The Importance of Self-Care, Mental Well-Being and ATTITUDE with Roicia Banks
Are you an entrepreneur struggling to prioritize your mental health? Join me and guest Roicia Banks as we dive deep into the topic of mental well-being for entrepreneurs. In this episode, we discuss the evolving nature of self-care practices and the importance of adapting them as you grow and change. Roicia shares her personal experiences and offers valuable advice on how to be gentle and kind to yourself, practice positive self-talk, and put yourself first. We also explore the significance of taking breaks and seeking support from accountability partners. If you're ready to prioritize your mental health and prevent burnout, this episode is a must-watch. Tune in now and start taking care of your well-being.
Go HERE for the Show Notes.
Right now, your assignment is YOU - and that includes your mental health.
As entrepreneurs, we often find ourselves putting our businesses and goals ahead of our own well-being. However, taking care of our mental health is crucial for long-term success and overall happiness.
During the Empowering Entrepreneurs: The Importance of Self-Care, Mental Well-Being and ATTITUDE episode of BOSS ™ Talk with guest Roicia Banks we discuss the various ways in which we can prioritize our mental health, prevent burnout, and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
But this conversation about mental health is just the beginning.
We’re actually giving away a FREE registration to ATTITUDE: A Mental Health Summit for African American Women to a BOSS™ Talk podcast listener!
For an opportunity to win this free registration, simply:
Here’s the Transcript:
00:00:02
Welcome to another episode of BOSS™ Talk. I am your host, La'Vista Jones, and today I am so excited to be joined by my guest, Roicia Banks. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
00:00:15
I'm so excited for you to be here. So those that are listening that you may not know much about her, let me share some things about Ms. Banks. She has served children and families within the states and the tribal government for over ten years as a social worker and community advocate. In an effort to make a bigger impact, she became a sole owner and the founder of Social Roots, LLC, which was established in August of 2018. Social Roots provides a wide range of social work services focusing on African American and Indigenous communities.
00:00:52
Social Roots, LLC began as an independent social work consulting business and in 2018 was solely providing home visitation and behavioral health recommendations to attorney clientele. Social Roots expanded its programming to creatively and culturally impact those who disproportionately experience trauma. And again, I am so excited for this interview to just really highlight, take the opportunity to highlight the important work that is being done by a young, and I emphasize a young woman that is truly taking this world by storm. So again, welcome to the show. And let me ask you, are you ready to share how you are walking out your BOSS™ Talk?
00:01:42
Thank you so much, and yes, I am. Let's get started. Let's do it. So I want you to just start by telling us a little bit more about the audience that you serve, right? Because I think that you have a unique audience, know the base that you have created here in Arizona.
00:02:01
Tell us exactly who it is that you serve. Absolutely. So as a social worker, I serve anyone who is in need, who is in need of help, but who has my heart for service is the African American and indigenous community because those are the two communities that I am a part of. I was raised on tribal land in my tribal community, and obviously I walk around as a black woman, so I have that experience as well. And so those are the two communities that I primarily serve and try to do my best work with.
00:02:38
Got it. And so I was reading through your bio, right? And you were talking and it talked about the attorney clientele. So is that like a gal for the youth that are in those cases? Absolutely.
00:02:53
So I was previously employed at a specific place and I just started developing networking and developing relationships with other attorneys and being at court and started to hear a lot of the conversations of the types of needs that they were needing. And so that's kind of where that started. Just doing contract social work for the gal or just your regular civil attorney cases, any type of insight that they needed for children or the family's best interest. I love that. I have a friend back home in Ohio that did a lot of gal work.
00:03:33
So when I read that, I was like, oh. I was like, that sounds like that's like what? That is so very needed and unfortunately needed, right? Because sometimes they are dealing with some really rough situations. And like your bio said, that demographic of those that are experiencing trauma, and unfortunately, that includes our babies that are out in this world.
00:03:58
So thank you for doing the work that you do. Now, with that, there is one thing that was not highlighted in your bio and I definitely need to shed light on that, and that is the annual conference that you host that is called ATTITUDE. So this is your fourth year hosting this event. So a round of applause for that in and of itself for holding space for women year after year with this conference. So, first of all, I love the name, and so I'd love for you to give us some insight to the origin story behind why you named this conference ATTITUDE.
00:04:35
Yes, absolutely. So it actually came to me while I was in New Orleans at a conference myself, okay? And this conference was called Power Rising. And so if you can imagine, literally hundreds of Black women from all walks of life, doctors, lawyers, oh my goodness, Kamala Harris was there. Like, literally anyone who's anyone who is a Black woman was in this space.
00:05:02
And it was a four-day conference. And so we were just having a great time, sharing space with each other. And being from Arizona, there's not a lot of moments where that happens. It was so powerful. And Sunday came around and they had a brunch and a word kind of with that, which is kind of where I got the framework and was inspired by.
00:05:27
So we were all dancing to Beyonce, having a great time. And I remember this vividly. I remember waking, like, looking around and seeing literally a sea of Black women just having the best time. Hundreds. And then the word started.
00:05:47
And I'm not joking, like five minutes later, I turn around and I look at the same crowd and she was talking about sexual abuse. And all of those same women who are just partying it up are literally sobbing. And in that moment, I was inspired because I was like, how are we the most educated? We've got the most businesses, we are climbing corporate ladders. How are we all of these things and we still don't have time or space to heal and be us?
00:06:20
And I was like, I want to provide a solution to what I'm witnessing right now. What could that be? What could it be? And by the time I got back home to Arizona, it came to me, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to do a mental health conference for Black women. What am I going to call it?
