On The Inside
“I can be myself here and no one judges me. That’s a hard space to find in prison.”-current student, Wyoming Women’s Center
*alumni student at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women 2023. Continues to work with us in our monthly class for all graduates of our 8 class series.
Thank you for being here with us, for being curious about our work, and the people we serve. More and more I find myself hesitating as I start to write the word: woman, and realize that we actually serve way more people than just women, and that gender, yes, can define us, but it can also redefine us. We serve our trans community inside and out, and recently held an all genders four class series that welcomed men, trans, and women into our circles. Our work, and our experience, continues to grow.
This month, I invite you to welcome more of our facilitators. What began as a team of one, grew to two, and now to five. We are based in Oregon, Wyoming, New Jersey, and Virginia, and together we serve incarcerated people in five states in six facilities.
Please welcome to our circles: De, Jennifer, and Atieno!
You can find them working in our WY youth facility, Nebraska Correctional Center for Women, and Virginia Correctional Center for Women. In addition, you can meet them in our outside monthly classes where we share leadership and studentship.
De Bolton-
Resilient. Determined. Ardent. De was inspired to change her life. Her transformation began by focusing not on weight loss but on honoring and rebuilding her temple. De is now a NASM Certified Personal trainer, Corrective Exercise Specialist, Fitness Nutrition Specialist, and Wellness Advisor. She has been sharing her faith and wellness journey and providing lifestyle education on her award-winning blog, FaithFueled Mom, for over six years. Her goal is simply to help strong women get stronger during their own wellness journey. How? By equipping them with the tools, they need to live free, nourish better, and honor their temple. De inspires and motivates people to live a healthy lifestyle while offering her community fitness and nutrition skills. Besides FaithFueled Mom, you can also find De featured in Active.com, Livestrong, Women's Health Magazine, Brydie.com, Reader Digests, Refinery 29, and Oxygen Magazine.
When she’s not coaching clients, mentoring, writing new and exciting content or praising Jesus, De can be found spending quality time with her three beautiful daughters along with her best friend and husband, Ed.
De Bolton-
Resilient. Determined. Ardent. De was inspired to change her life. Her transformation began by focusing not on weight loss but on honoring and rebuilding her temple. De is now a NASM Certified Personal trainer, Corrective Exercise Specialist, Fitness Nutrition Specialist, and Wellness Advisor. She has been sharing her faith and wellness journey and providing lifestyle education on her award-winning blog, FaithFueled Mom, for over six years.Her goal is simply to help strong women get stronger during their own wellness journey. How? By equipping them with the tools, they need to live free, nourish better, and honor their temple. De inspires and motivates people to live a healthy lifestyle while offering her community fitness and nutrition skills. Besides FaithFueled Mom, you can also find De featured in Active.com, Livestrong, Women's Health Magazine, Brydie.com, Reader Digests, Refinery 29, and Oxygen Magazine.
When she’s not coaching clients, mentoring, writing new and exciting content or praising Jesus, De can be found spending quality time with her three beautiful daughters along with her best friend and husband, Ed.
Atieno Bird-
Attention, intuition, love, possibility. Atieno brings her whole self into the room as a facilitator. Using her training as a Certified Psychodramatist, she looks for ways to follow participants' unfolding processes, meeting them where they are with acceptance and collaboration. Using Appreciative Inquiry, she looks for strengths to build on. As a Certified Professional Coach, she invites participants to ask what's possible in the future. Atieno's education at the Master's level included nonviolent communication, group dynamics, conflict resolution, efficient meetings, Restorative Justice, and Open Space Technology.
Atieno has collaborated with Nikki Weaver in offering annual Women's Circles in gorgeous locations around the world and now serves as a Facilitator for On the Inside. Time with women coming together to heal on the inside, on the inside, is precious to her.
Atieno lives in an old farmhouse in the Blue Ridge with her husband, two children, and canine bff.
“This class helps me see what I’m worth.”
-current student, Virginia Correctional Center for Women
In September our dream team will gather together for the first time in Missouri to play and learn from each other before co-leading at the Women’s Eastern Reception Diagnostic and Correctional Center (WERDCC) where we have been working for the good part of a year.
We are seeing more of our inside students released and seeking us out for support groups and for job opportunities. The transition of living inside prison to navigating the world outside of prison are vastly different.
Imagine it for yourself. We had one student recently released from Nebraska after spending 14 years inside. She had worked and served time at this facility for longer than some of the staff!
Our work begins inside, inside of ourselves as we uncover who it is we really are. Where trauma began, our ancestral lines, and we move into our bodies as we uncover our emotional life. We learn together, to speak to what is hard and true, to write it, to make art about it, and then ultimately to change the narrative.
The power, in our work, and in stories, is that we can change them. We can change ourselves and our perspectives. I think you’ll see that here this month.
Facilities we currently serve at:
-Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, since 2018, this is where Caroline and I met and began our work
-Nebraska Correctional Center for Women, since 2021
-Wyoming Women’s Center, since 2021
-Wyoming Women’s Center: Youth Offenders, since 2023
-Women’s Eastern Reception Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Missouri, since 2023
-Virginia Correctional Center for Women, since 2023
*We lead weekly and monthly classes at these facilities led by our two person facilitator teams, and monthly classes for caseworkers at some of these facilities.
