Our bodies are portals for creation. They are portals for wisdom. And now, we will collectively expand our body’s capacity as portals for the revolutionary act of rest. This opening session will attune our bodies so they’re ready to receive the “in-sights,” deep levels of healing, and the deep “re-membering” from what our visionary presenters will be sharing throughout the day.This is an invitation to feel rooted and present in our bodies, connected to the mycelium network of our collective wisdom, and open to receiving the gifts we are so worthy of.

ABOUT NATALEE

Natalee Facey is a Resilience Coach, Birth Doula, and Embodiment Healing Practitioner. She works as a guide for women and femmes who are navigating loss related to pregnancy, relationships, and their bodies. 

Natalee believes that loss can be an initiation into becoming a more powerful and authentic version of ourselves. She is with her clients through that initiation—supporting them in releasing grief, shame, guilt and other heavy emotions; reconnecting to their sense of wholeness; and moving into their personal rebirth.

Natalee is also the host of The Preparing for Pregnancy After Loss Podcast, which provides education and tools for thriving in life and pregnancy after loss or an infertility diagnosis. She’s been recognized by the Borough of Brooklyn for her work providing support to families who’ve experienced pregnancy and infant loss. 

Natalee is originally from the island of Jamaica, where she credits her deep connection to nature, and her love for music, movement, and laughter as medicine. Learn more about her work at nataleefacey.com.

This interactive workshop will encourage participants to think beyond mainstream colorism conversations about dating and preferences, and to instead explore how colorist preferences produce unfavorable outcomes for dark-skinned people in health, incarceration, education, and employment globally. History shows that widely-shared romantic preferences inform who we advocate for, who we think is smart, kind, talented, deserving of empathy, and even human. Workshop participants will critically interrogate how colorism manifests in the many sites dark-skinned Black people find themselves, such as hospitals, prisons,  schools, and workplaces.

ABOUT TK

Tigidankay “TK” Saccoh is an anti-colorism advocate, content creator, writer, and speaker. In 2020, when she was 20-years-old, she founded The Darkest Hue, a digital platform that centers the experiences and perspectives of dark-skinned Black girls, women, and femmes. She creates thought-provoking content and facilitates difficult conversations around colorism, misogynoir, Black feminism, and other related topics. Her work has been highlighted in Essence Magazine, Ebony Magazine, Harvard Business review, the Today Show, and most recently Vice media. Last year, she completed her undergraduate education at Columbia University, where she studied psychology and public health. Since graduating, she has worked with youth with criminal justice involvement.

Your energetic boundaries are not a woo-woo, “New Age” thing.  Our energetic bodies and systems are as wise and ancient as our ancestors.  Much of our African, Caribbean, and Indigenous spiritualities have had remedies and recipes for clearing our energy systems- and giving us embodied boundaries long before the self-help movement.Our Energy Boundaries are a sacred sign telling us to stop, slow down, or pull back.  They are an indicator, and deserve clearing, clarifying, space and less demands.  They are a protector.  This workshop to help us understand how we might somatically and energetically feel the weight of the impact before our minds catch up- and how we start to unfurl and engage in life despite the intensity.This interactive workshop will be an invitation for participants to get curious, lean into, and explore their relationship to how exploitation impacts their energetics boundaries and the importance of a hygiene routine- while connecting to our right to even have boundaries while embodying our Blackness.

ABOUT DR. JENNIFER

Affectionately nicknamed “the Rage Doctor” by peers and clients, Dr. Jennifer Mullan is a Clinical Psychologist, published author, consultant for behavioral and mental health organizations and schools, Ancestral wound worker, and CEO and founder of Decolonizing Therapy, LLC. Dr. Mullan seeks to unpack the oppressive legacy of modern mental health practices, and reconnect to the roots of our wounding and healing within a sociopolitical lens, most particularly for Queer Indigenous Black Brown People of Color (QIBPOC).

In what will be a beautiful and interactive session, please join Tricia Hersey in conversation with Thérèse Cator to explore the depths of Rest is Resistance. We’ll explore the conversations that we most need to have around rest and the praxis we need to deeply embody for our individual and collective liberation and thriving. Join us for what will be a conversation for these times.

ABOUT TRICIA

Tricia Hersey is a multidisciplinary artist, activist, writer  and theologian. She is the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organization that examines rest as a form of resistance and reparations by curating spaces for the community to rest via rest activations, immersive workshops, and performance art installations.  She holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from Eastern Illinois University and a Master of Divinity from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Her research interests include Black liberation theology, womanism, somatics, and cultural trauma.  She is the author of the New York Times bestselling book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto and The Nap Ministry’s Rest Deck: 50 Practices to Resist Grind Culture.  You can learn more about her work  at thenapministry.com

As “embodiment” and “somatics” has become more a part of the mainstream lexicon it is often taken out of context and disconnected from its liberatory origins. This session is an opportunity to come into relationship with our bodies as temples and oracles of healing and liberation as Black folks and folks of color. You’ll have an opportunity to explore, unpack and begin to transform your relationship to rest through personal and communal inquiry, sharing and embodied practice.

Thérèse will weave a tapestry of embodied healing through song, somatics, poetry and breath to commune with the depth and breadth of your body and our collective bodies.

ABOUT THÉRÈSE

Thérèse Cator is the founder of Embodied Black Girl, a global community that centers the healing and liberation of Black women and femmes. She’s also a mother, a leadership mentor, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (advanced), an anti-oppression facilitator, an artist and a healer from a deep lineage of medicine people and revolutionaries. Over the past 14 years, Thérèse has worked with people from all backgrounds and her work has been featured in Forbes and Mashable twice as well as Essence, Travel Noire, Jezebel, Authority Magazine, Mind Body Green, Motherly, Yahoo News, among others. Thérèse’s work weaves together spirituality, somatics and social change and exists in the world to provide deep counsel and guidance to cultural shapers to heal intergenerationally, unearth their deepest expression of embodied leadership and birth revolutionary work and worlds.

Over the years we’ve gotten the feedback that folks want us to share what’s next! So we’re going to share all the exciting things on the horizon (this summer + beyond) at Embodied Black Girl! We’ll share our summer explorations and some of ways you can get plugged into our liberatory ecosystem and spiral deeper with us!

This right here has been a community favorite over the years! Join us as we let loose and allow the rhythms of the African diaspora move us as we celebrate and anchor in the deep medicine of the day. Kiddos are welcome! We’ll flow right into our closing with gratitude!