Featured Women
Jacqueline
Jacqueline Velez Vazquez has worked for Massachusetts Jobs with Justice as their Racial Justice Organizer. She has almost thirteen years of advocacy and organizing experience. She served as the Project Assistant for the Women in Prison Project of the Correctional Association of New York for five years then later served as their first Communications and Social Media Associate for two years. She also worked as the Production Assistant for the late Eddie Ellis at WBAI Pacifica Radio on “The Criminal Justice and Prison Report” show for two years in NY. When she relocated to Massachusetts became Holyoke’s Lead Organizer for Neighbor to Neighbor (N2N) Education Fund for three years. She then took the position of Regional Organizing Director for Senator Ed Markey’s Re-election Campaign in 2018. She is currently working on several environmental and climate justice campaigns, police accountability, and incarceration issues. She is vice-chair and commissioner of the Hampden County Commission of the Status of Women and Girls. She obtained an Arts Associate Degree from Bard Holyoke Micro-college in May 2020 and had this article published in Oprah Magazine. She lives in Springfield, Massachusetts with her two children.
Sonia
Sonia Mendez chose to share an experience with us. She writes:
It was two weeks before my release date and I was scared. I had nowhere to go. No outside support, no family or friends expecting to welcome me. I had no hope. The world was different and I wasn’t part of it. Exhausted by the uncertainty, I shared my thoughts with a woman who was counseling another inmate. She looked at me and didn’t say a word. Instead, she reached over me and grabbed a Christmas notepad and wrote “Those that fear the future have no faith.” As she handed it to me, I read the message and felt the fire of desire deep within to confront my fears head on. The day of my release came shortly after. I stepped out of those prison walls in confidence. Amazingly, on time, (it’s that faith), a team of supports were waiting for me. With me, I carried 15 dollars, a bag of clothes, and my now folded Christmas note clenched in my right hand. I felt strong and also beautiful, ready to handle some business. I was good! I can’t remember that woman's name, but I thank her. She’s my freedom writer. Since that day, when faced with a challenge, I remember that note. I turn to it when I’m in silence reflecting on a decision or how far I’ve come, as goal after goal is executed, breaking barriers that were impenetrable, and loving myself for it. She transformed me and lent strength with the power of her words. Though they were few, it literally changed my perspective and is a contributing factor when it’s my turn to pay it forward. I’m careful with what I write. I want to make sure that it’s empowering, conveys truths and serves purpose.
Daisy
Daisy Diaz writes: I remember going to my first VFI group. It was during my first year of sobriety. I felt so lost. Writing set me free from so many secrets I kept. That engulfed me with shame and guilt that didn't belong to me. Now as l walk in my 6th year of sobriety, I've accomplished so much in reaching out to others in telling my story through being a substance abuse counselor facilitating groups speaking on substance abuse, sexual assault human trafficking, and motivational speaking at the women's jail in Chicopee, Massachusetts. I am currently working at the YWCA for the Human Trafficking Department.
Judy
Judy Owens Holmes has been a long-term substitute teacher for the City of Springfield since 2012. She is a Union Steward with local 1459 for substitute teachers. Currently she is on the Board of Directors for Women in Leadership Development (W.I.L.D) and serves on the Program Committee. She also serves as Co-President on the Board of Directors for VFI (Voices from Inside) and is a workshop facilitator for the writers group. Judy holds a Chaplains License from NY Christian Bible College and she hosts an outreach women's ministry group called Spiritual Transition, which she started in 2015 as God gave her the task to go back and get the women she used to party with (meaning: women suffering from addiction, domestic violence, mental and physical abuse, and they are searching for a way out).
Amie
Amie Hyson writes: As a person in dual recovery since 2004, and one who has been writing for even longer, I have come to see how writing can be an invaluable tool for healing & recovery. I discovered Voices From Inside at the RECOVER Project (RP), a peer to peer recovery support center in Greenfield. When I learned that the group was open to any woman who identified as being in recovery, I happily attended my first group in March of 2017. I knew right away that I had found something very special in VFI.
