riverside_alethia_retreat

A group of individuals, including Esther, Alethea, Alicia, Jessica, Ebony, and Lee, discuss the importance of community and creating safe spaces for people of color to heal and practice wellness. They talk about their backgrounds and experiences in various fields, such as therapy, higher education, entrepreneurship, and community building. They also discuss the need for outdoor exploration and the lack of diverse businesses and services in certain areas. Lee shares his experience opening a Jamaican and Thai restaurant to provide a space for black people in his community to get food. Welcome. My name is Esther. I'm the host of the Canadian Businesswoman Podcast. Today I have a roundtable. We're talking about community, so it makes sense that I'm surrounded by community. We'll start with Alethea. How are you today? I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for having me, Esther. You're the problem-causer here. You arranged this. Oh, thank you. It's best to start with you. Okay. I will briefly introduce everybody else, and then we'll come back to you and get to know you a little bit more. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Can you hear me loud and clear for you? Yes. I can hear you. I'm sorry. I think I misspoke. What is the money's... Who are you representing? Yeah. I'm the vice president of the Quinpe Cultural Innovation Committee, which Dharmini has set up. So, we have an affiliation that spans eastern Ontario from the Quebec border all the way out to Belleville in terms of our cooperation. Thank you very much. So, we'll go back to Alicia, and I'll have all of you kind of briefly introduce yourself, your earlier life, and what you're doing now, and what led you to that point. Yes. Well, I work with people in my private practice as a therapist who are recovering from anxiety and depression. And what I've noticed is for people of colour, which is 90% of my clientele, we're always talking about spaces that we can go that are safe for people of colour and people identified as people of colour to go where they need to heal. And I have a background from the Caribbean, and my parents would always say that when they were stressed, they would book a ticket and they would go back home. And I always used to think, well, where would I go if I needed somewhere to heal and to practice my wellness amongst my community? And one day I decided, you know what, I'm going to manifest this. I'm going to be looking for a space that I can bring other people that are in the health and wellness field that are also people of colour, and we're all going to come together and support one another and do activities that help replenish our energy, restore our faith, and also help us make better decisions so that we can do better for ourselves and also heal ourselves. And I just happened to run into the people that were creating an eco-village. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is amazing that I found this space where we can do these activities. And as I mentioned to you before we started, that I happen to be in a group with Jessica Rain, a sister who's in Sorority House of Nine, and I really liked her platform and the wellness initiatives that she was promoting. And when I visited my alma mater, I connected with Ebony, who was also in the wellness space. And I thought, you know what, what a great combination of having these platforms and these women join me, and we collaborated on this idea. And from there, the eco-village and Lee and his amazing group of people were open to the idea of hosting on their land. And I thought, this is a great time for us to start looking at some health and wellness initiatives for the Black and Black-identified community. Awesome. Well, since you called out Jessica, let's go to her next. Jessica, can you tell us a little bit about your life before you connected with Ebony and Alicia, and what led you to what you're doing now? Absolutely. So I hope you can hear me. Well, it's funny, because I feel like I've been an entrepreneur all my life, and I've been dibbling and dabbling in a lot of things, but at the core of it, it's been creating community. So I've worked in higher education for many years, for the University of Toronto, Humber College, York University, and mostly focusing on building spaces that are inclusive, where people belong, where people feel like they belong. Mostly Black student success programs, health and well-being programs for BIPOC women and men. So doing that in my nine-to-five, but also in my businesses. So I do own a business called Evolving Doors, which focuses on women specifically, and women entrepreneurs who are looking for better ways to connect and better ways to share their knowledge around entrepreneurship, build their professional skills, but even more on a personal level. We know that mentorship is not always easy to have access to, so creating a community amongst Black women who can help each other. And in that, with that organization specifically, I did a lot of retreats. So going away to cottages and places and providing experiences for some that were like, oh, I've never been to a cottage before, I've never kayaked, I didn't know it was so