About The Makings of You Foundation
The Makings of You Foundation creates culturally grounded, holistic spaces where Black women can heal intergenerational trauma, reconnect with mind, body, and spirit, and build lives rooted in resilience, purpose, love, and joy.
Our work is grounded in a simple truth: what we carry—emotionally, spiritually, culturally, and historically—shapes not only our lives, but the generations that follow.
We create spaces where women can explore what has been inherited, lay down what no longer serves them, strengthen what has sustained them, and reconnect with safety, self-trust, community, and joy.
Why We Exist
The Makings of You Foundation grew from a recognition that healing cannot always be understood through symptoms and diagnoses alone.
Our founder's background in psychotherapy and African-Centered Psychology, together with her own lived experience, shaped an understanding of how historical trauma, racism, family experiences, and generations of survival can influence how Black women cope, relate, protect themselves, and move through the world.
We believe healing requires space to understand the whole story—culture, history, family, body, mind, spirit, and community.
TMOY was created to provide that culturally grounded, holistic space: helping women recognize what has been carried forward, release what no longer serves them, strengthen what has sustained them, and create healthier patterns for themselves and future generations.
Our approach: Soul Therapy™?
Soul Therapy™ is TMOY's culturally grounded healing framework, bringing together reflection, nervous-system and somatic awareness, spirituality, education, storytelling, movement, and community connection.
Created with Black women's lived experiences in mind, Soul Therapy™ recognizes that healing involves more than the mind. Through guided experiences and community, women are invited to pause, reconnect, restore, and discover what healing can look like for them.
What We Offer
Healing Circles
Guided group experiences rooted in reflection, nervous-system awareness, storytelling, and sisterhood.
Community Workshops
Single-session gatherings exploring wellness, spirituality, legacy, and self-care through culturally rooted experiences that encourage connection, reflection, and restoration.
Movement Is Medicine™
Movement-centered experiences that use tennis, walking, stretching, dance, and other accessible forms of physical activity to support health, confidence, connection, and joy.
Legacy & Purpose Coaching
Support for women seeking to redefine identity beyond inherited pain, embrace the season they are in, and create new narratives rooted in purpose.
Through the Professor Derise Tolliver Scholarship, we also invest in legacy by supporting women as they pursue education, growth, and new possibilities.
Our Invitation
This is a space to breathe.
To soften the armor.
To remember you are more than what you survived.
You are not just the keeper of scars —
you are the keeper of songs.
You belong here.
Leadership & Board of Directors
Valerie Harris, LCSW, CADC
Founder & Executive Director / President
Audra Wilson
Board Member
Audra Wilson brings extensive experience in public policy, nonprofit leadership and organizational strategy to The Makings of You Foundation.
Denise Jordan
Board Director
Denise brings decades of experience in early childhood development, family services and community-centred work, with expertise in child development and infant mental health.
Michelle Pressley
Secretary
Michelle brings 27 years of business and executive support experience to entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations, with expertise in business development, organizational support, and sustainable growth.