Jerusalem Brown, LPC, NCC

Mary J. Obliged has spent years being everybody’s go-to—the fixer, the dependable one, the woman who could always “handle it.” In this MHM Psychocultural Artist Series feature, meet The Overfunctioner: a fictional illustrated singer giving language to emotional labor, over-responsibility, reciprocity, and what happens when being needed starts costing too much.

Grief is rude. It interrupts, rearranges, and takes up space whether you invited it in or not. In this MHM reflection, grief is compared to Deebo—not to make light of loss, but to name how it can roll up on your life, take over the block, and leave you figuring out how to keep moving with something heavy standing in your way.

Meet Notorious BSSG, the Black Sheep Scapegoat who finally got the mic. In the debut of MHM’s Psychocultural Artist Series, BSSG talks about family scapegoating, therapy, accountability, self-definition, and what changed when he stopped letting other people narrate his life—then turns it all into a Southern rap record.