self-reclaimed

Our Legacy.
2020 - 2025

A Survivor-Led Legacy of Healing, Creativity, and Collective Care

Self-Reclaimed was a survivor-led nonprofit organization founded in 2020 by Vanessa Rae De Leon in response to the urgent need for healing spaces that honored the lived experiences, bodies, and creative wisdom of survivors of sexual and domestic violence.

Rooted in expressive arts, somatic practice, and community-centered care, Self-Reclaimed existed to create spaces where survivors could reclaim voice, agency, embodiment, and connection; not in isolation, but together.

From its founding through its conclusion in 2025, Self-Reclaimed grew from a grassroots vision into a community-recognized organization, delivering survivor-centered programs, creative healing spaces, and public-facing events that challenged traditional, compliance-based models of trauma care.

In 2025, Self-Reclaimed completed its organizational mission and formally dissolved as a nonprofit. This page honors the work, the people, and the impact of those five years and the legacy that continues beyond them.

Why Self-Reclaimed Existed

Self-Reclaimed was built on a simple but radical belief:
Survivors deserve more than survival.

At a time when many systems emphasized control, compliance, or clinical distance, Self-Reclaimed offered something different: healing spaces rooted in creativity, relational safety, embodiment, and choice.

Guided by values of transparency, compassion, integrity, and authenticity, Self-Reclaimed centered:

survivor leadership
expressive arts as a pathway to healing
trauma-informed and abolitionist frameworks
community accountability and care

Rather than positioning healing as something done to survivors, Self-Reclaimed created spaces where healing could emerge with and through community.

A Living Lineage

The learning, feedback, and collective wisdom cultivated through Self-Reclaimed’s programs ultimately shaped the creation of the Survivor Reclamation Expressive Arts (SR-EXA) framework: the culminating expression of five years of survivor-led programming and reflection.

SR-EXA carries forward the heart of Self-Reclaimed’s work and will continue to be delivered through The Good Life, with the next training scheduled for Fall 2026.

While Self-Reclaimed as an organization has concluded, its impact, values, and practices live on through the people, programs, and communities it helped shape.

What We Built Together

Between 2020 and 2025, Self-Reclaimed created survivor-led spaces for healing, creativity, and collective care. Our programs evolved over time in response to community feedback, lived experience, and a deep commitment to doing this work with integrity.

What we built was not a single program, but an ecosystem of offerings that met survivors where they were and honored multiple pathways to healing.

Journey Series

The Journey Series marked the earliest chapter of Self-Reclaimed’s work (2020-2021). Launched during a time of global uncertainty and isolation, these programs offered survivors and community members guided expressive arts experiences focused on reflection, connection, and resilience.

Through movement, discussion, and creative practice, the Journey Series laid the foundation for Self-Reclaimed’s survivor-centered approach and affirmed the importance of accessible healing spaces during times of collective stress.

impact by the numbers

2020-2025

What matters most cannot be counted:
the courage to show up,
the relief of being held,
the power of being witnessed.

That impact lives on in people.

Self-Reclaimed’s impact was never about scale.
It was about depth, care, and continuity; creating spaces survivors chose to return to.

Across five years of survivor-led programming, Self-Reclaimed:

held dozens of healing spaces through expressive arts programs, community forums, workshops, and performance-based experiences
engaged hundreds of community members, including survivors, artists, facilitators, and collaborators
supported sustained participation, with many community members returning across multiple programs and years
delivered multi-session cohorts focused on embodiment, narrative reclamation, and collective care
centered accessibility through low- and no-cost programming
integrated expressive arts and somatic practices, including movement, visual art, writing, music, ritual, and performance
built survivor-led pathways from community connection to deeper engagement, leadership, and facilitation

In 2025, Self-Reclaimed’s contributions to community healing and cultural programming were recognized through the Evanston Cultural Fund.

Community & Gratitude

Self-Reclaimed was never the work of one person or one program.
It was built through relationships, trust, collaboration, and care.

