Who Cares for the Caregivers?

Holding safe spaces for Black women to process their trauma is imperative, especially for those women suffering from violence in their communities. Free Root Operation, a violence prevention initiative based in Bronzeville, offers therapy and other means of healing trauma while introducing the aspect of sisterhood to the healing process.

“Our whole idea is that when these women are cared for, then the children in their care and the other adults in their environment will also experience care, and that is how we will break those generational cycles,” said Eva Maria Lewis, Free Root Operation’s founder and executive director.

Free Root Operation was started by Lewis as a way to address what she refers to as the poverty-induced gun violence epidemic. Lewis has been working on behalf of Southeast Side communities, particularly advocating for South Shore and Woodlawn, since she became an activist at sixteen.  

“When I was in high school, [many] things came to a head,” she said. “I became privy to classism, racism, and also the lack of equitable resources between the North Side of Chicago and the South Side as a result of going to a well-resourced school on the North Side and coming back here.”

The project started as a blog in 2015, an independent study assignment during Lewis’s junior year of high school. The initiative evolved into what’s now Free Root Operation in 2020 and has been active in addressing the root causes of gun violence using critical care encompassing wellness, economic justice, and education for Black women caretakers. 

“What we have done over the years is community work, research, and asking people what they need. It led to this focal point of women within gun violence spaces and thinking about intersectional experiences related to violence for Black women as well,” Lewis said.

Murders and non-fatal shootings in the city declined in 2024 from the recent peak in 2020 and 2021, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab’s analysis. Still, Chicago continues to grapple with inequities tied to race and geography: Black residents remain disproportionately impacted by gun violence and are twenty-two times more likely to be killed.

The cornerstone of Free Root Operation is the BLOOM Network, a fleet of programs centering Black women caregivers in violence prevention. Currently, 2,000 women are part of the network, with numbers growing with each cohort. 

“These women come from the South and West Sides of Chicago, [and] they are caregivers [and] heads of households. Our whole idea is that when these women are cared for, then the children in their care and the other adults in their environment will experience care, and that is how we break generational cycles.” Lewis said.

While in the network, the women have access to field trips to touring Broadway shows, yoga, gardening classes, and other resources that encourage wellness, financial literacy, and budgeting.

“All of these things that are thinking about social determinants of health and increasing someone’s livelihood so they can be well, so that other people in their ecosystems can be well,” Lewis said.

Once part of the network, women can become a part of Free Root Operation’s BLOOM cohort, a five-month program for women who are prepared to take the next step of breaking cycles in their families.

In these five months, women gain access to wellness and peer support, get individual and family counseling, go on field trips, and engage in Free Root’s curriculum rooted in wellness, education, and economic justice. The women in this program graduate with a certificate in professional leadership development and learn how to set and obtain SMART goals that work towards leveling up in their families.

Lyntrina Broadnax is one of the several women in the BLOOM Network who accepted and graduated from the BLOOM cohort programming in 2023. Broadnax found out about Free Root Operation through a program called Sista Afya that offered therapy and mental wellness programs.

“I started seeking therapy in 2022, and they encouraged me to check out this program called Free Root Operation,” said Broadnax. “I looked at their website and went from there with the application. I didn’t know what to expect when I filled out the application, but I knew I had to start making changes because I was experiencing a lot of trauma, postpartum depression, and things of that nature.”

Broadnax was inspired to join the 2023 BLOOM cohort after reading what the program offered, impressed by the peer-to-peer learning and sisterhood shown within the program. She had never run across a program like it.

“I was shocked that I got in over 100 to 200 applicants and [went] with the flow mentally,” she said. “I was in a place where I knew I needed better, but didn’t know how to get there. BLOOM helped me tap into my emotions and identify that [issue]. When I first started, I was a mess and didn’t have any feelings.”

Her favorite part of the cohort experience is the many wellness retreats Free Root Operation offers, and another known specifically as The Dream Retreat. 

“Those two were deep and needed in our communities, especially with Black women building sisterhood. It allowed me to set new boundaries for myself and the people around me. It [also] allowed me to tap into my power and how I can care for myself,” Broadnax said. “I don’t always have to just be overworked and suppress my emotions and feelings. I am now able to identify when I’m feeling anxious or pressured, and I can use certain techniques to help me get over those humps. Just being with BLOOM in [those] six months changed my life [and] my children’s life.”

In its early years, the entire organization was run out of Lewis’s home, and all materials for programming were stored in her car to take to and from different partner sites.

“It wasn’t sustainable, but it shows you how committed we were to getting the work done. It became a running joke [of how] my car was always messy because the organization’s inventory was in it,” Lewis said.

Eventually, though, it became clear that they needed a real home base. Through Cook County Health’s Stronger Together Initiative, Free Root Operation obtained the funding for a brick-and-mortar space. The initiative aims to address behavioral health inequities across the region’s care system through increased systems alignment, enhanced system quality, and the expansion of access to early intervention and prevention, treatment, support, recovery, and crisis assessment and care. Free Root Operation was one of the fifty-three organizations chosen for the grant to maximize the potential of their work.

The true task, however, was finding a location on the South Side that would be open to supporting the work Free Root Operation was doing. After looking around for a bit, she found a space in Bronzeville.

“The owner resonated with what we were doing,” she said. “Bronzeville was not the goal, but in a lineage of the Black Metropolis, thinking of Black folk building up from nothing, [and] having come from down South Mississippi around the Great Migration, [it] makes so much sense for us because we are building new systems of care and wellness for Black communities. At the end of the day, it’s the perfect spot for us,” Lewis said. 

With the stability of a physical space, Lewis looks forward to increasing the number of programs offered through the BLOOM network, hosting weekly classes for women, and continuing to branch out and grow. 

“We are not just people who grieve when our babies are taken from us. We are not just folks who clean up messes and provide care to no end. We are assets. Women have so much potential in the community as influencers and stakeholders, so we want folks to see these women as beacons of hope.” Lewis said. “We also want to help South and West side Chicagoans operate in their communities as active stakeholders to feel like where they live is theirs, their families are theirs, and their futures are theirs.”

To learn more about Free Root Operation and its programs, see freerootoperation.com.