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Our facilitators of the prison project, Linda Coleman and Lonnie Mathis, have witnessed firsthand over the last five years the shifts in comments from the correctional officers who "guard" them in the rehabilitation area where the writing workshops meet. These officers often overhear the women as they read their stories aloud. Where previously our facilitators would often and only hear disdainful remarks such as, "They're all the same...they'll be back . . .,” they now often share conversations with these same guards that are geared to helping women with program placements, or sharing their disbelief that so many (estimated at over 90% by local prison officials) have encountered such heinous sexual (or other) violence in their early childhoods, or that one or the other is such a great writer, and could you ever have imagined? Well, yes we could…
One of our favorite testimonials received over the years came in the form of a letter written by Jonathan Scherr, director of the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Jail DWI Facility in Yaphank. Click here to read his letter.
For another favorite testimonial, from a recent article in the New York Community Trust Newsletter, click here.
More recently, Linda and Lonnie were touched by a letter they received from a former member of one of their workshops, now serving the remainder of her sentence in an upstate NY prison. It is perhaps the greatest testimony of how much they have touched hearts and minds through their years of service in Suffolk’s prisons;
They come together, these two women, so different in appearances that your eyes linger and you take a longer look. One small, slim woman, whiter than white, one big black woman, larger than life. Through heat waves and snowstorms, holidays and vacations, they come, keeping a promise made to those whose lives are littered with broken promises.
The big brown one is big all over; big hands, big feet, broad smile and a bigger heart. Her welcoming hug is all-encompassing, a mother’s hug, and her laugh begins down deep as a rumble in her very toes. She is everything I love about black women. I imagine her clapping and singing in church, then taking you home and feeding you a Sunday supper that nourishes your entire being. Then she’d gather you in those arms, press your head into her “girls” and rock you into a sleep that heals your very soul.
The slim white one is quieter, more still with measured words spoken in the softest of tones. I think of her as Episcopalian, all 6:00 gin & tonics and country club pools. She has that innate carriage and confidence that speaks of a moneyed past, tempered with the earth tones and natural fabrics of the hippie chick she surely must have been. I imagine she was at the forefront of the long hair, no makeup, bra-burning feminist awakening. Protest marches, sit-ins and radical thinking quick to ask how to help, a phone call made or a letter written to right a wrong, echoes of what surely must have been her 70’s activism. She invites us to meditate, teaches us to center ourselves. Her serenity is palpable, contagious and infectious and she shares it generously and freely. She is cool, calm and still, a peaceful oasis amidst the chaos of this jungle.
And still, they come, usually together, yin to each other’s yang, 2 halves of a whole. They welcome us with a hug, recognizing what human touch means to the untouchables, and draw us into their circle, where for an hour or two our surroundings blur, and we have the blissful gift of quiet. And they listen, never judging, never cringing, no matter how raw the words or shocking the crimes. They listen to our stories of abuse and addiction, of madness and destruction and they cry with us and for us. They glory in our triumphs and mourn our failures, but still they come.
And in their coming, and their listening and their coaxing of words and stories, they reach down those hands, that slim white one, and that big brown one, and they grab hold of us, and pull with all their might. They give us a leg-up out of the cesspool that has become our lives, and they afford us a glimpse of a new dawn breaking on a faraway horizon, where we can live healthy and whole. They have pulled out others before us, will pull out others behind us. We are each but a link in an unbroken chain of broken women that they, through the power of the written word, are helping to mend and heal.
And still, they come, long after we have gone from within these walls. With every hug, with every work & sentence, with every promise kept, they take away a little of our pain, and help us find the pieces of our shattered selves. These two so very different women, united in a common cause, battling our demons with their conviction and unwavering belief in the power of our stories. They are our mother-confessors, our soul sisters, our hope and our salvation. They are loved and admired and lifted up in our prayers, as we all leave this place, and still, they come.
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