Black Women’s Nourishment Retreat (2023)

Honoring the diversity of our Blackness: Black Women’s Nourishment Retreats

Black women so often must live in emergency response mode. Support for our rest is very rare. Black women frequently experience a blend of intersectional oppressions and erasure.

Black women need spaces to come together, listen to each other deeply, support and affirm each other, celebrate, heal and nourish ourselves. At our Black women’s nourishment retreats, we offer open spaces in which Black women can heal, talk, play, move, reflect, learn from each other, rest, be in nature, and dream.

In 2023, Center for Healing and Liberation offered two four-day Black Women’s Nourishment Retreats—one at Commonweal in Bolinas, CA, and one at the Whidbey Institute on Whidbey Island, WA. Almost 50 women gathered for these journeys of deep rest and healing. Our community of sisters and siblings explored the fundamental reality that our healing and our liberation are never separate.

These were gatherings thick with kindness and generosity, mutual grace, and honoring the diversity of our Blackness. We talked, laughed and rested. We oiled each other’s hair. We meditated and dreamed. We played and sang. We grieved and released.

Women said:

• "I was praying for something like this and then the invitation came and I knew I had to come."

• "I am here and I trust that someone in this room knows and understands."

• "The retreat breathed new life into me, and every day since I feel reenergized, more open, optimistic, and more connected with myself. Perhaps most nourishing was the love and acceptance I receive from the care team and participants. I did not realize how isolated and in need of community I was."

The momentum of our Black Women’s retreats is growing. It is flowing in divine time, and there is much more to come.