The HerStories Project is a writing and publishing community for women. Our goal is to have a meaningful conversation about Gen X women at midlife, and to create a space for expression, sharing, celebrating women’s voices, and supporting each other during a complicated stage of life. We offer online courses, writing resources, , and calls for submission, and we have currently published five essay collections. Our recent relaunch explores what it means to be a Gen X women at midlife, and we are excited to dive into this topic with a new online course, guest essays, and blog posts.
The HerStories Project is in its own sort of midlife as well. We have been through quite a few incarnations since our beginning. Over five years ago, we—both new-ish bloggers—read a book about friendship (She Matters: A Life in Friendships by Susanna Sonnenberg) and decided to start a blog series about women’s friendship. From that point, an anthology was born, (The HerStories Project: Women Explore the Joy, Pain, and Power of Female Friendship) as well as a new website, followed by a book specifically on friendship breakups (My Other Ex: Women’s True Stories of Leaving and Losing Friends).
We began to expand our community to focus on writing courses, columns, and calls for submissions. And did we mention that we never actually met in person until three years after we had been working together? We finally met face to face when we presented a personal essay writing workshop at the BlogHer conference. We published two more essay collections between 2015-2016, one about postpartum mood disorders (Mothering Through the Darkness) and the other about getting real about motherhood (So Glad They Told Me.) We published The Pandemic Midlife Crisis in late 2021.
And then, we weren’t quite sure what to do. We had explored friendship, publishing, motherhood, writing classes . . . what came next?
After reading a series of articles about Gen X women at midlife and sharing the discussion with our community, it was clear that women wanted to talk about their experiences, questions, and challenges. Our friends and readers shared their thoughts with us in a survey about their midlife experience, and we have incorporated their feedback into our latest content and offerings. We are excited about this new chapter, and can’t wait to share it with our community. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or feedback at:
info@herstoriesproject.com
Jessica@herstoriesproject.com
Stephanie@herstoriesproject.com
Best,
Jessica and Stephanie
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