Author and podcast host Natasha Smith tackles grief that is specific to Black women in her new book Black Woman Grief (InterVarsity Press, Feb. 2025). PW talked with her about providing ways for Black women to address their grief and how Scripture can be a source of healing.
Why is it important for Black women to have a safe space, such as this book, to acknowledge their grief and exhale in it?
Black women need safe spaces, as it can be challenging to discern which environments truly offer safety. Without a secure place to share our grief, we may isolate, bottle up, ignore, or dismiss our emotions, practices that can harm our overall well-being. In contrast, acknowledging pain, grief, and suffering is essential for healing and wholeness. And to do this, we need safe spaces that allow us to process openly and honestly.
How does our nation’s roots and our current cultural climate make Black women’s grief so profound?
Our nation’s roots run deep in oppression, beginning with slavery. While we don’t live in the past, those roots have shaped and are still intertwined with our current cultural climate, where oppression, racism, injustice, racial bias, healthcare disparities, and workplace inequality remain realities. These ongoing struggles contribute to making Black women’s grief especially profound.
How can we love grieving Black women well?
You can love grieving Black women well by sitting with us. By listening to understand. By listening rather than judging or advising. By mourning when we mourn. By offering empathy and compassion in times of loss. To simply come alongside us, just to sit with us.
How can Black women live a God-filled life amid such personal and cultural grief?
As Black women, we can live a God-filled life amid personal and cultural grief by inviting God into our pain and every part of our lives. By seeking God and trusting his Word, no matter how difficult our circumstances are. Not by minimizing or diminishing our pain but by acknowledging it and bringing it all to him, even our questions and complaints. We know there are no quick fixes, yet in God, there is always hope for a better tomorrow, for change. He equips us with his strength, his love, and his peace to withstand any trial. And with his help, we can live the God-breathed life he intended for us, beyond what we can think or imagine.
How is Black women’s grief different, and the same, from others who grieve?
For Black women, grief feels like a constant surge. Our deep community and connectedness mean that when one hurts, we all feel that pain. While grief itself is universal, the types of losses we grieve as Black women are not. In addition to personal losses, we grieve systemic injustices like racism, bias, prejudice, and limitation within the workplace and educational, judicial, and healthcare systems. Black women experience both the universal aspects of grief and a unique grief tied to these enduring challenges.
How does Scripture address such profound grief and help soothe it?
The Bible is threaded with stories of loss, grief, and the hope we find in Jesus amid life’s hardest places. In Black Woman Grief, I share Biblical examples that speak to the profound grief unique to Black women, where Scripture confirms that God sees us and we are not forgotten.
The book has been called “a love letter to Black women who grieve.” How do you see your book as a love letter?
I see my book as a love letter speaking directly to the heart of every Black woman. Black Woman Grief acknowledges the pain and suffering we experience while pointing us toward the hope we find in Jesus. Like a love letter, it opens space for conversations we often keep silent about and close to our hearts. Intimate and vulnerable, it fosters solidarity with Black women, reassuring them: “I’m with you, I’m for you, you are not alone.”
How can your book help those who are allies with and for Black women, as well as those who minister to them?
Black Woman Grief offers invaluable insights for allies and ministry leaders into the unique experiences of loss and grief faced by Black women. It calls others to come alongside us, to sit with us, to listen, and to learn. To rejoice when we rejoice, and to mourn when we mourn. By raising awareness of the many types and depth of our grief, this book equips practitioners, ministry leaders, and allies to better support Black women in faith and mental health contexts.
How does this book reframe the image of the “strong” Black woman?
Black Woman Grief invites Black women to embrace a softer life by letting God be the strong one. Yes, we are resilient, we are strong, often because we’ve felt we had to be. But we weren’t made to carry it all alone. Instead, we were created to lean on and rely fully on God. Black Woman Grief is an invitation to find strength and rest in Jesus.
How have your experiences as a grief advocate and Black woman impacted this book?
My experiences as a grief advocate, educator, and Black woman have deeply shaped this book, bringing lived experiences that resonate with every Black woman, whether for themselves or for a Black woman they know. These experiences allow me to come alongside other Black women and say, “I see you, I hear you, I am you.” We’re in this together, and God is with us and for us. And because of that, we have hope.
