Upcoming Workshop Schedule
THRIVE Lifeline and Stronger U are partnering to provide the following workshop series! These workshops will help you to destigmatize experiences within multiply marginalized communities, and uplift lived experience.
Spring Series #1: People, Not Just Parts
Our sliding scale for this series is between $40 – $85 for each workshop. We offer a 10% discount to those who purchase the entire series. We will have a limited number of scholarships available. If you do need a scholarship, please email info@strongeruwellness.com.
Speaker Bio: kitty lu bear
kitty lu bear is a white, disabled, queer, non-binary femme. Collectively, they are Mad and multiple, recognizing that their experience of ‘many in one body’ as a multidimensional state is the lens through which they experience the world. They are deeply connected to supporting interdependent solutions around healing justice and accessibility for the LGBTQIA+ community. From facilitating writing workshops to holding space in peer-led support groups, they are interested in the symbiotic nature of community care. They graduated from UMN-Twin Cities where they received an interdisciplinary BS in Engineering Studies, Holistic Health and Healing, and Plant/Fungal Biology.
Workshop 1: Undoing the Pathology of Dissociative Experiences
Many times therapeutic spaces refer to the ‘parts’ of self, as parts of one single whole person. This approach can reinforce the premise that a ‘singular self’ experience is the only one possible, and more so, the only one desired. This workshop will dive into the lived aspects of multiplicity/plurality, from a Mad lens. We will illuminate the process of depathologizing dissociative experiences and healing systemic psychiatric consequences. Madness acts not only as a lens but as a praxis to deconstruct the diagnosis of our lived experience and ground it in naturally occurring non-singular experiences of our world around us.
Date: Passed. Click here to buy workshop recording
Workshop 2: Redefining Peer Support for Dissociative Experiences
The work of redefining peer support spaces first invites a deconstruction of the self in the experience of survival, safety, and healing. How do we show up in support when the “self” is a communal experience, one not bound by linearity, memory, or time. This workshop will explore the lived experience of both sides of peer support, from reaching out in crisis in multiplicity/plurality to showing up in multiplicity/plurality as a lens for peer support. We will understand together that redefining peer support for non-singular experiences is a collective resistance to pathology.
Date: Passed. Click here to buy workshop recording
Spring Series #2: Showing Up in Ways That Count
Presented by THRIVE Lifeline and Stronger U teams
Our sliding scale for this series is between $62 – $135 for each workshop. We offer a 10% discount to those who purchase the entire series. We will have a limited number of scholarships available. If you do need a scholarship, please email info@strongeruwellness.com.
Workshop 1: Creating Mental Health Safe Spaces
Whether you’re an organizational or community leader, a friend or loved one, or holding space internally, showing up during mental health struggles is an intentional practice. In this workshop, we will begin to destigmatize suicidality by identifying what “safe” specifically means to your group, clarifying what scope of support that you can offer, vetting relevant resources, and responding appropriately when you learn that a group member is struggling with thoughts of suicide, urges to harm, or traumatic experiences.
Date: Sunday, May 5 at 7pm GMT / 3pm ET / 9am HT; 3 hours
Workshop 2: Creating Suicide Safe Conversations
Showing up for others means being able to let them be their most authentic selves. When someone shares about suicide, or other stigmatized parts of themselves, it is a sacred and vulnerable space to be allowed into. This workshop will help you to learn how to hold a sacred space and honor the authenticity of marginalized people when they need to talk about their suicidality. Examine your own fears, understand what will shut someone down, and practice having consensual and affirming conversations about suicide.
Date: Sunday, May 19 at 7pm GMT / 3pm ET / 9am HT; 3 hours
Self-Guided Course Workbooks
Each of the two above workshops has a self-guided course workbook associated with it, which allows you to go through the training materials in an educational, reflective manner. Each course workbook contains instructional material as well as many questions to help you deepen your thinking and understanding, hold space for yourself as you process, and practice the skills learned.
Workbooks are currently available for pre-sale for $40 here (all workbooks will be emailed after the completion of our May 19 workshop!)
Click here to register for workshops.
These are highly participatory workshops which include practice conversations and discussions, and emphasize lived experience. They will not be recorded. If you cannot attend, or aren’t comfortable having these conversations in a group, check out our self-guided course workbook!
Summer Series #1: Disabled Realities
Our sliding scale for this series is between $50 – $110 for each workshop. We offer a 10% discount to those who purchase the entire series. We will have a limited number of scholarships available. If you do need a scholarship, please email info@strongeruwellness.com.
Speaker Bio: Regina
Regina (they/them) is a Nonbinary, Queer, Disabled, Neurodivergent, white person who has been a disabled activist for over 6 years. They believe in unraveling theories and frameworks of disability where they align most with the social model of disability, and prioritize lived experiences over clinical opinions. This translates into community care and organizing, boots-on-the-ground activism, and creating resource webs. In their work—including writing university legislation, fighting for and serving in accessibility positions, and creating events with people including the late Judy Heumann—Regina prioritizes care, action, and community. They have a degree in Kinesiology from Cal Poly and minored in Dance and Queer Ethnic Studies, which shapes their intersectionality approach.
Workshop 1: We need your help, but we don’t need saviors
An exploration of how saviorism harms the disability community and how to help meaningfully. We will discuss the social, medical, and other models of disability and how framing affects the outcome felt by disabled people. The focus will be on how our rights, opportunities, and laws are shaped by perceptions of disability, and by the efforts of pre-disabled saviors and white saviorism. Alternative solutions will be explored, focusing on pre-disabled people fixing the problems they create, instead of fixing us. Finally, there will be space for creativity and reflection on actions pre-disabled people can take instead of engaging in saviorism.
Date: Sunday, July 14 at 8pm GMT / 4pm ET / 10am HT; 2 hours
Workshop 2: Crip Rage
An exploration into the systematic and personal barriers that disabled people face and how we continue to resist through peace and rage. We discuss how our community comes together despite the barriers and violence we face, highlighting the Crip movement. Rage against injustice is common in the disability community, we are justified in our anger and must navigate the cognitive dissonance of living in a world that is actively trying to push us out. Advice for practitioners on avoiding tone policing and addressing anger without repressing it will be shared, along with how to encourage feeling and expressing rage with the wide range of emotions we experience.
Date: Sunday, July 21 at 8pm GMT / 4pm ET / 10am HT; 2 hours