I want to highlight my long but important journey to being diagnosed with ADHD and how I am continuing to grow my flowers. The diagnosis was not the rain; instead, it was the sunlight needed to illuminate how and where I could grow. 

When he was diagnosed with prostate cancer late last year, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin joined the 280,000 Black men annually identified with the disease. It’s so common, studies show, that 1 in 6 Black men will develop it during their lifetime. 

Last Spring, the nation was alarmed to hear of another infectious disease that was rapidly spreading. On the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials, including the World Health Organization, declared Monkeypox, now called Mpox, a public health emergency of international concern.

A layoff, death in the family, a violent assault—in 1999, the hits just kept coming for Antoine Craigwell, then a young adult trying to make his way in New York City.

And so, one November day, he inched toward the edge of a Manhattan subway platform and prepared to take matters into his own hands: He would jump in front of the oncoming No. 1 train and end it all.He steeled his nerves—then he thought of his family, including his adopted mother, who’d buried his sister just months before. Craigwell backed off.

Despite an active childhood that included playing football and running track since fifth grade, Gerald Thomas was a bit spooked when he read his class schedule at the start of his freshman year at Elbert County Comprehensive High School in northeast Georgia.

“When I saw it said ‘weightlifting’ I went to my school counselor and asked her to change it because for some reason I was intimidated,” Thomas recalls. “She told me that for all athletes, weightlifting was our P.E.”

Thomas’s aversion to bench presses and squats soon dissipated as he became a stronger defensive end, a faster 400-meter runner, and experienced other benefits of regularly being in the gym.

“It helped me improve my performance, and it also made me look better,” says Thomas, who more than 30 years later remains an avid weightlifter, and whose 50-year-old physique resembles that of a college athlete. He briefly stopped working out after ending his collegiate track career, but within a month, Thomas noticed the activity he once dreaded had become an essential part of his being.

On a recent Sunday, on an unassuming corner in West Atlanta, an industrial-style gym transformed into a modern-day ashram. There, with the gritty rhymes of rap artists like Yella Beezy blaring in the background, dozens of Black and Brown people contorted their bodies into positions like high dragon, mermaid, and tree pose—reclaiming the ancient eastern art of yoga to find health and a little peace.

Countless people of color start their year with a handful of classic rituals—often a soul food meal, a vision board, and a lofty plan to get a snatched waist. The latter usually leads to a mad dash to the nearest gym—but across Atlanta, fitness professionals are encouraging people of color to add yoga to their list of ways to get summertime fine.

They’re offering “trap yoga”, Christian-themed classes, and even LGBTQ+ friendly practices as they try to woo a community that’s long viewed yoga as unwelcoming to all but the white health elite.

Like clockwork, the start of a new year is filled with resolutions, many of which are completely abandoned before the calendar enters the month of February. Without an internal assessment, a clear plan, and the necessary support to bring those plans to fruition, even the most hopeful among us often fail to meet personal goals set at the beginning of the year. But what if all you needed to thrive in 2022 was inside of you waiting to be unlocked? It’s not unimaginable that the keys might be hidden underneath two years of devastating loss, deteriorating mental health, and socio-economic challenges driven by the global pandemic. For many, January 1 marks the beginning of a clean slate—a do-over—another chance to get it right. But according to Fonda Clayton, an Atlanta-based holistic life coach, a clean slate is available for us to choose from every day.

For many, Christmas represents the promise of peace and goodwill, but behind the decorations and family traditions is a dark underpinning triggered by the holiday season. This sadness, often referred to as holiday depression, can be incredibly challenging for LGBTQ+ people who experience rejection from their given family based upon their sexual orientation or gender identity. So while most Americans are preparing to execute their holiday traditions, others are preparing to wage an internal war under the societal expectation of holiday cheer.

For Chancey Daniel, 31, a Marietta, GA native and doctoral student now residing in Montgomery, AL, the month of December is a painful reminder of the loss of his mother to multiple myeloma and his diagnosis of stage four throat and lung cancer the following year after her passing.

“It [depression] comes around November because Thanksgiving and Christmas are never the same,” Daniel says, referring to the season his mother fell gravely ill after battling cancer three times before ultimately succumbing to the disease in February 2017.

In case you haven’t noticed, fat bodies are having a moment.

It’s apparent in marketing strategies like Victoria’s Secret’s recent 180-degree turn toward size inclusivity; in the abundance of plus-sized TV and book characters reaching beyond stereotypical “fat friend” roles, and every time pop phenom Lizzo proudly struts her extra-large frame across the stage to wild applause.

The new era message is fat positivity, and to the casual observer at least, it appears there’s never been a more affirming time to be a big person.

Da'Shaun L. Harrison knows better. Large, Black, and queer, they exist at a precarious nexus of historically undervalued identities with complex social stigmas that reach far beyond what a few size-inclusive ad campaigns can address.

When Brandi Pinckney-Green learned that NAESM Founder Rudolph “Rudy” Carn needed help to bring his vision for a new Men’s Health and Wellness Center to fruition, her first instinct as a nurse practitioner was to ask how she could help. Despite juggling teaching duties as a nurse educator at Georgia State University and as a home health and hospice RN, the Savannah, GA native, who was born into a family of nurses, says she “saw an opportunity to be a part of something good” when she received the call nearly two years ago to bring her medical expertise to this unique healthcare facility.

Black gay relationship counselor and psychosexual therapist Machel Hunt tells The Reckoning that he is “on a mission to have every Black gay man in Atlanta in therapy.”