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Online Workshops for Our Time
Paintings by Gwynne Duncan for Herstory's Paintings for Justice archive
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Testify: Memoir as a Tool for Action
This 2-hour weekly intergenerational campus/community workshop, brings together neighborhood elders, young Dreamers, civil rights activists, legislators, and college students with the goal of generating stories that will advance the movement for equity, inclusion and justice at this time when every one of our voices is needed to protect our most basic human rights.
Thursdays 6:30-8:30 pm
Eastern Time via ZOOM
Shaping Spaces
Disability Stories to Create a Movement
This intergenerational workshop is building a space for disabled people and disabled activists to shape their stories in community with other people with disabilities. This group is open to anyone who identifies as having a disability, be it physical, cognitive, neurodiversity, madness, mental illness, chronic illness, or any other disability experience. Join us in crafting stories and pushing toward a more just world for disabled people.
Saturdays 3:00-5:00 pm
Eastern Time via ZOOM
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE MALKA FUND
Journeys to Survivorship
This new online memoir writing circle is for cancer survivors and family members navigating the multiple phases of their journeys toward healing, new meaning, and hope. Students who have experienced cancer, themselves or with a close family member, are invited to shape the stories that might give others courage and address the fears and myths around cancer that complicate our lives.
Wednesdays 3:00-4:30 pm Eastern Time via ZOOM
Writing Our Bodies Whole
Navigating issues of fertility, pregnancy loss, infant loss, choice
Join us as we write in community, telling our stories and helping to normalize and de-stigmatize our experiences. Participants will meet once a week over Zoom. You don’t need to consider yourself a writer—all levels are encouraged to participate. Though it’s not a substitute for therapy, we will be writing and talking about deeply personal things and we may discover moments of healing that arise from that.
Contact Elizabeth Bolton: ebbolton@alaska.edu
Thursdays 8:00-9:30 pm
Eastern Time via ZOOM
Escucha nuestras voces
Este taller es ofrecido en español. El taller involucra, entre otros, a miembros de la comunidad de Rural & Migrant Ministry, Long Island Head Start, estudiantes de escuelas secundarias y de universidades, junto con estudiantes locales, participantes nacionales e internacionales quienes escriben en el idioma de sus sueños para construir puentes de acción y esperanza.
Miércoles 6:30-8:30 pm
Hora del este vía ZOOM
Making Our Voices Heard
Memoirs to (Re)Imagine Mental Healthcare
This workshop invites people who have been affected by the mental healthcare system, who may identify as mad, psychiatric survivors, psychiatric consumers, or neurodivergent, to write their memoir in a mad-affirming, human rights-driven, supportive environment. In this workshop, we will combat stigma and discrimination through the power of storytelling to change hearts, minds, and policies. We invite you to join us to use the power of your voice to (re)shape our mental healthcare system and (re)imagine care.
Wednesdays 4:30-6:30 pm
Eastern Time via ZOOM
Freedom to Be
Resisting the Label of “BPD”: Survivor Memoirs for Change
This workshop is for people who have been hurt by the label of “borderline personality disorder (BPD)” and/or its treatment. The group writes about lived experiences, both the difficult and the beautiful, as well as those from being in the mental health system, with the hope of positively changing our own perspectives about who we are and simultaneously changing the world’s. All people, no matter age, gender, or location in the world, are welcome to join at any time.Come once or twice, to tell a particular story that needs to be told or continue week after week to shape stories for readings, web publications, or book-length projects. No writing experience is required!
Contact Rebecca Donaldson: Rebecca.donaldson@cgu.edu
Sundays 11:00 am-2:00 pm
Pacific Time via ZOOM
OUR ONLINE COMMUNITY
As we approach a new season, we are so moved by the way our writers have been using the ZOOM platform to bridge the multitude of distances that have set us apart, as the act of passing along the dare to care-- the cornerstone of Herstory’s method and magic—creates connectedness, community across an ever-widening geographical landscape, while each new piece of writing adds to the movement for equity, inclusion and compassion, and the restoration of our most basic human rights, one story at a time.
As we continue to offer our workshops online, even as we open in person in the jails and schools, there is a silver lining in that we are no longer bound by the difficulties posed by the lack of accessibility to transportation and the endemic segregation of our neighborhoods, each in its own silo.
For Our Community Members
Community members can come once or twice, to tell a particular story that needs to be told. Or continue week after week to shape stories for readings, web publications, or book length projects.
For Our Community Members
For Our Students
High school and college students can partake in these workshops for credit, as an internship, community service, or volunteer experience. Please contact us if you are interested in our helping you shape these opportunities with your school. Email Danielle Pappo, our Communications Consultant, at dpappo@umass.edu.