Quilt helps with recovery for women inmates

Posted 9/5/12

Started in mid-May, and just finished last week, almost every female inmate at the ACI minimum security facility had a hand in making the “Rally for Recovery” quilt.

The purpose of the rally …

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Quilt helps with recovery for women inmates

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Started in mid-May, and just finished last week, almost every female inmate at the ACI minimum security facility had a hand in making the “Rally for Recovery” quilt.

The purpose of the rally is to see the recovery success that the women have made. The national kickoff was on Friday, Aug. 30. The inmates were able to invite a couple of their own personal guests. This was the first time the rally was being done as a “behind the walls” initiative.

Due to confidentially issues, the inmates asked that only their first names be used. Tina and Renee were the ones who got the ball rolling.

“I had heard from other people that Renee knew how to draw, so I asked her to design something that we could work with,” said Tina.

The top and bottom three rows of the quilt are from the Providence Center residents, who are in a separate recovery program at that facility. A second quilt is being worked on by some of the women who were not around when the first quilt was started in May.

“Not every type of recovery is based on an addiction to drugs or alcohol,” said Tina. “My problem was with money and materialistic things.”

Each square on the quilt represents one of the women’s personal recoveries, and they either drew or wrote a message about their recovery or the process they are going through now.

“There are messages of hope and promises to themselves, the amount of clean time, personal wishes for recovery and messages to friends and family members who have passed away who could not recover,” said Tina.

With barely any real supplies to start with, Tina knew she wanted to make the theme of the quilt about transformation.

“We are all caterpillars right now, working on our own transformation into the butterflies we know we can be,” she said.

The few inmates who had any type of art supplies, which are hard to come by, donated them without being asked.

The message of the quilt is about change, acceptance and recovery. The caterpillars are walking up to the center of the quilt, which is the Recovery House. Around the house are many road signs of which path to take, and once they navigate the correct path, they turn into butterflies.

“The more drawing I did for Tina, the more engaged I became. The art for me is very therapeutic; it took me half an hour to sew every butterfly on here,” said Renee.

Tina said that every participant brought something to the table.

“We really want to acknowledge that one of the inmates donated one of her green T-shirts to make the caterpillars,” she said. “It cost her $8, and she literally gave us the shirt off her back.”

An inmate has to work nine days to make $8. Renee said she is donating her green shirts when she leaves.

Every piece of the quilt is hand-sewn. Two to three women worked on each part of it.

“Maybe they didn’t know each other, maybe they didn’t talk to each other, but they knew they had something in common,” said Tina.

Jim Dylan, the director of Anchor Recovery and Community Center, was the one who spearheaded the process.

“The quilt itself will be going on tour with representatives from the Providence Center to other recovery rallies,” he said.

Dylan will be attending nine different events in September, with the State Rally at the end of the month, with the quilt ending up in Washington, D.C.

“Rhode Island is going to be the national hub for the 2013 Rally for Recovery. For many of the rallies, the quilts are mostly symbolic, not actual pieces of fabric. Hand-sewn together by people in recovery, these people took it to the next level and created an actual quilt,” he said.

Both Tina and Renee are looking forward to leaving the ACI, and taking the next step in their transformations. Renee will be going to a recovery house for 90 days, then going home to her parents. She lost her husband shortly after her incarceration.

“This quilt has provided a huge escape for me; it required lots of focus, and I was able to lose myself in it,” she said.

Tina is working on getting her certificate in entrepreneurship from CCRI, and from there, looking to get a business degree. She is currently on work release at the Rhode Island Community Food Bank where she works four hours a day preparing 600 after-school meals.

Tina was proud, but also emotional, to see the quilt leaving to go on tour.

“I hope this tradition continues on. We were trusted with something that had never been done before. So many people were connected by this, we started a big healing project,” she said.

Renee agreed with Tina about the quilt.

“This is a great way to keep communication going. You need to talk in order to heal,” she said. “No one will really know or understand what this quilt truly means to us. We poured our hearts and souls into it.”

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