The Weight We Carry: Healing as a BIPOC Woman in 2025

Being Black or Indigenous in the United States in 2025 often feels like carrying an invisible weight, one woven from generations of pain, injustice, and erasure. The struggle isn’t always loud; it lives in the body, in the silence after being ignored, in the anxiety of navigating spaces not built with you in mind. The mental well-being of Black and brown people continues to be threatened by deep rooted hatred, systemic bias, and the generational trauma of enslavement, genocide, segregation, and ongoing discrimination. These aren’t just historical burdens, they are daily realities that shape how BIPOC women move through a country that continues to devalue their lives and labor.

This year, BIPOC Mental Health Awareness Month feels even more urgent. It isn’t just a time to raise awareness, it’s a lifeline. The term BIPOC, born from the 2020 racial justice uprisings, reminds us of the unique violence Black and Indigenous people have endured. If we lump all mental health challenges into one broad category, we erase the specific harms caused by racism, cultural erasure, and the generational PTSD that follows centuries of oppression. These distinctions matter because without them, BIPOC pain is misdiagnosed, minimized, or ignored altogether.

Under the current Trump administration, these realities have only deepened. Sweeping rollbacks to Medicaid threaten coverage for millions of low income Americans, disproportionately impacting BIPOC women who rely on this access for basic and maternal care. Attacks on DEI and civil rights protections have stripped away programs meant to protect and support marginalized people. Executive Order 14151 has dismantled federal DEI offices and scrubbed public records of images and stories that reflect BIPOC and queer existence. Affirmative action protections have been revoked. Women focused health research, especially around issues like pregnancy, postpartum mental health, and uterine fibroids, has been delayed or defunded. Indigenous sororities, Black women in civil service, and survivors of domestic violence have all seen the institutions they once depended on vanish or turn hostile. These systemic assaults don’t just create policy changes, they create trauma.

Despite these challenges, healing remains possible and necessary. It begins with culturally competent care that recognizes the unique stressors BIPOC women face. Seek out therapists of color, trauma informed clinicians, or grassroots wellness spaces that honor lived experience. Resources like Therapy for Black Girls, Indigenous Circle of Wellness, and the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network are vital lifelines. Community support is also essential—sisterhood, ancestral practices, spiritual spaces, and even protest itself can be grounding. Know your rights, Title VII protections remain in place, and partner with legal aid organizations or local advocacy groups when discrimination arises. And most of all, vote and stay politically engaged. The dismantling of public protections is a political act, and so is your resistance.

To be a BIPOC woman in 2025 is to stand in the crosshairs of erasure and endurance. Yet even under attack, we continue to rise, build, nurture, and fight. Healing is not a luxury, it is a revolutionary act. And through culturally grounded care, solidarity, and self love, we reclaim not just our mental health but our right to exist fully and freely.