Novena-Chanel Davies

Repost from 💜

I’m really looking forward to facilitating this supportive and reflective session with the wonderful Black SEN Mamas community during Mental Health Awareness month ✨

Creating spaces where Black mothers, fathers, and children feel seen, heard, supported, and able to exhale deeply matters so much.

Please see the original post below for full details and registration information 💚. If you haven’t already, please follow their page, share, and get involved 💜

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Black SEN Mamas: Virtual Support Group Session ✨

We’re excited to be hosting a powerful and supportive session focused on Maternal Mental Health & Caregiver Burnout, for SEN Mamas, in alignment with Mental Health Awareness Week this month 💚

What You’ll Explore:

🔷 The emotional labour of being both a mother and primary caregiver
🔷 Navigating mental health stigma within Black communities
🔷 The importance of rest, boundaries and self-preservation
🔷 Practical tools to support your wellbeing and avoid burnout
🔷 Creating space for yourself without guilt

Led by a qualified psychotherapist (also a neurodivergent, Black SEN Mama herself) specialising in wellbeing, particularly as far as race and neurodivergence. This session is a safe, understanding space for Black SEN mamas to reflect and share, with culturally appropriate support.

Being a caregiver doesn’t mean neglecting yourself. You deserve care too 💞

We’re expecting high interest, so if you’d like to attend, make sure you register using the link in the bio.

Feel free to share with another Black SEN mama, who needs this reminder 💛

Recently, I had the privilege of delivering CPD workshops at Metanoia Institute, Epigenetic Relational Therapy Academy, and for the Fredrick Edwards Trust, exploring epigenetics, intergenerational trauma, and the implications for contemporary psychotherapy.

March and April have been powerful months for bringing deeper understanding to the transgenerational and intergenerational impacts of trauma within families, communities, social systems, and wider society.

In March, I published my book, A Framework for Understanding Intergenerational Trauma in Black and Brown Diaspora, shortly followed by CPD workshops for practitioners and a community lecture for families.

This work continues to sit at the heart of my research, writing, teaching, and ther**eutic practice.

The workshops brought together key themes from the book and my ongoing doctoral research, including attachment, trauma, relational patterns, identity, culture, policing, discrimination, and the ways inherited experiences can shape emotional, psychological, relational, and embodied responses across generations.

What felt especially powerful was creating space for practitioners and families to reflect not only on theory, but on how these ideas show up in therapy rooms, family living rooms, relationships, communities, and the wider systems we all live within.

I am deeply grateful to have been able to share this work in both professional and personal learning spaces, and even more encouraged by the growing conversations around intergenerational trauma, epigenetics, and relational healing.

This is exactly why I wrote the book, and why I continue developing ERA Therapy as a model that bridges research, clinical practice, anti-oppressive thinking, and lived experience.

More conversations, workshops, and training spaces are coming.

During Mental Health Awareness Month, I want to turn the lens towards men’s emotional worlds, especially Black men’s mental health, an area that is all too often overlooked or viewed through stigmas that overlook systemic issues & trauma that influence behaviour, silence, anger, avoidance or strength, by asking:

What happened to the boy before the man?

In my work on parental wounding, I explore how sons can be shaped by both the mother-son wound & the father-son wound.

It has been said that a mother is her son’s first love. Her words have the ability to reach into his heart, rip it apart & break him, or to anchor him to safety, confidence & belonging.

Through her voice, he learns how love sounds & what safety feels like. If a son must adapt who he is to maintain her love, his true self is never fully known, because all of who he is, is never truly met, held & embraced.

A father also carries profound significance. A father does not only teach a son self-regulation, assertion & care. He also offers a template for how masculinity can be held with steadiness, emotional range & responsibility.

A father can model how power & boundaries can exist without anger, dominance or cruelty, and how vulnerability & self-discipline can coexist with strength.

To a son, his father may become his first model of protection, safety & possibility, or a cautionary tale of pain, absence, fear & failure.

Then, layered on top of these early relational wounds, many Black boys grow within racialised expectations of strength, containment & restricted vulnerability.

