Vanita Leatherwood, an award-winning poet and teaching artist who works at HopeWorks Howard County, offers transformative workshops, some tailored especially for older adults. Photo by HopeWorks of Howard County

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Vanita Leatherwood grew up in the 1960s in Washington, D.C., “at a time when everything on the news was violent, particularly against Black people,” she said.

But it wasn’t only on the news that Leatherwood saw violence. She is herself a survivor of childhood abuse and trauma.

As a teenager, Leatherwood was deeply moved by poet Maya Angelou’s memoir, she told the Beacon in a recent interview.

“Reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings really helped me to process what I experienced as a child and to know that I wasn’t alone,” she said. “That’s how my work with the arts first started — with my own need, my own comfort, to process the world around me.”

Now 64 and a grandmother, Leatherwood is an award-winning poet, playwright, therapist and educator who uses poetry, music and fine arts to both reflect on her own life and help others to heal.

Leatherwood said she stumbled across her line of work almost by accident as she was searching for graduate schools.

“I knew I wanted to do something that was healing and therapeutic, so I Googled the words ‘poetry’ and ‘therapy,’ and the National Association for Poetry Therapy (NAPT) came up. I thought I was on ‘Candid Camera,’” she said, laughing.

After taking classes with the NAPT, Leatherwood went on to Goddard College in Vermont, where she earned a Master of Arts degree in psychology.

Today, she teaches classes to a variety of groups throughout Howard County. “I use the arts as a healing tool, as well as to bring access to different social issues,” Leatherwood said.

Day job supports survivors

In the early 2000s, Leatherwood worked at nonprofits in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area on efforts to prevent child abuse and violence. There, she learned how to conduct presentations, seminars and workshops in schools, shelters, group homes and community centers.

She then moved to the Howard County office of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a nonprofit on whose local board she still sits.

Since 2011, she has worked at HopeWorks of Howard County, a nonprofit that provides comprehensive services to survivors of sexual and domestic violence. The organization also works to change the conditions in the community that allow such violence to occur in the first place.

As director of community engagement, she also established and edited HopeWorks’ magazine, Dragonfly, and produced the nonprofit’s award-winning podcast.

Plus her own nonprofit

Two years ago, Leatherwood founded a nonprofit called The Yes Within. She named it after a quote from poet Audre Lorde: “We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves.”

As the group’s director, Leatherwood presents workshops, both virtually and in person, for the general public — those who want to explore life stories in general and their own life stories in particular. The workshops are designed for people of varied ages, from teens to older adults.

For example, one of her eight-session writing workshops is for people 55 and up. She starts by introducing basic concepts about poetry, such as metaphor and form.

Leatherwood then helps participants incorporate ideas from songs, television clips and written works to create a poem they workshop together.

The workshop’s virtual sessions allow participants to “dive deeply into their life stories,” Leatherwood said.

Participants also create a piece of visual art using objects, fabrics and other “found art.” For a workshop offered at the Bain 50+ Center in Columbia, the county provided free materials for the art project.

Leatherwood has taught workshops at local retirement communities, too. Earlier this year, she presented a session at Residences at Vantage Point in Columbia.

She encourages participants to write poetry or create visual art to explore “issues related to personal discovery and growth, trauma, healing, self-care and wellness skills,” she said.

Many of Leatherwood’s efforts are inspired by the Creative Aging Movement, “a national initiative to provide older adults with opportunities for artistic expression, social interaction and enhanced mental and physical health through meaningful engagement in the arts,” she explained.

Leatherwood received training from one of the movement’s leading organizations, a nonprofit called Lifetime Arts.

Helping people help themselves

Leatherwood says she’s simply helping people reconnect with their inner selves through the arts. She views it as re-teaching people what they always knew.

“That’s what my work is about — giving people the space and the opportunity to tap in and to laugh, and reflect and figure out how to relax again.”

She stresses that her workshops aren’t meant to take the place of professional therapy. “These are practices that can supplement the work of clinical therapy, but [do] not replace it.”

For those who doubt poetry’s mind and body-healing capabilities, it should be noted that the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health contains a study related to the Covid-19 pandemic that found poetry “cannot only combat loneliness, but can also play important roles in helping patients, physicians and other healthcare providers” treat physical ailments.

In an article in the April 2019 edition of Psychology Today, research psychologist Deanna Raab noted that “as most writers and therapists know, writing and reading poetry can be a springboard to growth, healing and transformation because poems reflect the voice of the soul and can unleash the unconscious mind.”

Creating her own art

Leatherwood doesn’t just teach others how to be creative; she packs her life with creative projects in many forms.

In 2018, she wrote a play called “Telling This Truth,” which told the stories of nine survivors “linked together by the theme of triumph over partner violence,” she said.

Her next project is creating a chorus called the Voices of Survival. She’s hoping the choir — composed of people who faced trauma — will be ready to perform at a vigil in Columbia in April 2025, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

How have the participants of Leatherwood’s workshops benefitted from their experience?

Columbia resident Ardita Jay Holland, 62, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who has “had to do a lot of healing in my life,” said Leatherwood’s workshops have helped her tremendously.

“She is one of the most wonderful women in my life,” Holland said. Her “Awakening” workshops were “by far” the best way to help her move forward.

Holland said Leatherwood “has a way during the workshops of reaching inside you while allowing you to have fun and healing you at the same time.”

Leatherwood said she has some of her best days when she’s leading workshops.

“Sometimes our compass is a little off because so much is in front of our faces about what we’re supposed to reach for, to work for. We have to find some sort of tool, some sort of pathway to focus on what’s important.

“Your pathway or tool can be the arts. Or the sound of a child laughing, the feel of your spouse’s hand in your hand, the grass on your feet — those things can bring us back to what’s true and real.”

For more information and a schedule of upcoming workshops, visit theyeswithin.com, hopeworksofhc.org, or call (410) 997-0304.