Sitting with Trees: A Green Love Letter to Black Elder Women

Event Information

Four years ago, Photosynthesis: A Green Love Letter to Black Women was shortlisted in this space — a poetic offering honouring Black women as life-givers, memory-keepers, and sources of quiet strength. Nearly two years ago, that poem evolved into a formal research study: Sitting with Trees: An Eco-Autoethnographic Research Study about Optimal Ageing and Black Womanhood.

Today, these threads return in conversation.

Sitting with Trees: A Green Love Letter to Black Elder Women is a virtual dialogue with two elder women who participated in the original study. Together, we revisit their experiences, reflect on new encounters with nature since the research concluded, and explore what ageing, memory, and ecological connection mean to them now.

Blending poetry, eco-autoethnographic inquiry, and oral history, this gathering centres Black elder women not as subjects of study, but as living archives. It honours ageing as deepening - as rootedness, as photosynthesis, as a sustained relationship with light.

This offering is both a continuation and a gratitude. A return not to repeat, but to listen again - and to witness how wisdom grows over time. Additionally, this offering is the first public announcement of the forthcoming anthology - Sitting with Trees: Nature, Memory, and Black Elder Wisdom Vol. 1 and the companion children's book - Sitting with Trees.

This webinar will also be screened at Art Hub Studios site, join us for tea/coffee and watch live: Art Hub Studios, Stanley Street, Deptford, SE8 4BL

Contributors

Dr. Christal Mischelle Omni, MPH, MLS

Dr. Omni is a Black women’s health researcher whose work is ancestrally guided and archivally supported.

She is a Black Joy scholar, eco-spiritualist and founder of the OMNI Institute of Well-being, Inc. Her work centres the spiritual and ecological wisdom of Black women, especially Black grandmothers, through storytelling, nature-based inquiry, and intergenerational research. As the creator of the Omni Process™ and a leader in eco-autoethnographic methodology, she weaves together scholarship, healing, and creative practice. A two-time TEDx speaker and award-winning researcher, Dr Omni’s work lives at the intersection of land, memory, and liberation, inviting others to return to nature as a site of teaching, restoration, and joy.

Dr .Janet Haynes, EdD

Dr. Janet Haynes is a lifelong scholar, mentor, and member of the inaugural Elders-in-Residence cohort for Sitting with Trees. Her work is rooted in intergenerational care, academic resilience, and the wisdom of lived experience. With over 50 years in corporate leadership and a doctorate from Fielding Graduate University, her journey into mentorship was shaped by her own doctoral experience navigating marginality within academia.

Since 2010, Dr Haynes has supported doctoral and undergraduate students, including her time as Adjunct Faculty at Haskell Indian Nations University, where her teaching was deeply informed by the healing presence of nature and the realities of student life shaped by historical trauma.

At 71, she brings a grounded, expansive perspective on ageing, one that honours beginning again, listening deeply, and living in rhythm with what is beyond our control. As an Elder in Sitting with Trees and part of its inaugural Elders-in-Residence cohort, Dr Haynes embodies what it means to be a living archive, rooted, reflective, and ever-growing.

Gloria Ragsdale

Gloria Ragsdale is a co-founder, alongside her two sisters, of a women’s organisation dedicated to strengthening relationships among Black women and building community through fellowship, leadership, encouragement, and support. Gloria is also the co-author of a forthcoming anthology - Sitting with Trees: Nature, Memory and Black Elder Wisdom along with a companion children's book - Sitting with Trees.

She brings extensive administrative experience from her work in education as well as city and county government, and currently serves in community development within the planning division for the City of Lenexa. Outside of work, Gloria enjoys puzzling, long outdoor walks, and spending quality time with friends and family.

Ashley Powell

Ashley Powell is a Florida State University graduate with a B.S. in Psychology and a Registered Behaviour Technician (RBT). She has been part of The OMNI Institute of Well-Being since 2022, serving as a Research Mentee, Research Intern, and now Teacher’s Assistant. Through mentorship, she has participated in the 2023 and 2024 International Symposium on Autoethnography and Narrative (ISAN), first as a panellist, then as moderator, continuing mentorship to the next generation of mentees. She also has served as a Nature Evolutionaries panellist and co-authored  “The Omnipresence of Black Joy,” which was published by the International Association of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry in the Proceedings of the 2023 International Symposium on Autoethnography and Narrative. Ashley sees mentorship as a labour of love rooted in support, growth, and the permission to dream.

Michelle Gunn

Michelle Gunn is a graduate of Florida State University in International Affairs with a concentration in Public Administration, and currently serves as the International Outreach Coordinator for the OMNI Institute of Well-being. In this role, she helps cultivate global, community-rooted connections that centre storytelling, relationship-building, and shared knowledge across borders.

Grounded in narrative training and intergenerational engagement, Michelle approaches her work as a practice of listening, witnessing, and honouring lived experience. Her presence within Sitting with Trees reflects a deep commitment to amplifying community voices and nurturing spaces where stories are not only told, but felt, remembered, and carried forward.

Gemini Williamson

Gemini Williamson is a third-year Dietetics student from West Palm Beach, Florida, and a first-generation college student guided by a deep commitment to children’s health and community well-being. She serves as the Community Action Manager for the Unconquered Scholars Program and is a member of the Student Advisory Board, where she helps cultivate spaces of service, advocacy, and collective care.

At the OMNI Institute of Well-being, Gemini supports the reader’s theatre dimension of Sitting with Trees, an arts-based research approach that transforms lived experiences into embodied storytelling. Through this work, she helps carry participant narratives from page to performance, honouring story as both data and offering, something to be shared, felt, and remembered in community.

Eryn Files

Eryn Files is an emerging public service leader working at the intersection of public health, criminal justice reform, and human rights. She has conducted research on intergenerational wellness and currently studies employment as a social determinant of mental health for individuals re-entering the workforce after incarceration in Leon County, Florida. Eryn serves as a Brand Strategist for the OMNI Institute of Well-Being, where she designed the organisation’s website and leads its digital storytelling. She is committed to advancing equitable systems and plans to pursue both an MPA and a JD.

Social Media

Website: www.OmniInstituteOfWellbeing.org

Insta: @omniinstituteofwellbeing

Location of event

Location: Webinar.