An episode of “Changing the Conversation” podcast
Daisy Hernandez shares experiences with the intersections of corrections, reentry, and recovery, including traumas before and after incarceration with host Ashley Stewart. This episode is dedicated to Gloria E. Resto, Daisy’s grandmother.
July 15, 2024
Erika Simon, Producer (00:02): This episode is dedicated to Gloria E. Resto, Daisy’s grandmother.
Ashley Stewart, Host (00:10): Hello and welcome to Changing the Conversation. I’m your host, Dr. Ashley Stewart, the director for the Center for Health Equity at C4 Innovations. Today’s episode is focusing on the intersections of corrections, reentry and recovery, the trauma to and from incarceration. Our guest today is C4’s very own Daisy Hernandez. Daisy is joining us from Springfield, Massachusetts and is an expert trainer, and manager at C4 Innovations. Hi Daisy.
Daisy Hernandez, Guest (00:45): Hi Ashley.
Ashley (00:46): So Daisy, I’m hoping that we can jump in first and foremost with an opportunity to create some honor to really create a moment for you to tell your story, to share with us why this topic is so near and dear to your heart. And I mean, share with the listeners how we came up with this idea for our topic for today,
Daisy (01:09): I am really lucky to have Dr. Ashley as my supervisor and one day during our supervision and speaking about topics that are of interest to me, we came to this topic of because of my own lived experience. I identify as a woman in sustained recovery and one who has successfully reintegrated her family and community from commitments to the Massachusetts DOC. Despite my lived experience, I consider myself lucky to have had to complete my commitments in the state of Massachusetts where there’s a high intentional focus on recovery, treatment, supports, and employment and education development. During our supervision a couple months back, and I talked about that privilege of having so many resources and programming offered to me during and after my incarceration, we got into this conversation and came up with the topic. I mean, I think that in a short podcast, we’d only be scratching the surface of the need for treatment and recovery from the moment an individual enters the incarceral setting and the additional supports necessary for exiting an incarceral setting.
(02:33): But again, I’m really lucky that in the state of Massachusetts and not just with corrections, I think that the Department of Public Health and the Bureau of Substance Addiction Services have really been intentional with creating access and opportunities for individuals in the state who are diagnosed or working through symptoms of a substance use disorder, a trauma, that connection to trauma, that connection to other social needs that are impacting the social determinants of health. These systems have created intentional approaches and initiatives to support individuals upon entering and exiting, whether it be incarceral setting and or inpatient treatment or with specialty courts even before entering an incarceral setting.
Ashley (03:26): Daisy, thank you so much for sharing with everyone, our listeners and me, a bit of your story. And I know a lot of times, especially at C4, we talk a lot about lived, living, and learned expertise. I think it’s really important that we create a space to be able to talk about the importance of lived and living expertise and putting lived and living paramount, and recognizing that that is such an important asset to making innovative, creative, and concrete change. You have, in my opinion, so beautifully married your lived and living expertise with a lot of learned and professional expertise as well. Can you tell me a little bit about your story of how your living expertise has transitioned into your work and the work that you get to do now that really centers what you’ve learned from living and navigating through these systems and structures?
Daisy (04:33): Upon one of my many releases, we’re often connected to what used to be known as the After Incarceration Support Services Reentry Center [AISS]. Now, it’s all-inclusive considering they provide support to individuals that don’t have a CORI [Criminal Offender Record Information], and in the creation of my recovery support network at AISS, they offered me a free course, a women’s course through the women’s group. And it was a community college transition or bridge to education course. And so then I just stood there and I went through my community college education. Also, the resources case managers at AISS supported me with identifying funding for schools, scholarships, taking me to see colleges that I would be interested in and created that bridge for me because I come from a family that does not have higher ed. So not that I did not know that higher ed existed, but I didn’t have that connection or that family support to really be a bridge and a connection for me.
