A Blade of Grass
Reports from the Field: Harriet's Apothecary
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
6 to 8pm
Photo courtesy of Harriet's Apothecary. [Image Description: 27 womyn group together and smile into the camera. Most of them are wearing white and one of them holds a child also dressed in white. The floor is a dark gray stone and behind them are two coral colored doors and windows with brown wooden blinds.]
ABOG presented a conversation with 2015 Fellow Adaku Utah and collaborators Naimah Johnson and Natalie Sablon from Harriet's Apothecary, an intergenerational, healing village led by Black Cis Women, Queer and Trans healers, artists, health professionals, magicians, activists and ancestors. Harriet’s Apothecary is committed to co-creating accessible, affordable, liberatory, all-body loving, all-gender honoring, community healing spaces that recognize, inspire, and deepen the healing genius of people who identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Color and allies. The project continues the rich healing legacy of abolitionist, community nurse and herbalist Harriet Tubman. Learn more: harrietsapothecary.com
Bios
Naimah Johnson is a NYS licensed therapist with a radically integrated therapeutic approach. Her healing practice is informed by activism, esotericism, and ancestral wisdom, in pursuit of psychic liberation. She provides trauma-focused counseling through her private practice and in community-based settings. Naimah works with Black Women's Blueprint, supporting survivors of sexual assault & violence. She's a member of the village of healers with Harriet's Apothecary, and works collaboratively with organizations across New York City, providing training and facilitating community healing spaces. Her wide range of experience has helped her create interventions, which include clinical theory, intuitive practice, sacred ritual, community organizing tenets, and politicized activism. Naimah works intensively with those who've experienced trauma, as a result of being under-resourced, marginalized and oppressed. This includes work with individuals exposed to institutionalized oppression, sexual assault, domestic violence, state violence, as well as race & gender-based violence. She's currently expanding her healing practice by completing a Yoga Teacher Certification, as she believes in the union of all aspects of being (mind, body, spirit), as central to healing. Naimah believes in healing as an act of resistance and revolution.
Natalie Sablon is a nomadic urbanite with roots in Denver, Arizona, St. Louis, Atlanta and New York. She is a nurse who adores all things herbs, and has experienced their healing on a first hand basis. Equally important, she has witnessed herbs usher in healing in her community. Natalie is passionate about teaching, dancing, creation, expression, and growing within value-creating communities. She leads workshops throughout the community, which invites participants to tune in to their inner wisdom, trust that knowing and utilize it to create their tools of wellness.
2015 ABOG Fellow Adaku Utah has taught, organized, created sacred healing spaces and performed both nationally and internationally as a Social Change Initiatives coordinator, rape crisis counselor, youth organizer, intuitive healer, gender-based violence advocate, dancer, liberation trainer, sex education teacher, herbalist, sexual violence organizing educator, and board member for several organizations including Yale University, Chicago Foundation for Women, The Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health, Black Lives Matter, Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER), Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Museum, Sadie Nash Leadership Project and more. Her greatest desire is to embody the sacredness and wholeness of love and support herself, humanity and our larger ecosystem in garnering and using our tools of love, healing and liberation to fashion just and sustainable realities. Learn more: harrietsapothecary.com
We're grateful that this program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Reports from the Field presents the voices of community participants and collaborators in ABOG Fellows' socially engaged art projects, both in-person and online. Learn more in our online forum.