The Brave Women's Community Center

The Brave Women's Community Center Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from The Brave Women's Community Center, 1978 South Garrison Street, Lakewood, CO.

Nonprofit organization
Empowering women survivors of all forms of abuse
Creative, safe, healing space
Podcast | Speaker
Storytelling and The Arts
Denver based

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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.

☕️

Something is happening here. And we want you to be part of it.We’re building a place where women who have lived through ...
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

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

Sometimes you learn the most about someone after you set a boundary.It’s not that someone gets upset. People are allowed...
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.

You don’t have to prove they’re an abuser to decide you’re done.Sometimes we get trapped trying to build a case.Was that...
08/22/2026

You don’t have to prove they’re an abuser to decide you’re done.

Sometimes we get trapped trying to build a case.

Was that manipulation?
Was that cruel?
Did they mean to hurt me?
Are they a narcissist?
Was it really abuse?
Am I overreacting?
Would someone else think it was bad enough?

And while we’re trying to answer all of those questions, we can lose sight of a much simpler one:

Do I want to continue participating in this relationship?

You are allowed to notice when an interaction leaves you feeling accused, diminished, confused, intimidated, or repeatedly forced to defend your own reality.

You are allowed to take responsibility for your mistakes without accepting someone else’s characterization of you.

You are allowed to apologize without surrendering your boundaries.

You are allowed to hear someone’s anger without making their interpretation your truth.

And you are allowed to decide that the way someone communicates with you is simply not something you are willing to have in your life.

We can spend years waiting for enough evidence to justify leaving.

Sometimes bravery sounds much simpler:

I know how this feels to me.
I don’t want this relationship.
I’m done.

You don’t need a diagnosis.
You don’t need their agreement.
You don’t need to win the argument.

A boundary isn’t a verdict about who they are.
It’s a decision about what you will participate in.

When you give to The Brave Women's Community Center, where does your money actually go?Some of it goes to very ordinary ...
08/20/2026

When you give to The Brave Women's Community Center, where does your money actually go?

Some of it goes to very ordinary things that can make an extraordinary difference in whether someone can participate at all: transportation, bus passes, meals, supplies and scholarships.

But accessibility is only half of what we're trying to build.

Once a woman gets through the door, I want her to find programming that has been created with thoughtfulness, skill and care. That means being able to compensate qualified facilitators and creative professionals. It means investing in therapeutic improv, movement, storytelling, creative workshops, performances and projects like When Fear and Bravery Collide and Brave Hearts Speak.

And ultimately, I don't want BWCC to be somewhere a woman comes once.

I want us to build something she can return to.

A creative community where women can play, create, take risks, find their voices, build relationships and experience themselves as so much more than what has happened to them.

That's what you're helping us build.

If you believe in this vision, we'd be grateful to have you build it with us. 💛

Donate through Colorado Gives. https://mtyc.co/64kt2g

08/19/2026

Another great one. Passing it along

A little over a year from now, these women will have traveled through an extraordinary creative process together.But rig...
08/18/2026

A little over a year from now, these women will have traveled through an extraordinary creative process together.

But right now, we’re at the beginning.

As When Fear and Bravery Collide gets underway, we asked some of our participants a simple question: What does bravery mean to you?

I love how different their answers are.

Bravery can mean trusting yourself. Moving forward with fear beside you. Facing the hard stuff. Showing up when the odds are against you. Speaking truths that break silence.

This project isn’t about teaching women one definition of bravery. It’s about creating a space where they can discover and express what bravery means in their own lives—and eventually bring those voices to the stage.

Meet Andrea, Jena, Theresa, Victoria and Abbey. ❤️

We’re just beginning, and I’m so excited for you to get to know more of the women who are creating this project with us.

If you’d like to help us build what comes next, you can support The Brave Women’s Community Center through Colorado Gives. Use this link! https://mtyc.co/t3orig

We started. 💜After months of dreaming, planning, interviewing, recruiting, and wondering what would happen when we final...
08/17/2026

We started. 💜

After months of dreaming, planning, interviewing, recruiting, and wondering what would happen when we finally put this particular group of women in a room together, When Fear and Bravery Collide officially began this past Saturday.

Before we started, I asked the women to finish one sentence:

“Bravery, to me, means…”

These are some of their answers.

I love that there isn't one definition.

That's part of what I hope we'll discover over this next year: bravery doesn't always look like fearlessness. Sometimes it may look like showing up. Being seen. Trying something ridiculous. Saying no. Saying yes. Taking up space. Letting someone witness you. Creating something without knowing whether it will be good. Trusting another person enough to make something together.

Over the coming weeks, we'll introduce you to each of the women participating in this project.

And then we're going to invite you to follow what happens.

Through movement, therapeutic improv and drama, storytelling, writing, voice, play, and collaboration, these women will eventually devise an original theatrical work together. We're also documenting the journey on film because we believe the process matters just as much as the final performance.

These are some of the faces at the beginning of that story.

Get to know them. Root for them. Follow their journey.

And if you'd like to help make this work possible, please consider supporting Brave Women's Community Center. Your donations help us provide the skilled facilitation, participant support, creative resources, filmmaking, and production this project requires.

💜 Help Us Build Brave at this Colorado Gives donation link:
https://mtyc.co/he9g8f

Address

1978 South Garrison Street
Lakewood, CO
80227

Telephone

+17204127858

Website

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