Join BWBH for this DEI Workshop

Empathy to Connect Community

Co-faciliated by

Alina Balseiro and Gihanah Seb-Di Dio

Through this virtual workshop, we will reflect on ways to build empathy to encourage greater understanding and connection within communities. By tuning into our own self-awareness, we can explore and expand relationships between our peers, our loved ones and ourselves. Join us as we experiment with mindful practices that are foundational to how we communicate through our inner language as well as the words we share with others.

Learn how we all develop patterns of thought and communication in society, and discover how we might reframe old stories about ourselves and others. We will share simple ways to uncover new considerations of all ways of Being with empathy and kindness, particularly in relation to LGBTQ+ allyship.

FREE and open to ALL.

Please DONATE! We co-create FREE practice in community thanks to the generosity of our contributors.

Be Well Be Here is a 501c3 non-profit mindful wellness educational collaborative - your donation is tax-deductible to the full extent of the law.

Join us and Be part of our mission to bring wellBEing practices to ALL, regardless of ability to pay.

DEI Specialist Gihanah Seb-Di Dio is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in International Higher Education at Lesley University. Alina Balseiro is a student at Lesley University.

Join us at the Concord Festival of Authors for the LGBTQ Memoir event with celebrated authors Alex Marzano-Lesnevich and Michelle Bowdler. BWBH founder Lara Wilson emcees this conversation about crafting authentic, unforgettable personal narratives that reveal deep aspects of our humanity.

About the Authors

Michelle Bowdler’s book, Is Rape a Crime?, published in July 2020, has been long-listed for a 2020 National Book Award in Nonfiction. Michelle is a recipient of a 2017 Barbara Deming Memorial Award for non-fiction and has been a Fellow at Ragdale and MacDowell Colony. She has been published in the New York Times and in the anthologies The Anatomy of Silence (Red Press) and We Rise to Resist: Voices from a New Era in Women’s Political Action (McFarland). Her essays: Eventually You Tell Your Kids and Babelogue were both nominated for Pushcart Prizes.

Michelle has worked in the public health field for years on issues of addiction, violence prevention, sexual health, HIV education and prevention. She has been involved, as well, for over a decade working on social justice issues related to rape and crimes of violence. Currently, she has the pleasure and honor of working as Executive Director of Health & Wellness at a major university in Boston where her work involves efforts to provide excellent sexual assault prevention and treatment for students in addition to mental health and health care.

Michelle Bowdler is a graduate of Brandeis University, where she studied and fell in love with literature and writing, and of the Harvard School of Public Health, where she learned that so much of healthcare access and outcomes have a social and cultural component. She is married to a wonderful woman and they have two awesome children.

Alex Marzano-Lesnevich is the author of THE FACT OF A BODY: A Murder and a Memoir, which received a Lambda Literary Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the Grand Prix des Lectrices ELLE, the Prix des libraires du Quebec 2020, and the Prix France Inter-JDD, an award for one book of any genre in the world. Named one of the best books of the year by Entertainment Weekly, Audible.com, Bustle, Book Riot, The Times of London, The Guardian, Paris Match, Lire, Telerama, and The Sydney Press Herald, it was an Indie Next Pick and a Junior Library Guild selection, long-listed for the Gordon Burn Prize, short-listed for the CWA Gold Dagger, a finalist for a New England Book Award and a Goodreads Choice Award, and has been translated into ten languages.

The recipient of fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, as well as a Rona Jaffe Award, Marzano-Lesnevich has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Boston Globe, Oxford American, Harper’s, and many other publications.

Alex earned their BA at Columbia University, their JD at Harvard Law School, and their MFA at Emerson College. They are now an assistant professor at Bowdoin College and live in Portland, Maine, with an enormous puppy.