Building a Loving & Powerful Community

To transform the criminal legal system, women impacted by incarceration must organize and have access to leadership. Our goal is to create a network of Black and Brown women with incarcerated loved ones to disrupt the cyclical impacts of the criminal justice system through breaking isolation, healing trauma, leadership development, organizing, and building political power. We hope to ultimately break the isolation of hundreds of thousands of women with incarcerated loved ones, increase resources to families, and confront mass incarceration’s harm as a unified, loving, and powerful group.

Our Healing to Advocacy Program

Today 2.3 million people are confined in jails and prisons. Incarceration has increased by more than 500% in the last forty years. Seventy million people have criminal records. Seven million children have had an incarcerated parent. Mass incarceration is a domestic human rights crisis of astounding proportions.

An overlooked effect of mass incarceration is that today an astounding one in four women and nearly one in two Black women has a family member in prison. The sense of loss is painful, acute, and often borne in silence, leading to illness, severe depression, and even suicide.

In this age of mass incarceration, women are at once sole leaders and linchpins of families, expert navigators of complex systems, adept at articulating the features of a broken system, and isolated, impoverished, and overlooked by contemporary crime and safety approaches that focus on men. Wasted is the expertise women have individually developed, as our isolation prevents us from being engaged in mutual support and advocacy. Essie is here to change this.

Breaking Isolation & Building Loving and Powerful Community

Like many, this may be the first time sharing about your experience as a woman with an incarcerated loved one from a place of strength, dignity, and mutual support. During the nine weeks, 12 -15 participants move together through individually held pain to begin journeys of collective healing, share resources that offer beams of support to families during crisis, and gain confidence to advocate for change. To reduce barriers for your leadership, Essie provides transportation support, childcare and meals, and technology support.

After the nine-week program, you’ll be invited to attend a regional or virtual graduation ceremony, and also invited to take our membership pledge, committing to leadership in decarceration campaigns and recruiting more women to lead healing and advocacy in their communities. After graduating, as an Essie member, you’ll lead in our communities and across the state by taking on campaigns, providing peer-to-peer support, participating in actions, speaking with elected officials, holding press conferences, and partnering with a national community of activists and advocates to fight against the harms of mass incarceration.

Our Nominations Process

Our program starts with the simple power of witness from someone who knows and loves you: a nomination letter. We receive nomination letters from incarcerated individuals and family members to a woman or gender nonconforming person in their life, mirroring back your strength, resilience, and expertise in navigating the system on behalf of your family, and ultimately nominating you to join Essie. From there, those who are nominated are personally invited to join a Healing to Advocacy cohort.

Incarcerated men and women serve as Essie’s most important partners, writing nomination letters about the women in their lives, which they mail to us. The women they write about are then invited to join our Healing to Advocacy program.

“My sister is the most extraordinary woman…she takes care of my children in my absence along with her own children and household…If anyone in my life deserves a nomination for being supportive, loving, and understanding, and deserves those things in return, it is my loving sister.”
Excerpt from a nomination letter from incarcerated person in California

If you are a woman with an incarcerated loved one, you can also nominate yourself. Formerly incarcerated people, or members of the community may also nominate. Click here to fill out a nomination form. You can also email [email protected] for more information on our Healing to Advocacy program.

We Welcome Transgender and Gender Nonconforming People

The extreme isolation and violence that transgender women, particularly Black and Brown transgender women, and those who challenge the gender binary encounter has led to tragic consequences for individuals, families, and society at large. If you are a transgender woman or a gender nonconforming person, are interested in joining a Healing to Advocacy cohort, and would like to learn more about what it might feel like to be a part of our community, please reach out to us at [email protected].

We will schedule a phone call with you and a member from our staff team, and connect you with queer, transgender, or gender nonconforming people in our community who can candidly share with you what their experience was like as they went through, facilitated, or otherwise supported the nine-week process.