My self-care journey in prison

(Trigger warning: mention of harmful substance use)

Words: Lilly

Drawing on her own experience in prison, Women’s Involvement Advisor at One Small Thing charity, Lilly, reflects on her self-care journey and shares the activities that helped her take care of herself.

My name is Lilly. I am a Women’s Involvement Advisor for One Small Thing, an organisation that aims to redesign the justice system for women and their children. I am also a domestic abuse campaigner and a Women’s Justice Ambassador for APPEAL. I started campaigning when I was in prison; I was sentenced to eight years in 2016.

My life before prison can only be described as chaotic. My story started the day I was born, when I was abandoned by my mother for the colour of my skin. For the following 30 plus years, I was in one abusive relationship after another, and I was abusing my body with alcohol and drugs.

In 2013, the unthinkable happened: my children were removed from my care. Then, in 2016, I found myself facing a Crown Court judge for my part in a conspiracy to defraud.

After six months in prison, I wrote to my sentencing judge and thanked him for what I call ‘my gift of time’. Once you have been sentenced, the time you are in prison is out of your control, however what you do with that time is up to you!

Everyone is different, but here are some things that helped me:

l Reading. I went to the prison library and borrowed every self-help book I could find. I looked for authors such as Dr Sam Collins and Louise Hay. These books taught me how to love myself by knowing my own value and allowing my self-worth to grow.

l Meditating. I was able to cut out the negative chatter in my head through meditation. I saved my prison wages to buy a DVD player to play meditation CDs from the library on how to practice mindfulness.

l Writing. I wrote a journal for my children to read when they are older. On each page I would write ten things I was grateful for – simple things like the sun shining. This helped me to start my day positively. l Yoga. I joined yoga classes and made a promise to myself that any activity I was involved in had to have a positive outcome.

My piece of advice would be to use your time in prison to take care of yourself. That way, you can walk out of those gates with your head held high, knowing you took what could have been the worst experience of your life and made it work for you.

You may also be interested in the guided self-soothing exercises found on pages 52-53 of this magazine and articles on yoga and boosting your mood in the recent edition of our Healthy Foundations magazine – this can be found in your prison library.