Mental Wellness Toolkit
Breathing techniques
Journaling Prompts
Take a moment to slow down, check in with yourself, and put into words whatever feels present for you today.
For the Girl Who Is Figuring Herself Out
A space to think about who you are, what makes you different, what you’re still learning about yourself, and how you want to move through the world. These prompts invite you to explore your identity without needing to have everything figured out.
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What is something about you that people tend to misunderstand?
Which parts of your personality feel easiest to show at school? Which parts come out more around people you trust?
What is something you like about yourself that you don't talk about very often?
What is something about yourself that feels different, new, or unclear to you right now?
Think about the last time someone made an assumption about you. What did they get wrong?
What is something about growing up in today’s world that you wish the adults in your life could see from your perspective?
When do you feel most comfortable being weird, loud, quiet, silly, serious, or completely yourself?
What is something you want to try without worrying about whether you'll be good at it?
What parts of yourself feel like they are growing or changing right now?
If nobody could rate, comment on, compare, or judge your choices for one day, what would you do differently?
For the Things You Don’t Have Words For Yet
Not everything is easy to explain, especially when you’re still figuring out how you feel. These prompts give you space to explore the thoughts, feelings, questions, and experiences that may be difficult to put into words right now. You don’t need to have the right answer—or even know exactly what you’re feeling—to begin.
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Is there something you've been feeling lately that you can't quite explain? What do you notice about it?
What is something you wish you could explain to someone, but you don't know where to start?
Have you ever felt like something was bothering you before you knew what it was? What was happening around you at the time?
What is something you’ve been thinking about a lot lately? Why do you think it keeps coming back to you?
Is there something you wish you could say to someone but haven't? What makes it hard to say?
What is something that has changed for you recently—at school, at home, with friends, or within yourself? How does the change feel?
Think about a moment when you knew something didn't feel right, even if you couldn't explain why. What did you notice?
What is something you wish someone would ask you about?
Is there a feeling you keep pushing aside, avoiding, or telling yourself isn't a big deal? What might happen if you gave yourself permission to pay attention to it?
If you could write a letter about something you're going through without anyone knowing it was yours, what would you want to say?
What is something you wish people understood about you without you having to explain it?
Finish this sentence: “I don't know exactly how to say this, but…”
The People in Your Life
The people around us can shape how we see ourselves, what we believe we deserve, and how comfortable we feel being ourselves. These prompts invite you to think about friendship, belonging, boundaries, conflict, and the relationships that make you feel more like yourself.
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Who are the people you feel most like yourself around? What is it about those relationships that makes that possible?
What makes someone a good friend to you?
How do you know when someone actually respects you?
Have you ever stayed in a friendship because you were afraid of what would happen if you left? What kept you there?
What is something you wish you could say to a friend but haven't?
Think about a time you felt left out, misunderstood, or like you had to change yourself to fit in. What did you learn from that experience?
What are you not willing to compromise on within your friendships/relationships?
How do you usually respond when someone you care about hurts your feelings?
What does an apology need to sound like—or look like—for you to believe it?
Have you ever confused being wanted with being valued? What is the difference?
What do you want the people closest to you to know about how you like to be supported?
What would a friendship feel like if you never had to compete for your place in it?
Making Room for a Life That Feels Like Yours
Growing up comes with a lot of expectations about what life should look like. These prompts create space to think about choice, possibility, joy, and what it means to have a say in the life you’re creating.
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What parts of your life feel chosen by you? What parts feel chosen for you?
Where do you feel like you have a say in what happens next?
How much say do you feel like you have in the choices that shape your life? Where would you like your voice to be heard more?
What is something you want more of in your everyday life?
What is something you are doing because you genuinely want to—and not because someone expects it from you?
What does a good day look like when nobody else gets to define what "good" means?
What is one choice you would make differently if you weren't worried about disappointing someone?
What does having more freedom mean to you at this stage of your life?
What is something you hope never becomes "too childish" for you to enjoy?
What would you like your home, friendships, school, work, or community to make possible for you?
What is one thing you want to make more room for?
Beyond “When I Was Your Age”
The world a young person is growing up in may look very different from the one you knew at her age. These prompts invite parents, caregivers, and trusted adults to reflect on their own experiences while making room for hers—to listen with curiosity, question their assumptions, and get to know who she is rather than who they expect her to be.
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What do you remember needing at her age that you didn't always know how to ask for?
What parts of her personality do you recognize from yourself? What parts feel completely different from you?
When she is struggling, what is your first instinct: fix it, question it, give advice, give space, or something else? What might she need instead?
What might she be experiencing that she does not yet have the words to explain?
When was the last time you asked her what she needed without deciding beforehand what the answer should be?
What messages about Black girls, success, respectability, or strength did you receive growing up? Which ones do you want to pass on, and which ones do you want to interrupt?
How can you integrate your own bias?
What does "being a good parent or caregiver" mean to you? Where did that definition come from? How does it shape the way you listen?
