Survivor Storytelling as a Catalyst for Change with Anne K. Ream
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In This Episode
What happens when storytelling isn’t just about raising awareness or driving donations, but about creating a space where survivors can be truly seen, heard, and supported?
On today’s episode of When Bearing Witness, I sit down with Anne Ream, founder of The Center for Story & Witness. Anne has spent two decades alongside survivors of gender-based violence, facilitating writing workshops and initiatives that honor lived experience while protecting the dignity and agency of each storyteller.
We discuss what she has learned about the healing potential of storytelling, how to create trauma-informed spaces that prioritize care, and the fine line between empowerment and exploitation in nonprofit storytelling.
About Anne K. Ream
Anne K. Ream is the founder of The Voices and Faces Project, a global testimonial writing program for survivors of gender-based violence and other human rights violations (now Center for Story & Witness); co-founder of World Without Exploitation, the national coalition to end human trafficking; and author of Lived Through This, a critically praised memoir that documents Anne’s multi-country journey listening to sexual violence and trafficking survivors. The recipient of numerous awards for her work using story to create social change, Anne is a regular contributor to New City Chicago and currently serves as board president at Justice for Migrant Women.
Connect with Anne K. Ream
Center for Story and Witness | Story and Witness Instagram | Anne K Ream Instagram | Anne K Ream LinkedIn
Connect with Maria
Speaking & Training | LinkedIn | Email
Transcripts
Maria Bryan:
Today's guest is someone whose work has shaped the landscape of survivor storytelling and advocacy for decades. Anne Ream is the founder of the Center for Story and Witness, formerly known as the Voices and Faces Project, a global writing initiative that creates space for survivors of gender-based violence and other human rights violations to share their truths. Anne's work has earned numerous awards and recognitions, not just for her storytelling, but for her tireless efforts to center survivor voices in social change movements. In this conversation we'll explore how, when approached with much care, storytelling can be both a tool for healing and a catalyst for justice. And what an honor. Thank you so much for being on When Bearing Witness.
Anne Ream:
Thank you, Maria. I'm glad to be here.
Maria Bryan:
I want to know a little bit more about your journey, your story. Tell me about the beginnings of the Voices and Faces Project, now the Center for Story and Witness, and why survivor storytelling.
Anne Ream:
I really appreciate this question because we've been around now for almost 20 years and that history is now in the rearview mirror pretty significantly. But for me, this work really started with my own story. I'm a survivor of sexual violence and at that time I was in my twenties, living in Washington DC, working on K Street. I remember going back to work a couple of months later and looking in this office full of really powerful women and thinking to myself, if I knew just one of you had gone through what I'd just gone through, I would have breathed a huge sigh of relief knowing what was still possible for me.
And it's hard. I worked with a lot of really wonderful young women now, and it's hard for them to even imagine this time when survivor faces were blotted out in the news media. Real names were not used very often, if at all. You'd go to a bookstore because you didn't have the internet then, and you couldn't find narrative or story in which you saw the voices and faces and the identities of survivors. And if survivor stories were told, they were often told in a way that was sensationalistic, that might be sexualized, that felt to me very exploitative.
I remember thinking how powerful it would be, because I became fairly outspoken on the issue early on. I'd have people pull me aside and say, I've never told anyone this, but... And I remember feeling not long after I had survived this myself, that if those stories, if we could create a place for survivor stories to be told, or they were given the space to tell their own story in a way that showed that we were shaped but not defined by what we had gone through, that we are rich and dimensional forces, that we are survivors and we're all these other extraordinary things, those stories would have incredible personal power, but also political power.
Because society so often fails to grasp both the vulnerabilities created by violence, but also the extraordinary power of survivors of gender-based violence or human rights violations who are given the support and the space and the cultural and social resources to transform.
The beginning for me was writing my own book, traveling globally with a documentary photographer to document the stories of survivors of gender-based violence globally. Part of our proposition was that I would write a story that was holistic. In many cases, this was a ten-year project. I was in conversation with these survivors for over a decade. I really got to know them, not just their story, and in fact, not only their story of surviving violence, but who they were and are as human beings. And we photographed them beautifully in the way they wanted to be photographed, with their family, with their dog, in nature, on the top of a mountain—whatever it was they wanted.
It was really during that journey that survivors would say, yes, I'm excited to be in this book, but I'd also love to think about how to share my own story. My closest friend and the co-creator of the Center for Story and Witness, the really wonderful novelist and creative writing teacher Clifton Spargo, was the one who had the idea of creating a testimonial writing program, and that became the organization.