calming, I didn't know that nature could feel this way in Canada. I had never seen myself in these places, specifically in Canada, so I think a lot of it had to do with outdoor exploration with your people, but also the professional and personal growth. So when I met Alicia through the Sisters in Solidarity program, and I heard her vision for wellness, I'm like, yeah, I'm totally aligned, that's my mission, that's my value, so let's get it going, and that's what we're doing now. Amazing. I love that you're talking about getting outdoors, because I don't know, again, a lot of the Black culture that we see is very American-centralized Black culture and that experience, and the conversation is always like, Black people don't ski, and Black people don't do this and that, and kind of all these limitations that are supposed to, I guess they're disguised as like uplifting and community, but it's really just limiting beliefs. So I love that you're saying, yeah, you can do it, and you need to do it, because we all need it, we need to get outdoors. So we'll get more into that after we introduce Ebony. Ebony, please tell us about yourself, and what led you to this point, and connecting with the other people on our panel, we'll call it a panel today. Brilliant, brilliant, absolutely. So, hi, thank you so much for having me, my name is Ebony Morgan, I am a writer, storyteller, and I like to call it community builder, because there's so many different ways in which I've been able to do that, and so just as a way to capture all of them, I think that's a word or a phrase I like to use. So this journey for me started way back when I was a student at DAU, which is also my alma mater, so I graduated in 2019, and I noticed that there was a huge gap for Black students specifically, and the challenges that we had to endure going throughout our academic journeys. I mean, to go to a class and have a professor who is in charge of whether you pass or fail that whole class, but has the most minimal expectations of you, doesn't pour into you, doesn't believe in you, and I think that that starts so early in the academic journey, that by the time they get to university, oftentimes they hit the wall. They get to a point where they don't see a light at the end of the tunnel anymore, and so in seeing that shift, I really wanted to be able to show up for Black students, and so after that, I started working at the university, which is where I met Alicia, and I started supporting Black students specifically in my later years working at the university, and after some academic advising support, support with admissions, and just my own experience as a Black alum, I was able to really show up for students in that sense. I've continued my journey in higher education in supporting students and have also ventured out in my own business, so I have always been a huge, huge fan of writing, and so I've written my own book, A Year of Black Girl Magic, which is daily reflections and affirmations to celebrate Black women, and so I continue to push, again, that community builder element where I'm able to really show up for our people in various different ways, but always on the basis of bringing us together and reminding us who we truly are as a people and what we're capable of. Awesome. Thank you, Ebony. And Lee, I feel like you kind of did a sort of intro earlier, but I'm still going to throw it to you. Anything you want to add to the conversation before we start talking about this wonderful retreat you guys are putting together? Absolutely. I'm going to try to be as brief as possible. So I reside in a community that is just below 50,000. I've been here in Cornwall for about 22 years. I opened up the Spicy Pearl, which is a Jamaican and now Jamaican and Thai restaurant in our community, and what stands out about that is within the Cornwall area, there were no diverse businesses to be seen. So I took business marketing at St. Lawrence College. I operated six Tim Hortons simultaneously, and so I decided to bring all of that together. My business partner and myself opened up this wonderful business, and for me, it wasn't about making money. It was about creating a space where Black people in this community and region would have a place to go get food. In my time growing up here, if I wanted to get food, and by the way, I grew up in the GTA, Branson Malls in Mississauga. In order for me to get food here, I'd have to travel to Ottawa or I'd have to travel to Montreal just to get a home-cooked meal. And so one of the things that I was noticing was we didn't have any spaces to get our hair done. We didn't have anything that we could get at the grocery store. We had nowhere to eat. So we struck out November 2019 and then COVID hit. Took all of my training from Tim Hortons. We kept our business alive and our business is still running. I was offered an opportunity to do a climate change project for the Government of Canada. I left my business in my partner's hands and his wife came on board. She brought Thai food. He kept the Jamaican Park. And then I was honoured with Citizen of the Year for the City of Cornwall. And so in that space of being honoured, I have had the ability to encounter Darmini. Darmini brought