A Merry Christmas in Jail

This past Christmas season was very special for me and Knitting Peace. Mainly because I finally had the opportunity to stay in Bolivia for the holidays, which up to know I usually spent in Los Angeles, selling our goods and participating in gift fairs. However this year was different, I spent it here, with my team!

We were all very excited, and although I couldn’t put together the celebration my girls deserved with a tree, Santa, champagne, gifts, etc (let’s not forget the girls are in a jail), I was able to go into the jail during non visiting hours and have a special intimate gathering with my team, where we shared tea, chocolate milk, Christmas Paneton and cookies.  It was the first time in a long time we had the opportunity to gather around a table and chat. 

I started off the gathering by sharing my gratitude with them for all of their hard work, diligence, perseverance and inspiration. I experienced tremendous growth in each one, on a personal and team level this year, and am extremely grateful for all of their effort and support.  Each team member received a Paneton and chocolate milk to share with their children on Christmas day, which they greatly appreciated. I also gifted them pictures I had taken of them throughout the years of working together, which they asked me to write an inscription on. 

Towards the end of our sweet meal, the girls surprised me with a showering of gratitude and beautifully spoken words of excitement for what is to come, love for the work that we do, lessons received, and mountains of joy.  Each woman shared freely what Knitting Peace has meant to them, and all that they had achieved. In that moment I was able to perceive a group of women sitting in their power, and I almost forgot that I was in a jail. I realized that each and every woman sitting around that table was free; in their hearts and in their minds they experienced the freedom to be in peace and outside of the limitations of the walls of that jail. 

~Namaste

From Rebellion to Devotion... lifes many twists

The idea of devotion was a concept I set aside when I made the choice to step away from traditional religion, and open myself to spirituality. At the time I didn’t know what spirituality meant, but I knew in my heart I needed to follow my own spirit towards a higher meaning and life of purpose. Something away from the pre-conceived concepts of a God contained within the frame of fear and judgment. At the time this felt much like an act of rebellion which perfectly suited the 20 something year old that I was. I didn’t realize until much later how magnificently wise that young woman was. She was pretty amazing and I am so proud of her.

Once the intention to live in alignment with a higher purpose was set, many opportunities for developing the needed skills for aligning with this purpose surfaced and looking back, I can honestly confess that these have not been comfortable or easy lessons to learn, some even painful. However the new relationship that has blossomed from within myself has made each hard spot softer and easier to appreciate, bringing deep purpose to each experience as I gently knit stitch by stitch the tapestry and mastery of life.

These past weeks have brought forward on numerous occasions the opportunity for me to re-evaluate my concept of devotion. At first the word devotion started to pop up in conversations with friends, later in books and soon in my yoga and meditation practice. I opened a curios ear to all of this, but it wasn’t until I lost a significant sale opportunity for Knitting Peace due to my own procrastination that I realized... uh-oh Houston, my Angels really want my attention.

The loss of this big sale helped me come to the awareness that I wasn’t devoting myself fully to what I considered to be my life’s work and this was a representation or projection of how I was being with myself and ultimatly God. Meaning I was not fully allowing myself to authentically embrace a life of devotion to something higher than myself.

During this process all the old preconceived notions of religion, God and devotion came forward for a re-visit. However this time with the skills I accumulated since my last wrestle with devotion, I was able to hear my hearts deep yearning and longing to love open heartedly, with absolute joy, loyalty, humility and fervor. To be devoted to something higher than myself, to something which I can’t see, taste, hear or feel but know in every cell of my being loves me unconditionally and wants only for me to experience authentic, the cup runeth over kind of loving, and radiate this love unlike any love imagined by my mere mortal mind.

It is from this space that I am learning that devotion is gratitude to the sacredness of life, making each breath a moment of connection and love expressed with Source. Devotion to the spirit in every form, living in devotion to something higher than ourselves and everything in between, revealing the ilussion of separation. Living in flow as ONE and part of the whole, like drops in the ocean.

To me, this is the face of pure, unconditional love.

This is my dog Nicolas, one of my favorite beings in the Universe

Pre-adolescents in jail and nowhere to go

Knitting Peace, as a social enterprise seeks to empower its team of incarcerated women in overriding some of their limiting core beliefs with new visions of what is possible for themselves and their children.

