Transforming Trauma: How Sharing Stories Can Help Us Heal

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL TUESDAY, MARCH 20TH, DUE TO WEATHER.

A book launch celebration for Erin Moulton’s new anthology Things We Haven’t Said that includes a panel discussion with Denise Casey of Burlington’s Young Writers Project and Yasmeen Hossain, Interim Executive Director of SafeArt. The panel will investigate the ways in which storytelling and self-expression can transform the impacts and trauma of sexual abuse.

Panelists will draw upon their multi-layered experience in teaching, art therapy, performance and counseling. Parents, educators, counselors, social workers, and teens or anyone who identifies as a survivor of trauma are encouraged to join us a for a very important evening.

Free and open to the public; a Bear Pond Book Educator Series event.

Please CLICK HERE to R.S.V.P. Thank you.

About the book:

Things We Haven’t Said is a powerful collection of poems, essays, letters, vignettes and interviews written by a diverse group of impressive adults who survived sexual violence as children and adolescents. Structured to incorporate creative writing to engage the reader and informative interviews to dig for context, this anthology is a valuable resource of hope, grit and honest conversation that will help teens tackle the topic of sexual violence, upend stigma and maintain hope for a better future.

Net proceeds of this work go to charity: RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) and Voices and Faces Project.

“This book will save hearts. This book will save minds. This book will save lives.” –A.S. King, author of Still Life with Tornado and I Crawl Through It

About Erin Moulton:

Erin E. Moulton is the author of Flutter (Penguin, 2011), Tracing Stars (Penguin, 2012), Chasing the Milky Way (Penguin, 2014), and Keepers of the Labyrinth (Penguin, 2015). She is also editor of Things We Haven't Said (Zest, 2018). Her books have been selected and nominated for national and state award lists, such as the Amelia Bloomer list, the Kentucky Bluegrass Master List and the Isinglass Teen Read Award List. Flutter was also a 2011 Kid’s Indie Next pick. When Erin isn’t writing books she works as teen librarian at the Derry Public Library where she maintains a collection of awesome YA books and leads teen programming. Erin loves fostering new voices, which makes her an active school visitor, mentor and workshop leader to writers of all ages. You can find her online at www.erinemoulton.com.

About the panelists:

Yasmeen Hossain is the Interim Executive Director of SafeArt, a healing arts non-profit located in Chelsea, VT. She has been engaged in the healing arts almost her whole life - recognizing the important contribution dance made in her overall wellbeing as a teenager, and later as a pracitioner helping others discover the healing benefits of the arts. Yasmeen offers individual healing arts sessions for adults and youth, in-school residencies K-12, and co-facilitates healing arts groups for women that promote the processing and management of trauma through music, visual art, creative writing, meditation, yoga, energy work, and play. Yasmeen has a PhD from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and is a Board Member of EarthWalk, a nature education organization for youth and adults. 

SafeArt is a community-based organization that engages creativity and the expressive arts as tools to support mental health and overall well-being. They offer residencies, workshops, and classes in the expressive arts for children, teens, and adults as well as ongoing focus groups. For many years, they have worked with trauma survivors to help them engage with and transform emotional, mental, and physical injuries of all kinds. 

Denise Casey has taught experience-based learning for over 10 years. She teaches mindfulness through a variety of mediums: formal meditation practice, nature-based learning, movement, spoken word, poetry and voice.  After years of studying yoga, yoga therapy and mindfulness, Denise joined the Center for Mindful Learning, a residential mindfulness training center where she lived for almost two years. In that time she served as the Program Director of Modern Mindfulness, teaching mindfulness to youth and training teachers how to facilitate mindfulness in the classroom. Denise co-leads a 5-month mindfulness course for teachers and helping professionals in Vermont, as well as provides personal mindfulness coaching throughout Vermont. As an artist she shares mindfulness by performing original pieces that blend together the obstacles and insights of practice through song, story and poem. She provides voice education and mentoring for youth and young adults, as well as serves as one of the coaches for the youth poetry slam team, Muslim Girls Making Change (MGMC)​.

Young Writers Project is open to teen (and pre-teen) writers and artists from anywhere. Their home base is Burlington, Vermont, but they welcome storytellers from all over the world on youngwritersproject.org. They have just one rule: Be respectful. And it works -- YWP is a remarkably safe and civil place to share your writing, photos, art, audio and video.