Yesterday I posted a picture of a young woman whose father was incarcerated. She told me her main support system was her friend Gina and the women of the Essie Justice Group. I connected with Gina to learn more about Essie.

“Essie is fun work because it’s all about this exciting solution to an overwhelming problem. We’re harnessing the collective power of women with incarcerated loved ones. Today it turns out that nearly 1 in 4 women has a family member in prison in the United States. That number is almost half for black women. This is a huge opportunity to bring together women under this umbrella of shared painful experience.

We developed a curriculum that was made by and for these women focusing on the things that they told us they care about. First being trauma healing, second is managing money through crisis, and third advocacy or leadership training. Through that we’re seeding communities of sister circles. So far we have 3 support groups. We’ve tested our curriculum and our theory that connecting women is the way out of this mess. Women are ready for this and this is where the solution lies.“
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"MADD is a model organizations for us. They’ve been able to pass over 2500 laws in this country. That’s women coming together from a place of loss and grief propelling that into social change. Because women got together and said enough is enough.”