Project Echo Restorative Community Healing Series: Session 2

Community Education & Reducing Stigma

Join us for Session 2 of the Restorative Community Healing Series, a healing-centered experience that brings together community voices, lived experience, and culturally grounded practices.

This session focuses on reducing stigma in mental health and substance use while exploring how healing is understood and practiced beyond traditional systems of care.

Rather than a lecture or standard panel, this gathering invites participants into an interactive, community-rooted space where healing is explored across mind, body, and spirit.

Through small-group stations and guided experiences, participants will engage in practices such as:

• Movement and embodiment
• Herbal care and nourishment
• Emotional awareness and mental health reflection
• Spiritual grounding and connection

Each station will be led by community practitioners, offering real, accessible tools for healing.

Together, we will explore:

• How stigma shows up in our communities
• The impact of language on healing and recovery
• Ways to create more supportive, culturally responsive care spaces

Food and refreshments will be provided.

This session will feature a panel of community leaders representing different dimensions of healing:

Movement (External Body)
Shontel Booker
Shontel is a somatic healing guide who connects self-awareness work with children and sensual embodiment for adults. Through yoga, breath, movement, and nervous system practices, she supports generational healing by helping young people build emotional safety while encouraging adults to reclaim presence and embodied confidence.

Nutrition (Internal Body)
Daria Frazier
Daria is the owner of Rooted Healing, where her work centers nourishment, care, and connection to the body. She brings a culturally grounded approach to wellness that honors lived experience and relationship to food.

Mind (Mental Health)
Nawal Osman
Nawal is a GMCC Certified Peer Recovery Specialist and UMM Project Program Coordinator with over a decade of experience in healthcare management, mental health care, and basic needs support. She leads recovery-focused programming and provides individualized support, with strong ties to the East African and Muslim recovery community in the Twin Cities. Nawal is fluent in Somali and English and is currently pursuing her Master’s in Clinical Counseling and LADC certification.

Spirituality (Faith & Lived Experience)
Faysal Abdi
Faysal is a recovery advocate and spiritual guide with over six years of sobriety. Drawing from his lived experience, he supports others through faith, discipline, and community, sharing his story to inspire hope, growth, and lasting change.

• Individuals in recovery or supporting someone in recovery
• Community members
• Providers, advocates, and professionals
• Anyone interested in culturally grounded approaches to healing

Our goal is to reframe harmful narratives, reduce shame, and uplift community knowledge as a source of healing.

This space centers identity, lived experience, and connection—creating room for both vulnerability and learning.

Come as you are. All are welcome.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher Project Echo: Eliminating Racism in Substance Use & Community Care Fellowship