(05:42): And so I knew that I didn’t want to continue to live the life that I was living. And then slowly but surely, education, employment development, career development has really become part of my recovery identity. I started off as a peer recovery coach. I was actually fee for service. And then through my own determination and recovery supports in my network and the case managers at AISS who are still a big part of my recovery network, really encouraged me to continue to develop and continue to find trainings. And from a recovery coach, I moved on to be a recovery coach supervisor, then while I was going to my social work school, I became a clinician’s life recovery coach supervisor, the life of the human service world you kniow [laughter], and have kind of just created this interest of learning, but not just learning and developing my professional practice, but also that working in human service and doing the human work that I call the work of the heart.
(06:53): I learned and started working through some of my own stuff, some of that trauma that led to substance use, some of the trauma that led to incarceration, some of the trauma experience during incarceration, but I didn’t let it kind of hold me back. I found ways of kind of growing around my trauma and being interested on the why… on how this could be better, on how I can work through this, on how I can continue to grow and not let the trauma kind of dictate or hinder my life, kind of paralyze me through that fear. And I think that a big part of my education was working as a recovery coach where I was exposed to individuals that although they looked like me and had many similar experiences, also increased my knowledge around things that I didn’t know. And in helping them, I also helped myself through that internal self-work that allowed me to move past or grow around my trauma both personally and professionally.
(08:01): And now I’m at a point where I feel like I could do anything, even though there sometimes it’s fear. Like I get a new project or something and I’m like, “Oh my God, I’ve never done this.” [Laughter] I’ve been through worse. And I feel like every opportunity to work past my trauma or past my fear, there’s growth on the other side. And so it’s like a silver lining that I know that I’m going to gain some development both about myself and professionally after I move past that fear. And I think that it was because of working through my own life stuff and working through some of the unknowns of developing professionally, that has really gotten me to that point of wanting to use my lived experience and wanting to know more. So now I know this, I did this in this project, so I got experience. Now I want to try something new. And not that I don’t feel fear because that’s part of life, but it helps me grow.
Ashley (08:58): Yeah, yeah. Humbly and confidently, I say I know a nice handful of people, you being one of them, who I feel can absolutely do anything. I haven’t seen you say you want to do something that you haven’t been able to. And I think two truths that I know about you very much is that you navigate with such a level of humility and also you exude your brilliance, your dedication, your hardworking nature and your innovation, and you add so much to the states, to the organizations, to the individuals, and to the national work that you do in this field. And so I’m very grateful for you, and I’ll always take an opportunity to tell you that. You also have been teaching us a lot of things too, teaching the folks at C4, teaching the folks within our Center. And I know that you were mentioning you have some knowledge about examples or models that other countries are utilizing or different things that they might be doing as it relates to the intersections of corrections, reentry, and recovery. So can you share a little bit about that with us now?
Daisy (10:15): So my exposure to models of treatment and recovery, my initial exposure was through the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department. They were really intentional. I wholeheartedly believed that the past sheriff, Sheriff Ash, who had a background in master’s level social work really was the innovative mind around flipping corrections and focusing it on treatment and recovery, where as an inmate we’re required to participate in treatment groups, recovery groups, and identify employment development trainings within the setting. And I remember going through social work school myself for my MSW and saying, “Well, I don’t want to be a research social worker. I don’t want to be a clinician,” and doing this work, I’ve found such value in identifying and being knowledgeable of the data and research that’s out there to help inform my work and my focus because I’ve learned that majority of individuals that enter an incarceral setting at admissions are identified with a co-occurring disorder.
(11:27): So it’s telling me that individuals, although they have criminal genetic behaviors, there’s more to that individual outside of them being a whole human being than just being a slice of the pie that identifies them, but that they come with intersections and layers of things that factor into this behavior. And knowing that individuals enter incarceral settings with co-occurring behaviors, childhood and past traumas, and for the focus to be treatment and recovery, it just made total sense. And then through my research, I’ve also found… and research from other colleagues in the field and panels that I participate in and boards, we found that other countries like Portugal are creating incarceral settings to mimic or reflect settings of educational institutions to really create a feel for the individuals that not that they’re not incarcerated, but that there’s life outside of incarceration, that they can be free and develop strengths and abilities both in the mental and emotional side and or the education and employment side that can prepare them for their reentry.
