It takes a lot for me to trust anybody.
I liked Herstory, so I stayed for four years.
Yeah, I went to therapy. Yeah, I had a psychiatrist.
I had my mother. I had my family.
But I never said this out loud: [writing with Herstory]
was the real reason why I healed from my trauma.
- Testimony from a formerly court-involved Herstory youth mentor.
30 Years of Impact
18,626 Served
9,754 Workshops Delivered
11,130 Adults
7,496 Youth
8,280 In Person
1,474 Virtual
Facilitators Trained
Our impact is far reaching because our workshops are easily replicable and cost-effective.
Herstory’s unique approach and pedagogy are at once simple and transformative, making it easy to multiply these in-person and online spaces of healing, connection and belonging.
10 Higher Education Partnerships
17 K-12 School Partnerships
Our impact is multidimensional.
Our workshops are:
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healing and transformative
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empowering, helping writers find the voice inside and identify their resilience
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empathy- and community-building, connecting us across shared experience and difference
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spaces to grow as writers, showing participants how to tap into their creativity and find the language to articulate their life journeys
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proof that everyone has the potential to write beautiful literature
Our events and online and print publications are:
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invitations and avenues to proudly share memoirs
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opportunities to share writing with a broader community, reinforcing the importance of writer’s words
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ways to dig deeply into topics that matter most to the community
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an ever-growing archive of the testimony of the power of grassroots memoir
Herstory’s projects and programs are:
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opportunities to experience oneself as a mentor and change agent
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leadership, critical thinking, social-emotional literacy, and narrative writing skills development
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drivers of civic engagement
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career exploration and professional development
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tools for advocacy
We invite you to dive deeper into what it’s like to experience transformation through Herstory:
Writing set Laura free
Herstory became part of Laura Mullen’s’ life in 2019 while she was incarcerated at Yaphank Correctional Facility. She remembers that chapter in her life as dark and painful, until she began attending a Herstory workshop.
“I was writing in a place where people in dark suits with weapons and cold stares reminded you of your lack of freedom. I would sit
with myself and write for days in my black and white marble notebooks, eager to share my writings at the next Herstory meeting. I discovered that I could write, and, importantly, how much I loved it, and when writing, I felt free.”
Becoming a poet: "Something within me said I could go far with this."
Kris Janvier discovered the power of his voice through Herstory.
In 2013, when he found out that there was a Herstory workshop for Hempstead High School students, he knew he had to find a way to join. Each week he would board the school bus with a small cohort of fellow students, to write side by side with students of criminology, social work and education at Hofstra University. His family recognized that he had a gift for writing
poetry and he was excited to see where it would take him, little dreaming that within the next ten years he would be an established poet.
A mother-daughter bond deepens through writing in community, the Herstory way
Bea Gravino once made a confession: “I never thought I’d be the mother I’ve become.”
Bea discovered that writing with Herstory was like “lifting a veil,” helping her see her journey parenting an autistic child in a new light and replacing years of self‑doubt with the
realization that she had always been an exceptional mother. When Bea joined Herstory in 2005, she began exploring the fear, exhaustion, and uncertainty that had gripped her as she refused to accept the predictions of clinicians that her daughter Amy’s life would be limited, helping her look back on the early years of her journey parenting a child with autism in a new light. This process also allowed Bea to celebrate all that her daughter had achieved through her own refusal to accept the words of so-called “experts” that Amy would only ever work in a sheltered workshop, living a life without meaning.