This is where the Strong Black Man archetype can begin to form. He may learn to become warrior, protector, provider & emotionally restrained self.
He may learn that sadness, fear, tenderness & dependency are unsafe, while endurance, provision & self-control are praised.

For some Black men, even anger is not safe, because a raised voice may be misread as aggression, & their distress is all too often misread as instability.

These misconceptions & racialised trauma, in addition to relational wounding, epigenetic adaptations & intergenerational trauma, births the stigmatisation of seeking support.

We see you

Novena-Chanel, The Equilibrium Coach™️ Black Men’s Mental Health

Creating Generational Healing: The Shared Diary Method for Parents

Have you heard of Shared Private Diaries with children? It’s something we adopted within our family several years ago and the benefits have been life changing!

As children, it can be really hard to speak up to our parents about what’s going on. Goodness, even as adults it can be hard to talk to our parents!

Sometimes there are things we feel, questions we have, or experiences we don’t quite know how to put into words out loud, especially if we’re worried about getting into trouble, being misunderstood, or not being taken seriously.

One of the things I do with my children is keep a shared, protected diary. It’s a protected space between us where anything written in that diary stays in that diary unless they choose otherwise.

They can write their thoughts, draw pictures, tell me secrets, ask questions, share worries, say something funny, or even bring up something they haven’t felt able to say out loud, including how I or others may have disappointed them or missed an opportunity to understand them better.

The main rule is that they are not punished or penalised for anything they write, no matter what it is!

It creates a sense of safety, trust, and openness, and it gives them a way to communicate at their own pace, in their own words.

For me, it’s also about gently breaking patterns of silence that can exist across generations, where children feel they cannot ask certain questions or speak about certain things.

I know what it feels like to be a child who had things they needed to say, but didn’t feel able to, and I work with so many children and adults who share that sentiment. So in our family, we’re doing things differently.

Hearing my son say, “you make me feel so safe” meant more than I can put into words.

Sometimes the smallest practices create the deepest sense of safety.

This approach is something I also explore more deeply in my book, A Framework for Understanding Intergenerational Trauma in the Black and Brown Diaspora, available on Amazon.

What generational cycles are you currently breaking, and what ones are you ready to break today?

It might not have started with us, but it can start to end with us.

Video on YouTube at:

Novena-Chanel, The Equilibrium Coach™️ Creating Generational Healing: The Shared Diary Method for Parents

During the holidays, it really is okay to do nothing at all or everything that feels right for you.

Whatever today looks like for you, it counts.
This is your day.

Maybe today is about re-parenting yourself; moving slowly, watching festive films, making something comforting to eat, whether that’s toast and beans or a full spread that takes all afternoon. Maybe it’s group chats with friends, or a quiet walk to clear your head and fill your lungs. Maybe it’s music turned up too loud, dancing until you’re breathless and laughing, or comedy films on repeat because joy sometimes comes wrapped in silliness.

Maybe today is a recipe you’ve never tried, a face mask, a long shower, or doing absolutely nothing at all. All of it counts.

If you’re visiting family when it feels complicated, you’re allowed boundaries. You’re allowed to pre-face visits with, “I’ll need to leave after dinner,” or, “I may need to head off early, but I’ll make sure I say goodbye.”

You’re allowed to gently close conversations that feel heavy or intrusive, with closing statements such as, “Today is about joy for me, I don’t want to go there,”
or, “I’m keeping things light today.”

You don’t owe anyone explanations about your relationship status, your body, your children, your job, or where you think you should be in life.

If you’re sending messages today, a soft reminder; today isn’t joyful for everyone. Some are grieving, some are lonely, some feel disconnected, some feel full of warmth and love. Every emotion is welcome here.

As a therapist I can assure you that all the beautiful posts you’ll see today may also place a plaster over difficult family dynamics, past betrays, those who are absent, broken hearts and unspoken words. Some are just ok with silencing for a day, some can’t. Both can be held as what each chooses to do.

However today meets you, let it meet you with kindness.

You’re allowed to choose ease and yourself.

Sending you much love, big hugs, kind words, acknowledgement and permission to do what feels right for you ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Novena-Chanel