So this little book project that I thought would maybe be a two-year project led to an organization and really changed my life’s work, and I think my philosophy around storytelling as well.
Maria Bryan:
So much has happened in 20 years. The Me Too moment was not that long ago. What has it been like, 20 years of navigating testimony? How has it changed over the years? How is it different now than it was 15 years ago, 10 years ago?
Anne Ream:
It's such a great question, Maria, because it's so radically different. When I started writing my book, I remember having a really treasured mentor, and she was a well-known second wave feminist. She said, I love this idea. I think you're going to be really challenged to find a lot of high-profile women who will actually come forward and share their stories and agree to this. And she said, and if you do this, how are you going to guarantee that no one gets hurt?
I remember thinking about it and saying to her, the only thing I can guarantee is that people will get hurt. Because when you have the courage to come forward and share your story in a world that does not necessarily want to hear or understand these issues, you may be harmed. We are vulnerable when we do this.
So part of what has happened in the last 20 years is we've confronted both the unique pain and challenges of coming forward, but also the extraordinary collective power that emerges. When I have the courage to say, yes, this happened to me, I lived through this, me too, someone else has the courage to do it. That act of solidarity makes me feel less alone in this world. It creates a powerful political force.
What I've seen change quite beautifully is I think there was a sense among people who embraced the idea of storytelling that the focus of storytelling might be something therapeutic for the storyteller. And I think we've come to understand much more clearly the potent political power of storytelling.
But having seen that, the other thing that changed my mind is that we run a trauma-informed writing program. It's extraordinarily creatively ambitious. Clifton comes out of the Iowa Writers Workshop. He teaches creative writing at Yale. He's a wonderful writer himself. We're very ambitious for our writers, but we also practice a trauma-informed pedagogy. We're trained in trauma-informed moderation. It's an extraordinarily loving space and quite beautiful in many ways.
What I've seen is that what actually has led to healing outcomes isn't necessarily the beauty and power of the space during those two days. It's watching people over time start to see that their pain can have a purpose. That if I find ways to connect what I've lived through to a call to a world that needs to change, it is transformative.
Even in our two-day writing program, where we read and discuss testimonial writing across history and social justice movements—Reverend King, Primo Levi, Sandra Cisneros, Audre Lorde, Bob Dylan, Sam Cooke, Lauryn Hill, The Roots—you see people start to see how other writers and artists have used their own testimonies of injustice to call the world to change. Suddenly the writers in our workshops see themselves connected to something larger and broader, connected not only to activists in real time, but to this history of human rights activism. They sit up straighter, and you see power emerging in real time.
I didn't anticipate that healing outcome of story sharing. If anything, when you and I were talking earlier, I came into this with an extraordinary amount of caution for our writers. I had gone public very early on, and I remember people who didn't want to hear my story. I remember relationships that changed. I remember the sense that people who had previously viewed me as powerful and forceful saw me differently. I knew how hard that was for me.
If anything, I came into this very aware of the risks of storytelling and have come out of it 20 years later still aware of the risks and the extraordinary gift that survivors give us when they speak. But I am also really aware of the extraordinary potential for not only political transformation, but also personal transformation. I find that moving and, frankly, sometimes quite mysterious.
You go into a workshop and sometimes you know right away someone is going to be a force of nature. They might be a published writer, a well-known activist, or someone who wrote a powerful application. But sometimes a force emerges from the workshop you would never have expected. Someone who was quiet in the beginning, and months later writes a piece that changes the world. That is the mystery of storytelling, and I love that.
Maria Bryan:
There's so much to unwrap, and so much is just hitting me so deep. One concern I have in the nonprofit storytelling world is that people are often told: when you tell your story, it will be healing. But the truth is, it can be incredibly painful and you could be at risk. I think that's what we need to start with. We need to start with the realities and then explore the potential for healing. We cannot promise healing, especially in my world, where it's not just testimony, but for a specific purpose—to market or to fundraise.
Your voice on this is so important. When we ask folks to tell their deeply painful stories, so much is at stake. But then there are these other layers. I've been thinking a lot this year about how they can't take away our stories. Our stories are so intertwined with those of our ancestors, generations and generations before us.
I love that exercise you do, where you read testimony from so many people across history. The power that gives to people to tell their own story, to be their story, is profound. Thank you for that. You're giving us so much to sit with. Storytelling is a vehicle for healing, for social justice, but it can also be painful and put people at risk. I love that you go through extensive trauma-informed training and that there's so much love and care in the room within your workshops.
