This is the first of a four-part Facebook and Instagram Live series with Climate Expert Marjahn Finlayson (ClimateEdu) and Alicia Wallace (Equality Bahamas).
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Join them live every other Thursday at 6pm EST on Equality Bahamas Instagram or Facebook.
Part 1 took place September 4, 2024.
Part 2 will be live September 19. 2024.
Connect with Climate Edu Bahamas: https://climateedubahamas.com/
Watch the full conversation below.
Rest is a crucial component of our physical and mental health. Unfortunately, many of us struggle to find ways to prioritize it while juggling many other commitments.
As summer comes to an end, let’s talk about making rest a priority. Our team is ready to share our practices and experiences, and we’re interesting in hearing about yours. Following the discussion, Margot Bethel will guide us in meditation.
– What does rest look like for you?
– How do you carve out moments of rest for yourself every week? Every day?
– Why is rest important?
– How can our relationships support us as we seek more rest?
Margot is an artist, a seeker, and a mindfulness meditation practitioner enrolled in a teachers’ training program with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach of Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Centre in California.
“I have been a regular practitioner of insight meditation for nine years. Over this time period, facing health challenges, as well as loss and grief, my experience with meditation has helped me to heal deeply, and continues to have a significant positive impact on my overall health and happiness. These are the key reasons I want to share with others who may be curious, interested or otherwise drawn to these practices.”
Watch the session from September 4, 2024 below.
Women’s Wednesdays was designed by Equality Bahamas as a response to community members’ requests for a space to access resources, experts, and practitioners, share knowledge, and engage in conversation with one another. Officially started in May 2017, Women’s Wednesdays highlights Bahamian women and our experiences in The Bahamas, specific to our identities including gender, race, sexuality, age, and ability. Held once per month at minimum, the events draw women together to have conversations that bring our individual lives into focus while connecting to family, community, and national narratives.
#WW242 intentionally centers and prioritizes women and girls, and is open to the public through in-person events, livestreams, and social media activity. With the support of the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, we create a safe space for knowledge-building, idea-sharing, critical dialogue, and movement-building.
For August’s Feminist Book Club, we’re reading a book by a Bahamian author! Where Was Goodbye by Janice Lynn Mather is up for Wednesday, August 21 at 6pm EDT. Join us for a discussion on Zoom.
Register: tiny.cc/fbc2024
Feminist Book Club is rockin’ through the summer!
We’re reading They Called Us Exceptional by Prachi Gupta this month. Join us for the discussion on Wednesday, July 17 at 6pm EDT.
From the publisher:
“Gupta addresses her story to her mother, braiding a deeply vulnerable personal narrative with history, postcolonial theory, and research on mental health to show how she slowly made sense of her reality and freed herself from the pervasive, reductive myth that had once defined her. But tragically, the act that liberated Gupta was also the act that distanced her from those she loved most. By charting her family’s slow unraveling, and her determination to break the cycle, Gupta shows how traditional notions of success keep us disconnected from ourselves and one another—and passionately argues why we must orient ourselves toward compassion over belonging.”
Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere, said, “I read it in one sitting. Wow. It aims right at the tender spot where racism, sexism, and family dynamics collide, and somehow manages to be both searingly honest and deeply compassionate.”
Register: tiny.cc/fbc2024
This Pride Month, we’ve got two amazing, free community care events for you.
Community care is critical for LGBTQI+ people who experience systemic and interpersonal violence. We need time and space to see and connect with one another. We need to develop skills and access tools to survive the current environment while we work toward the one where we will thrive.
Equality Bahamas intentionally focuses on community care during PRIDE because we believe in our interdependence and our ability to build new worlds together, and we recognize the importance of meeting our basic needs at time when PRIDE is focused on the general public. We are centering LGBTQI+ people. Come be in our circle.
Join us for weekly yoga sessions with Antonio Weech of Get Fit Life, Sundays at 8.30am. We’ll focus on a different zone of the body each week and learn ways to relieve tension.
