women. But Lorde’s words have been turned into a catchall phrase used by wealthy white wellness influencers.

Kim Knight and Shanelle Mckenzie by Roya Delsol

Over the past few weeks, as I’ve been scrolling past both harrowing stories of Black death and uplifting images of resistance on Instagram, every now and then I’ll stumble upon a message urging Black people — women especially — to take care of ourselves. Poet and activist Audre Lorde’s famous quote stares back at me often: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." This is a radical feminist statement for Black women. But Lorde’s words have been turned into a catchall phrase used by wealthy white wellness influencers.

The mainstream wellness industry as a whole is dominated by these same white faces. This co-opting of the self-care business is why two Black women, Montreal-based Kim Knight and Torontonian Shanelle McKenzie, decided in 2017 to start The Villij, an inclusive wellness community for women of colour. Out of their respective cities, they run everything from yoga classes to meditation sessions to inspirational talks, all offered on a sliding fee scale so clients pay what they can. The reality that many Black women are feeling at the moment — barely sleeping and eating; our mental health taking a backseat to fighting the pandemic of anti-Black racism — is why Knight and McKenzie have kept The Villij going virtually.

Here, Knight and McKenzie talk about why practising self-care with other Black women is so important, how the mainstream wellness industry got so white, and how they really feel about white people checking in on their mental health.

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