With the launch of its first community workshop in 1996, Herstory began opening literal and metaphorical doors in all kinds of places for all kinds of people. Community workshops, offered in English or Spanish, have been the cornerstone of Herstory ever since, providing opportunities for people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, age groups, nationalities, and ethnicities—people who otherwise might never find themselves in the same room—to share their stories with one another.

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Whether a workshop lasts a few months or many years, or whether it encourages writing about a particular theme or nurtures stories on a range of topics, community members create a space of mutual understanding and respect, where they can rediscover and reclaim their voices as they write and share stories of survival, resilience, pain, love, triumph, and loss. By working week after week alongside one another, participants experience and witness their own and each other’s turning points and transformations, while together making their private journeys toward healing and contributing to public movements for social change.

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Herstory’s portable, flexible model also allows us to respond to requests from a specific community or a demographic group to deliver workshops they tell us they need, often as a way of grappling with what may be affecting them in a given historical moment. Our workshops take place in venues ranging from libraries to community centers to farms, as well as online in order to facilitate access for those with transportation or other challenges. Regardless of where the workshops take place, they are always open to the public, with the goal of building bridges among us across the differences that too often keep us apart.