“We Are Still Human” — Dr. Helena Lewis Voices The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women
When Helena Lewis performs her poems and monologues in solo shows, populated by characters inspired by real people she encounters in her work as a Doctor of Social Work and Licensed Certified Addictions Counselor, the audience has an inside view of realities they might otherwise never confront. In her award-winning show Call Me Crazy: Diary Of A Mad Social Worker she tells the truth about systems that underpay and overwork professionals who provide essential human services. In Shenanigans, she explores grief, death and loss through the lens of her mother’s death and the ways it reshaped her family. Her most recent work, We Are Still Human, introduces us to real women struggling with the trauma and long-term psychological impact of incarceration. Her work with women during and after their time in the correctional system began with a job as vocational counselor for a residential community release program for women inmates and led to a breakthrough research project, Reentry, Grief and Loss: Addressing Unmet Mental Health Needs of Incarcerated Women. Through her compelling performance and vivid characterizations, Lewis brings her research to life and demonstrates that storytelling truly is “the essential human activity,” as described by writer Tim O’Brien. “The harder the situation, the more essential it is.”
And this situation is hard. Research shows that since 1980, the number of women incarcerated has increased by eight-hundred percent. This is a result of mandatory minimum sentences, stiffer sentences for non-violent drug offenses, and barriers to reentry that are uniquely complex for women at the same time that mental health and addiction treatment and human services lose funding. “Incarcerated women suffer a significant amount of grief and loss issues as a result of their incarceration,” states Lewis. “In addition to physical losses, e.g. the death of a loved one or separation from their children, there are numerous symbolic losses that are not addressed as well.”
The stories Lewis tells in her show take us through the lived experience of what it is like to be denied the expression of human feeling, because the prison environment renders it unsafe to share vulnerable emotions and offers little to nothing by way of professional help. “The sad part about all of this to me is the majority of the ladies that I work with have histories of unaddressed complexed trauma that put them on the pathway to drug addiction and incarceration,” she explains. “Everything about the system leads to many women coming out worse than when they went in.”
The absence of mental health services to help incarcerated women deal with the trauma of separation from their families, and address the underlying trauma, combined with the realities of the prison industrial complex make reentry and recovery extremely difficult.
“I have worked with women that have had panic attacks while out on staff escorted shopping trips. Depending on their length of incarceration they have to navigate an entire new world,” Lewis explains. “Prison has a way of psychologically compressing people, causing them to lose the ability to make any the simplest of choices. I took a group of clients on a shopping trip. The clients were able to pick which store they wanted to go in first. I watched 12 clients stand in a circle for 20 minutes trying to decide if they should go to Walmart or the 99 Cent store first. Afterwards, I asked the clients what took them so long to decide. One of them told me, ‘We thought yall were trying to set us up to get returned back to prison.’ What a burden it must be to not trust anyone, not even the people who are there to help you.”
Story is the currency of human connection. Using her skills as an artist and poet, Lewis elevates essential, true stories about social inequities that we can change if we have the will, but only if people know about them. Through storytelling that informs, inspires, educates and enlightens, Lewis introduces us to characters who have lost so much, including their voice. “Storytelling is about building communities,” she states, “affirming family values, education through teachable moments, and honoring those who came before us.”
Helena Lewis will perform “We Are Still Human” on Thursday October 15, 2020 at 7:30 pm in a live streaming weekly show Totally True Things: A Socially Conscious Storytelling Show, produced by Lifestage, Inc.
Through her work, Lewis demonstrates the power of storytelling to
designed to help people who are incarcerated lose their funding, jobs project that provided HIV/AIDS case management services for incarcerated men that employed Helena Lewis lost its funding, she
“Adaptation to prison life creates habits of thinking and acting that make it difficult for post-prison adjustment.45 Because prison requires inmates to relinquish the freedom and autonomy to make their own choices, this may lead to prisoners having the inability to initiate behaviors on their own and the judgment to make decisions for themselves.46 Additionally, this controlling of behavior can cause dependency upon the institution.47 This proves to be quite a negative effect as prisoners attempt to reenter society but have lost the ability to provide direction for their lives because they are so dependent on institutions like prison to give them direction.48 Another psychologically crippling effect of prison manifests itself through a sense of hyper-vigilance, interpersonal distrust, and emotional over-control that culminates in social isolation and withdrawal.49 Prison is a dangerous place where weakness is often exploited and, as a result, those incarcerated become hyper-vigilant, always alert for signs of a threat or personal risk.50” Law & Psychology Review
