Artist / Grief Doula / PhD Candidate

Public Health Storyteller and Program Manager Passionate About Arts Education, Mental Health, Chronic Illness, Grief, Loss, & Freedom Dreams

Saharra (she/her) is a Black and queer digital and performance storyteller from the greater Philadelphia area passionate about decolonial and anti-racist public health practice and research. She uses creativity and narrative to identify and address fundamental causes of health inequity.

Her artistry explores grief and wake work that allows us to reimagine Blackness as life and living memory. She works with children & adults alike in using art as a tool for reflection, transformation, & radical healing. Her critical scholarship works to understand how systems and social environments (re)produce health inequities. She uses arts-based and participatory methods to promote more caring, collaborative, and community-accountable approaches to health promotion.

Saharra has experience working in sexual/reproductive health, reproductive justice, and HIV/AIDS advocacy. Saharra uses arts-based and participatory methods to promote more caring, collaborative, and community-accountable approaches to health promotion and research. She is a Public Health PhD Candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Board Director for the Collective for Radical Death Studies. She successfully received a high pass on her comprehensive exams in Spring 2024. Her dissertation research topic is: 'Some of Us Did Not Die': Storytelling as Recovering Black Grief Embodied Narrative Traditions in Qualitative Mental Health Research and Intervention--a Case Study on the Impact of the Superwoman Role on Black Women and Femmes with Body-focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs), inspired by poet and activist June Jordan and her own work as a grief doula and BFRB advocate.

She co-directs the Worcester Youth Speaks Honestly (WYSH) devised theatre program at the Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts. She also works in local government public health throughout Western Massachusetts. She has experience partnering with several organizations across the U.S. and abroad including the Collective for Radical Death Studies, Planned Parenthood of Delaware, United Way of Delaware, the TLC Foundation for Body-focused Repetitive Behaviors, the Lyder Foundation, Trinity College Dublin, BFRB UK & Ireland, Front Porch Arts Collective, and The Body: a Home for Love. Saharra received her BS in Health Behavior Science from the University of Delaware and her MA in Educational Theatre from New York University. She is also a Certified Health Education Specialist.

Grieving is Never Easy...

Services

But, it is a normal part of the human experience.

What if we used our grief to empower us to re-evaluate our relationship to earth, our belongings, ourselves, our communities, and to our systems?

Saharra works with individuals and organizations to support healing, acceptance, and radical transformation around grief and loss using an anti-racist, decolonial, systems-informed approach.

Consulting and Community Workshops

Speaking Engagements

One-on-One

Grief Support

Memorials & Rituals

Compulsive Hair Pulling May Be Incurable, But the Shame Around It Isn't

by Katie Banon

Symphony & Saharra honor late father, Lamont Dixon, with a poetry scholarship contest in Southwest Philadelphia

Honoring Black

History Month, 2020

For a feature, please email me at saharra.dixon@gmail.com

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