On this page we have quotes from the women who participated in the most recent pilot for the LWPP course, we hope their inspiration shines on to you…
I felt truly at ease and respected by the course leaders. The involvement was priceless. I felt secure in all aspects of this course and the leaders’ presentation, they are so very capable.
– Martha: Inmate
My words: by Sophia Arain
The journey is to be valiantly loving and to find what you can bring to the world. These words were inspired by Virginia Kellogg and Helen House, Co-Leaders of the pilot.
When the day has its way with you, who do you become? Are you the light and the air? Are you the breath of god? It felt too hard to dig out and now I have a shovel.
I see a common thread among the many threads that creates a fabric of compassion, movement and action. What I learned is, it was easy to be with these women, the staff all of them. They were and are real. To learn a little about them, their families, their hearts, their jobs was like sinking into their path and riding along with them – walking in their footsteps and feeling their load.
We are all just in this world bumping into each other in a crowded room of balloons or bubbles trying to name the space in between things. The air was light and perfect. The energy in the room was warm, inviting, like an embrace even inside and behind the doors that lock and slam. And for a while we made the walls disappear and fade. They were existing in curiosity, reaching out to make a change. They hold their values close to them since they can’t hold on to their loved ones. So much loss and sadness in these walls, one woman recounted the loss of her son, his birth and his death and she carried that sadness as a part of her fabric and I could feel it all over her and inside of her and she was amazing. Their stories tear your heart and your soul and we held them capable of anything they dreamed.
What do you need to know when going into a prison?
To be real. To know that these are human beings that have lost their way and are finding their way back to themselves. They are proud, they love, they are brilliant, they are scared, angry, amazing, compassionate, smart, energetic, sad, happy, just human.Look at them and let them look at you as if they are a brother, a sister. As if they are you. Be with them in your skin, in your comfortable skin. Let your behavior reflect your human condition and their human condition. They are the lioness and road runners, go-go dancers and laid back – they are flower children, thoroughbred and powerballs of winning. My heart hurts. I am blessed.
We have found the space in between us to be beautiful. We have found the energy to be light. Like flowers they bloomed from that light and found their perfect imperfection. They found part of their way back to themselves.
These women were beautiful and perfect as much as we all are. I am in this with them and I am with them and they are with me and they have impacted me forever. I wanted to know my love and be my love and I am doing that – giving and receiving perfect love.
Sophia Arain – Director
Microsoft
This course is very helpful to give us tools to take into the facility with us and help not only ourselves but our fellow offenders as well as relationships outside of the facility.
– Susan: Inmate
The more coaches there are for children the better the world would be.
– Allegra: Inmate
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Can you bring this training in every weekend, please? Oh, and lets start with the staff! Can we have all this training for the staff, for the executive level?”
– Captain Kathleen Arnold: Denver Women’s Correctional Facility