The TMI Project: Radical Truth and Transformation
On April 4, the Vassar community hosted the TMI Project for an afternoon of vulnerable storytelling in the Class of 1951 Reading Room. The event was part of the Engaged Pluralism program’s Spring 2025 series, Exploring Difficult Dialogues—a campus-wide effort to foster meaningful conversations around complex and often stigmatized topics. Led by workshop facilitators Raine Grayson and Vassar alum Dara Lurie ’83, the event invited students, faculty, and community members into the world of radically authentic narratives.
The TMI Project, a nonprofit based in New York’s Hudson Valley, has spent the last 15 years helping people tell the stories we often consider “too much information”—the messy, complicated, deeply human experiences left out of public narratives and identities. Through performances, podcasts, and guided writing workshops, they encourage participants to confront the parts of their lives hidden away by shame, fear, and stigma, and to share them in ways that are both cathartic and connective.
At Vassar, that mission came to life through a communal writing workshop. Participants were encouraged by Lurie to “kick the editor out of the room,” letting go of polished, curated content, and embracing emotional authenticity instead. Through a series of guided writing prompts, attendees explored the thoughts and experiences we tend to filter out of our identities. By telling these “radically true” stories, students took on a reflective writing exercise unlike anything they would find in the classroom.
The event exemplified what the TMI Project does best: creating brave spaces where people can lean into discomfort, examine their experiences through a new lens, and find community through shared truth. This approach isn’t about perfect writing or performance—it’s about storytelling as a form of liberation. As Engaged Pluralism Director Kimberly Williams Brown explains, these workshops “underscore that humans are interdependent and that stories are an important way to connect and to bridge silos between people and groups.” Through collaborative events like these, the Vassar community fosters inclusive pedagogies and deepens the sense of belonging that so many of us lack in the digital age.
By the end of the session, those who participated had begun to peel back the layers of self-protection we all wear, revealing the parts of our stories that are hardest to tell, but most likely to resonate. The event was a powerful reminder that what we often think of as too much information might actually be the most commonly shared experiences we have.
As part of the Exploring Difficult Dialogues series, the TMI Project workshop fit perfectly into Vassar’s larger mission of fostering inclusive, engaged conversation. In a time when dialogue across differences is more important than ever, the TMI Project offers an evolutionary way to approach our lived experiences—through truth-telling, vulnerability, and connection. Because when we share the stories we usually hide, we don’t just free ourselves—we open the door for others to do the same.