enBloom Crownsville Heals Individual Pain through Collective Progress

My father, known by most as “Eddie,” left this Earth before I think he learned how to thoroughly enjoy living on it. A highly-skilled, self-taught carpenter and mechanic, he worked hard for more than 35 years in telecommunications. More than anything, what I remember about my father, though, was his almost constant state of agitation. He was constantly cloaked in an aura of frustration -- dissipating only occasionally to temporarily allow a few rays of joy to shine through and uplift his mood, such as during occasional family gatherings or maybe after a game of tennis with an old friend. When he passed in January 2016, days after my 35 birthday, I realized that I mostly only knew my father as his pain.

As the flurry of activity from moving into a new home and the death of a parent days later slowed, the isolation I felt in the community that we moved to began to settle around me in a way I hadn’t felt before. I’ve been a minority in predominately white spaces before, yet I was never as acutely aware of it as I suddenly was, and I didn’t understand why. I also felt overwhelmed as a mother, saddled with the responsibility of two young daughters who depended on me to know how to provide a mother’s love, guided only by the faded blueprint passed down to me.

My father was one of six children to Mary, a career homemaker, Eddie, a WWII vet turned postal worker. Hoping to better understand my father’s life after his death, I began to learn more about the backdrop of my father’s upbringing -- America in the 1950s and 1960s. The many books and documentaries I heard gave words to what my mind, body, and spirit felt. I easily recognize the impact that institutionalized racism, inadequate mental health services, trans-generational trauma, and lack of resources, among other things, had on him during that time. Generations upon generations of unequal access to resources, stifled and discouraged communication, self-medication, and many other by-products of being Black in American were woven into his fabric, just as they are for me and many other black families still today.

Around that same time, my youngest daughter was being treated for chronic ear, sinus, and throat infections. I began to question repeated doses of antibiotics recommended by her pediatrician when the conditions kept reoccurring. I learned that it could take her immune system up to one year to rebuild itself with each course of antibiotics. After 5 years of entrusting my family’s health to traditional doctors and big pharma “solutions,” I decided to seek a naturopath for a more proactive approach to my family’s health.

For the remainder of 2016, I struggled to find my footing in every way. My future was foreshadowed by my father’s life and ancestors before him, but I couldn’t accept this fate as my own. I felt the urgency to finally end the cycle of intergenerational trauma and leave it in the past where it belonged -- for it was not mine nor my daughters’ to carry. In 2017, I began to manifest Freedom -- this was when my self-awaking began.

Throughout 2017 and 2018, I continued to explore and benefit from alternative wellness practices such as acupuncture, reiki, yoga, singing bowls, barre, astrology, naturopathic medicine, therapy, and spiritual wayfinding. I took regular 3 mile walks, ate gut-healing foods, tried plant-based remedies, had more fun/less worry, started homesteading, and guarded my spirit, time, and energy. Many of these experiences were expensive and often not covered by insurance. I was “robbing Peter to pay Paul” to access these for myself and my family. However, once I began to experience the benefits and saw the changes in my family and relationship with one another, I knew these were the healing tools that so many needed. At one point, I was even enrolled in an AgriBusiness Management degree program to learn how to help make “food as medicine” sexy for farmers and consumers. I gradually gained consciousness and clarity for the first time in my adult life. In 2018, I came across the state-owned Crownsville Hospital Center while out driving. I was drawn to the beautiful stately yet dilapidated historic buildings even before knowing anything about the Hospital’s history.

Since learning more about how the property came to be and the “treatment” that most patients endured (and ultimately succumbed to), I’ve spent countless hours thinking and talking about possibilities for the future of the former Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland.

What if the patients at Crownsville had access to healing tools and services to address the root of their mental health challenges? Some of which we commonly know as postpartum depression, general depression, and anxiety today. How could access to alternative health practitioners be more affordable? How could a symbiotic connection with nature be more accessible to those that are were interested? How can one’s personal health journey and progress be used as currency to build a legacy of lasting holistic wellness for an entire community’s physical, nutritional, emotional, social, spiritual, intellectual, financial, and environmental health? What exactly IS needed for healing? Who should be responsible for such a place?

By the time the state of Maryland announced that it would divest the property, three years later, in September of 2021, the vision was clear. I feel called to plant the seeds for a place for collective wellness, incubated on the land of the former Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland under the nurturing guidance of those that it was meant to serve.

Crownsville enBloom is about access to the physical and mental space and healing tools for a sustainable and holistically well lifestyle. Inspired by Alice Walker’s quote, “the nature of this flower is to bloom,” enBloom is a personal journey to blossom through one’s own pain to reach one’s full expression of oneself, leading to collective healing and health of a community through connection with nature and land.