29/08/2026
Sometimes a sista doesn't need another system. She needs a sista.
Recently, one of our women was travelling alone to attend a funeral.
She was hurting. Really hurting.
Before leaving our group chat, she said something that concerned me deeply:
“Just let me go be with my brothers. This is too much hurt.”
She was travelling hours away from me, but I knew someone who was only about 45 minutes from where she was heading.
So I reached out.
“One of our sistas is coming into town. She's travelling alone to a funeral and she's hurting. Can someone meet her at the train station? Give her a hug. Remind her she isn't alone. Maybe grab a coffee and just sit with her for a while.”
The professional response I received was :
Call an ambulance.
And it made me think deeply about the space BBM is creating.
Because our people have had a lifetime of systems responding to our pain.
Police. Ambulances. Hospitals. Psych wards. Courts. Prisons.
And yes — when somebody is in immediate danger, emergency intervention has its place.
But lived experience has taught many of us something else too.
Sometimes you hear something in a sista's voice and your first thought isn't:
“Which service do I call?”
It's:
“Who's near her?”
“Who's meeting that train?”
“Who's going to sit beside her?”
“Who's going to remind her that she matters?”
That's lived-experience leadership.
It isn't clinical intervention.
It doesn't pretend to replace professional care.
It's relational care.
It's knowing that sometimes before the referral, before the assessment, before another system becomes involved, there can be a human being saying:
“I'm here, sis. You're not doing this alone.”
There is an emotional intelligence that comes from having walked through darkness yourself.
You recognise the language beneath the language.
You understand isolation.
You understand grief.
You understand what it feels like when another intervention feels like the very last thing you need.
And you understand the power of belonging.
Academic knowledge is valuable. Clinical knowledge is valuable.
But interpersonal connection between women with lived experience is its own form of language and knowledge.
You can't learn sisterhood from a textbook.
At Bars Behind Me, that's the space we're creating.
Not instead of professional services.
Alongside them.
A cultural and relational safety net where our women know that when life becomes unbearably heavy, somebody will notice.
Somebody will care.
And sometimes the response will be beautifully simple:
“Where are you, sis? We're coming.”
Bars Behind Me — Culture First. From Prison to Purpose.
