Dear Friends and Supporters:

I hope you and your family are all staying safe and healthy during these turbulent and unprecedented times. The last few months have been a whirlwind and life altering for many people. Despite the challenges our world has faced, I have been incredibly moved by the acts of kindness I’ve witnessed everywhere I look.

It also gives me hope and renewed energy to find innovative and creative ways to serve the incarcerated adults and youth population we work with, who happen to know a thing or two about living in a lockdown. Anytime I think this is difficult for me, my mind pivots to the adults and youth who are living in prison. They are not only locked down, but have lost ALL visits, education, groups, meetings and most legal visits with lawyers. Many have lost jobs due to social distancing rules and therefore have no money to buy canteen for their basic needs and have little else to look forward to.

I feel so fortunate that even with self isolation I still have freedom. Freedom to go for walks, freedom to connect with people on the internet, freedom to go get groceries. And the freedom to stay away from people.

Folks in prison don't have that same freedom. They are living in very close quarters, they often have poor physical and mental health and conditions are ripe for contracting COVID-19. As of last Friday all volunteers, visitors, and programs have stopped in Oregon prisons and jails. Groups like ours can be a lifeline to people who are struggling with all sorts of emotional and physical challenges, or simply feeling adrift, alone and caught up in regurgitating thought that won't quit. Our team at the Insight Alliance brings a sense of hope, kindness and love and that's not counting the incredible value of our Insight to Wellbeing programs.

We are working to spotlight our amazing supporters each month via our blog and newsletter. This month, I had the pleasure of connecting with Forrest Hoffmaster, CEO of New Seasons Market. Here’s what he had to say about the work the Insight Alliance is doing.

It's been a great few months at The Insight Alliance! We have several programs running right now in four different facilities (soon to be six). We continue to receive positive feedback about our programs.

I had the privilege of meeting with Robyn Tenenbaum, our board chair extraordinaire, at our office in downtown Portland. After our conversation, I was reflecting on all that we’d discussed and how great I thought Robyn was when this fabulous Dolly Parton quote popped up:

“If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.” -Dolly Parton

I had the most amazing and energizing lunch today! I got to meet with Patty Merrill – an artist, activist, small business owner and overall bad ass woman. Patty also serves on the board of directors for The Insight Alliance.

Welcome Lindsay Jensen, our new Operations Manager! Lindsay is the newest member of our team and we are very excited to welcome her. She brings a wealth of experience in the nonprofit world, most recently serving in an Executive Director role.

We’ve had an incredible year at The Insight Alliance. With your help we’ve been able to touch more people’s lives.

The six weeks of the holiday season can be especially challenging for people in prison. There are more suicide attempts and many more people go to seg (solitary confinement) – getting into trouble and reacting to people and life around them. Some are on suicide watch.

We loved everything about our Fundraiser on Nov 7th. The evening was such a wonderful culmination of a really big year for The Insight Alliance. Thank you to all who came out to support us, we really appreciated it.

Some weeks ago, on a boiling hot Wednesday evening, I was leading one of our groups in the men’s prison. One participant, JH, was getting really restless and agitated as the room was pretty toasty. To be fair it was bloody hot. 28 men in a room with no air conditioning and 95 degrees outside… so he did have a point. But it’s just heat. No one was going to die. And no one else was making a fuss. He was behaving like the sweat dripping down his front was out to attack him. He kept saying how uncomfortable he felt.

We’ve had a wonderfully busy and eventful summer/fall here at The Insight Alliance.

When we met with Coffee Creek Correctional Facility 2 years ago, they told us we would need to do a research project to show the efficacy of our program. We took that to heart and formed a partnership with the PhD professor, Dr Sarah Bowen, from the Psychology Department at Pacific University and the Department of Corrections research team.

Barb Patterson and I had a great conversation about what it took to start The Insight Alliance and working in prison. In a word – ‘Don’t Take your Business Personally’.

This is the third of our prison podcast excerpts. Meet Eve. Eve is a transgender woman doing time in a men’s prison. This comes with its own challenges as you can imagine. Having gone through our program and continued with our mentor training Eve navigates the ups and downs of prison life and her own state of mind with much more ease. In this snippet she talks about how understanding the Mind has helped with day to day life, things that used to bother her no longer do. She’s an impressive woman.

Following on from last week’s podcast snippet with Angel, meet Damien. Damien is a war veteran, in prison for a shoot out with some police officers. He has seen enormous transformation coming through our program and in this 10 min podcast excerpt he talks about what that looks like.

We had the exciting opportunity to partner with Dave Dahl on his podcast, Felony Inc., with Mark Grimes from NedSpace as producer, to do a special podcast from Columbia River Correctional Institution. We interviewed three of our Insight participants: Angel, who’s been in prison many times over the last 20 years, Damien, a war veteran and Eve, a transgender woman. They each talk about how taking our program has changed the way they experience life and have found more peace of mind in their day to day lives.

Sheila Hamilton interviews Anna in this episode of Beyond Well.

SA has been in prison for 3 years. She had many hard knocks in her life. She was an addict and struggling with life on the streets, getting into bad relationships and getting into trouble. From SA’s stories, she is prone to trouble in prison too and often found herself in solitary.

Not anymore. Her mind is quieting down and she realizes she’s been looking in the wrong direction for her wellbeing. She sees that her wellbeing doesn’t come from drugs, winning fights or arguing with the world. She has started to see that when she doesn’t take all the negative thinking and feeling as more than a passing storm, her wellbeing naturally bubbles to the surface.

On Thursday in the medium security women’s prison, one of our participants said, “I have a letter I wrote to you. Can I read it?”. Of course I said yes. It’s one of the most beautiful letters I’ve ever received. It was quite long so I’m sharing the highlights.

My name is Jessica and I was as broken as they come. And the 3 Principles of the Mind helped to give me my life back even locked away in prison.