COMMUNITY AREA #68: Englewood—BreAnna Moss

BreAnna Moss believes music and poetry can get her friends and neighbors talking about mental health.

ENGLEWOOD — Three years ago, Englewood native and marketing professional BreAnna Moss lost a close friend to suicide.

While grieving, she wondered what she could do to get communities of color to open up about mental health issues.

“He was one of those people who lit up a room no matter where he was and he was one of those people you could lean on and dump all of your stuff on,” Moss said of her friend. “He would give you great advice, wonderful advice, and we just thought he had really thick skin and didn’t know he was going through so much with PTSD and other traumas that may have happened both in the military and before because he grew up in Chicago.”

The stigma surrounding mental health runs deep in her neighborhood…

This story was written by Lee Edwards and originally published on Block Club Chicago in partnership with Chicago Ideas and The 77 Project. Continue reading here.

The 77 Project is a storytelling and media project presented in partnership with Xfinity with additional support from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to help redefine the narrative of our neighborhoods from the inside out. We’ll spend the remainder of 2018 shining a light on organizations and individuals in each of the 77 community areas of Chicago who are making a positive impact. Know someone we should speak with? Recommend them here.