We lost a student of ours at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, Amanda (Mandy) Stott-Smith, she had worked with us for six years. She was serving a life sentence for a horrific crime, but in our room she was humble, funny, kind, sensitive, and encouraging. For nearly six years, I would find her waiting on the bench outside our classroom eager to do the work. Always with homework in her hands, a packed folder of creative ideas from the prior week. The last piece she handed me was on her light and darkness, an excerpt of this piece is here:
“A quick smile, a fleeting glimmer in your eye, was that for me?
Give, take, Give, Take, GIVE, TAKE-
Am I so stuck in the tides of mankind’s praise?
Peace…
I cry out for peace.
I cry our for calm
For internal peace, love and patience
that doesn’t cease,
Whose steady rhythm soothes the chaos
reflected from the hearts of those around me.
That is my light
Is my cry.”
-Mandy
We held circle with our class in Mandy’s absence, and will continue to hold an empty chair for her to honor her life and work in our room. We are creating a book for her family of her work from the last six years.
Don’t sit on the outside of our circle:
1.Sign up for our final four class series beginning in October, then join our monthly circle after completing our four class series.
2.Become a monthly donor to sustain and build our work.
3.Share our work through your social media platforms to build our collective awareness.
“I am reminded of how to walk in strength and beauty again. I feel less alone when I am in this class”
-current student, Wyoming Women’s Center
SIGNATURE FOUR CLASS SERIES-
*final one of 2023
Our four class series is a great way to become a part of our work, learn about the class structure, create with us, and build community. Each class occurs over Zoom so you can participate from anywhere. Every class you can expect to: share, create, receive, and learn as we make work that goes into our facilities and work from our inside students is shared with us.
*We only offer our outside class series 4 times a year, these fill up FAST so connect with us to register today. Please confirm which series you would like to join.
FINAL FOUR CLASS SERIES of 2023-
Thursdays 5-7 pm PST/8 pm-10 pm EST
October 5, 12, 19, and 26.
This series is co-led by Caroline Cox, Project Manager at On The Inside, and Nikki Weaver Founder.
Zoom links and instructions are sent out after payment is made. We offer a sliding scale and full scholarships too, all you need to do is connect us. Payment can be made right here. Please connect with us if you would like to join our next class series and specify which four classes you would like to attend. The work builds upon itself so it is essential that you prioritize attending all four sessions. You can join our four week class series, and then continue on in our monthly class by signing up here.
Joins us for our monthly gatherings of 2023-
All monthly groups meet from 12-2 pm PST/3 pm-5 pm EST
*Zoom link sent to all those who have participated in our 4-class or 8-class series.
In these classes, we gather and share, create together, move together, and discuss artwork and poetry from our students currently serving time. Your work is also shared inside facilities. It’s a chance to connect and grow with women worldwide.
Announcing our 2023 Monthly Group Gatherings (2 hours)-
**All monthly group meetings are 12 pm-2 pm PT/3 pm-5 pm ET over Zoom
Saturday, Jan 7 HOPE
Tuesday, Feb 7 LET’S GET SEXY
Thursday, March 2 AGILITY
Tuesday, April 17 TRUTH
Tuesday, May 2 CREATIVITY
Saturday, June 3 JOURNEYS
Thursday, July 6 SHADOW WORK
Tuesday, August 1 LOVE
Sunday, September 3 COURAGE
Monday, October 2 FLEXIBILITY
Thursday, November 2 VALUES
Saturday, December 2 HOPE
*current student Women’s Eastern Reception Diagnostic and Correctional Center, Missouri
Your actions matter. Your words matter. How you show up matters.
Much love and gratitude for your ongoing support,
Nikki Weaver
Caroline Cox
De Bolton
Jennifer Chapman
Atieno Bird
-The Dream Team
“Letting the past go, listening with your heart
On the inside- overcoming obstacles
Victorious victory
Everlasting endless love.”
-Nebraska Correctional Center for Women, current class
OUR MISSION
On The Inside builds a creative connection for incarcerated women, both individually and collectively. We do this by telling our stories, igniting our hearts, and sparking dialogue. Creative connection for a greater good, we create community for women on the inside and outside by breaking down the walls that keep us apart.
The United States houses over 1.3 million incarcerated women.
We aim to change that.
Creativity is what keeps us alive, it is what draws us together. Our stories save us and have the ability to heal us. Healing is both collective and deeply personal. We create shared dialogue by holding a container for women to transform themselves. We do this through creative prompts where each woman has a voice in the room, through exploratory movement, creating a rolodex of emotions to draw from, and boundaries to hold.
We begin.
We create.
We play together.
We share.
We seek closure.
We begin again.
We hold weekly classes to gather in a circle. We create weekly newsletters where women on the outside create work (poetry, art, song) for women on the inside, and the women on the inside do the same. We create living, breathing works of art that move us far beyond the page, beyond the stage, and into a space of embodiment.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Dr. Lisa Collins
Reema Zaman
Fungai Mubayiwa
Katie Morell
Caroline Cox
Megan Gaffney
Atieno Bird
Dr. Mercy Nyangulu Nyepudzayi
Jazmin Jimenez
Cindy Lone
Tina Packer
Mia Zara
Marie Gonzalez
Beck Wilschefski
Elena Brower
Together, we stretch four continents wide.
Collectively, we are making a difference by creating together.
You are always invited to join our work, join our collective, join our creative expanding circle.
