Hi everyone!

I feel like every email I send out starts with something about not having heard from me in a while because I've got who knows how many incomplete drafts out there that never make it to you but this one has and it's about where am I actively going to be over the next two months (which also lets you know about some events going down - including two with free ticket options).

I also just posted about this on IG if you want to share any of this there.

Sunday, April 19th: Beyond Research Papers: Co-Creating Public Knowledge About Bodies, Autonomy, and Healing

Event: Authority & Health-Science-Knowledge Virtual Symposium

April 17 - 19th

Host: The Sexploration Project

Location: Virtual (& free)

Description: This session explores how testimonios from Caribbean Island Hispanas about bodily autonomy, pleasure, and agency can function as health knowledge. Drawing from original qualitative research and an ongoing community-engaged museum project, this session examines how lived experience can be ethically translated into public-facing health education. Participants will be introduced to an evolving process in which research participants are invited back into the work to co-curate how their stories are represented in museum exhibits. This approach challenges extractive research practices reframing consent as ongoing, relational, and embodied. The session highlights how community storytelling can resist fear-driven health messaging, restore trust in embodied knowledge, and redistribute authority over meaning-making.

Co-facilitators/Presenters: Dr. Idalia Maciel, Lizzy Colón, and Bidania Criscuolo

Friday, May 1st - Sunday, May 3rd

Event: Embodied Wisdom: Foundations for the Future AASS Annual Meeting

Host: American Association of Somatic Sexologists

Location: Panama City, Panama

Workshop 1: Breathing into Consent: Practicing the Sacred Pause

Description: Come in and sit down. Can I kiss you? Give me a hug! Should I come over tonight? Did any of these questions or commands make you hesitate—or squirm? We make countless decisions every day and may sometimes respond before we have fully tuned into what our mind, body and heart truly want. For those who struggle with self-sacrifice or fear that changing their mind is not an option, this can be especially distressing.

In this sixty (60) minute workshop we will practice the sacred pause, a somatic tool for responding to requests from a place of mind/body/heart knowing. Together we will cultivate the skill of honoring our authentic responses and practice expressing when we have changed our minds.

Co-facilitator: Tashé Ann

Workshop 2: Beginning to Build a (Semi) Vetted Referral & Triadic Network

Description: This interactive session is designed for practitioners who are committed to working within their scope of expertise while collaborating across disciplines to provide holistic, client-centered care. Rather than operating in isolation, participants will explore how to intentionally cultivate vetted referral lists, reciprocal referral relationships, and triadic support networks that expand client care while maintaining ethical clarity.

Through guided reflection and small-group discussion, we will examine practical strategies for informally vetting both local and virtual helping professionals, clarifying scope of practice, and establishing communication norms for collaborative work. Participants will leave with concrete frameworks for building resource lists, strengthening professional relationships, and discerning when triadic collaboration may better serve clients than referral alone.

This session supports ethical practice, interdisciplinary collaboration, and sustainable professional community-building within somatic and relational work.

Thursday, June 4th - Sunday, June 7th

Event: AASECT Annual Conference: Aquí y Ahora (Here & Now)

Host: American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT)

Location: San Juan, Puerto Rico

Tickets: There are about 50 FREE tickets left for Puerto Ricans on the island! Let me know if you'd like the info :)

Pre-Conference Session: Rooted & Ready: Tools for Creating Effective, Values-Aligned, and Liberation-Centered Workshops

Description: Facilitating spaces of learning, vulnerability, and growth requires intentionality, not imitation. In this interactive pre-conference, participants will practice designing and facilitating workshops that reflect their authentic values and honor participant agency. Using trauma-aware and liberatory principles, you’ll explore how to set the tone for connection, apply backward design to build impact, and evaluate learning in ways that center joy, inclusion, and authenticity. You’ll leave with a customizable planning and evaluation toolkit you can reuse for any workshop.

Learning Objectives: 

1. Practice and evaluate techniques for intentionally setting the tone of a workshop that reflects their authentic facilitation values.
2. Apply a backward design framework to develop a cohesive, engaging, and inclusive workshop plan.
3. Identify one or more liberatory facilitation practices they can integrate into their future sessions. 

Plenary: (Re)claiming Pleasure, Sexual Agency, and Bodily Autonomy: Lessons from Caribbean Island Hispanas

Description: Testimonios, which come from Latina feminist traditions, transform personal experiences into collective awareness and sparks of political resistance through the act of witnessing and being witnessed. Fitting with the theme, “Aqui y Ahora,” this interactive plenary centers the testimonios of Caribbean Island Hispanas as part of a community healing project and healing research methodology. These testimonios, along with narratives shared from other projects and ongoing submissions are forming the basis of a virtual museum dedicated to Latine narratives around body, sexuality, and belonging from which excerpts will be shared.  

Through the words of Caribbean Hispanas, we will bear witness to how colonialism, sex-negativity, and anti-Blackness permeate intergenerational messaging. And we will also share in the celebration and the wisdom of these women, and their communities, in disrupting those inherited legacies and (re)claiming sexual agency, bodily autonomy, and pleasure for themselves and future generations.  

Learning Objectives: 

1. Identify the types of harmful intergenerational messaging Caribbean Hispanas receive about body and bodily autonomy and from where they stem. 
2. Describe methods that Caribbean Hispanas are using to replace harmful intergenerational messaging to promote pleasure, sexual agency, and bodily autonomy validation.
3. Analyze testimonios as a tool in healing and political work related to bodily autonomy and sexual agency.  

I'd love to know if you plan on attending any of these events!

Best,

Yael

Authority & Health-Science-Knowledge Virtual Symposium