In doing so, I am becoming more and more aware of their daily challenges within the Bolivian jail, and count on the pleasure of experiencing their trust as they share with me some of their stories and hardships. One situation which I became aware of and is of great concern to me is in regards to the children reaching the age limit to legally remain within the jail.

Legally, children of incarcerated women in Bolivia may live within the jail with their mothers until the age of six. Exceptions are made in the case of those children who don’t have family to live with outside the jail. These special cases are considered, and the children are allowed to remain within the jail until the age of 12, assuming they have no other alternative.

Once these pre-adolescents reach the age of 12, they are required to leave the jail. Fortunately by then most of these children have a family member or older sibling they can count on to support them while their mothers remain incarcerated. However, there are more than a handful of cases in which these adolescents have nowhere to go.

Picture taken by Hannah Kozak

Charo, one of my team members approached me with great concern because her daughter turns 12 next month. Charo has at least 10 more years to complete her sentence, does not have any family members she can count on to care for her daughter, and her time to decide what to do is running out fast. Charo shared with me that her alternatives are to either send her little girl to a home for street children, or rent her a little room where she can live alone. Charo says she is willing to work hard to make sure her daughters financial needs are met, but she is concerned for her daughter’s safety and well being while living on the outside without her.

To my surprise, Charo expressed much concern in sending her daughter to live in a home for homeless children, where she could count on adult supervision, discipline, schooling and food. Many of the women shared with me that in these homes their children would be exposed to street kids who have been vulnerable to drugs, prostitution and sexual abuse, and fear their children will become vulnerable to these as well while in these homes.  

For these reasons Charo and many of the women with pre-adolescents within the jail are more inclined to send their children to live alone in a rented room, without any supervision and away from the nurturing eye of their mothers.

It is in situations like this that I have a hard time understanding what the lesson opportunity is for these children. Why do some lives have to be so hard? I can’t imagine living alone at the age of 12, how I would have handled it, or what choices I may have made. It seems a recipe for disaster or at the very least another teenage pregnancy or the repetition of the cycle from which these girls were brought into.

At best, my work through Knitting Peace strives to provide opportunities to change the trajectory of the children of these incarcerated women in service to healing and empowering generations to come; however I feel I am at a loss in this situation being that the alternatives seem to lead to more of the same.  My hope is to find an alternative to bridge the gap between living with their mothers, and living in alignment with their higher purpose and well being. 

Picture taken by Hannah Kozak

The deep inner journey thickens

During my almost 9 month stay in Bolivia, I have had the pleasure of meeting amazing, strong women who are grounded, connected, attuned to their feminine and very wise. I have learned a lot from these women; regarding the sacredness of ceremony, the importance of being a strong female today and the power we each have to affect all of which surrounds us.

I feel blessed by their presence¸ example of leadership and guidance, all of which has inspired me to begin taking steps in developing and owning my leadership skills within the compounds of the jail Knitting Peace has taken me into. From this space of deep inner knowing, I have felt called to develop a weekly program for these incarcerated women that could provide a safe and nurturing environment for healing. The program would consist of weekly classes targeting specific topics of discussion, and would last between 60-90 minutes once a week. As the weeks go by, the topics of discussion would also progress and deepen, creating a momentum and sacred bond between the participants.

My Bolivian mentors have enthusiastically agreed to join me in this effort, we have put our hearts together and set the intention of developing a weekly class that deals with topics such as self healing, empowerment, freedom to choose, family planning, affirmation setting, honoring oneself,  communicating with kindness, heartcentered listening and much much more. Our intention is to provide a safe space for healing, releasing that which no longer serves and providing skills that allow for the opportunity of personal freedom, self forgiveness and higher vision.

I am very excited about this new phase Knitting Peace is paving the way for! I am also trusting that we will be guided perfectly, allowing only that which is in service to the highest good to come forward. I also know that our team of facilitators will expand and many angels in human form will come forward to share their wisdom and experiences so our group of women will grow all the more for it.

So, this goes out to all my heart centered friends… the invitation is yours. We know the power and joy of being of service. There is great need for soul centered leadership here, and I welcome any and all assistance in facilitating or adding to this program.

Thank you for listening, ~Namaste