Black Women's Collective Care Circle 2025
The Black Healing Centre’s Collective Care Circles are culturally competent Black-led multilingual psychosocial support groups for the Black community of Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). Our Collective Care Circles provide a weekly caring and supportive space that focus on deep listening, storytelling and communal care. The groups focus on learning skills with the intention of managing anxiety, depression and trauma in the body.
💐Black Women’s Collective Care Circle: Holding the light bearers 💐
This group hopes to offer a space where Black women can hold and witness the dark and heavy aspects of daily life. In response, offer an exploration of creativity and the sacred. In this strange moment in time … may this group offer opportunities for us to check in with ourselves and each other, continue our journey of healing and growth, get in touch with what is sacred or spiritual for us, make peace with the messiness, and hone our inherent creativity for navigating darkness or the ways we get stuck.
Spirituality means different things to different people. Our explorations are non denominational and everyone is welcome to share their myths, rituals and sacred resources. Or create them. Creativity is what allows us to make something out of nothing, to make meaning out of something… again. Creativity is an essential resource when world-building is necessary.
📌 Group Objectives:
To feel care, and reciprocity of support, holding and community space and trust. Come as you are, bring what you hold. We will respect your rhythm ABSOLUTELY.
To be able to listen to self, become aware of thoughts, feeling, behaviours, triggers and tolerance, to become benevolent witness for each other and ourselves to develop self compassion and find the words for your own journey.
📅 Program Information:
Program dates: 12 weekly sessions from Tuesday March 4th 2025 - Tuesday May 20th 2025
Meeting day and times: Tuesday evenings from 6pm-8pm
Location/Format: Virtual via Zoom
In Person sleep away retreat dates: Tuesday May 13th to Friday May 16th, 2025. (Food and Transportation covered in Registration fee.)
💰Fee:
$100 registration fee.
🗣 Language:
The activities will be in English. But both of the facilitators are bilingual if English is not your first language.
🤝 ACCESSIBILITY:
We believe in inclusivity! If financial constraints are a concern, reach out to us. We're committed to providing free space for those who need it. If the cost is a barrier, please email us at info@blackhealingcentre.com with the subject "BLACK WOMEN'S COLLECTIVE CARE CIRCLE" to get a free spot.
Please note:
(1) These groups are reserved for Black women ages 21+.
(2) In order to ensure everyone feels nurtured, spots are limited.
(3) This space is inclusive and welcoming of all Black women.
MEET THE THERAPIST
Dr. Lisa Ndejuru is a psychotherapist, psychodramatist and theatre practitioner.
Her practice is about creating accessible, non-medicalized, scalable strategies for healing and change in our communities, impacted by the violence of anti-blackness in all its forms. Violence flattens our lives and creates silences. Lisa wants to work on intergenerational transmission of trauma, breaking the silences and repairing trust within our communities. Lisa works to open pathways to wellness, emancipation, and finding one’s voice in a post-colonial context of everyday oppression, systemic racism, and large-scale political violence. Lisa’s work on trauma started in her community with survivors of organized violence and colonial violence. She was one of the 2017 Concordia public scholars and the first John F. Lemieux fellow for genocide studies in 2018. As the 2020 Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto’ faculty of information, she is working with the “Vansina collection” of Ibitekerezo tales.
Kathleen (Kat) Charles (she/they) is a queer, Haitian, mental health counsellor, artist and co-founder of Black Healing Fund based in Tio'tia:ke (Montreal).
Kat is trained as a creative arts therapist and somatic practitioner with a focus on fostering safer spaces for QTBIPOC youth as a counsellor and community organiser. Their growing ideology as a therapist is heavily rooted in a commitment to the re-indigenization of healing spaces for marginalised communities through embodiment and sacred creativity.
Kat believes that pursuing a career in mental health is void of sustainable impact without also being deeply invested in mutual aid to fuel communal resistance against systems of oppression that exacerbate mental distress for us all.
