The Roots Beneath Us: On Black Women Loving Each Other Loudly

Sisterhood has always been one of the Black community’s greatest love stories. Not the romantic kind, but the kind built in kitchens, group chats, hair salons, and living rooms where someone’s auntie is always offering food you didn’t ask for. It’s the kind of bond that feels less like friendship and more like a root system, sprawling, intertwined, impossible to separate without everything else collapsing.

And we’ve seen versions of it everywhere. The women of Girlfriends arguing, laughing, and holding each other through breakups and career crises. The Real Housewives of Atlanta turning shade into an Olympic sport but still showing up when it matters. Even on Love Island, where chaos is practically a production requirement, the strongest alliances are often between the girls who pull each other for chats, fix each other’s hair, and decode the behaviour of men who haven’t emotionally matured past Year 9. These moments aren’t trivial. They’re cultural evidence of something deeper: Black women finding grounding in each other.

The roots that hold us

Sisterhood in Black communities is rarely accidental. It’s shaped by history, by necessity, by the understanding that the world doesn’t always offer softness, so we create it for one another. Sociologists studying Black British communities often highlight the strength of “fictive kinship” ,the practice of forming family-like bonds with people who aren’t biologically related. It’s a survival strategy, but it’s also a love language.

Think about the way Black women hype each other in public bathrooms. Or the way aunties at church will correct your posture, your life choices, and your outfit in the same breath. Or the way cousins who haven’t spoken in months can fall back into conversation like no time has passed. These are the roots. They keep us steady when everything else feels unsteady.

On-screen sisterhoods that feel like home

Shows like Girlfriends didn’t just entertain; they documented the emotional architecture of Black womanhood. Joan, Toni, Maya, and Lynn weren’t perfect, but they were real. Their friendships were messy, loyal, and layered, the kind of relationships where you can fight at brunch and still send a “text me when you get home” message later.

The Real Housewives of Atlanta gave us a different kind of sisterhood: loud, glamorous, dramatic, but grounded in a shared understanding of what it means to be ambitious Black women navigating public scrutiny. Beneath the wigs and one-liners, there’s a tenderness, the way they rally around each other during divorces, health scares, or business failures.

Even reality TV, which thrives on conflict, can’t hide the fact that Black women often form the most emotionally intelligent alliances. On Love Island, the girls’ dressing room is usually more supportive than any of the couples. It’s where the real therapy sessions happen.

Why sisterhood feels like grounding 

Psychologists studying social support consistently find that women with strong friendship networks experience lower stress levels, better mental health, and higher resilience. For Black women, this effect is even more pronounced because sisterhood often compensates for the emotional labour demanded by racism, sexism, and cultural expectations.

Sisterhood becomes a buffer. A mirror. A place to exhale.

It’s the friend who tells you you’re not crazy.

The cousin who reminds you who you were before life got heavy.

The group chat that turns heartbreak into humour within minutes.

The auntie who prays for you even when you don’t ask.

These relationships don’t just keep us grounded. They keep us going.

The joy in it 

There’s something joyful about watching Black women love each other loudly. The inside jokes. The shared references. The collective eye-rolls. The way we can communicate entire paragraphs with a single look. It’s a kind of cultural shorthand,  a reminder that even when the world misunderstands us, we rarely misunderstand each other.

And that’s the heart of it. Sisterhood is not just support; it’s recognition. It’s being seen in a way that feels accurate, generous, and unfiltered.

An ode, then

To the sisters we were born with and the ones we collected along the way.

To the women who ground us, hype us, correct us, and carry us.

To the friendships that feel like home, like history, like future.

To the roots that hold, even when we don’t realise we’re leaning on them.

Written by Vanessa Twerefou