So what are some of the trauma-informed approaches you've learned over the years when it specifically comes to survivor storytelling?
Anne Ream:
In some ways our process is a living thing. It's always changing and evolving based on what we learn and hear from our writers. But it starts before anyone is even in the room. If you visit storyandwitness.org or see any of our materials, it starts with how we show survivors, how we photograph them, how we write about this issue, how we speak about this issue, how our team interacts with other human beings.
We have a wonderful survivor outreach coordinator, Janet Goldblatt Holmes. This workshop has traveled all over the globe. Janet was actually in our second workshop ever in Canada. She then became a volunteer, and now for over a decade has been our survivor outreach coordinator. Even before someone applies, Janet may be in written or even verbal dialogue with them for years. And she stays in touch with alumni long after the workshops.
Within the workshop itself, one of the most beautiful elements Clifton conceived is the reading packet. It's curated for the people in the room, based on their applications. We really take care to understand who is coming into the room. Every now and then someone has applied and we've had to say, maybe not yet. They might apply again two or three years down the road.
The reading packet is a collective of writing and speaking across history and social justice movements. That sets up the free-write prompts. Then we workshop the writing, which means every writer has the chance to read aloud and receive feedback from the collective. Sharing is always optional. You can get a lot out of the workshop without ever reading aloud. But 99% of the time, even people who said in advance they wouldn’t read end up reading, because they feel safe in the room.
Another brilliant aspect is that we expose people to diverse mediums—memoir, fiction, poetry, speeches—so they see that testimony can be non-linear. Some works never name the trauma, but evoke the feelings. This frees people up. It shows them that they can tell their story, or not, in their own way. It places power with them.
This approach reminds writers that they are part of a broader tradition. For example, many authors wrote fiction about gender-based violence before ever acknowledging it happened to them.
We did that because we wanted a creatively ambitious writing program. But Clifton also intuitively knew that if we created a space where, for the first day, we stepped back from our own personal experiences and looked at storytelling across movements, it would take pressure off. It would shift people from thinking, this is all about me, to, this is about us. It grounds them in something larger than themselves.
Of course, in the workshop we practice active listening. We moderate with care. We know when to allow someone to go deeper and when to transition out. We're now launching a teacher training institute and fellows program to train others to facilitate workshops like this.
So yes, there are very practical trauma-informed practices. But the very structure of the program is trauma-informed. It reminds people that they are part of something larger. That feeling creates a trauma-informed space in itself.
Maria Bryan:
Right. I always talk about agency and safety. There's so much autonomy and safety built into your program. And then there's this extra layer of the “we” when you bring in other stories. That's powerful and comforting, because trauma is isolating, and the traumas you work with are especially isolating. To work as a cohort through these stories, then through your own story, and to have the choice whether or not to share—I can only imagine what an experience that is.
I recently did a training with survivors of sexual violence. We leaned toward rights and agency, focusing on what outcomes they wanted from telling their story. One of the first things I asked was, what is your goal in telling your story, and what outcomes do you hope for? At the end, people said, I never thought about it. I'm asked to tell my story, and so I tell it. I don’t necessarily have a goal.
People tell their stories for all kinds of reasons—legal testimony, movement building, fundraising, marketing, memoir, personal healing. In your two decades working so intimately with people telling their stories, what outcomes have you seen?
Anne Ream:
We've had extraordinary outcomes. Writers have published novels, written op-eds, lobbied on Capitol Hill.
One powerful example was a 10-day narrative advocacy training we did in Durban, South Africa. It was a community of women ranging in age from 18 to almost 80. They had never spoken out about the gender-based violence they experienced. South Africa at the time had one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the world.
They recognized that two institutions that had brought down apartheid—the Anglican Church and the African National Congress—were failing to address gender-based violence. But they also faced the challenge of speaking out about violence committed by men in their own communities, men who themselves had been victims of apartheid violence.
The organizers on the ground took care. They said, if we're going to ask women to do this, we need to support them in thinking through how and why. So we spent days talking about how others had used story, what audience they needed to reach, what stories they wanted to tell.
They also made sure audiences with power would be in the room. They flew in ANC leaders and Bishop Margaret, Bishop Tutu’s heir.
The women decided to open the event by walking in singing. They carried signs with both negative statements (my community ignored me, the police did nothing) and positive ones (I can be a voice for the voiceless). But they carried each other’s statements, not their own.
I sat in the back of the room as they entered. There wasn’t a dry eye.
