The Brave Women's Community Center

09/10/2026

The entire car ride, he had given her the cold shoulder.

Then they arrived to meet the wedding photographer.

And suddenly, he changed.

He was friendly. Engaged. Everything appeared fine.

In Part One of her story, Iris describes moments when the version of her husband she experienced privately could look very different from the version other people experienced.

And that can create its own kind of confusion.

Because when everyone else sees the smile, the charm, the friendliness—what do you do with the person you just experienced five minutes earlier?

You may start questioning your own experience.

Maybe it wasn’t that bad.
Maybe I misunderstood.
Maybe I’m too sensitive.
Look how easily he gets along with everyone else.

But perhaps the question isn’t whether other people experience someone the same way you do.

Perhaps it’s:

What do I consistently experience in this person’s presence when no one else is watching?

🎙️ Hear more of Iris’s story in Part One of Brave Hearts Speak.

Iris is a pseudonym used to protect our guest’s identity.

09/09/2026

What happens when you know something is wrong in a relationship—but you don’t yet have the words to understand what you’re experiencing?

In Part One of this three-part Brave Hearts Speak series, we meet Iris—a pseudonym chosen to protect our guest’s identity.

Iris takes us back to the beginning.

To what she learned about relationships long before she met the man she would marry.

To the behaviors that felt uncomfortable—but also strangely familiar.

To an intense courtship, a proposal after only a month, warning signs she couldn’t yet make sense of, and the slow realization that something was deeply wrong.

And perhaps one of the most important parts of her story: Iris did ask for help.

She went to therapy.
She went to marriage counseling.
She participated in church-based marriage programs.

And still, no one gave her the language for what she was experiencing.

There is a question underneath this first part of Iris’s story that I hope stays with you:

What if we stopped asking, “Was it bad enough?” and started asking, “How do I feel most of the time in this relationship?”

Notice the sadness.

Notice the confusion.

Notice the helplessness.

Notice the loneliness.

Notice how much energy you spend trying to make things okay.

Sometimes what we later recognize as abuse initially feels familiar.

🎙️ Brave Hearts Speak: Iris — Part One
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Iris is a pseudonym. Identifying information has been withheld to protect our guest’s privacy.

09/08/2026

One of the hardest things to relearn after experiencing interpersonal abuse is this:

I am allowed to trust what I experience.

Someone can say all the right things.
They can describe themselves as compassionate, accepting, safe, kind, inclusive, or loving.

And I can still notice how I consistently feel in their presence.

Do I feel diminished?
Do I feel the sting of contempt disguised as humor?
Do I find myself becoming smaller, quieter, or more careful?
Do their actions repeatedly contradict the person they tell me they are?

Discernment doesn’t require me to prove that someone is a bad person.

It doesn’t require me to know their intentions.

It simply allows me to notice a pattern and decide:

How close do I want to stand?

Sometimes bravery is speaking up.

And sometimes Everyday Bravery is quietly believing what you see, honoring what you experience, and choosing your distance accordingly.

09/06/2026

09/04/2026

Sometimes healing needs more than words.

There is absolutely a place for talking, understanding, processing, and making meaning of what we’ve experienced.

But sometimes we also need a place to play.

To put on the ridiculous costume.
Make the character bigger.
Move differently.
Try something and get it completely wrong.
Laugh with other women.
Change our minds.
Start again.

Creativity gives us an opportunity to experience ourselves as more than what has happened to us.

At The Brave Women’s Community Center, that’s why creativity isn’t an extra added onto our work. It’s at the heart of it.

We want to create spaces where women can explore:

Who am I now?
What do I want?
What makes me laugh?
What haven’t I tried yet?
What might I create?

Because healing doesn’t always have to look serious.

Sometimes it might look a lot like play. ❤️

What is something creative that makes you feel more like yourself?

09/01/2026

ALL YOU ARE IS MEAN. ☕️

This weekend at my son’s soccer game, I was sitting under a covered patio with my daughter, trying to stay out of the rain.

I had a Starbucks cup in my hand.

One of the kids asked her parents if they could get Starbucks after the game because she was cold.

What followed was three adults talking about how “stupid” people are for even entertaining Starbucks, how ridiculous it is to spend that much on coffee, and eventually ridiculing other people they knew for their choices.

And I sat there.

Holding my Starbucks.

Maybe they noticed my cup. Maybe they didn’t. I have no idea whether any of it was directed at me.

But I could feel the contempt in my body.

And I felt so incredibly sad. Wounded, actually.

Then I felt stupid for being hurt.

It’s coffee. Why is this bothering me?

But I realized something:

Even if the contempt wasn’t directed at me, I was still sitting in the presence of meanness.

And in the prophetic words of Taylor Swift: all you are is mean.

Maybe being disturbed by cruelty isn’t something I need to toughen myself out of.

Maybe it’s something I don’t want to lose.

We’ve normalized contempt—the eye rolls, gossip, ridicule, bonding by making someone else small.

I don’t want that kind of belonging.

And I don’t want someone else’s contempt to become my shame.

Someone can think my coffee is stupid.

I don’t have to believe I’m stupid.

Someone can think I’m too quiet.
I don’t have to become louder.

