My Mission
I strive to dismantle the harmful stigmas associated with mental illness within the Black community. Promoting the idea that seeking help is a sign of strength and courage empowers people of color to prioritize their mental wellbeing without fear or shame. By eradicating barriers that hinder Black people’s access to quality mental health care, all people are able to get well. I get to do this work through LifeSkills Cares, Inc. with the Black Mental Health Symposium, Black CE credits, public and keynote speaking, and through books I write.
Lifeskills CAres, inc
A nonprofit organization that aims to destigmatize mental illness, increase access to quality mental health care, and improve mental wellness among Black communities.
black mental health symposium
An annual two-day solutions-based interdisciplinary conference that gathers mental health professionals who work to provide culturally responsive care to Black communities. Attendees earn up to 12 CE credits. Highlights include dynamic breakout sessions, inspirational keynote speakers, trap yoga sessions, moving opening acts, relevant exhibitors, swag bags, networking, and fun.
KEYNOTE SPEAKING
Need a public or keynote speaker who will captivate your audience with insightful messages they’ll think about long after your event? You’ve found it in Dr. LaTonya M. Summers, a speaker who specializes in transforming her listeners. Send a booking inquiry to latonya.summers@lifeskillsccgroup.com.
black again: Losing and Reclaiming My Racial Identity
I wrote Snowdrift, my first book when I was 8 years old, about a Black girl wanting to be white. Fast forward some forty years, and you find Black Again, a book about me recovering from the psychological harm of having lost my Blackness. Join me on this journey of realization---from all those years of assimilating, stretching and pressing for whiteness to finding myself in a world that sees me as Black and it was about time I did too.
Multicultural Counseling: Responding with Cultural Humility, Empathy and Advocacy
When Springer Publishing asked me to write a multicultural counseling textbook I laughed. I’m a novelist, a memoirist, not a textbook writer. Springer and I are both laughing. Here’s how they describe my book. “The first multicultural counseling book to use a strengths-based perspective, this innovative text emphasizes culture and diversity as an asset to be nurtured and approached with humility, empathy, and culturally responsive interventions….”
know pain, know gain
We’ve become adept at avoiding pain. We repress it by any means. We used to know pain as a great teacher, but somewhere along the way we internalized that it was not OK to hurt. Dr. LaTonya Summers, a mental health counselor and scholar, argues that acknowledging pain is not only necessary, but also the conduit to greatness. We must relearn how to hurt if we want to live our best lives.