About Give Her A Voice

Mission: To empower, ignite and bring a deeper connection to the artist’s voice within the impact of trauma and abuse through the creative arts.

Vision: To build a global community of artists through creative arts workshops and the multi-media production The Telling that deepens understanding of the daily impact of trauma and abuse.

 

A COMMUNITY OF VOICES

Founded by Marta J. Luzim, MS, Give Her A Voice, Inc, (GHAV) is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization created to help women to ignite the artist within from their experiences with trauma and abuse. Complex trauma is one of the most undiagnosed, misdiagnosed and invisible psychological, emotional and physical disorders of the human condition. Our daily lives are flooded with images and words that continuously activate the fight or flight syndrome – a symptom of abuse. Education, politics, social interaction, families, mass media and religious orders affect us overtly and covertly in ways that often we do not see as, feel as, or connect to trauma and abuse. Give Her A Voice creates awareness of how we as a society are numb to the intricate ways trauma and abuse affect us all, down to the way we breathe, sleep, eat and make our daily choices. There is an enormous epidemic of abuse in our culture, resulting in complex trauma and leading to the symptoms of addiction, eating disorder, chronic illness, depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and anxiety disorder. Give Her A Voice creates an opportunity for women to explore their healing through the expressive-creative arts, experiential feeling processes and performance.

Give Her A Voice workshops and The Telling are for:
➢ Women who desire to transform their trauma and abuse into art .
➢ Women who have been through an initial recovery process and want to know what’s next
➢ Women who want to dig deep, feel and create
➢ Women who want to find their creative voice and speak their truth
➢ Women who want to be visionary leaders
➢ Women who believe creativity is their path
➢ Women who have the courage to be vulnerable and imperfect
➢ Women who want to be part of a community of creativity and empowerment
➢ Women who want to learn self-care through the creative arts

 

THE HEALING POWER OF TRANSFORMATIVE STORYTELLING

Through transformational storytelling and visual and performing arts, GHAV helps women identify, create awareness, discuss, process and understand the patterns of trauma that are an outcome of: physical, emotional, sexual, verbal and self-abuse. In our daily lives we are violated in both subtle and aggressive ways by the way we are touched, ignored, seen, heard and spoken to. Significant others (family, friends, teachers, spiritual leaders, and spouses) influence our self-esteem and worth for better or worse. Just by living in a society that is addicted to power and control through mass media, we can be shamed into believing we are less than. What is lost between the cracks are the abuses in ordinary circumstances that most do not identify as trauma; being perfect, being ‘’the best’, repressed feelings, abandonment, ignored emotions, unresolved hurt, anger, fear, comparison, competition. There are countless other ways our society traumatizes the way we see ourselves in relation to others that can cause us to shut down, go numb and be terrified of intimacy and risk taking. On top of all of this so called “normal” treatment, 1 in 3 women are raped, beaten and/or emotionally terrorized.

Freedom to live a creative, expressive, loving and empowered life comes from undoing old ways of behaving, feeling, thinking and working that have been shaped by unresolved and unidentified trauma and abuse. Allowing the artist within to shape the way you live, Give Her A Voice offers a doorway out of trauma and abuse into an aliveness beyond survival, coping and even thriving. The artist way is the next step in recovery.

 

Board Members

Marta J. Luzim, MS, President

Ronald A. Luzim, Esq. Vice-President

Lara Luzim, BFA, Artistic Director

Evelyn Park, Secretary / Director

Rita Munoz, Director

Peggy Bennett, Director

 
***We are excited to announce that Give Her A Voice has been awarded a grant from The Puffin Foundation in Teaneck, NJ to help produce our next Telling performance. Our deepest appreciation for their support.***

Comments are closed.