Someone can dislike my boundary.
I don’t have to abandon it.

Maybe Everyday Bravery isn’t developing a thicker skin.

Maybe it’s learning how to protect a soft one.

So I’m drinking my coffee anyway. ☕️

And I’m inviting you to join me.

Post a photo with your cup—Starbucks, local coffee, tea, whatever. The brand isn’t the point. The cup is a symbol.

Tell us:

“I’m drinking my coffee anyway because ______.”

Tag us so we can share your Everyday Bravery.

☕️

09/01/2026

Something is happening here. And we want you to be part of it.

We’re building a place where women who have lived through interpersonal abuse don’t have to be defined by what happened to them.

A place to create. To play. To tell stories. To make art. To take risks. To be witnessed. To laugh. To find community. And to discover what becomes possible when women are given room to reclaim their voices.

This year, When Fear and Bravery Collide began bringing women together to create a survivor-led theatre project. Brave Hearts Speak continues to give women a place to tell their stories in their own words. And around those programs, a larger creative community is beginning to take shape.

We are still small. We are still building. And that is exactly why this is such an exciting time to get involved.

Follow our work. Share us with someone who should know we exist. Come to an event. Listen to the podcast. Donate if you can.

Help us build the kind of community we believe women deserve.

Help Us Build Brave. https://mtyc.co/80erag

08/31/2026

These are the 14 women of When Fear and Bravery Collide, our year-long, survivor-led theatre project at the Brave Women’s Community Center.

And this was only Session Two.

This isn’t a program about trauma stories.

It’s about reclamation stories.

It’s about what happens when women who have survived come together not simply as survivors—but as artists.

When they create together.
Play together.
Laugh together.
Take ridiculous risks together.
Try on characters, costumes, movements, and ways of being they may never have given themselves permission to explore before.

Some of these women may not even think of themselves as artists yet.

We do.

Over the next year, these 14 women will move from play and improvisation into writing, devising, rehearsing, and ultimately creating an original full-length theatre production together.

They applied for this project and were chosen because they are ready.

Ready to shed some things.

Ready to expand into others.

Ready to discover what becomes possible when the stories and identities handed to us are no longer the only ones available.

And after only two sessions, I can already tell you:

Something beautiful is beginning.

There is laughter. There is ridiculousness. There is tenderness. There is courage. There are women experimenting with taking up space differently.

And there is art beginning to emerge.

I want you to follow these women.

Root for them.

Watch what they create.

And if you’re able, help us carry them all the way to the stage.

Your support can help provide meals and groceries during long rehearsal days, transportation assistance, costumes and props, creative supplies, accessibility needs, rehearsal and performance costs—and help us document this extraordinary year through film.

When you support When Fear and Bravery Collide, you’re not buying someone’s trauma story.

You’re investing in what comes next.

Fourteen women.

One year.

One original production.

And we’re only two sessions in. 💗

✨ Support When Fear and Bravery Collide through Colorado Gives. https://mtyc.co/pluhbf

08/25/2026

There are so many ways to be brave.

As we begin When Fear and Bravery Collide, we’ve been asking the women involved in this project a deceptively simple question:

What does bravery mean to you?

Jill talks about showing up authentically.

Mandy talks about embracing the parts of ourselves we try to hide.

And Bailey, our wonderful production assistant, talks about living authentically in the face of adversity and trusting the resilience that has already carried us through hard things.

These definitions matter because we aren't interested in presenting bravery as fearlessness.

We’re interested in what bravery actually looks like in the complicated, imperfect lives of real women.

Over the coming year, these women will create, play, write, improvise, take risks, build community and ultimately bring something of their own to the stage.

And we're just beginning.

Swipe through to meet them — and then tell us: What does bravery mean to you?

If you'd like to donate to this project please check out our link on Colorado Gives. Every contribution helps to bring this project to it's full potential: https://mtyc.co/ba3xye

08/22/2026

Sometimes you learn the most about someone after you set a boundary.

It’s not that someone gets upset. People are allowed to be disappointed. They’re allowed to disagree with you. They’re even allowed to be angry.

Pay attention to what they do with that anger.

Can they be upset and still respect your no?

Or does the pressure start?

Do they question your motives? Attack your character? Keep demanding explanations? Insist that your reasons aren’t good enough? Try to make you feel guilty for making a decision they don’t like?

And maybe most importantly — what starts happening inside of you?

Do you suddenly feel like a terrible person?

Do you start believing the accusations?

Do you start thinking, Maybe I’m selfish. Maybe I’m cruel. Maybe I handled this all wrong. Maybe I should apologize again. Maybe I shouldn’t have said no.

Do you become so busy trying to prove that you’re a good person that you forget:

You were allowed to set the boundary in the first place.

That’s information.

Sometimes the boundary didn’t create the problem. It revealed something you needed to see.

So take the information seriously.

And then ask yourself:

Where does this person belong in my orbit now?

Close?
A little farther away?
With much less access to me?

Or maybe far, far away.

You don’t have to diagnose someone to protect yourself. You don’t have to convince them that they behaved badly. And you don’t have to keep giving someone opportunities to show you the same thing.

Receive the information.
Say thank you.
Keep the boundary.