Wayyy outside my box..

 
This past Wednesday morning I found myself standing in the middle of a women's lock-down, residential facility for substance abuse offenders/parole violators...  I felt like that Talking Heads song, "This is not my beautiful wife! This is not my beautiful house! How did I get here!"  I should explain why I was so surprised to be there:  when I signed up as a volunteer at the substance abuse rehab center, I imagined I would  be doing some peer support, maybe taking people for rides to AA meetings... helping them apply for benefits, stuff like that... I really didn't anticipate that I would be working with prisoners. In lock-down. Seriously, no offense to prisoners... it just sorta took me by surprise. I am a soccer mom, fuh cryin out loud...I wore friggin' PEARLS to this thing...
The building is located in a neighborhood that, to be quite frank... it's a war zone. This is an abandoned steel town, run over by gang violence and drugs. A police officer was ambushed and executed not 40 ft from the building I was entering. I did not tell my husband where I was going, and I'm going to have a very hard time telling him I'm going back again.
The director was very nice, a retired Navy dude.. I was semi-comfortable in his office, we were shootin' the breeze, he's explaining the program... but then he says he's gonna give me a tour... good lord... not prepared for that...  what if they... bust a cap on me... or stick me with a shiv... or some other prison-type activity I probably picked up from watching  "Shawshank Redemption"... They'll sneer at me, they'll instantly distrust and hate me, because I am The Man, that's right, I am The Oppressor, The Wearer of Pearls...
I don't get out much...  I work sometimes in the high school, I know how sneering and snide and sometimes menacing those young people can be... let alone, these were repeat offenders...
They were all very young women, probably in their twenties, and these young people that I did not expect to meet, and then I was afraid to meet...  they greeted me with smiles and warm welcome.... and interest... and curiosity.. and then they went back to doing whatever it was they were doing, one girl was rolling her own cigarettes (that one threw me for a sec, I've never seen that done, and wasn't sure what it was she was rolling at first... I told you... soccer mom... )  A couple girls were watching TV, one was making a sandwich...
Sigh... 
The director was really open to every idea I threw out there... In fact, I did not expect to be throwing ideas out there, I thought I would volunteer, and they would tell me what to do. Instead, he said, well, what do you think you want to do here?  We talked about meditation, and we talked about laughter yoga and we talked about peer support...  He really left it up to me, as if I were a real person, with thoughts and opinions and something to offer... I'm not used to feeling that way...
So I will be bringing to them a course in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction...meditation and breathing techniques... mild yoga stretching... I may even take in my dog,  as a sort of impromptu "pet therapy"..  I told him my dog is a "Good-Will Ambassador," which I truly believe she is...