Conversations about mental health are changing and Black women are leading the way. They’re creating safe spaces to talk about healing, therapy, rest, and resilience in ways that feel both radical and familiar. The 2025 21Ninety Award’s Wellness category honors two women with the Mental Health Trailblazer award. These are advocates who use their platforms, expertise, and empathy to make change possible. Through their work, they’re breaking stigmas, building community, and reminding us that prioritizing our minds is just as vital as caring for our bodies. This year’s honorees have shown that healing can be both personal and collective. They prove that Black women’s wellness is a movement worth celebrating.
First Place Winner: Candyss Love
Candyss Love (Candyss Roberson) is a multi-hyphenate healer who blends soul coaching, content creation, and trauma-informed mentorship. On her website, she describes herself simply and powerfully: “I’m Candyss Love … I help people identify and work through their blockages—trauma, emotional wounds, unhealthy thought patterns—that keep them from living their fullest lives.”
She is also the author of “Remember Who the F*ck You Are,” a guide to reclaiming identity and agency after seasons of hurt and self-doubt. She has already sold over 11,000 copies. Love hosts retreats such as the Texas Healing Retreat, leads weekly healing gatherings called “Sundays With Source,” and creates content around inner transformation, ancestral healing, and spiritual alignment.
Her style is deeply rooted in experiential work. She invites her community to lean into the places they feel “stuck,” loosen shame, and reclaim spiritual sovereignty. She guides Black women to reclaim their narratives by stepping into their inner knowing, not through prescriptive frameworks but through the guidance of felt experience. Her emphasis on embodied healing, versus solely talk therapy, resonates for many who desire integration of the spiritual, emotional, and mental being.
Second Place Winner: Dr. Raquel Martin, PhD
Dr. Raquel Martin is a highly respected clinical psychologist whose work centers the Black experience within healing. She describes herself as practicing “liberation psychology,” which is the framework that names the sociocultural, systemic, and internal dimensions of mental health together.
One of her signature initiatives is Burn the Cape, a 10-week support group designed to help participants unlearn the belief that strength must come through silence. The curriculum covers burnout, self-advocacy, identity, and compassion, rooted in culture and community. She also hosts the podcast “Mind Ya Mental,” which explores mental health through both personal narrative and clinical insight.
As a professor and clinician, she works at the intersection of research, teaching, and practice. Her therapy often integrates Black Identity Development frameworks, racial stress assessment, and cultural humility.
“I integrate Black Identity Development in all that I do,” she said in a feature with the Boris L. Henson Foundation. “Black identity development is a barrier against mental health difficulties, especially those linked to the impact of racism.”
For many Black women, therapy often feels clinical, cold, or culturally tone-deaf. Dr. Martin’s work challenges that by embedding healing in identity, culture, and collective liberation. She’s helping shift the paradigm of therapy for Black women from assimilation to radical belonging.
About the Awards
Mental health advocacy often happens quietly behind closed doors, in healing circles, through whispered breakthroughs. But these three women are ushering that work into daylight, creating generational change in how Black women see themselves, feel themselves, and heal themselves.
By celebrating them, the 2025 21Ninety Awards give a reminder that change agents are not always the loudest voices, but those deeply rooted in the soil of care, culture, and courage. These trailblazers push their communities to see mental health as essential, expansive, and collective.
This year, the 21Ninety Awards shifted from product-based categories to people-focused recognition. Instead of highlighting only what people use, the awards celebrate the women shaping beauty, wellness, and lifestyle culture from within. Winners were selected for their impact on their audiences, their ability to create space and community, and their dedication to representation. We also looked at innovation, consistency, and cultural influence. Above all, nominees had to reflect 21Ninety’s mission of empowering Black women through beauty, wellness, and lifestyle. This approach ensures that changemakers, community builders, and unsung heroes get the spotlight for the impact they make every day.