00:06:39
And I really wanted to be intentional with the words. And so I named it ATTITUDE, because as we know, Black women are seen and heard and all of these other things with our ATTITUDE. And so it's actually a play on words. And I wanted us to challenge our ATTITUDE about mental health and stigma and shame and challenge the things that we have been taught and learned, whether generationally or systematically. I wanted those things to be challenged.
00:07:11
The ATTITUDE of mental health, right? And so it's called ATTITUDE: A Mental Health Summit for African American Women. And this is the fourth year. That is so exciting. And so you do have a self care shop on your website, and so there are shirts that will be available soon.
00:07:27
They're sold out right now, but there's one in particular. It says, My ATTITUDE has deep roots. And I saw that shirt when I was going through and preparing for today's interview and I was like, I love that shirt. And so if you resonate with that story, that origin story, because I definitely do, when that shirt comes back onto the market, please go out to the self care shop and go get one. And we'll make sure to include the link to the self care shop in the notes so that they can go out and they can shop when it's available again.
00:08:04
So I know that you shared kind of a pivotal moment right at that conference where it's like, hey, one moment, everybody is up and kind of like jubilee, right, and dancing and having a great time. But then their conversation shifts to a trauma that far too many women, especially women who look like us, have had to deal with. I know, I have sexual assault history, right? It's far too common. Far too common.
00:08:32
And then looking around and seeing these women that were just having the time of their lives, like you also said, that are holding different offices and titles and out here running the world sobbing because they have this shared trauma amongst them. Tell us, really, was that it? What was the deciding factor that caused you to focus on mental health with this conference? Yeah, so that was the deciding moment. And because I'm a master social worker, in that moment, I said, what makes me different from them?
00:09:14
Why am I not sobbing? Why am I not losing it? So I am a survivor of sexual abuse. I'm a survivor of child sexual abuse. And like, all the things physical, emotional, I went I was in foster care until I was eight.
00:09:27
And so there are a lot of things that I personally experienced. And then I was like, well, how come? It's because when my Master of Social Work program, I was literally doing the healing and the unpacking. Then as I was learning, things were coming to me constantly about generational trauma and historical trauma and how that's impacted our communities. And so I was like, oh, well, that's it.
00:09:53
I was reading the tools, I was reading the answers. And they need the tools, they need the answers, they need the information. And so it was that deciding moment where I was like, I'm going to eliminate all of these factors and make it accessible. And so the other thing that I was also doing is being able to sit in the living rooms of grandmothers raising grandchildren and listen to the things that they were saying and that they were sharing about either behavioral health professionals or psychiatrists or people who just didn't understand the cultural things or they didn't trust them or they had bias. Right.
00:10:33
And so I was like, well, I'm going to eliminate all of that. And I'm only going to allow Black women who look like me, who are qualified, who have the education, who have the topics that need to be. Discussed to be able to disseminate this information in a way that's able that they can digest and that they can process, so that they can go. And as we know, Black women are the backbone of this society and our families especially. And so I knew that if I taught Black women, they would go back and teach their families.
00:11:06
They would go back and teach their communities. And so for me, that's what it was. It was an easy solution to say, hey, I'm going to provide a safe space for Black women and I'm going to have only Black women teaching Black women. I'm only going to have the women who can identify with them and ask those questions because they don't want to ask questions about medication. And oh, my son just got a diagnosis of ADHD.
00:11:33
What does that mean? They don't know my kid. They don't take time to learn my kid. And so it was really a place to we can let down our hair and unpack those things and say, yes, part of these things are true, but here are some alternatives, here are some resources that might meet your needs. It doesn't always have to be medication.
00:11:52
Sometimes it does have to be medication, but let's understand why. And so I just wanted to create a safe space for women to be educated, to make the best decisions that they can make for their families in a preventative matter. So I don't see them on the CPS or the DCS side of things. I can get that in the forefront by educating my community. I love that so much.
00:12:14
It's generational healing, right? Yes, absolutely. That is so great. And so let's talk about the specifics for the conference for a bit. So it's generally in January, right, the ones that you have had.
00:12:27
So this one is coming up January 6 through the 7th, 2024. So tell us where the listeners can go to actually register for ATTITUDE for next year. Yes, so exciting. So we are having it at the Parsons Leadership Center. You can go to socialrootsllc.org to get your tickets and RSVP for the event.
00:12:49
Now, I will say that every single year we sell out and I'm so excited about that. So please don't wait last minute. I always have this group of people standing by, please don't do that.
00:13:11
I'm sure we'll talk about this, but the price is a little higher from last year. But as we know, inflation and all of these other things. But in addition to that, each ticket, because I also have the Social Roots foundation, but each ticket purchase comes with a $50 donation into the Social Roots Foundation. And what that does is provide scholarships for Black women pursuing careers in mental or behavioral health. And so we really want to create an event that essentially it's a gift that keeps on giving.
00:13:43
And so please visit socialrootsllc.org to secure your ticket. Yes. And so I love that. The ticket to the conference itself also helps to feed the nonprofit, right? And it's kind of like a growing your own kind of cycle, right, of, hey, here are already trained professionals that look like you come to this space that is safe.
00:14:13
You can let your guard down. You can ask the questions that you need to ask. You can get the help that you need to get for you, for your family. And by doing so, by literally coming and helping yourself, you're also planting the seed for another woman that looks like you to be able to go to school so that she can help future generations to break some of these cycles, to help them with the things that are just there and prevalent and sometimes just standing in the way of our community. So I love that all of that is connected.
00:14:49
So please go out to the sites, get the tickets, and can someone like, if they're out of state or whatever and can't come to the conference, can they just donate to the nonprofit? Yes. And for that information, it is socialrootsfoundation.org awesome. Get the tickets LLC and then Social Roots foundation. And I will also add, if I may, that I intended this conference to be able to circulate the bag within our community.
00:15:18 </