Wounded Healer

By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER Senior Staff Writer Being vulnerable has been hard for LaVontae Hill, but the local mental health professional is sharing his own journey to help others in the Black community. Louis Bryant III, OBSERVER Growing up on the southside of Richmond, Calif., it was so common for LaVontae Hill and his older brother Lamondo to hear gunshots ring out in the night that the boys made a game of it, trying to guess what caliber bullet was being fired and what type of gun it came from. Hill saw and heard a lot of things that a young person shouldn’t be exposed to and while his childhood helped drive him to a career of service, not processing early experiences and traumas also contributed to a crippling mental illness. Today, Hill, 28, is a clinical social worker who’s sharing his own mental health journey in hopes of inspiring others to ask for help and heal. He recently joined the speaker’s bureau for the organization Stop Stigma Sacramento, which is as part of the multi-media project, “Mental Illness: It’s Not Always What You Think.” & Hill first decided to speak his truth last spring, posting weekly Instagram videos...