March 2018 – The Journey Home

The Empowerment Quilt

We sat at the writing table. Ten women from the local corrections work release unit, eight Lafayette College student volunteers, and me. The assignment was to write a life story…

Safer inside the jail?

I read a story online this morning entitled "Prison was the only place this addict was safe." It told the story of the struggle of addictions and the danger on…

The Road Less Traveled

After spending most of my professional life in the secure setting of an institution of higher learning, I have become a social entrepreneur. According to Google, a social entrepreneur is…

There is a Buddhist Koan about a person who is walking along in the mountains and falls down a cliff. She grabs a hold of some tree roots and holds on in fear of death. I told this story to the women in a group I facilitate in the local county jail. The story ends with the person seeing a delicious strawberry and letting go of the roots to eat the strawberry.

This story was about my difficult decision. As I explained to the women in my group, the tree roots represented my professional life at the time. It seemed that I was clinging to it and afraid to let go. The strawberry was, is the women, the work in the jail.

I chose the women and retired from my professional academic career. The women were thrilled especially to know that they are my strawberry. I wonder how many of them have truly been the strawberry in someone’s life?

A colleague listened intently to my story and suggested that the group is now “Bonnie’s Strawberry Patch.”

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