I see them gathering to go on outings and to meetings together. It’s a
and you’re gonna be okay, you don’t have to do this alone.” This was about
community in which each person is reaching back to help the next person
a year and a half ago, and today, Tiffany’s employed, she lives in her own
along, sharing their experiences, sharing their resources, sharing their
place, she has a car, and she’s doing really well.
chores, and supporting each other.
It’s been a long journey, and I feel very blessed, but there are
In time, you can see these women really start to change. They learn
definitely still challenges. The economic landscape is really bad. California
that life does have ups and downs, and though they’re down today, they
wants to just keep building prisons instead of schools. The state has built
can be up tomorrow—they’ll survive this. I see that resolve happen within
thirty-three prisons in the last thirty years and just one university. It is really
them. A light starts to come on in their eyes, they take on a new kind of
troubling that we can put so much energy and so many resources into
determination, and you begin to hear laughter in the house.
punishment and incarceration and so little into education, prevention, and stimulating and supporting poor communities. It’s very heartbreaking to see that that’s the way the world works.
“In time, you can see the women really start to change. They learn that life does have ups and downs, and though they’re down today, they can be up tomorrow—they’ll survive this. I see that resolve happen within them. A light starts to come on in their eyes.”
When I started A New Way of Life I never imagined that I would be doing development work, I just thought that if women had a place to come they would be all right, and I could pay the bills if we all pitched in together. So it was a really simple concept of providing and creating a household, a family not related by blood but by a shared mission to get their lives together, and I think that it’s really scalable. That’s the next phase of my own development—to encourage and create ways that people can duplicate these reentry homes in communities throughout the country. I’ve actually mentored three other women who have started their own homes so far, and now the goal is to develop a training manual to get people started, and
I remember one young woman, Tiffany, came to us after serving
then encourage them to implement their own ideas and design.
a sixteen-year sentence. She was convicted of shooting her childhood
I started this organization—not because I wanted any fame or
molester who was also beginning to molest her sister, and she was
recognition, but because I wanted to see something different happen for
protecting her. She wrote to us and said that she had been incarcerated
people who had the potential to make a valuable contribution to the world
for a long time, and she asked for our help when she got out. The morning
if given the opportunity. You look at these women’s lives, and I look back
after her first night in the house, I came by at 9 a.m. and found her sitting in
at my life, and I just say, “Hey, I got a real dirty deal here in this life, and
the chair next to the door rocking, crying, and clutching the Bible. I asked
I have a right to be mad.” But I don’t have a right to be angry to the level
her, “What’s wrong?” and she said, “I was upstairs and I heard all the other
that it’s destructive. Things just happened like they happened, they were
women downstairs, but when I came down no one was there. I went back
unfortunate, but someone helped me to see that. And now my job is to
upstairs and I wanted to take a shower, but I didn’t know how to turn the
help others to see that and move beyond it. I don’t know what the effect
shower on. I’m all alone and I don’t think I can do this. I don’t even have a
of this will be ten, twenty, fifty years from now, but I feel like I’m on the
coat.” And I said, “I’ll give you one of my coats, and I’ll teach you how to
right track. I think I’m showing California, the United States, the World,
turn on the shower, and all the other things that have been updated and
that there is an alternative: we can treat people differently and have more
created since you’ve been gone, you’ll learn how to do them one by one,
positive outcomes.
A New Way of Life Reentry Project
39