• Artist is Cuban and Bahamanian

• This image was featured on the website Dear Darskinned Girl under an article titled “Let’s Talk About The Stigma Around Mental Health for Women in the Black Community”

• Originally posted on Noriega’s Instagram, wanted it to be a reminder that “Growth, healing, and evolution is no longer optional for [her].”
Imagery

• Turquoise (and light turquoise) - represents calm (and feminine appeal)

• Orange - a symbol of energy, balance, enthusiasm 

• Red - representative of excitement, passion, and love

• Brown - Stability, endurance and comfort 

• Black woman so viewers can “see” themselves in the imagery

• Yellow "sun" represents power positivity clarity and optimism, sun on the horizon representative of new beginnings

• Black female psychologist: representative of how the mental healthcare system can look (rather than how it actually looks)

• Black man seeking mental health care which is a rarity

“Weathering the Storm” attempts to show how American slavery has shaped the relationship that Black people experience with mental health. The creation of Drapetomania as an affliction that only enslaved Blacks could have because of their “irritational” desire for freedom eventually leads to the misdiagnosis of Black men with schizoaffective disorders because of their desire for civil liberties. This constant fight for simple rights and freedoms leading from slavery and even currently affects Black posterity, and although Black children born after the Civil Rights Movement never experienced racism in the same way as their parents or grandparents, they carry the trauma of the racism. Because of the treatment of Black people in society, mental health has become a stigma within the community making it a rarity for them to seek mental health treatment and care. The effects of slavery and systemic racism from the points of enslavement to the present day play a large role in the ways mental health has been addressed and viewed in the Black community, but as time progresses the stigma is becoming smaller, and more Black people begin to seek mental healthcare.