Aja Barrett’s struggle to find a doctor who took her health concerns seriously propelled her to seek her own solutions.

Barrett began hosting alternative healing and wellness spaces for Black women to cope with the troubling experiences of finding the support and quality care they needed. 

She recently pitched her idea, Jubilee Wellness Retreats, at Accelerate: Citizens Make Change, a Cleveland Leadership Center competition that offers residents a chance to win money to launch their unique idea to improve their community.

The wellness events, she hopes, will be the seed for a larger vision, Jubilee House of Healing Wisdom, which will be a resource center and space for women to find community and heal among each other. She hopes to hold her first retreat this summer. 

Barrett shared her story with Signal Cleveland. Her words have been edited slightly for brevity.

‘I needed someone to understand’

I knew I had a serious diagnosis. And I knew I needed help. Yet I would go through the same situation over and over again.  

I would establish a relationship with a doctor during a basic check-up. Afterward, I would be asked to fill out the paperwork just to be considered for services. It would take weeks, sometimes months to get another appointment. 

Then, when I finally got one, I would be asked awkward questions about my health insurance status and if I was able to pay for treatment. Then, after months of not hearing back from anyone, I would be told the doctor is booked up, or [I was on] a waitlist, and I’d be on my search again. 

I had to start this process over three times in less than a year. It had worn me out. I just needed someone to listen to me. I just needed someone to not dismiss my concerns or my pain. I needed someone to understand how I was feeling and how this experience was affecting me as a Black woman. 

The number of discriminatory experiences in medical establishments I experienced in Cleveland kept piling up. It made me not want to go to the hospitals anymore. I was frustrated. I was angry. 

Then, one day, I said, “You know what, I’m going to try to just heal this myself.” 

‘My first act of service’

I grew up in a single-parent home with three siblings in Cleveland. Nowadays, there’s proper words and phrases to describe families like mine: “urban families with low to modest economic means.” I say it how it is: I grew up as a poor, Black folk. 

Where we lived, we used to call it “The Rock” back in the day.  It was the projects on the west side of the city. It was near 150th and Puritas Avenue. 

The homes were right by the airport. Our neighbors were people with substance use disorders, people addicted to alcohol or folks who were incarcerated. That was the place I called home from kindergarten all the way to high school graduation. 

I got an associate’s degree from Lakeland College. I spent some time at Cleveland State University. But as far as education, I’m not classically trained. I’m an artist. I’m an independent thinker. I’m a free spirit. 

My life has always been on this winding path. But the places I’ve been and people I’ve met along the way have made me richer, fuller and, most importantly, taught me things about myself and how I understand the value of community. 

I always tell people my first act of service was splitting a loaf of bread and a pack of baloney with my next door neighbor at 10 years old. 

In the ’80s and ’90s, you didn’t have as many programs and resources for poor folks that you have now. We had to lean on each other. You had to hold each other up through the good times and bad times. It was how you built community. It’s the heart and soul of how I live and create my life and work. 

Over the years, I’ve partnered and worked with so many organizers, culture workers, people who care so deeply about the people in our  city. I’ve helped build youth and adult literacy programs. 

I’ve worked with organizers like Pamela Hubbard with her Golden Ciphers program. I’ve worked with my community to create police and social justice workshops. But where I always gravitate back to is the work I do around women and wellness. 

Sister healing circles 

The very first circle I had was in my living room. I invited cousins, aunties, neighbors and told them to bring a friend. I promised there would be food and refreshments.

I also invited all of the women to bring something they created to share with our circle. We had a table full of things that the women had brought, made or sold. There was a table full of jewelry and soaps and candles and art. 

We shared a lot of laughs, a lot of tears. Women were able to express things they had never shared before. Were able to be vulnerable in a way that only we could understand. Everybody didn’t know each other. But it was so warm, safe and comforting.  

Twelve women showed up to my house that night. Our healing circle was only supposed to be two hours, from 6 to 8 at night. It ended up lasting until 3 in the morning. I let it go that long because I realized some of us really needed it. Afterwards, the women were asking me if I could do it again. So the idea to host these healing spaces grew from there. 

‘I can be saved here’

I’ve pulled back a little bit away from my wellness work over the last three years. I work 50 to 60 hours a week, so it’s been hard to carve out time to do it. But, with my diagnosis and some other women that are close to me, it has been heavy on my mind lately. 

How can you start this up again? 

I made lifestyle changes and choices and had to learn to stay committed to it to heal my own self. But, through forming my own community, my own sister circle, I was able to discover something on my own: I can heal. 

Black women, our spirits and our physical bodies face so many different challenges, day in and day out. We are at the bottom of almost every list in society: The lowest paid, the least likely to receive an opportunity, the worst health outcomes, the least listened to in the medical field. The list goes on. I just feel like that doesn’t happen accidentally. It makes me wonder, who’s responsible for remedying it? 

Black women deserve luxury. We deserve to be treated and considered with the highest amount of respect and dignity when we’re trying to heal, especially heal ourselves of afflictions from the world we live in. 

I want Jubilee House of Healing Wisdom and Wellness Institute to be something breathtaking for a Black woman. I want them to come to my retreats and say, ‘My healing is worth this.’ I want them to say, ‘I am worth this attention. I am worth this investment. I am worth this time. I can be saved here.’