In September of 2017, I was invited to train as a facilitator, attended the facilitator training and began facilitating the group at the RP shortly thereafter. In the late spring of 2018, I learned that the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office (formerly known as FC House of Correction) had opened a women’s pod (previously all FC women awaited sentencing at the Chicopee Jail) and that VFI would be offering workshops there. I expressed an interest in facilitating these groups “inside the wall,” and, gratefully, was allowed to do so. We began our first Franklin County VFI workshop inside on July 2, 2018 and, until COVID shut things down on March 6, 2020, I was blessed with the opportunity to write with the incredible women of B-pod most every week.
The writing that we do in group (my own & that of others), coupled with having the opportunity to facilitate these workshops has healed me & assisted my recovery in more ways than I can possibly state; and for that I am eternally grateful to VFI! I have also been blessed to see tremendous healing & growth in the many women that I have had the privilege of writing with in my groups over these past 4 years. Witnessing someone who thinks they have nothing to say, as they blossom through this process of discovering their voice and by writing pieces that move listeners to tears is one of the most beautiful things I have ever experienced in this lifetime. I have also had the benefit of using the methods we utilize in VFI to write hundreds of pieces, a process that has left me with a sense developing from being someone who dabbles in writing poetry into an "actual" poet because of my weekly practice of writing with these groups. I have acquired quite a body of work and hope to, someday soon, publish my own book.
Kay Kay
Kay Kay is a 28 year old woman who has been writing with the women of Voices From Inside (VFI) since 2018, and her poems have been published in multiple chapbooks. One poem won a contest and got published through The Academy of Music. She says she enjoys writing because it helps her free her mind and her heart when her feelings become too ginormous. She first learned about VFI while incarcerated, and that is where she originally started with the group. She never wrote before joining VFI but after the first session she really enjoyed it and has been writing ever since. She is a proud mother of 2 children and currently has her own home. She says writing helped her get through some hard times and she keeps notebooks all throughout her home so there is always an opportunity to write. In her free time, Kay Kay enjoys spending time with her children and playing games of any sort, along with listening to music and writing.
Featured Scholars
Nicole Hendricks
Nicole J. Hendricks is Professor and Chair of the Criminal Justice program at Holyoke Community College. She is the co-founder and co-coordinator of Western Mass CORE, a program that works in jails, in the community, and at HCC to create academic pathways for people impacted by the criminal legal system. Before joining the faculty, she was a Research Associate at the Vera Institute of Justice where she conducted both federally funded and privately funded research on a range of issues. Her research and teaching interests include the intersections of gender, race, crime, and justice, police-community relations, and discretion and decision-making in the criminal legal system.
Adina Giannelli
Adina Giannelli has volunteered with Voices From Inside (VFI) since 2018; she has served as a facilitator, board member, and board chair. When she is not volunteering with VFI, Adina teaches at Holyoke Community College and enjoys cooking, books, and spending time with her kid.
Lisa Mahon
For the past 16 years, Lisa Mahon has taught English and worked as Service-Learning Coordinator at Holyoke Community College. As a faculty member, she has been designing and teaching team-taught courses for the past decade that focus on community engagement and social justice issues such as homelessness, incarceration and teen pregnancy and parenting. For her sabbatical project, Lisa volunteered as a Voices From Inside (VFI) facilitator and created and taught a course titled “Orange is the New Black: The Real Story” that focuses on literature by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women. Through her own course, as well as other courses at HCC, Lisa has helped establish a long-running service-learning partnership between HCC and Voices From Inside. Lisa is particularly drawn to VFI because, through the years, many formerly incarcerated women who have participated in the Voices From Inside program have been successful students in her HCC courses. During her first semester teaching “Orange is the New Black”, Lisa and her teaching partner Melissa Weise were awarded a Kennedy Center American Theater Festival Outstanding Community-Focused Dramaturgy award for students’ work highlighting the deeper social issues of incarceration through posters they displayed in conjunction with the HCC theater production of the play “Getting Out”.
Gretchen Krull
Gretchen Krull, M.Ed. recently retired as the Executive Director of Voices From Inside. During her tenure she utilized her prior work supporting sexual violence survivors to enhance the writing program’s focus of trauma-informed practices . She believes the main goals of the writing groups and community presentations is to nurture the women’s natural wisdom and enhance their self-confidence. Gretchen has a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst .