Projects and Initiatives

HEAL HER Talking Circles

‘Heal Her’ is a global action for the healing and prevention of sexual violence. Meeting in talking circles worldwide, we create rituals for transformative storytelling, consciousness-raising, empathetic listening, and collective healing. Working with artistic facilitators, therapists, and healers, we provide creative and holistic methods for addressing sexual trauma. We have held events and festivals in Los Angeles, New York, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona, and Mexico City. Our work has been supported with grants from the Burning Man Global Arts Fund and Daza Filmes, which featured the project in a documentary on artists combating gender-based violence.

HH story circles take multiple forms: from small and intimate circles of a few friends in someone’s living room to festivals with workshops and public performances, all of the circles make use of creative expressive art forms to shape the story being told.

Suzan Lemont, the founder of the Netherlands Expressive Arts Association (NEXAA) is also the director of facilitator training for Heal Her, and is in the process of writing a facilitator’s guidebook to share with a worldwide community so that more circles can happen safely and effectively. Join our mailing list to be notified of the progress and publication.

The ‘Heal Her’ way of working focuses primarily on spoken/performed stories that are shared in a group setting. Whether it’s a small circle of friends telling of an encounter that left them shaken or scared, or a song shared in a public venue, it’s all about the power of being able to tell one’s story. The expressive arts,  (music, dance & movement, drama/storytelling, visual art, and creative writing) lend themselves perfectly to this process and utilizes all art modalities, in some form or other, in all ‘Heal Her’ workshops. The ‘Heal Her’ method encourages creative and expressive means of sharing and storytelling in each circle. This is done through the practice of sacred ritual, play and tapping into the power of personal, cultural, and global ritual making.

NEXAA is in the process of developing pre-circle workshops and applying for grants to host a series of ‘Heal Her’ workshops and of story circles in Utrecht. These will begin in the Autumn of 2026. Previously we have focused primarily on story circles for adults, but we are now expanding that work to develop best practices frameworks for children and adolescents. 

Please sign up for our mailing list (MALING LIST URL LINK) to stay tuned to latest developments. We are open to working in partnership with other organizations working in a similar vein. In fact, we welcome collaboration and cooperation and find it is the best way to make essential healing practices available in as many places as possible, where it is sorely needed. 

Stories are a powerful and effective method of conveying emotions and connecting inner and outer landscapes. For thousands of years humans have used storytelling and community ritual as a way of expressing what cannot be said in everyday language, and what needs witnessing and healing.