The conversation surrounding mental health in the black community has become more open. More people are learning that in order to heal, you have to speak up and use the resources around you. One of those resources is forgiveness. Mental health issues are often stigmatized within the Black community, leading to feelings of shame, isolation, and reluctance to seek help. In most black households, therapy is a word not often used outside of the word church. Open conversations can help challenge these negative stereotypes and encourage individuals to seek support without fear of judgment. For Shenelle Jackson, her journey started with dreams of wanting to be behind the chair as a cosmetologist and quickly changed by the suggestion of one person. That change shifted the purpose of her life and led her on a journey of helping people become the best version of who they are. Even through her own childhood traumas, Jackson finds great comfort in her position.

Being a therapist places people in the seat of entering into the lives of others to be a guide and help them to navigate life’s struggles. Jackson has taken her seat and in an exclusive interview, takes you on a ride to how she became an expert in healing others.

Jazmyne Courtnii Byrd: How did you get into the mental health industry?  What led you down that path?

Shenelle Jackson: Well, I always wanted to be a hairstylist. But I also realized that I also had the gift of talking to people and helping them work through their problems and challenges of life. Before I went off to college, my mom was just like, you should consider social work? So, when I got to college, I decided to take her advice and go into social work. As I began to dive into the major, I began to like to understand the different layers of social work and how it positively affects people. Most people think it’s just child and family services, but social work is a whole world and therapy is a major part of it. Understanding mental health and how to help people get through is the core.

JB: When you’re going through careers like this, you often experience like your own situations and you have to learn how to navigate and, almost be a therapist to yourself.  How has that been for you on your own journey?

SJ: It has been hard, because nobody tells you when you’re in college that there’s going be a chance that you’re going meet yourself. This means that you’re going meet different stages of your major, you’re going to meet some clients that resemble some of the things that you went through. My first job was actually dealing with victim services in a facility is located in Washington DC. And I really had to gain an understanding of what the struggles were that my own mom had, through this particular woman and my work with her. The stage when I was in an orphanage, the stage when I had entered the foster care system as a child and then being removed to go back to my mom. There are some people who had to go through the worst things that I could ever even imagine and being able to work through them and then also work through myself and really understand where I am and how I am in regards to my past. Acknowledging that I need to get some help too because some of these things that I’m feeling is not healthy, it’s not healthy for me to be holding this on.

JB: Did you give yourself any level of grace?

SJ: Oh Yeah. All through it. I had to tell myself about those things that I went through and be honest with myself. Sometimes the child in you comes back into the picture, that child that she once was that hurt that went through that stuff. They come back to that picture and sometimes I had to talk to myself, I had to talk to her and be like, yeah, what we went through was messed up. This is not our mother though. This is not our mother, and we have to forgive our mother. And you know that forgiveness came later on when an honest conversation with my mother. I could only have that conversation with her and really be understanding to things that I didn’t know before and being able to heal from that and give my give myself consistent grace.

JB: How often does the word forgiveness come up?

SJ: it comes up a lot, in fact for my clients it’s almost like I’m taking a knife and stabbing them with it when I talk about it. It’s something that in our community is not talked about much. There are a lot of things that adults have to forgive their parents for, experiences that they went through, and things that they did not understand. As a therapist, you can’t be afraid to go into deep spaces and talk about things that bring healing to your client. Forgiveness is a two-way street, you have to know what forgiveness is, what it feels like, and how it feels to go about that, you must understand that sometimes forgiveness can be given even though the door, even though hurt is still there as you work and you cope through the challenges that you’re facing. So yeah, forgiveness is something that comes up a whole lot.