That meeting led to changes in the Anglican Church and within ANC political leadership. But what moved me most came later, when one of the organizers visited Chicago. She asked, do you remember Yvette? Yvette had been the youngest, quietest woman in the room. She said, Yvette has become an outspoken leader.
That was the greatest gift. It reminded me that you never know who will emerge as a leader.
The outcomes vary. Some writers publish or lobby. Others simply speak up in their family for the first time, like telling a relative that a rape joke isn’t funny. Clifton once told me those stories moved him most.
Maria Bryan:
And you bear witness to a lot of pain. How do you care for yourself?
Anne Ream:
Thank you for asking, Maria. That means a lot.
When I started, I just wanted to keep moving. I think I overestimated my capacity to live in my trauma and witness others’ trauma. Eventually my body and mind told me I had to change.
Now, joy is sacred to me.
About 14 years ago, through a partnership with the David Lynch Foundation, I trained in meditation. That’s part of my practice now, along with hot yoga, which I’ve done all over the world.
I’ve also connected with the community exploring the healing potential of plant medicines and psychedelics. It’s not for everyone, but it’s been meaningful for me.
Most importantly, I’ve learned to nurture relationships. Last year I lost my beloved mom, a grounding presence in my life. That was a wake-up call: the only way we endure loss is through deepening bonds with others.
There are also non-Western lessons to learn about building movements that are joyful even when the work is hard. Survivors have taught me that joy is possible even in the face of great injustice.
How do you care for yourself?
Maria Bryan:
I feel your joy in this conversation. For me, gardening helps. I'm not a great gardener, but having the sun on my face and dirt under my nails grounds me. I also rely on longtime friends who’ve been there through many iterations of me.
I came into this work with caution, thinking we have to do it this way or we’ll do harm. But I’m working toward your joy—knowing that trauma-informed storytelling can cultivate healing and joy.
I sometimes get frustrated when people tell story owners that they will heal by telling their story. I think we should let people decide their own goals and outcomes. That balance between risk and joy feels important.
Anne Ream:
I love and really appreciate this idea, and actually it's something that you've given me. So thank you. This very overt question of, why do you want to do this? Because a lot of times when we are working—our narrative advocacy trainings are often different from our writing workshops.
Our writing workshops are with survivors or witnesses of whatever injustice we are focused on in that workshop. But our narrative advocacy trainings, we have many different kinds. Oftentimes we're working with direct service providers, folks in the field who are working in NGOs, journalists, people who want to think in new ways about story.
I think we often make assumptions about why people want to share a story. Or organizationally we may have an agenda for the stories we are soliciting. The most important thing, if that's happening, is that the goal of the storyteller matches the goal of the organization inviting them to share their story. Motives can change over time.
My own bias and the way we constructed our writing program was to give people space for the exploration of their why. And you often stumble upon your own why when you’re exposed to other people’s why.
Maria Bryan:
I love that.
Anne Ream:
In most of our workshops we read and discuss Reverend King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” of course. It’s the beautiful letter he wrote to religious leaders—Protestant ministers and one rabbi—who had written to him when he went to Birmingham to stand in solidarity with workers. They said, we agree with your goals, but we do not approve of your methods.
In that jail, he wrote this open letter that is now an iconic human rights text. In it, he challenged these leaders. He cited the Bible, philosophy, law, and history. And he wove in a narrative about what it is like to be a father, telling his daughter she can’t go to Funland because Black girls are not allowed.
His why was to remind these people, who said they cared for children and families, what this struggle actually feels like to him as a father. His broader why was to challenge systems and institutions, but within that, he found a way to weave in a personal story that he knew would remind these men—many of them fathers—to view the civil rights struggle not only as leaders, but as human beings.
That kind of getting to the why is something I feel does not happen enough in movements or organizations. We don’t give people enough space to find their why. So I really love that you understand how much that matters.
Maria Bryan:
Mm. And you have been abundantly generous today. Where can listeners connect with you and learn more about the Center for Story and Witness?
Anne Ream:
Go to storyandwitness.org. We're also on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. You can connect that way through the website as well. I would love for your listeners or the organizations you work with to look at the overview of our available workshops.
We’d love for your listeners to consider applying, or consider bringing one of our narrative advocacy trainings to their community. We do our work for people like your listeners, and I’d love to get to know them.
I’ve really appreciated you, Maria. You asked some wonderful questions, so thank you.
Maria Bryan:
What an honor to have you on. Y’all go check out Center for Story and Witness. What a really beautiful program with so much care and intention. Thank you for that. Thank you, Anne. We appreciate you being here.
Anne Ream:
Thank you. Be well.