Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, School of Education, 2022This study aimed to explore the meaning-making process of Black women graduate students in STEM and their holistic well-being. The literature on Black women graduates' experience in STEM is limited and often emphasizes their negative experiences without reporting the other sides of their stories. Furthermore, the literature on graduate students' wellbeing is limited because scholars tend to highlight their stressors and what they lack rather than their strengths and how they thrive. As such, this dissertation sought to explore the holistic wellbeing of Black women graduate students in STEM, particularly those who attend historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). This study is mainly concerned with how Black women graduate students in STEM strategize and make meaning of their holistic well-being and how the STEM environment at HBCUs influenced their well-being. This study’s conceptual framework included the Psychological Framework for Radical Healing, which foregrounded Black women graduate students' strengths and how they engaged in radical healing and liberation by centering on their wellness. The study centered on Black women graduate students’ in STEM experiences that were not saturated in negativity but uplifting experiences. The study emphasized how the women pushed against the grain to achieve holistic well-being. The study’s methodology included narrative inquiry with a Black feminist epistemological approach. The storytelling format of the narrative inquiry methodology coupled with the Black feminist epistemology highlighted how Black women's experiences are a valid source of knowledge. Each participant engaged in two semi-structured focus groups and blogged over five weeks about their STEM journey, experiences with community building, HBCU experiences, and well-being. The study’s findings encompassed two central themes that gave insight into how they define holistic well-being, the internal and external processing they engaged in to achieve and enact holistic well-being, and how the STEM environments at HBCUs contributed to or detracted from their holistic well-being. Each theme demonstrated how Black women graduate students in STEM made meaning of their holistic well-being and the multiple ways their lived experiences served to recreate a narrative where they are thriving. Implications for Black women graduate students in STEM provided ways to create boundaries in their lives so they can care for themselves. Implications for research and academia explored how Black women graduate students’ in STEM strengths can be incorporated throughout the socialization process, including how they prepare them for the workforce, how their well-being can be foregrounded, and how advisors and faculty members can incorporate an ethic of caring when they interact with their Black students. These implications focused on how to improve the holistic well-being of Black women graduate students in STEM.