(12:46): I remember going into incarceral settings for my own commitment and always hearing reentry starts at admission, reentry starts at admission, and at the moment when I wasn’t ready for sustained recovery, it didn’t make sense. It was kind of annoying. But in working through my different processes, it made total sense. And seeing how so many of people I’ve been incarcerated with who are now off to law school, who are directors and managers of residential centers and peer recovery centers and recovery coach programs, then I see the value in leveraging that time to focus on that internal mentor and emotional work as well as developing education, employment skills to really set them up for success at their reentry, but starting that process at admissions.
Ashley (13:41): That’s really interesting. It’s one of those things where, like you said, maybe we don’t think about it. As soon as you start to put the pieces together, you’re like, “This makes total sense.” In addition to thinking about reentry in this way, there’s also a really important role that community, community organizations, and people play in long-term sustainability. I’m thinking about social service organizations, I’m thinking about the community itself. What do you think are the takeaways there?
Daisy (14:22): I feel, and through my own lived experience and professional experience, many people, parents, as they raise their families, have heard of the phrase, “It takes a village in raising our kids.” Johann Hari in the recovery space says, “The opposite of addiction is connection.” And that connection is beyond family connections.
(14:47): Oftentimes, at least for myself, during my own active and chaotic use, I burned many bridges. And so when I reentered community, I often reentered just to the support of my grandmother, God bless her soul because she was always there to pick up my pieces and support me on my reentry. But many people reentered the community with not even a place to go home to. And we already, at least here in Massachusetts, have many social service organizations that are dedicated or tasked or taking on the responsibility of supporting individuals and meeting the needs necessary to establish stability in their social determinants of health, right? And these social determinants of health, although they focus on health, they help stabilize in many areas of their life. And it requires collaboration of organizations. We, here in Massachusetts are also being intentional in addition to many things, to recovery and health, to recovery oriented systems of care.
(16:00): We think of wraparound services, but it requires more than just giving someone a reentry form and saying, “Hey, these are all the reports we submitted for you.” It requires intentional partnership and collaboration within organizations that can meet all the basic needs to set the individual up for success in finding a life of stability and creating a positive quality of life that’ll allow them to meet whatever goals they step out of, an incarceral setting and or an inpatient setting. That collaboration between organizations, sometimes it feels a little siloed, the mental health space and the substance use space and the housing space and probation parole, some of those community corrections. But if we really want to fulfill our mission and vision independent of what organization you’re part of, if you’re doing the human service work, it requires you to be intentional in creating partnership with organizations.
(16:59): One partnership in particular that really helped me, set me up for stability, was a partnership between the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department and the Reentry Center, and one of the local housing offices. And what they created was a partnership to support individuals to move into low income housing. We have folks that are coming out of incarceral settings like myself, who had very — a high school diploma at minimum, and there’s folks that come out with no high school diploma, no formal employable skills. And if I didn’t have established or safe stable housing, I wasn’t thinking about none of the resources they gave me, none of the coping skills that I was working on and developing to cope with my things right?
Ashley (17:49): Survival.
Daisy (17:50): I was focused on where I was going to sleep. But in them, creating this partnership has really helped me find stable housing, affordable housing, because that term affordable housing, many people throw it out there like it’s-
Ashley (18:06): [Laughter] What does that even mean?
Daisy (18:07): Like they’re saying hello. But in a state like Massachusetts or even Hampden County where Springfield, for example, it’s one of the poorest cities in Massachusetts, affordable housing is just a wish term. It’s not really accessible and the waiting list, or wildly crazy like 10 to 20 years. And in their partnership with housing organization, it really helped me establish housing, which gave me the space to work on finding employment of working through my education so that I can bring my son to live with me in a stable house where I can work on all these other goals that I had in life without worrying about where I was going to live or how many jobs I had to work to pay my rent.
