YOUNGSTOWN — When she came to the Mahoning Valley about 17 months ago from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Madison Gregory brought little more than one suitcase and a $300 one-way plane ticket — but also a plate filled with stress and anxiety.

“I cut ties with toxic relationships in my life. God helped me sit and cry and let go of all of the shame,” Gregory, of Niles, said.

Gregory, who said she came from a broken home, was “closed off,” had no outlet for expressing herself without judgment and no one to talk to, she recalled. Nevertheless, moving to the area, partly spawned by a great-aunt in Warren, reversed Gregory’s fortunes and provided her with a means to work through trauma and stress after she joined a local church with congregants who supported her. In addition, Gregory found a satisfying job caring for animals at a veterinary hospital in Middlefield.

“It was a pretty empty feeling, but once I left, I left half of the stress,” she said about the 1,200-mile move north.

Also aiding in her self-care was attending a Grounded and Growing black maternal health-related event Saturday afternoon at the YWCA of Youngstown, 25 W. Rayen Ave., downtown.

The two-hour gathering offered mainly black mothers ways to feel a stronger sense of community via experiencing gentle-movement yoga exercises, a tonal “sound bath” and an opportunity to learn to plant and care for seedlings called Bubble Babies. The event’s primary thrust was to allow the women to tend to their roots and work on their mental, emotional and spiritual growth, April Surles, who runs a nonprofit organization called Yakundi, noted.

Yakundi, a faith-based entity, is committed to uplifting and empowering Mahoning Valley mothers with a variety of programs and resources, along with a supportive community, to help them further thrive.

Part of Saturday’s program was dedicated to gentle-movement yoga conducted by Kim Moore, who runs I am Me Life Coaching of Youngstown. She led the participants through a series of quiet poses and positions aimed at helping them relax, focus and better deal with stress and anxiety.

After a brief break, Surles had the women again assemble on mats, then lie down to partake in a “sound bath,” in which she used seven singing bowls, a mallet and a stick to produce the tonal variations. The results were a variety of soft, gently reverberating tones designed to positively affect the central nervous system and other parts of the body.

The goal was to help the women relax, focus and work through stress and trauma, as well as the autonomic fight-or-flight response.

Others who benefited from the offerings included Jay Milner of Liberty, a single mother who’s raising a 5-year-old daughter, and who grew up “in a divided family that didn’t talk a lot about mental health,” she recalled.

“Mental health is very important,” Milner, who is taking online courses to be an electrocardiogram technician, said. “I try to check in with friends as often as possible, because you never know what someone else is going through.”

Especially in today’s society of ubiquitous cellphones and other technological gadgets, it’s additionally important to take care of one’s physical, not just social, well-being. Along those lines, Milner encourages her daughter to spend more time outdoors, she added.

Also, Milner has sought therapy and spirituality to better cope with the stress factors that accompany being a single parent. About 10 years ago, she “did a mental health check-in with myself,” Milner continued.

Other constructive ways for people to get the upper hand on stress and anxiety are to perform deep, focused breathing and “remember they are not perfect,” and to accept that they all have certain limits, she advised.

“Just remember, it’s just a bad day, not a bad life,” Milner said.

In addition, it is vital the participants take care of themselves and also find their own positive ways to cope with life’s pressures and stressors. One such means for Surles is to spend time next to her garden in prayer, which also serves as a tonic, along with being a pleasing metaphor for the importance of self-growth, she explained.

Also on hand Saturday were Jessica Mack and Constance Burgess, who run Bronson Family Farm, a 118-acre property on the East Side that was founded in 2023. They demonstrated to the women how to plant and care for Bubble Babies, which are hand-wrapped and meticulously grown seedlings in spiral-shaped rolls designed to protect the roots.

Individual ones contain multiple seedlings that include a potpourri of vegetables such as collard greens, tomatoes, lettuce, herbs and peppers, several varieties of which were available for the women to take home.

Bronson Family Farm operates as an off-grid, regenerative agriculture and workforce-development project, with a focus on long-term community impact via offering healthful food production, engaging youth, supporting workforce training and promoting wellness through hands-on growing experiences.