REGISTER: tiny.cc/prideyoga24
Join us for weekly Therapy sessions with Jessica Russell, Mondays at 6pm.
REGISTER: tiny.cc/pridetherapy24
Finally for this Pride, we’ve got an update to our music collection, and a sequel to last year’s Proud mix, by @heydjampero.
Listen to it below.
🎧 Mixcloud: tiny.cc/pridemix24
🎶 Spotify: tiny.cc/pridemusic24
Feminist Book Club is reading Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Love and Making a Life by Amy Key over the next few weeks.
From the blurb:
“Mapping the evolution of her early conceptions of love through her adulthood, Key offers a tender and nakedly candid celebration of the many forms of intimacy that often go unnoticed. An essential work for both the single and the partnered, Arrangements in Blue is a bold manual for building a life on your own terms.”
From an interview with Amy Key:
“It feels vulnerable and scary to talk about life without romantic love at its center because it’s something that has made me feel ashamed and lonely throughout my life. I thought there was something wrong with me. I don’t think that now and more than that I’ve come to think it would be good for everyone to knock romantic love off its perch – to question its place at the center of experience.”
Join the online discussion:
Wednesday, June 19 at 6pm EDT
We’re meeting online only for the next few months, so make your snack and beverage plans!
We encourage you to buy the book from an independent bookstore. If you’re ordering online, check out bookshop.org.
Register: tiny.cc/fbc2024
Join us on Wednesday, May 15 at 6pm for a discussion about our next book:
Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
“Undrowned is a book-length meditation for social movements and our whole species based on the subversive and transformative guidance of marine mammals. Our aquatic cousins are queer, fierce, protective of each other, complex, shaped by conflict, and struggling to survive the extractive and militarized conditions our species has imposed on the ocean. Gumbs employs a brilliant mix of poetic sensibility and naturalist observation to show what they might teach us, producing not a specific agenda but an unfolding space for wondering and questioning.”
The book is available in hardcopy and ebook. If you’re buying the book, we encourage you to go to an independent bookstore. Bookshop.org is a great option for ordering only and supporting independent bookstores.
We look forward to seeing you on May 15! This meeting will be virtual only.
Register: tiny.cc/fbc2024
We’re part of the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights and we’re looking forward to Ending Statelessness & Upholding Equality Nationality rights on Thursday, May 9 at 7am EDT. This is a virtual event at the United Nations Civil Society Conference. Join us to learn about gender-unequal nationality laws and statelessness in five countries and the work incredible activists are doing to end them. We will also be joined by a representative from the UN Refugee Agency who will tell us about their work on this issue.
Feminist Book Club is reading How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair this month. Join us!
“Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.”
We’ll meet at @poincianapaperpress, 12 Parkgate Road, on Wednesday, April 17 at 6pm EDT to talk about How to Say Babylon. You can also join us virtually. Be sure to register at tiny.cc/fbc2024 to get updates.
More than two weeks left to get it and read it! It’s available as an ebook and audiobook in addition to print. There’s a copy in the library at Poinciana Paper Press, so you can arrange a time to drop by and enjoy the book and the space.
On April 3, 2024, we were in conversation with journalist Ava Turnquest about media literacy. She helped us learn that we have to understand the news better, and the purpose of the press, to make clear, specific demands for better reporting.
In this session you’ll learn:
What is media literacy? What does it require of us? What factors determine how news is delivered to us? How do we know when key pieces of information are missing, and what do we do about it? How, in the current race to be first, can we identify the best, most credible source(s) of information?
Women’s Wednesdays was designed by Equality Bahamas as a response to community members’ requests for a space to access resources, experts, and practitioners, share knowledge, and engage in conversation with one another.
Officially started in May 2017, Women’s Wednesdays highlights Bahamian women and our experiences in The Bahamas, specific to our identities including gender, race, sexuality, age, and ability. Held once per month at minimum, the events draw women together to have conversations that bring our individual lives into focus while connecting to family, community, and national narratives.
Watch the replay of the Women’s Wednesdays event below.
