Butterflies in Cocoons: Black Women & Mental Health.

Reel Sisters Lecture Series will present two panels on healing and mental health. Our first panel will be virtual and the second one will be held on Nov. 5, 2022 at the Maysles Documentary Center, 343 Lenox Ave in Harlem. Please join us for an open and honest community conversation on wellness and mental health. 

Please watch the film and leave comments.

Tuesday, October 25th, 2022 | 6:30pm EST (Virtual)

Butterflies in Cocoons: Black Women and Mental Health

This panel will feature three Black women sharing their stories of living with chronic and persistent mental illnesses and their journeys to recovery. A facilitator will moderate. A viewable link for the film Black Girl Bleu will be sent a few days before the chat. The film is directed by Sharee Silerio.

Chiquita Williams

Chiquita Williams, Facilitator

Chiquita S. Williams is an educator, peer health practitioner and cultural organizer. As a trauma survivor and a person living with mental health conditions, she has dedicated her life to the pursuit of racial, gender and disability justice. For over 30 years, Chiquita has helped survivors access healing and recovery resources. She has engaged in individual and group counseling; and designed multiple educational programs dedicated to empowering women and girls of color. She’s also written extensively and given legislative testimony about the impact of sexual violence on the lives of Black women. More recently, she has worked at Fountain House, the world’s oldest mental health social rehabilitation program. Website: www.chiquitawilliams.net

Sharee Silerio

Sharee Silerio

Sharee Silerio is a St. Louis born and raised filmmaker who tells coming-of-age, self-discovery, and real-life stories where Black women and girls exist as full human beings on screen and feel seen, heard, loved, and affirmed beyond the screen. Her film and television credits include projects on cable and streaming platforms such as Netflix, Oxygen, Comedy Central, MTV, Prime Video and more. Sharee’s latest work is a celebrated short doc and wellness community called “Black Girl, Bleu”, born from her personal challenges with mental health after the unexpected passing of her favorite uncle. In 2020, she launched 11 Stars Studios, a film, television, digital and streaming production company that houses all her heart-born projects. To learn more about Sharee, and to view her body of work, visit www.shareesilerio.com.

Stephanie Colon

STEPHANIE COLON, Panelist For 40 years I worked within the non-profit and public sectors. I have community organizing and planning experience within the capacity of executive director, bilingual case manager, clinical supervisor, therapeutic cultural arts coordinator, group facilitator, certified peer specialist and personal medicine coach. I have worked for state and municipal governmental agencies in Africa, Central America and in the United States. I am a performing artist/choreographer with extensive teaching exposure to African and contemporary dance techniques.

Candace Reunions

Candace Reunions

My name is Candace and I had the honor and privilege of being a truth teller in BGB! This documentary has been life changing as I continue navigating life with anxiety and depression. Through this film and continual therapy, I have learned my mental health MATTERS especially as a Black Girl!

Outside of this film, I am an educator working with preschool-aged children who learn differently (Special Education), a Big Sister with Big Brother’s Big Sisters and I am an entrepreneur! 

My small business, Love Xpressions By Can LLC, customizes a range of products all made with LOVE!

Black Men, Trauma, and Mental Health: An Open Conversation.

Christopher Rogers

Saturday, November 5th, 2022 | 3:30-4:30pm EST

Maysles Documentary Center, 343 Lenox Ave. (near 127 St).

Reel Sisters Lecture Series explores trauma experienced by Black men and its connection to mental illness. Christopher Rogers, a Certified Peer Specialist, CarePATH Coach and Program Director for Baltic Street AEH, Inc., will engage in conversation with author/poet/filmmaker Brad Walrond who shares his story on healing from depression. A short film on hip-hop artist Wayne and his experiences with trauma and mental illness will be screened before the panel. 

An Open Community Conversation and Q&A will follow, with audience members encouraged to share their own mental health struggles.

Christopher Rogers

Christopher Rogers, Facilitator

Christopher Rogers is a Certified Peer Specialist, CarePATH Coach and Program Director for Baltic Street AEH, Inc., as well as a New York Peer Conference Board Member and facilitator for the Healing through Hip Hop paneling committee supported by OMH. For the last 15-years Christopher Rogers has been working with collaborating, supporting, and moving people and communities forward with his ideas for a better way to live and do things. From 25 years in fashion as a men’s wear designer to 20 plus years touring the world as an entertainer in Hip Hop to becoming the COO to the community based F.O.O.D. Foundation to becoming the Director of the Adult Home Initiative program for Baltic Street AEH, Inc. and facilitating the monthly men’s support groups for Autismandwe.org, all while living with and journeying through my mental health concerns, battling ESRD (End Stage Renal Disease) on Dialysis and undergoing a kidney transplant mid pandemic to this forum and stage. I am honored to be here. 

Brad Walrond, Panelist

poet| author | filmmaker | mixed-media conceptual, performance artist |activist 

Brad’s poetics, performance, and multi-disciplinary work interpolates between virtual reality, identity formation, and human consciousness at the intersection of race, gender, sex, and desire. By amplifying and interrogating the great power and contradictions inherent to identity Brad aims with his work to provoke futurist explorations of how we experience and co-create historical, remembered, and imagined time. An urgency suffuses his work with an eye toward cultivating the embodiment of habitable futures we can viably fashion out of the common and conflicting threads of our human inheritance. 

Walrond’s forthcoming debut collection Every Where Alien, on Moore Black Press, Harper Collins, locates the author’s own black queer exploration of the world, and how these experiences map onto the discovery of co-occurring and overlapping art and resistance movements among New York City’s underground communities.

2 thoughts on “Lecture Series”

    1. Steele,

      Happy Kwanzaa! Thank you for taking the time to enjoy our Reel Sisters lecture series on Black women and mental health. It is an important issue we will continue addressing in 2023! Wishing you the best in the coming year!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *