Home: The Berkshires, MA

Why this work: By choosing to work with women, we take the hardest cases and make them the most important cases. To show resolution in the face of fear, bullying and righteousness. No longer disregarding women, but investing in each other.

Home: Jersey City, NJLoves: I love to read, dance, write, and the beach.

Why this work: This work is essential to me because I wholeheartedly believe, with my entire being, that each human, and women especially have a natural power buried deep in their instinct and their heart. I'm excited to learn and explore a sense of community and self during this adventure and hope to be able to inspire at least one other woman in the process too. Especially during such a time of extreme isolation for many of us, creating a safe space to explore and learn from each other is not only valuable but critical to our continued existence. I'm honored and excited to be selected to participate, even if just in a small way, in this great work that has found Nikki and which I know will explode into something more, into something transformative for all. I'm ready for the journey. 

Home: For years, home was my mama. Then, home was the theater, then Brooklyn, and back and forth. Home means something different in Covid, and in my new status of adult orphan, as we learn to live remotely and embrace travel and exploration as our consolation prize. Home is my husband, a gregarious playwright, and my 2 kiddos. Home is also a place inside where at last I have found some peace.

Why this work: I believe in this work because writing, exploration and performance have set me free in many dark times. I believe in Nikki Weaver as a woman with an imagination, belief and heart that astound me, so I will follow her anywhere she asks. I believe in freedom and justice and art, and this organization seems to be where those three intersect.

Home: I’ve struggled with the word “home.” Is it where you were born (L.A.), where your parents/family live (Miami), where you live (Cambridge), or where love lives (all over). For many years, I knew exactly where home was. And then I didn’t. Today, I’d say it’s Cambridge, MA.

Why this work: I’m attracted to this work because we are all more alike than we are different. Each of us has a story that we tell ourselves about who we are and what we’ve been through. While the details of our stories are uniquely ours, there is a common thread that weaves its way through us. Personally, I have found that when I have the courage to share parts of my story - whether outright or through poetry - I find connection and am reminded that I’m not alone. Nikki has always supported me in finding that courage, and beyond being thankful, I am so excited to see what this work will yield in her creative and soulful hands.

Home: Home as where my family is, Zimbabwe is a beautiful country where a greater part of the time you go outside and feel the sunshine on your face.

I'm lucky to have grown up in a  family where my mum is a strong female figure in and outside our home which shaped my character a lot. My parents were both in the police force and I'm glad I grew up in an environment were my parents gave us equal opportunity in terms of education and for that I'm grateful.

I studied Travel Tourism and hotel recreation management and I worked in the Hotel industry for 6 years.

Why this work: Being a woman and a mum, and a wife in the middle of a pandemic we have boasted that we can multitask, but  homeschooling my 5 year old with a toddler has really tested me. It has also given me time to reflect on how other women are coping inside and outside their homes as frontline workers ,single moms, as breadwinners and as incarcerated women. It has made me wonder how other women are coping during this lockdown. I have used the time to also learn how to bake. I am sure this is skill other women would like to have but due to pressures of life they do not get the same opportunities.

In Zimbabwe we have to change from the term prison which most  people use to the term correctional facilities, so there is less stigma. I strongly feel we as Africans could do more to make it a better place in terms of providing education,  life skills for self fulfillment and others will hopefully use those skills after release to earn money to support their families. I'm excited to be part of the team and together we can make a difference.

Home: Croatia

Why this work: Rebellious acts of injustice are a two way street, where can we meet each other? How do you continue on, and how do you adapt to change, to kindness? Through speaking words of strength, through learning our stories, and connecting the dots.

Home: I live in Sydney Australia, I am a Relationship Coach who is passionate about working together with women to show them how to create and live their best relationships, I love people, music, nature and fun.  Why this work: This work is so fundamentally important to the future of women.  Women together hold an incredible power, one that doesn't always need to roar but one that stops time and one that the future of this world needs.  I have seen throughout my life how connection, belief and respect can change a human's life and I am excited to see how this will impact the women on the inside and outside equally.

Why this work: This work is so fundamentally important to the future of women. Women together hold an incredible power, one that doesn't always need to roar but one that stops time and one that the future of this world needs. I have seen throughout my life how connection, belief and respect can change a human's life and I am excited to see how this will impact the women on the inside and outside equally.

Home: Zimbabwe

Why this work: We must bond together and help those in need, this work serves women in a large way.

Home: Santa Fe, NM, grateful in the big sky, but NYC remains in my heart.

Why this work: This work connects us as women, healing. Plain and simple. We are all always in some state of healing; incarcerated women acutely so. To be closely involved with On The Inside keeps me in gratitude, creative cultivation, and appreciation of the freedom in my smallest choices.

Home: Home for me is in nature in an old-growth forest or fishing in the lake, Nature is where my heart sings. I was born in Los Angeles, traveled in the military with my family, and transplanted here to Portland 9 years ago.

Why this work: Human connection is vital in the wholeness of humanity. This works because we as a community ARE one and this works because it is the action we all need to heal and grow together. Togetherness works.

Home: El Segundo, CA

Why this work: On The Inside is creating a beautiful space where solidarity is being cultivated through the celebration of womanhood and the expression of storytelling– that is so exciting to me!

Home: After living in the San Francisco Bay Area for nearly two decades, Katie, her husband and their dog relocated to Bend, Oregon, in fall 2020.

Why this work: Katie believes deeply in the work of On the Inside because she believes that stories can heal and connect us all. She believes that, through stories, we can learn to love each other no matter our perceived differences. And Katie believes that every life matters and every story matters.

Home: Home is wherever and with whomever we feel loved, protected, and free. Home often takes a long time to find and cultivate. My partner and our puppy are my My writing is my home. My inner circle of family and friends are my home. My body is my home.

Why this work: This work is work of love. There is nothing more empowering and life-renewing than helping a person feel loved and valued, by helping them find radical self-acceptance and self-worth. On the Inside does this work of love in motion. Going back to the meaning of home, and home being a combination of love, protection, and freedom, On the Inside helps our incarcerated find a sense of home within and among themselves in the least likely of places.

Home: Home has meant many things to me in my life. As a child, my home was a constant roller coaster but we all slept behind the same four walls. As I gained insight into the world and grew from my experiences, I realized home isn’t one place, but a combination of places, people, emotions, acceptance, and endurance for the long haul. I feel at home when I am embraced by the people I love, or when I feel like I can’t keep going and a friend reminds me of my value. Home is putting love into my garden and being proud when it feeds my family and it is watching my children’s father play with them in the yard. Home to me is a feeling, not a place.

Why this work: I do this work because in my distant past I was incarcerated. When I found out I was going to prison I took a long hard look at who I wanted to be and what I wanted my legacy to say about me. Did I want my legacy to say rape victim, junky, bad mom, bum? Those are the words I used to refer to myself as but the answer is simple: NO. While incarcerated, I signed up for any and every program available to start my healing process because I went in broken and I needed to come out strong. I learned a lot when I went into treatment. I learned why I went down the path I did, and I learned how to tell myself not to go down that same path again. The subject that helped me refine those skills the most was theater, of all places, through the experience of figuring out how to convey the emotions that went along with the story. Doing so helped me connect with my own emotions in a way that has put a fire behind anything I do. Initially, I was scared to get in front of people. Not only the people I was incarcerated with but also people from the outside, sitting there, wondering why each one of us was in prison, wondering were we damned to repeat the same cycle, and what was their program paying for? Well, I am here because I am not afraid to show exactly what healing through art and expression can do for a person. I do this work because I want to be part of the solution; because life and love are worth it.