What is one thing you could learn about her world instead of expecting her to learn about yours?
How do you want her to remember feeling around you during these years?
When she tells you something about her life, how do you want her to feel after talking to you?
What would it look like to let her tell you who she is instead of getting ahead of her by telling her who you think she is or should be?
Self-care Checklists
Practical checklists for the moments when you need to pause, reset, work through what you’re feeling, or give yourself a little more room to breathe.
Book Recommendations
Mental Health & Emotional Wellness
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By Rheeda Walker, PhD
A culturally grounded guide to understanding Black mental health, including the effects of racism, stigma, stress, and barriers to care. Walker offers practical tools for protecting emotional well-being while navigating systems that don't always understand or affirm Black experiences.
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By Angela Neal-Barnett, PhD
A guide specifically for Black women navigating anxiety, panic, and fear. The book combines psychological research with practical strategies for understanding anxiety and developing healthier ways to respond to it.
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By Joy Harden Bradford, PhD
An exploration of how connection, friendship, community, and sisterhood can support healing. It offers a reminder that mental wellness doesn't have to be an individual journey.
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By Rheeda Walker, PhD
A practical companion for readers who want exercises and reflection tools for understanding mental health, navigating racial stress, challenging stigma, and developing strategies for emotional wellness.
Healing, Trauma & the Body
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By Resmaa Menakem
A body-centered exploration of racialized trauma and how the effects of racism can become embedded in our bodies and nervous systems. The book offers practices for beginning to work with these patterns individually and collectively.
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By Natalie Y. Gutiérrez, LMFT
Written for people of color living with complex trauma, this book explores how chronic stress, cultural experiences, and relational wounds can shape the way we move through the world. It combines education with practical strategies for healing.
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By Sonya Renee Taylor
A powerful invitation to examine the shame and judgment we carry about our bodies. Taylor challenges readers to practice radical self-love while confronting systems such as fatphobia, racism, sexism, ableism, and other forms of oppression.
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By Alexandra Elle
A reflective guide to healing that centers self-awareness, boundaries, vulnerability, and intentional reflection. Through personal stories and prompts, Elle encourages readers to develop a more compassionate relationship with themselves.
Rest, Joy & Pleasure
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By Tricia Hersey
A manifesto challenging the idea that our worth is tied to productivity. Hersey reframes rest as a practice of liberation and a way to reclaim our bodies, time, and humanity from grind culture.
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By Adrienne Maree brown
A guide specifically for Black women navigating anxiety, panic, and fear. The book combines psychological research with practical strategies for understanding anxiety and developing healthier ways to respond to it.
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By Cole Arthur Riley
A collection of meditations that brings together spirituality, Blackness, grief, liberation, tenderness, and hope. The book offers short reflections that can be read slowly and returned to as grounding practices.
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By Morgan Harper Nichols
A collection of poetry, artwork, and reflections about becoming, belonging, grief, hope, and the slow process of growing into yourself. A gentle read for anyone who needs permission to move at their own pace.
Boundaries, Relationships & Love
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By Nedra Glover Tawwab
A practical guide to understanding what healthy boundaries look like and communicating your needs without guilt. Tawwab explores boundaries across family, friendships, romantic relationships, work, and everyday life.
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By Bell Hooks
A foundational exploration of love as a practice rather than simply a feeling. hooks examines how love intersects with family, community, spirituality, justice, and our capacity to care for ourselves and one another.
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By Bell Hooks
A meditation on women's relationships with love, intimacy, self-worth, and patriarchy. hooks asks what it means for women to develop a relationship with love that does not require self-abandonment.
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By Tarana Burke & Brené Brown, eds.
An anthology of essays from Black writers exploring vulnerability, shame, resilience, belonging, and the pressure to appear strong. It offers a multidimensional look at what it means to be vulnerable without losing one's sense of self.
Identity, Self-Worth & Becoming
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By Elaine Welteroth
A memoir and reflection on identity, ambition, self-worth, and taking up space. Welteroth explores what it means to define success on your own terms rather than allowing other people's expectations to determine your value.
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By Sahaj Kaur Kohli
A guide to navigating cultural expectations, family dynamics, identity, and the tension between who we are and who we've been taught to be. Particularly useful for readers working toward greater self-definition.
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By Sonya Renee Taylor
For readers working on body image and self-worth, this is a powerful invitation to move away from shame and toward a more expansive relationship with one's body.
Wellness, Work & Our Relationship With Money
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By Rashad Bilal & Troy Millings
A practical introduction to financial literacy and wealth-building that focuses on helping readers understand money, investing, and generational wealth. It can be a useful addition to a holistic wellness library because financial well-being is deeply connected to stability and quality of life.
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By Christine Platt
A culturally conscious approach to simplifying your life and reconsidering your relationship with consumption, possessions, and abundance. Rather than simply prescribing minimalism, Platt examines what it can look like through a Black cultural lens.
