Challenge into Change logo with leaf illustration

Challenge Into Change is a writing program and community event that supports participants to nurture mental health and promote overall well-being with self-expression through writing.

Thank you to everyone who joined our community celebration and book launch on November 13! Books featuring our 2024 authors are available for pickup at our main office. Contact our office at 434.872.0047 or email info@thewomensinitiative.org with questions.

Community member reads their writing during annual Challenge into Change event in Charlottesville

My Story, My Strength

Challenge Into Change is a writing program that honors women’s stories of overcoming life challenges to find hope and healing. We have collected these true stories since 2008 and shared them through community readings and published books to inspire all people along their healing journeys. 

Our 2024 theme is “My Story, My Strength.” Women and members of the gender-expansive community were invited to submit short selections of prose or poetry on transforming difficult experiences — such as grief, poverty, illness, domestic violence, or racial trauma — as part of the journey toward well-being and wholeness. First-time writers were encouraged to participate.

Community member reads their writing during Challenge into Change community event

Writing for Healing is offered regularly through our Arts & Connection Resilience Programs. Participants explore how the writing process can serve as a healing tool for adversity and painful experiences, and how self-expression and stories can connect us.

Challenge Into Change culminates with a celebration to honor all participants and the communities that support them in healing.

we look forward to sharing details for our 2025 community celebration next spring.

We are so grateful to all those who make this program a success, including our volunteers, event speakers, sponsors, donors, and especially our authors who contribute their personal narratives with bravery and grace.

Participant Stories

  • “Perhaps the glint you share / And assume to be too far / Is the end of someone's tunnel / Igniting them to carry on.”

    - Samman Akbarzada, The Magic of Small Kindness

  • “I write to release our caged rage, ground us in the inevitable, and discover hope again.”

    - Deborah Burghardt, Words Won’t Kill Me

  • “I don't want to be civilized. I don't want to be colonized. I don't want to be digitized. I don't want to be good.”

    - Elizabeth Vaughn-Mead, Wildheart Whispers

  • "In my yearning to stop feeling you, Even in the midst of the storm, I search in the depths of its waters, I speak to her about you, about my sorrows, and your complaints."

    - Yeimi Villalobos, The Healing Nature: The Sea

Watch this year’s celebration.

The event took place on November 13, 2024, at the Dickinson Theater at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville and featured a selection of pieces read by various authors from the 2024 Challenge Into Change book.

Thank you to our corporate sponsors! We are so grateful for their generosity.

Their support helps ensure that all donations received during this event go directly towards our individual counseling and support group services.

2024 Sponsors