Dear Friends:

We're excited! Back from the Congressional Black Caucus 44th Annual Legislative Conference (ALC)! Community Healing Network and the Association of Black Psychologists presented a ground-breaking forum called "From Trauma to Wellness: Building the Movement for Mental Health, Emotional Wellness and Well-Being in the Black Community." This action-oriented session focused on the importance of confronting and overcoming the myth of Black inferiority: the root cause of mental health disparities, the devaluing of Black lives in Ferguson and across the country, and so much else that ails our community.

We had a full house and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. The forum opened the door for us to build new collaborations for emotional emancipation at the national and local levels.

Next on our agenda is the sixth annual celebration of Community Healing Days, Friday through Sunday. October 17, 18, and 19, 2014. Please make plans to celebrate with us.

In honor of the late Dr. Maya Angelou, founding chair of Community Healing Network's Board of Advisors, we urge you to respond to her Call to Wear Sky Blue as a sign of our collective determination to move "beyond the pain of the blues to the sky blue of unlimited possibilities."

We also invite you to arrange informal get-togethers with your family and friends (during or any time after Community Healing Days) to imagine a future of "unlimited possibilities" for Black people-- a world free of the lie of Black inferiority and all the negative stereotypes that have burdened and limited us for 400 years.

You can click here for a sample email invitation and you can share your collective visions with us at www.communityhealingdays.com/reach-out -- so we can keep the healing conversation going.

Writing our own, new, empowering vision of who we want to be as Black people in the 21st century is the first crucial step in breaking free of the poisonous narrative that was written for us nearly 400 years ago.

Thank you.

From your friends at Community Healing Network, Inc.

Enola Aird, Jill Snyder, Dottie Green, Natalie Roche, Wizdom Powell, Sheila Warren, Tarice Gray, Carl Miller, A.D. Carson, Margo Fugate, and Albert Gentry III, and all your friends at Community Healing Network, Inc.

www.communityhealingnet.org

We welcome your support. Community Healing Network, Inc., is an all-volunteer, 501 (c)(3) charitable organization and all donations are tax deductible. You may click here to make a secure donation through Network for Good or mail your contribution to Community Healing Network, Inc., c/o Jill Snyder, Treasurer, 111 Whalley Avenue, New Haven, CT 06511.