Photo by Carol Mudra
My name is Michele Beaulieux.
Beaulieux, pronounced “bowl YOU” (ignore the “x”) means “beautiful places” in French, and beautiful places are my destination. I am on a journey into a culture of consent, educating myself and others about community accountability and preventing sexual violence.
I am developing the My Choice Decision Navigator and Our Choices Solution Facilitator for people impacted by sexual violence; I write about creating safer brave space for voluntary gatherings such as contact improvisation dance jams, and I curate articles about creating a culture of consent.
I am an independent scholar focused on sexual violence prevention and response, published in Huffington Post, Contact Quarterly, and National Catholic Reporter. I have presented at Contact Improvisation festivals and given a poster at a public summit of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Action Collaborative to Prevent Sexual Harassment.
I’m also a marketing strategy and employee communications consultant, a liturgical dancer, and an identical twin. I hold a Master’s of Management in Marketing and a Bachelor’s in Political Science. I’m a trained peace circle keeper. I draw with oil pastels. I swim everyday, in the summer in Lake Michigan, and I’m an avid cyclist. I live in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States of America.
When I was in college, a fellow student raped me, and during a contact improvisation jam, a fellow participant attempted a sexual act to which I did not consent. These experiences inform my perspective.
I am a white, middle-aged, well-educated, able-bodied, cisgender woman. I am aware that I have many privileges even if I do not always recognize how they manifest. I am committed to working intersectionally. My work is evolving. I make mistakes, and I welcome suggestions and dialogue. I am constantly revising my thinking, and I edit the posts on this site as I learn new information and gain new insights. So if a page seems better than you remember it, it may be that it indeed is!
I have done this work as a labor of love and healing. If you find hope and help in my writing and want to see more, please consider supporting me with a donation. Some of the oil pastels on this website are also for sale. And if this work excites you, and you have ideas or skills to move it forward, please contact me.
And what about you? Let’s talk!
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© 2020-2023 Michele Beaulieux. This website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). That means you are free to share and adapt as long as you attribute to Michele Beaulieux, don’t use for commercial purposes, and use this same license. And if you do share, I’d love to know!
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