The Friendship Bench: A Story for All of Us

“How ironic that we have been brought up to believe that we are poor, when actually everything we need is right here in our community”. - Lindiwe, CKT group member

On a warm August morning in Harare, a young mother named Farai sat on a wooden bench, her hands trembling as she clutched an envelope. Across from her, an 82-year-old woman, known to the community as Grandmother Jack, sat in quiet presence.

“I’m HIV positive,” Farai whispered. The shame, the fear, the overwhelming weight of it all had left her paralyzed.

Grandmother Jack gently took her hand. “It’s okay to cry,” she said.

And so, Farai did. She wept, and as she spoke, something shifted. The burden that had been locked inside her heart for so long began to loosen. The conversation that unfolded on that wooden bench was the start of her healing, and that of many others who came after her.

This is the power of The Friendship Bench - not just the project, but the book that is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

👉 Pre-order The Friendship Bench now on Amazon

A Healing Space Under the Trees

The first benches were not grand or elaborate. Just wooden seats in the shade where 14 grandmothers - women who had lived through many of Zimbabwe’s struggles - began listening to those in distress. They were trained in basic problem-solving therapy, behaviour activation and psychoeducation but their greatest tool was human connection.

We called the rampant distress kufungisisa - the Shona term for “thinking too much,” a weight so many in Zimbabwe carried but had no words for. The benches gave them something they never had before: a place to be heard, to be understood, and to heal.

I wrote this book because of my own discovery of the power of our humanity, a discovery that took two decades in my field of work to lean into, and one I wish to share with you. Grief led me to create the Friendship Bench Project, but The Friendship Bench: How Fourteen Grandmothers Inspired a Mental Health Revolution is the story of what I discovered in the process, an experience that reshaped my understanding of healing.

Globally, we are living in a mental health crisis born of both ongoing and generational trauma, violence, oppression, repression, and disconnection. While unfortunately not everyone can access a psychiatrist, and we have certainly heard enough of the doom and gloom of the failure of our institutions, nearly everyone has access to something far more powerful: community. The wisdom, compassion, and quiet strength of our elders, especially grandmothers, have been an overlooked resource for too long.

The Friendship Bench is a story dedicated to the 14 grandmothers that started it all in Zimbabwe, a nation where elders are honored for their experience and resilience. These women became the heart of a movement that would transform mental health care for communities in Zimbabwe and the world over.

Healing isn’t just about medicine, it’s about being acknowledged, understood, and connected to something greater than ourselves. I believe that we all have a gift to offer the world, a gift often forgotten in times when the compartmentalization of humanity is prioritized, a gift each and every reader - regardless of background - can be reminded of.

We are all dealing with the effects of trauma, minor or large. This is a reality that cannot continue to be avoided.

I have come to see that the global mental health crisis will not be solved by more diagnoses or prescriptions alone. Instead, change happens when communities take ownership of healing. We are experiencing times when we cannot afford to indulge in despair and hopelessness. The Friendship Bench has created spaces where ordinary people help one another in extraordinary ways. Ours is a story of hope, empowerment, agency, and empathetic connection.

Through this work, I have realized a profound truth: we are not as powerless as we have been led to believe. We do not have to wait for institutions to save us. Healing is within us, within our communities, within the simple yet powerful act of listening. All we have to do is open our minds. We all do, as different as our preferred methods of closing off and the reasons for doing so may be.

Why This Story Matters to You

You might be picking up The Friendship Bench for different reasons. Maybe you are someone struggling with your own mental health, looking for hope. Maybe you are a doctor, a teacher, or a parent, wondering how to support others. Perhaps you are a policymaker, an entrepreneur, or a student, searching for new ways to address the global mental health crisis.

Whoever you are, this book is for you.

At its heart, The Friendship Bench is not just my story. It is the story of resilience, of community, of how healing can happen anywhere - even on a park bench in Zimbabwe, Washington DC, New Orleans or El Salvador.

A Personal Journey, A Global Movement

I did not set out to start a movement. I was a psychiatrist, trained in conventional mental health care, working in a system where I was one of only a handful of psychiatrists for over 12 million people in Zimbabwe.

Then I lost Erica.

She was a young woman, full of promise, who had been making progress in therapy. But her family couldn’t afford the ten-dollar bus fare to bring her to Harare for treatment. Ten dollars. That was the price of her life.

Her death changed me. It forced me to ask: What if mental health care didn’t start in hospitals? What if it started in the heart of the community, with people who already held the wisdom of healing?

This question stayed with me until I found the answer in the grandmothers.

What You Will Find in This Book

The Friendship Bench is more than just a history of a project. It is a deeply personal journey through my own evolution as a psychiatrist, a leader, and a human being.

You will meet the people who shaped this journey:

Grandmothers like Jack, whose quiet wisdom changed lives.
Patients like Farai, who found their voices on the bench.
Colleagues who doubted this unconventional model - until they saw its impact.

You will also see the challenges - the resistance, the skepticism, the failures. This is not a story about easy solutions. It is about persistence, it is about reimagining what mental health care can be.

This book is an invitation. As you turn the pages of The Friendship Bench, I invite you to do more than just read. I invite you to reflect on the following:

Where are the spaces for listening in your community?
Who are the people already offering healing, even if they don’t have formal training?
How can we build more benches - physical or metaphorical - to bridge the gaps in mental health care?

It is about time we reclaim our inherent human capabilities as equally powerful as scientific and organized care.

Join the Movement

The Friendship Bench started in Zimbabwe, but its story is still being written. You are now part of that story.

Whether you are reading this book as a student, a professional, a caregiver, or someone searching for answers, I hope it inspires you to act. Healing is more than just about therapy, it’s about connection, it’s about creating spaces where people feel seen, heard, and valued.

Sometimes, all it takes is a bench.

The Friendship Bench launches this April. Read the book. Share the story. Build a bench in your community.

👉 Pre-order The Friendship Bench now on Amazon

Join the movement - partner with us :)

People need support, with your help we can reach out to more people. We invite you to:

Donate: Your contributions can help us expand our reach and support more people.
Support a grandmother: For $25 a month, you can empower a grandmother to continue this vital work. Our goal is to support 4000 grandmothers in 2025.
Spread the word: Help us raise awareness by sharing the story with your friends and family.