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.

This year’s community celebration will be held Wednesday, November 13, at 6:30pm at the Piedmont Virginia Community College’s Dickinson Theater.

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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 are 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 are 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 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

“I’ve learned that sometimes you will be alone, you’ll have to learn to sit with yourself. No one can teach you how to be with you, for you, but you. I like to think of my birthday as the day I first went to therapy. Sought help. Tried to save my life. Start my life.”

- Olivia Winston, Her Light
“I learned how to collect honey from the resilient group of women in my lineage. The ones who crossed the borders of North America, swam across rapids rivers, and endured the heat of valleys and deserts … to plant seeds of prosperity and hope in a foreign land. I learned how to channel art because I was full of rage, hurt, and despair. I learned how to channel those feelings because I was ready to be free.”

- Melissa Vargas, My Mother’s Hands
“I’m so young. / How is everything I ever loved / just a relic / a whisper of an old way of life / or only a memory? / But still I move forward. / To whatever I will become. / In a world I barely recognize.”

- Elizabeth Vaughn-Mead, Dad
“This unimaginable loss was devastating, but my child and residents of this Midwestern Ohio cul-de-sac prepared me well. They saved my life as my daughter lost hers, proving that through living larger and growing larger, that the last earthly year for a vivacious 27-year-old cancer warrior, daughter, mother, sister, wife, and friends, could be, in fact, remarkable.”

- Janet Call, More Than a Neighborhood