Creating Zola Mondays
Creating Zola Mondays is a recurring live‑series hosted by ABPsi — airing on the 1st and 3rd Monday of every month — designed to center Black voices in conversation, healing, wisdom, and community.
With this series, ABPsi curates a space much like a “Black table talk”: a forum where intergenerational Black healers, scholars, creators, and activists come together to engage in conscious, critical dialogue.
The conversations fuse African ancestral psychology with contemporary psychological science and lived experience — drawing on decades of resilience, survival, and spiritual heritage. The aim is to provide insights, understanding, and guidance toward a better future: healing trauma, reclaiming identity, and building community strength.
Through Creating Zola Mondays, ABPsi advances its broader mission: to promote psychological wellness, cultural affirmation, and social justice for Black individuals and communities — offering a reflective, empowering, and communal alternative in mental‑health discourse.
From Strange Fruit to Sacred Roots:
An Ancestral Conversation on Racial Trauma, Remembrance, & Repair
⚠️ CONTENT / TRIGGER WARNING: This conversation will address lynching, hanging deaths, racial violence, racial terror, suicide, and the historical and present-day racial trauma these experiences may evoke. Please honor what your mind, body, and spirit need as you engage. 🖤
When a Black person is found hanging, history enters the room with us.
Even when the circumstances or cause of a death remain unknown, contested, or are ultimately determined not to be racially motivated, the imagery of a Black body hanging carries a painful historical meaning within our collective consciousness. For many Black folx, it can evoke grief, fear, anger, vigilance, sorrow, and memories of the racial terror our ancestors endured.
We can seek the facts while also making space for the trauma.
Tomorrow at Monday,1:00 PM ET, we invite our community to join us for Creating Zola Mondays, where we will welcome Reverend Dr. Robert Turner for a sacred and necessary conversation about racial trauma, the historical legacy of lynching, spirituality, remembrance, healing, and collective care.
In the spirit of Sankofa, we look back not to remain in the pain, but to retrieve what we need to move forward. We remember that our ancestors were more than what was done to them. They loved. They prayed. They resisted. They created. They dreamed.
And we are still here.
Come into community with us. Bring your questions. Bring your grief. Bring your hope. Bring your whole self.
🌿 Creating Zola Mondays
🗓️ Tomorrow
⏰ 1:00 PM ET
🎙️ Special Guest: Reverend Dr. Robert Turner
May we remember together.
May we grieve together.
May we heal together.
May we continue together.
Asante sana. Sawubona. 🖤❤️💚
Kujichagulia (12/20/21)
Habari Gani Family? Make sure to catch up on Creating Zola Mondays Season 2 Episode 9 Kujichagulia: On Challenging Revisionist History and Performative Activism where we rooted the conversation in Black self-determination. In the midst of Kwanzaa, we have no plans of slowing down and are looking forward to further curating Black power in the year 2022.
Creating ZOLA Mondays: Episode 12 (2/1/2021) CZM | Celebrating & Elevating Black Joy (part 2)
JoJo Hickson, Dr. Linda James Myers, Dr. Harvey Linder, Robina Onwong'a, Evan Auguste, and Garrick Beauliere discuss the elements of Black joy and experiencing joy in contexts of harm and grief.
Creating ZOLA Mondays: Episode 22 (8/2/2021) COVID, Cultural Mistrust, and Mental Health
Dr. Garrick Beauliere, Dr. Suzanne Randolph Cunningham, Dr. Linda James Myers, Dr. Harvey Linder, and Dr. Joniesh Hickson discuss the results from the ABPsi COVID-19 Needs Assessment that Dr. Randolph Cunningham and her team gathered. #TheABPsi #CreatingZolaMondays #CZM #ZolaUP #UJIMA #FacebookLive
Creating Zola Mondays: The American Dream or Nightmare
Dr. JoJo Hickson, Dr. Linda James Myers, Dr. George-Harold Jennings, Dr. Robina Onwong'a, and Dr. Garrick Beauliere discuss the cultural shifts in the U.S. through the lens of astrology.
Creating ZOLA Mondays: Episode 19 (5/17/2021) Dark Light Consciousness (part 2)
Featuring Dr. Edward Bruce Bynum
Grief as Sacred transition an Afrikan spiritual perspective feat President Dr. Sharon L. Bethea
In this episode of Creating Zola Mondays, we explore grief not as an end, but as a sacred transition—an essential part of the Afrikan spiritual continuum. Featuring Dr. Sharon L. Bethea, President of The Association of Black Psychologists, Inc., this discussion delves into the ancestral, cultural, and communal ways Black people have navigated loss, honoring the wisdom that guides us through transformation and healing. Join us as we reclaim grief as a sacred, spiritual process rooted in Afrikan-centered traditions.