me out to Belleville and she showed me her wonderful location and it's exactly what everybody's talking about on this call, on this panel. It's about having a space where you feel that you can be yourself. And so that to me really sang to my heart in terms of what I was trying to do with my restaurant was creating a space that we could find ourselves and meet each other and be surprised because our community has a very small Black population in terms of its disability and I didn't want them to get lost in the shuffle of things. But moving up to Darmini's, her project, I thought it was a wonderful space to be outside. So being again a kid from the GTA, one of the things that captivated me about this community was you could have a bonfire. When I grew up in Brampton, North Mississauga, you're not putting bonfires in what? That's not happening. You're going to jail. Yeah. Wow. And so you could also see the stars. And so I'm born in Edmonton. I'm a bit of a prairie kid in certain ways. So the country is something that really spoke to me. So being in Darmini space, you could really feel the separation of the quote unquote concrete jungle, the rat race, and you kind of get lost in the expansiveness. So I came on board. We shaped the Quinti Cultural Innovative Committee. And so I'm here in place of Darmini, but I cannot fully represent her because she's such a stellar human being. So I've got a couple of pieces that I will mention, but I'm here to support everything that she does. And today you get to speak with me, but there's so many things I would love to talk to you about. But focusing on this, I would say my thread, my common thread is that we want to create spaces that allow us to feel natural in those spaces and not confined by whatever structure society puts on us. So I'm very blessed to be in all of your presence and I'm very grateful for the work that you do. Thank you for being here. Congratulations on all your accomplishments and that you realize that it's everybody's not at that same space and same level that you are. So we need to bring them along, or at least give them that opportunity. It sounds like that's what everybody on here, that's everybody's goal. So, Ebony, I'll kind of let you jump in because I heard you kind of getting excited and reacting to Lee a little bit. So was it something you wanted to add before we start talking about your retreat? Yes, I actually also am from Edmonton, Alberta. And I was just really resonating with what Lee was saying because whether we want to believe it or not, Black people are outdoor people. It might not be this outdoor with tundra and cold and snow, but we are outdoor people. So I think being in Edmonton versus being here in the DPA, you can really feel the difference between being outside versus being around buildings all of the time and what effects it has on your mental well-being. So anyway, that was my excitement. Thanks for giving me the space to share that. That's awesome. Well, we'll stay with you. We'll get it started with you. So you are now working on a retreat. Can you kind of get the ball started and talk about why you felt the need to do that and the goals with this retreat? Sure. I'll actually use space and being outdoors as a thread to weave here. So where the retreat or the wellness experience will be held is in Belleville. And it's, as Lee was saying, a gorgeous, gorgeous space that really allows attendees to be in a space not just of community, not with fellow BIPOC people, people who understand what it is to have to navigate these social structures that we have to battle, but something that really invokes healing in a communal way. And so the Ubuntu wellness retreat or wellness experience will really speak to, I think, bringing folks back together in a way that we have craved and in a way that we lost for some time. As we all know, I won't even mention the words. We all know what I mean when I say that. So being able to bring folks back together in a way where they're able to really engage in different activities to support their well-being, support their growth, support their overall joy and happiness and their ability to continue forward together is truly at the root of the wellness experience. So that ball is rolling now. Thank you, Ebony. And so Alicia, we'll go back to you. What's your goal with this retreat? Why did you feel the need to be part of this? And what do you hope to get out of this or hope people will get out of this? Well, I'm just jumping on what Ebony said, because I really love the way she described that tapestry of what we will be doing in this space. And I'm like, wow, this is so beautiful, because people get it and they understand it, right? And my goal was to develop a wellness plan so that people can have some activities, right, that help them improve their neural pathway of pleasure and happiness. And we know about those four neural pathways, and I call it dosing up on your happy hormones, the dopamine, the oxytocin, the serotonin and the endorphins. And these are the things that we really need to tap into as people of color, because we've been so oppressed and restricted for so long. And I wanted to have a space that we can just frolic and be free and