Empress Project
the
Sis,
Have you ever felt the yearning for a space to untangle the complexities of your journey as a black woman - where your emotions, stories, and joys as a black woman can find expression and true understanding?
Look no further.
space
where we can
Exhale
I created this space because I needed it too.
You did all the right things.
Got the degrees, certifications et al. Stayed out of trouble. Achieved. Performed.
You built the career. Secured the title. Landed the “good” job.
From the outside? You're thriving.
But inside, there’s a tiredness and a quiet ache.
the Empress Project is my love movement for us.
A place where we can pause. Where we get to breathe deeper, soften, and reconnect to the wisdom that's already living inside. Where the strength were known for is honored, and where we are allowed to be held. Be tender. Be real.
This is about deep caring for ourselves. Its about returning -gently , soulfully -to the parts of you that have been waiting.
I've woven the Empress Project with great care - bringing together inquiry based creativity, somatic healing, and ancestral remembering - so we can show up as our full selves:loving, bold, grieving, laughing, becoming.
Youre not here by accident. This is your invitation home - to your body, your beauty, your birthright to feel, to heal, to create.
Come be with me
Daughter of the diaspora.
BOLD
&
UNAPOLOGETIC
“Just walking through this life as a Black person, and actually surviving that,
was and still is an ovation-worthy performance.” ~ cicely tyson.
WE ARE:
Ya dun know...
For women of the Caribbean diaspora ready to reclaim what belonging & surviving & thriving taught us to forget.
To be an Empress is to hold multitudes — it is to live the delicious complexity of Black Caribbean womanhood living in your wholeness in a world that often tries to negate you.
Empress is not just a title.
It’s a movement back into yourself, full of the layers that make you whole: our ancestral roots deep in island soil, the rhythms of sea and mango-sweet air, the resilience baked into our skin from surviving and thriving within dominant cultures.
The Empress Project is a living container designed to honor this fullness, this beautiful layering of your experience. Here, somatic wisdom dances with intentional creativity. Your body becomes the first language — because before you are words, you are breath, pulse, sensation. Healing flows through your nervous system, through the winding river of memory held in muscle, bone, and skin.
We don’t just speak about trauma and healing — we feel it. We move with it. We paint it, we breathe it, we witness it. We cultivate safety, not as an abstract concept but as a felt reality, a grounding in your body that begins to rewrite what it means to live as a Black Caribbean woman — to show up soft and strong, visible and unseen, whole and still becoming.
WE :
POSSESS A DISTINCT
STRENGTH,VERSATILITY & BOUNDLESS BEAUTY
"If you have the privilege of being born a black woman, it is my belief, that it is a part of your divine mission to liberate yourself from all external and internalized oppression and thereby liberate the world". ~maya angelou
How do we it?...
we take you as you come.
WE ARE:
WARRIORS IN
BROAD DAYLIGHT
It’s not the load that breaks you down; it’s the way you carry it.
–Lena Horne
MEET OUR FOUNDER
Denise
I was raised in a time of assimilation, where a contortion of one's identity, and how one moves, & thinks was required in order to belong to the mainstream. I like many of my Caribbean sis were taught to harness our West Indian ways -our accents (colloqualisms), mannerisms, our passionate expressions and even our hearty laughs. Not much has changed really, the wording now has evolved from assimilation to diversity and inclusion an idea of acceptance of others, however the measure still remains to be the white or dominant culture as a standard and an expectation that people of color can be included provided that our otherness didn't shine so bright. The days that followed May 25th 2020 I became un-done. All those years of deflecting indirect and direct racial experiences seized my throat and unraveled my body, I cried for myself, I cried for my son, I cried for every black bodied person, and I cried for humanity. I remember thinking things have to change. I was raw and confused I could not understand how those that did not see, did not see. And how was I and mine to continue on, being in a world that rationalized the mistreatment of black bodied persons. I did not then nor do I now have the answer. I did find the power of creativity - intentional creativity. And through it have found an exquisite, fierce mode of healing & celebration..., Read More
It is your birthright to feel safe in your own skin.
Come home to your body & liberate your Empress
HEAL - GROW- LOVE INTENTIONALLY
what dem say
"the empress project is transformative and exposed me to a part of myself that had never been given a voice - retrieving a sacred piece of myself." ~ S. Cole, Calgary AB
"this is a must for every black woman" ~ M. Osagiede, Calgary AB
powerful. I was apprehensive at first, I am so glad I did it! i was able to work through stuff without coming apart. Stuff I didn't even know I had, and through it all my painting is BEAUTIFUL. ~ C. Brown, Calgary AB
looking forward to being with you
403-808-5713