Offerings
The WELLS Healing Center provides wellness workshops and psychopolitical education using counseling psychology and Black feminist principles. The WELLS Healing Center also provides mentorship and training for mental health and wellness healers (e.g., counselors, coaches, etc.) that incorporates scholarship and activism. View our offerings below.
Training Programs
This training program is for aspiring Black feminist healers, researchers, consultants, and organizers. Collective members of The WELLS Healing Center love mentoring future healer-scholar-activists. We provide training and mentorship to individuals who (a) are invested in the serious study and application of Black feminisms and (b) can dedicate 15 hours a week to the program. Aspiring trainees can apply to one or multiple programs. Programs run for one full calendar year but if selected for all four areas there is a two year commitment expected.
Healing Training Program
Learn how to and practice conducting culturally mindful healing (e.g., counseling, coaching, group work) through the WELLS Healing Training Program.
*This program does not provide clinical hours for students in mental health training graduate programs (e.g., practicum, internship). Please see The Radical Healing Collaborative if you are interested in this type of training.
Applications are open for Fall 2024 from April 1-May 30. Announcements will be made on July 1.
Current trainees: Chandler Golden, Gabe Lockett, & Marquel Norton
Organizing + Consultation Training Program
Learn how to and practice organizing under a Black queer feminist lens and conducting consultation focused on social justice and mental health through the WELLS Organizing and Consultation Training Program.
Applications are open for Fall 2024 from April 1-May 30. Announcements will be made on July 1.
Current trainees: Brittany Bridges, Jeannette Mejia, & Cherese Waight
WELLS Workshops
Wellness, Equity, Love, Liberation, and Survival Workshops (virtual or in-person)
WELLS workshops ultimately aim to facilitate healing and liberation for all. The sessions cover a variety of topics centered on moving people towards liberation and wellness. These workshops are offered to groups such as faculty departments, teams, and organizations.
Toward Cultural Mindfulness in the Workplace
This workshop aims to improve wellness and workplace dynamics through psychoeducation on cultural mindfulness. Cultural mindfulness is a practice that encourages individuals to become aware and to maintain an awareness of (1) their own cultural identities and how their access to wellness is facilitated or prevented as a result of it, (2) the cultural identities of others and how their access to wellness is similarly impacted, and (3) how power operates to shape their interactions (or lack of interaction) with culturally different people through the lens of intersectionality. Participants are provided practical frameworks that help them to increase their cultural self-awareness, interpersonal efficacy in cross-cultural relationships, and understanding of the barriers and pathways to wellness for people with diverse cultural identities. By engaging in reflection, discussion and skill-building exercises, participants will leave with knowledge, a memorable experience and resources to facilitate their and others’ wellness in the current sociopolitical climate.
Anti-Blackness and Racial Trauma in the Academy I: Working toward Critical Awareness
This workshop explicates power, oppression, wellness, and liberation with an emphasis on anti-Black racism and resistance within the academy. The concepts of Whiteness, White supremacy, racism, racial trauma, critical consciousness, and activism are integrated with the psychopolitical wellness framework to further narrow the focus to mechanisms of Black oppression and liberation. Importantly, we apply the contemporary and intersectional framework of Critical Consciousness of Anti-Black Racism (Mosley et al., 2020) to the training so the local campus and community racial histories and current climate is meaningfully integrated. Participants can expect to engage in personal reflection, experiential exercises, and group discussion alongside their more traditional readings, media, and lectures.
Anti-Blackness and Racial Trauma in the Academy II: Working toward Critical Action
This workshop builds on attendees’ understanding of anti-Black racism and racial trauma. Attendees will learn about and explore the critical actions that will help them advance from being aware of anti-Blackness to being able to prevent, resist, cope and/or heal from anti-Black racism and racial trauma. Participants can expect to engage in personal reflection, experiential exercises, and group discussion alongside their more traditional readings, media, and lectures.
WELLS Groups
Wellness, Equity, Love, Liberation, and Survival Groups (virtual)
Healing and Wellness Grad Group for Transgender, Nonbinary, Gender Diverse Black, Indigenous, Students of Color
This group is designed to provide tansgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse graduate students who identify as BIPOC a space to heal, process, engage in peer mentorship, and community care, as we strive for collective wellness. The group is capped at 8 people, co-facilitated by Marquel and Gabe. Meetings will be 1.5-2 hours each, either bi-weekly or weekly, depending on group preference.
Start date determined once group is filled.
Black Grad Student Mentoring and Community Care Group
This group is designed to provide Black students in diverse graduate training programs with a community external to their university from which to receive mentorship and social support. The group is capped at 14 people. Members are screened by Dr. Della and can join with a 10 session commitment. They can continue on for as many weeks as they want after that and leave the group when ready thus opening a spot to a new member.
Start date determined once group is filled.
Black Grad Student Mentoring and Community Care Group
Creating Our Black Feminist Future:
A Bootcamp for Graduate Students with
Big Ideas
This group is designed to help graduate students take their big ideas from possibility to reality. There will be a total of three group meetings (2 hours in length per meeting, one meeting per month) with optional biweekly check-ins available for members.
Start date determined once group is filled.
Departure: The act of leaving to start a journey (A How-To)
Facilitated by Ti Malik and Sunshine A.
“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive” – Audre Lorde. This workshop is designed to support folks facing difficult life transitions using storytelling as a healing mechanism. Whether it is a job, a relationship or an institution that longer serves you, finding and telling your story can be a powerful tool in helping you move through departures and find your way towards freedom.
Mondays 6-8pm, start date determined once group is filled.
The Embodied Femme: A Creative Community Conversation
Facilitated by Maria Saldana
Drawing from Black, Latinx/Chicanx, Native Feminist Theories, and Queer Latinx Theory, this event is designed to explore and (re)imagine the ways we understand femininity and our relationship to it. Through this community conversation, participants will be invited to practice collective embodiment practices and open a reflective space to engage in body narratives and share the ways we find pleasure and joy.
There will be three one hour group sessions to continue to explore body narratives, sacred storytelling, and embodiment. If you missed the workshop you can still join us- you will receive the recording and materials from the event. Group sessions will not be recorded to help foster a sharing space.
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3 sessions
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QTBIPOC self-identifying femmes to the front
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Plan for Thursdays 5-7 PM ET / 2-4 PM PT