do some of those things that we know helps restore energy, replenishes our way of doing things and just really getting into what are those things that help us get back to our center and make us feel whole again. And I said, you know, from growing up and just being in different spaces, we love our cookouts. We like being out in nature. We like being free. And I thought, well, this is a good time for us to really look at these spaces and create something that would really be a part of a wellness experience for everyone involved. That's great. Jessica, we're gonna, we're gonna send it back to you. Can you speak to why you chose the word Ubuntu? And also, what specific African cultures? Because I think it's kind of mentioned that there's, you're trying to include African cultures. So is there a specific region? And what was the reason for that? Yeah, absolutely. I think choosing the word really, I think I'm going to give that to you, Alicia, in terms of choosing Ubuntu, but it makes sense because it's about togetherness. It's about us coming together and doing this together. I think that's one of the biggest things when we think about wellness, especially in our community is so much of our wellness has to do with tradition, but also a tradition that we might not even be connected to at the moment. So we're trying to reconnect with our African heritage, with some of the traditions from West Africa or East Africa or South Africa, right? And I think when we were thinking about this, being very intentional about having, you know, African spirituality, principles, concepts, ideas for folks to start learning about that as well. So one of the things that we want to do is, you know, we want to have kind of a drumming ceremony to call in our ancestors as we begin to do this together, you know? So the drums are connected to our heartbeat. It connects to a tradition that happened for many, for many years, right? So what are the, you know, the essence of, you know, our Africanness? How do we bring that into the space and not just see wellness as these different kind of spaces that don't include our spirituality and connecting with who we really are? So yeah, I think we're very intentional on how we're doing that. And the variety of things that we're talking about, like so cooking together, you know, as a practice, growing food or gardening together as a practice. So things like that. Wonderful. So we're going to take it back to Lee because he's involved, literally involved with the land that you'll be using to create the churchy. Why is land so important? And just tell us, you know, more about that, because I was kind of reading a bit about your focus about focusing on not just food, but how the food is grown. And just tell us more about that. Absolutely. And so one of the things that I really like about Dharmini's contribution to this is, I'm not going to lie, my parents came from Haiti. They worked very, very hard to give me what they have given me. They're not landowners. And I think a considerable amount of our population, at BIPOC individuals, don't have access to land. We may own our homes, but our homes in urban areas lack sufficient terrain to be able to do some of these exciting things of being able to have a relationship with the soil, have a relationship with our cultivation practices. And so when I was looking at Dharmini's location and what she has to offer, you have the opportunity to have a relationship with nature. And I think that is critical, especially in the day and age that we live in, where things are going very, very fast, where we're tuned into so many things, but we're not tuned into ourselves. And so this space offers us freedom, access. This is the most important thing that I think should be put out there is that we now, through this project, have access to a space that is not limiting. I'm going to take this back a step for a second. When I grew up, I didn't have a cottage. I still don't have a cottage. And so the idea of being able to leave my home and go somewhere else and enjoy the freedoms of nature, it was a foreign concept to me. And if it was a foreign concept to me, I know it was a foreign concept to my cousins, to the football teams, to my high school. A lot of people just didn't have this luxury of being able to leave the day-to-day race and go into a place of reprieve. And so Seven Acres, as it was formerly called, it's now under a different name, but the location in Delvo where this experience is going to be, it's expansive enough. And there's plans for having food sustainability practices, where people can actually come into that space. And this is what's key. When we're talking about what the future is going to hold, food scarcity is a real reality. If you're going to the grocery store, I think you begin to think about, would it be cheaper for me to grow my food? And you can only take that thought further if you've got land to do it off. And so this is where these kinds of things kind of intercept against the system, as it were. Even if you don't have land, getting a part of these kinds of initiatives allows you to practice what has been lost. We are a culture of people. We have a motherland. We've got a homeland. When I say