Are you wanting more out of this time?
Are you wanting to address your own need for healing?
Are you wondering if your life has a real purpose?
Take a moment to reflect on your own answers to these questions. Fliers with these questions are posted in each unit in Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. They draw women to request a pairing with one of our Soul Care Mentors. Following an interview, they are paired with a mentor who meets individually with them twice a month. It is a confidential relationship that addresses the reasons they ended up incarcerated and provides guidance for healing and forgiveness.
Soul Care Mentoring with incarcerated women enables each person to grow in self-esteem and confidence. It helps her to address the thinking that led to negative choices, to identify her core values, to develop skills for positive relationships and for sharing her gifts. Soul Care Mentoring involves both deep inner work and the development of practical skills.
Soul Care Mentoring is a response to the mental health crisis in our communities. Individuals with mental illness are significantly overrepresented in American prisons. One in four individuals with mental illness ends up incarcerated. Sixty-seven percent of the women in DWCF struggle with some form of mental illness. Although the facility does its best to respond to the need, there is a 50% shortage of mental health workers in the Colorado Department of Corrections at the present time.
We do not step into the role of mental health clinicians. Our response is based on solid research that demonstrates the significant role of spirituality in healing and stabilizing individuals confronted with mental health challenges. Spirituality is about meaning, life purpose, healthy relationships and sharing one’s gifts through service to others.
We work with individuals of all faith traditions and no faith affiliation. Some of the women will be released back into the community in a few years, others have life sentences. They range in age from women in their twenties to those in their seventies. Most have no visitors or outside support. We mentor women in all the units including the disciplinary unit and the mental health unit.
We accompany them as they unpack their history, grieve losses, address the harm they have caused and walk through a process of forgiveness of others and of self. We recognize the impact of Soul Care mentoring in attitudinal changes, better decisions, pro-social behavior, improved capacity to deal with conflicts and more successful work relationships within the facility. Most significant is the transformation that happens as they identify their gifts and discover a sense of meaning and life purpose. A third of the women have become mentors themselves for other women in the facility. Others have become a positive influence serving as leaders on various committees or assisting with the training of new volunteers and officers.
As we come to the end of this Mental Health Awareness Month, we extend our gratitude to you for the support that makes Soul Care Mentoring possible.