Ashley (18:51): People are balancing and juggling and navigating so much during that time, and I don’t think that we ever are reflective of that. We assume that whatever resources people have should be enough, but it’s multilayered, it’s complex. And I would love to just take a moment to honor your grandmother. I know that she played such an important role in your life and was such a beautiful support to you. So just bring an honor to her and honor to the many family members and loved ones who also experience the systems, the structures, the inequities that can be pervasive for individuals. One of the things that you say that I loved, and I wrote it down here, you said, “Trauma to and trauma from reentry.” As I listen to that, I think about the journey of it, how people are changing in the process, how society is changing in the process as time goes on, how families’ needs are changing. What might be a few key takeaways about responding innovatively and trauma informed in supporting people as they navigate reentry?
Daisy (20:12): For me, I never identified trauma as part of my story. I grew up in poverty. I grew up with a mom who struggled with her own mental health and substance use, but that was what I knew. And so we were taught to just survive and the next right thing and then the next right thing, independence, depending on yourself and figure it out. But it wasn’t until participating in these mental health and substance use and recovery groups in incarceral settings, that I started to really tie things together. Things started to make sense for me, and I had three or four commitments, and every time I went in as a different person, but came out as a different person as well. And I always wanted to do the next right thing, and then lifeing for me and not having the full support and not knowing where to turn and just trying to survive, I messed up and then went back through the cycle.
(21:16): But it’s important for families to understand that sometimes folks do want to make the next right choice. We have to work through barriers of long waiting lists, not meeting criteria, not having proper identification, having to balance recovery and employment and transportation and childcare. It gets too overwhelming. And we have to consider: I’m not the smartest tool in the shed, but I know that cannabis is not the only gateway drug. I believe trauma is the gateway drug. Our bodies aren’t naturally created to be activated with this trauma response all the time. And when we are, then we’re always going to be in this fight or flight mode and just trying to survive. And being a support and not responding with a, “What’s wrong with you,” kind of response, “Why do you continue to do this,” it’s, “What’s going on with you? What happened to you? How can I be of support? How can I help you right now,” versus, “Don’t let them in the house.”
(22:25): One thing my grandma taught me long ago was, if you can’t help a person, don’t hurt a person, the least you could do is connect them to somebody who could help them. And she was a coach without the training. She was a counselor without the training, and she didn’t know much, not even too much English, but she knew somebody that knew something somewhere in some organization, some resource, and was always willing to be a resource to someone, at least connect them to someone who could be the proper resource. And trauma is not just an individual’s healing, it’s family healing. Because during our active and chaotic use, we do impact our family members, and it requires a family healing for us to really understand what happened to you and how can I help you get better versus closing doors and that tough love, that’s a facade. Love is love. Love can be tough and be love at the same time. We got to move away from that.
Ashley (23:29): That’s just so beautiful, Daisy, and so tangibly helpful to folks. I think about how trauma is not the event, it’s how it’s processed in the body, it’s how it’s processed in the family, it’s how it’s processed in the community. And so I’m really honoring that, that trauma is a gateway. If you can’t help a person, don’t hurt a person. That is a direct quote from Grandma. And love is love. Love is love. Daisy, I have just absolutely loved the opportunity to share space with you on this podcast, and I just want to thank you for making the time to come and share with us.
Daisy (24:11): Thanks for having me and dropping some of my grandma’s gems because she lives within all that she taught me, I get to teach and continue to keep her alive through spreading her gems.
Ashley (24:26): Her legacy is powerful. So we honor her and we honor you. And to our listeners, be sure to join us next time on Changing the Conversation.
Erika (24:37): Visit www.c4innovates.com and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube for more resources to grow your impact. Thank you for joining us. This episode was produced by Erika Simon and Christina Murphy. Our theme song was written and performed by Peter Hanlon. Join us next time on Changing the Conversation.
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