Nina has been known to mean “full of grace.”
There’s no more befitting name for Mrs. Westbrook, who, since being in the public gaze for nearly two decades, has been a pillar of centeredness.
From the court as a star collegiate basketball player. To the walls of her home, as a doting mother of three. To the court side, lending a watchful eye to her NBA superstar husband Russell Westbrook from the sidelines. Her calm is ambidextrous yet consistent. Soothing and strong.
She’s carried that calm to the boardroom as a founder, first at the helm of her own practice as a certified marital and family therapist, then as a brand builder with her sustainable children’s apparel company Minibrook among other commercial ventures. Now, she is bringing her talents to the digital space.
Bene By Nina, Nina’s digital-based wellness platform launched in 2022, providing mental health courses and self-care services for women, is one of the most recent endeavors she’s leading. It’s an amalgamation of the core tenets of her life: family, faith and health. The name itself, Bene, comes from Latin, where it has the meaning well.
“One of the major pillars of the Bene brand is raising mental health awareness and providing tools to embrace mental health,” she tells ESSENCE. “Focusing on mental health in communities of color, is something myself and my husband are staunch advocates for. He has actually been really outspoken about his mental health journey and has celebrated how therapy has helped him. So, we try to lead by example and change the narrative around mental health in Black communities.”
The self-funded endeavor is a labor of love and an extension of Nina’s extensive therapeutic background that includes stints in hospital inpatient treatment, geriatrics, community work, family therapy and youth counseling. Her sweet spot, though? Helping us fine tune our relationships with ourselves. Although we’re seeing a surge in online lifestyle self-help hubs like Kourtney Kardashian’s Poosh and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Bene sets itself apart.
“I love Poosh, and Goop, and I could even say Goop is a bit of an inspiration to me. However, I think the lifestyle approach is a little different than what I’m doing. My focus is mental health and the purpose of Bene is to educate and inform others and all of our visitors about how our mental health plays a role in our everyday lives. Including mine. A part of debunking the stigma around mental health is creating a new narrative around it.”
Her entry into the $131.6 billion mental wellness business sector comes after she herself had to take some time to reprioritize what’s most important to her. In an interview on her digital talk series The Do Tell Relationship Podcast, the couple talks about not becoming resentful toward the priority partner in times of sacrifice. But in a moment of radical honesty, Russell spoke to how Nina gave up much more of her life to support his.
“I mean, I don’t know if our relationship is 50-50,” he told her. “I just feel like you have, I’ve always said, you have sacrificed a ton more of your life and things you want to do for the betterment of my career. And the things I was doing so, to me we would never be equal in that standpoint.”
Because of Russell’s meteoric NBA career, the family has had to relocate each time he was tapped by a new team, often pulling up the roots Nina had previously planted.
“My lifestyle of moving around often and my husband’s popularity kind of trickling off a little bit onto me put a wrench in my private practice dreams just because of the therapeutic relationship, not being in one place, switching clients, all of that. That’s why building a digital point of connection for people through Bene is so important. They can get the resources they need from anywhere they are.”
With Bene, her podcast and her conversation card series, Do Tell, she says she focused on creating various points of wellness for those who seek it, without shame.
“Many of us associate mental health with dysfunction and chaos and negative labels, but to me, it’s so much more than that. When we share those ideas, we open ourselves up to the idea that mental health and wellness is actually a good thing. All the choices that we make throughout our day contribute to our mental health and wellness. Particularly for those who are balancing career-building, running businesses, loving your family. I want to make it easier for people to be good to their minds.”