We Heal Together Presents: Pleasure and Sex Workshop with Lydia Collins

Join us for a conversation with author and sexual health educator Lydia Collins, as we discuss Black sexual agency. What does it mean to reclaim pleasure? What does sexual self-care look like after trauma including colonialism, capitalism, and rape culture? Together we will explore how to foster Black sexual agency, reclaim pleasure and cultivate sexual self-care.  This is a space for Black community members solely. 

About the facilitator: Lydia Collins is an Author, Educator, and Creator from the Niagara Region, currently residing in Montreal. She published her first chapbook of poetry Angry. Black. Woman. in January 2019, her second To Everyone We've Ever Been in September 2020, a free digital chapbook In Transit in February 2021, and produced her first short film Joy Is Our Birthright in October 2020. Lydia is the former African, Caribbean, and Black HIV Prevention Strategy Worker at Somerset West Community Health Centre, and has most recently entered her role as Learning & Development Specialist at the African and Caribbean Council on HIV/AIDS in Ontario. Lydia's unwavering love for writing and community health are what keep her determined to continue amplifying marginalized voices through telling her own story.

We Heal Together is a monthly group for Black Carleton and Ryerson community members looking for alternative community healing methods. This group acknowledges the systemic barriers and erasure of black folks in survivor-led spaces. As Black people, our experiences with sexual trauma and hypersexualization is influenced by colonialism and anti-Black racism. Healing from our traumas requires different alternative methods that are within a closed safe space for the Black community. We will provide alternative healing methods through mindfulness techniques, reclaiming our narratives and multiple art mediums with guest speakers to help us along our healing journeys.