STP Healing Through Creative Arts @ the Cambridge Women's Center

For over four years, Survivor Theatre Project has run the Healing Through Creative Arts program at the Cambridge Women’s Center in Cambridge, MA. Program Coordinator Martha Rogers (STP Alum and Leadership Team member) shares with us the importance of this program in survivor’s lives and the vitality of the Women’s Center:  

Consistent steady programming for people who live with the unpredictable vulnerability of trauma is a critical piece in the healing process.  That steady year-in year-out presence is a major strength of the Healing Through Creative Arts workshop series. This series is a regular public statement that all child sexual abuse survivors in the Boston area have a healing, creative refuge for expression each month for anyone who walks through the door.

Martha continues

Another major strength of the workshop series is its grassroots base.  Many of the workshop facilitators were first workshop participants and had never led a workshop before.  Our facilitators choose to offer their facilitation because they know first hand that this environment can provide survivors a safe place to take risks, heal and explore different art forms.  The opportunity for contribution to others healing is healing in itself and empowering for each person whom I witness taking that leap.  It fills my heart. Repeatedly people who lead these workshops for the first time say that they want to do it again.  That speaks for itself.  And in some cases they go on to offer independent workshops as well.

This creative and healing space would not be possible without Program Coordinator Martha Rogers, the many facilitators who bring their skills and passions, the longstanding Cambridge Women’s Center staff,  volunteers and board members, the expertise and guidance of Incest Resources Director Elaine Westerlund, and the many survivors who bring spirit, courage and imagination to these workshops. We give thanks for this community, and send many blessings to you all in the new year.