This section honors the people and communities who shaped, sustained, and believed in this work.

To our survivor community

To every survivor who trusted Self-Reclaimed with your presence, your creativity, your stories, and your boundaries, thank you.

Your courage, discernment, and leadership shaped everything we built.

This legacy belongs to you.

Board of directors

We extend deep gratitude to the board members who stewarded Self-Reclaimed through growth, reflection, challenge, and transition. Your guidance, accountability, and belief in this work made sustainability and integrity possible.

Christina Ola McHale, President
Joslyn Matt, Treasurer
Sara Oakes, Secretary
Marilyn Catinella, Member
Francesca Morales, Member
Phil Leone, Member
Jana Pruski, Member

Executive Leadership

Vanessa Rae De Leon, Co-CEO
Gabriela Starr Rosete, Co-CEO

Legacy Staff

Elanna Smith, Director of Fundraising Initiatives
Angela Brizant, COO
Christina Kim, Director of Strategic Partnerships
Tou Ger Lee, Director of Marketing
Laura Lea Nalle, Director of Marketing
Jordan Ordonez, Director of Programs
Antoinette Panganiban, Director of Operations

Sr-exa staff

2025

denim chang, Manager of Program Initiatives, Transformative Culture
Janelle Knippen, Manager of Program Initiatives, Expressive Arts Therapy

Reclamation Coach Fellows

Mary Kethya Khuon, 2023-2024
Jasmine Lee, 2023-2024
Sophia Ou, 2022-2023
Nikita Virani, 2022-2023

Marketing team

Stacey DeLathouwer, Sponsorship Manager
Kho Lor, Graphic Design & Social Media Manager
Karen Lum, Email Manager & Wellness Program Facilitator
Portia Li, Marketing Associate
Joy Rodenas, Marketing Associate

Interns

Elizabeth Colson, Research & Metrics Intern
Emmanuel De Leon, Research & Metrics Intern
Chloe Nichols, Communications Intern

Landscape Analysis Research team

2024-2025

Katrina Arevalo
Marina Alvarez
Lori Dombrowski
Abigail Fuentes
Janell Huckstadt
Christina Kim
Ellaine Manuel
Cindy Nielsen
Adrian Rosete

Artists, Facilitators & Coaches

To the artists, facilitators, and coaches who brought your craft, skill, and lived experience into these spaces, thank you for honoring creativity as a pathway to healing.

Your presence transformed programs into experiences of embodiment, reclamation, and possibility.

Community Partners, Friends & Supporters

Self-Reclaimed’s work was strengthened by community partners, collaborators, donors, and supporters who shared space, resources, expertise, and trust.

Healing does not happen in isolation and neither did this work.

Carrying the Work Forward

In 2025, Self-Reclaimed completed its mission as a survivor-led nonprofit organization. This decision was made with care, intention, and respect for the work, the people, and the community that made it possible.

Self-Reclaimed was never meant to exist forever.
It was meant to respond, to listen, to build, and to evolve.

Across five years, survivors, artists, facilitators, researchers, board members, and community partners co-created spaces rooted in embodiment, creativity, accountability, and care. Together, we learned what it takes to hold complexity, honor lived experience, and build healing spaces that center dignity and choice.

The collective learning, feedback, and wisdom cultivated through Self-Reclaimed live on through the Survivor Reclamation Expressive Arts (SR-EXA) framework, the culmination of this work. SR-EXA was shaped directly by survivor voices and program experience and will continue to be delivered through The Good Life, extending the values and practices developed here into new contexts and communities.

Though Self-Reclaimed has concluded as an organization, its impact remains in the relationships formed, the practices carried forward, and the people who continue to reclaim themselves and each other.

This page stands as a record of what was built, who built it, and why it mattered.

With gratitude,
Self-Reclaimed (2020–2025)

Our Instagram

@selfreclaimed