The Black body was created to be loved.

Collective generational trauma demands collective healing.

Black Exhale is committed to empowering and resourcing our communities with tools to create healing spaces. We honor the wounds and wisdom of our ancestors while imagining a future where we are collectively free.

Est. 2020

The Black Exhale Nest

Photo by Micah Brown

“All societies need collective healing spaces where emotions and experiences can be witnessed, and creative inspiration for the future can emerge.”

-Point of Relation Podcast

AS FEATURED IN

A reparative ecosystem.

We acknowledge that historical trauma has affected our lives and communities. We confront racism as a liberatory practice. We are survivor-centered and diasporic. We believe that by healing ourselves, we can start to intraracially heal the space between us and expand from there.

Antoinette Cooper

is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator, and organizer dedicated to healing collective trauma through the arts, ancestral wisdom, and embodied practices. Born in Jamaica and raised in NYC public housing, Antoinette is a survivor who knows violence by its first name. As the founder of Black Exhale, she creates sanctuary for the liberated Black body.

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Photography by Theik Smith

Resources

Once on a bus there was a person I sat next to that was talking to themselves. It seemed like they wanted a listener but were so used to not being listened to, so I showed interest in them. They continued talking. I do not remember their stories, but
Years ago I traveled to Ghana in search of our stories. I grew tired of working in a school district where Black children kept being sent to the Principal’s office with a story on their back that did not speak to their possibility. Then I&rsqu
When I visited my grandmother late last year the smell in her apartment nearly knocked me out. The kitchen sink was backed up for weeks and Housing Authority had yet to come in and fix it. My grandmother just kept on about her business though so I di
One of Delia’s favorite memory is me asking her, “Why are you being so nice to me?” Her response, “Because you are me. I know what it is to be a young Black woman in the world who does not know love. I know what it’s li
This is the post where I share about my momma. My mother used to be a trigger for me because there was violence—as her daughter I would bleed before I menstruated. Not every mother knows how to nurture. Not every mother has been nurtured. I ha
“You don’t even know who you are.” Those were the words that kept echoing inside of me during my first Ayahuasca ceremony, and in a tone filled with Black girl attitude too—“You don’t even know who you are.”
I was a child the first time I saw a ghost, a spirit, a being without a body. There was nothing scary about it so there was nothing to tell. Plus, I figured everyone had glow in the dark friends that visited their rooms and would climb out the window
By the time I was getting prepped for my 2017 surgery I had only told a handful of people that I was not well. Truth be told, I was ashamed of my body and her mortality, how death seemed to mock me even though I had one of those fit bodies. Was in s