back home, all of us understand what back home means. And so if we can bring ourselves closer to the way things were done, I think we've got a way to circumvent the system insofar as we have more control over what comes into our bodies. But I think there's a spiritual aspect of this that also needs to be understood. To be able to have a place where you can commit and pour yourself into and then have that commitment return back to you, there's a spiritual cycle that I think we can practice with that. So if you've got access to land, you've got access to a certain kind of spiritual practice. And I think that's what some of this has to offer. And I'm so proud of the work that's being done. I want to leave room for Jessica because I know that we're under a certain time construct. I'd like for her to say a little bit more. Yeah, that's great. So we'll jump to Jessica. Any final words that you want to add before we end the recording today? Can you hear me, Jessica? No? All right. So we'll just quickly kind of wrap up. Alethea, can you give us some just details that people will need to know about the retreat? And any final words you wanted to add? Yes. The retreat will be happening in July. And we have organized and saved the date for four Saturdays in July, the 6th, the 13th, the 22nd. And I think there's one more day, the 6th, the 13th, the 20th, and the 27th. And it's going to be a full day of programming with facilitators coming onto the land. We will be doing various activities from a holistic lens, which means it'll be financial wellness, emotional wellness, mental wellness, physical wellness. And also, we're going to be doing some thing around food and making sure, again, that we're going to be celebrating ourselves and our womanhood. We are thinking of having an overnight. That hasn't been confirmed. But it will be a wonderful time to do some gathering and also sit around the campfire so we could share our stories and really connect with ourselves on the land so that we can, you know, start our healing journey and our emotional wellness. So everything is just about your health and well-being. The goal is to have 100 people served. And it looks like through the survey that I put out, and the information that we circulated amongst your groups, we have 65 people that are interested. So the spaces are going to be going really fast. We haven't advertised yet, but we know that once we advertise, it's going to be sold out. There is a second component, and then we will talk about that in September or towards the end of the summer, where we will be looking at social enterprises for all of our businesses and really keying into that market. But other than that, you know, we're really looking forward to having this experience. This is the first experience that we've had in this large magnitude. And there's also interest of having an observational study based on some of the work that we're doing. And I've had some psychiatrists and mental health experts that have reached out to us and said that, hey, we would love to see something written about what we're doing, because it's the first time it's been implemented on a large scale. So I'm really excited about that. That's amazing. Wow. Already 55 people. So that's great. Ebony, we're going to just get some final words from you. Did you want to add anything to what Alicia said? And just any kind of final words of anything that I haven't already asked you? Yeah, absolutely. It's just, I hope that folks really see the value in being together in community and having the opportunity to take advantage of things like this wellness experience. And if it's something that you or somebody in your family or in your circle is interested in, share it with them. I think the more that we get used to experiencing these things and get used to being in these spaces, the easier it will be for us to continue to bring one another into these spaces and to liberate ourselves one by one. So see it, believe it, be there. I'm excited. Awesome. And Lee, you get the final word. What would you like to add before we wrap up? The last thing I'll say is from a personal note. There's a beautiful spiritual experience of looking into a fire and just letting your soul get lost. And you can't have those experiences except for if you're outside. So I'd really encourage anybody that's listening that may be apprehensive to getting outdoors. Use these kinds of programs to use them as bridges. There is nothing better than being able to have a connection, a familiarity and a comfort with being on the land. As much as we're Canadian, we're from other places. This is our country too. In the wide open wilderness, it is a beautiful place. Don't be afraid of it. But it takes somebody else that's been there to bring us there. And these fine women are going to be great ambassadors and advocates for that. So hearing this, I invite you to get in contact with them, make it happen. It's worth your soul. It's worth your soul. Thank you for that. I'll make sure to include all the details in the show notes. Thank you for being here and have a good evening. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much. Bye everybody. Thank you. you Transcribed by https://otter.ai