BY AMBER J. CRAFT
Special to the Telegraph
Earlier this year, the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office launched “Growth Through Gardening,” a 10-week scripture-based creative writing program offering a safe space for women inmates to meet weekly to discuss and process past traumas while incarcerated. During this program, participants also grow and manage a real garden while working on their personal growth.
Participants focus on emotion-packed words like shame, forgiveness, reconciliation, accountability, courage, empathy, pride, self-doubt, and vulnerability. These words are matched with a variety of different flowers to illustrate the growth achieved while working through them.
Face their inner traumas
Deputy Amanda Hinds, the programs coordinator, explained how the program came to be. “We put some feelers out to our volunteers when I took over a few months ago, and we’ve had lots of ideas about different ways we can help out inmates to express themselves, to find more meaning within themselves, find more courage and a little bit of hope.” The result was Growth Through Gardening, led by volunteer Helen Haverty, a former teacher who has dedicated herself to this initiative.
“This is a class that is designed for these females to face their inner traumas whether it’s recent or whether it’s long in the past.” Deputy Hinds explained. “It’s a safe place for them to be able to express these things and have some context from other people who may or may not have gone through some of the same issues, and they just work to build each other up through that course.”
The gardening activities the women participate in together act as a practical representation of this growth. “We have carrots, radishes, and flowers right now.” Deputy Hinds said. “And what’s really cool about this program is because they have the physical plants, they get to watch the plants grow as a reflection of themselves growing.”
Sleeping, playing cards or succumbing to depression
Ashley Forbes, 39, a college student and mother of four, is currently participating in the program and agrees. “These classes have helped big time. It makes you more mindful of the day-to-day interactions with people so that you can kind of put yourself in their shoes.”
According to Forbes, prior to this opportunity, activities available to pass time were limited to sleeping, playing cards, or succumbing to depression. “It can be very draining being in pods. The same thing every single day. I’ve seen people lose it. This gives us an opportunity to open that part of your brain and do something different.”
Deputy Hinds related that there is one common struggle among most humans regardless of age, and that is unresolved trauma. “From my perspective, I’ve worked with youth. I spent seven and a half years as an at-risk youth counselor. I’ve spent two years teaching at the high school, and I’ve worked here on and off for about 20 years now. And one thing that I’ve seen through all the different ages is that we all have traumas that we’ve suffered. What I see the most is that a lot of our people that are here in our inmate population, they have really deep, unresolved things that have just been holding them back. They’ve been making choices based on those trauma responses instead of their rational thinking patterns.”
A better mindset
Inmates are given the opportunity on a volunteer basis to participate in the program and use the time they have to work on themselves without any outside distractions. Once they leave, the hope is that they will be in a better mindset to make more rational, more productive decisions instead of falling back into negative patterns and behaviors.
So far, the program is considered to be a success with positive results. “I’ve seen them being a lot calmer, being a lot more willing to express themselves. They seem like they’re finding their peace of mind. Like they’re not carrying their burdens as heavily.” Deputy Hinds said. “We’re just going to continue to foster and nurture these people, give them the opportunities to go in and be part of this self-motivated improvement so that they can go and work on themselves, face these things they’ve been internalizing for a long time and hopefully at least have a clear mind in the end.”
“I’m just very excited to see how everything’s going. It’s encouraging.” Hinds said.
