a project supporting women in prison…

Since 2007 Kate has been a volunteer in the state women’s prison. Utilizing the SHANTI model, she provides confidential nonjudgmental listening and support to people living in prison. In 2018, with incarcerated participants, Kate formed a group Good Grief for women to process emotions and experiences in a supportive peer space.

In the spring of 2024, Kate began a new program: Painting Inside Out, where she guides participants in utilizing creative self expression for personal healing and storytelling, to process grief and other challenging emotions, enhance self-care and well-being, and learn new coping skills. Kate believes creativity is a powerful, transformative tool for personal liberation and re-storying. Her aim is to expand this work to support the ongoing transformational recovery, reconnection, and restoration of women (currently and formerly incarcerated) back into our communities.

to support this work…

You can buy Kate a Ko-fi. Join her Patreon. Or reach out!

You may donate to support this work directly by helping cover costs that make this work possible (gas mileage, toll fees, supplies, and volunteer training). You may also donate other supplies like books (a prized possession), writing journals, and art supplies. Please contact Kate.

The aim of Good Grief is to utilize the support, knowledge, and wisdom each person brings; to mend and strengthen relationships with ourselves and one another by creating a safe, confidential, respectful, and nonjudgmental environment to share and process; to understand our stories as they are contextualized in the larger environment and world. Acceptance and acknowledgment are major components of the approach — this pertains to being willing to listen to and be present with difficult feelings, both our own and others.

a fund for children of incarcerated women

In 2021 I created a fund to support programs that benefit the children of women incarcerated in Washington state. To this fund I donated 20% of all sales of my artwork (in 2021). If you are interested in supporting this work—please be in touch!

my story

I began volunteering at Washington Corrections Center for Women in 2007, having done similar work previously at the King County Jail. This was part of a program called the Inmate Support Project, an initiative of a Seattle-based nonprofit called Shanti that initially formed in the 1980's (also in San Francisco) to support people diagnosed with HIV. Shanti's work involved training and supporting volunteers to provide confidential, non-judgmental support to people in the community who were isolated, vulnerable, stigmatized, and experiencing grief and loss. In the late 1990's this was extended to incarcerated individuals through Shanti's ISP. Seattle's Shanti dissolved in 2013 due to funding cuts by its parent nonprofit, but the inmate support work has continued through a small handful of people at WCCW, Monroe, and King County Jail. I've been the only such volunteer at WCCW since 2007. Prior to Shanti's dissolution, I helped plan and facilitate the four-day training program for potential new volunteers. I currently meet 1:1 with about 18 women each month, and seem to always have new referrals awaiting a first meeting. My primary role is as listener, being present to the difficult experiences these women are navigating. Some people I meet with for a relatively short period of time (a few months), and others I have supported over many years. Since March 2020 this work has been put on hold due to the pandemic. Since this time I’ve been painting at a feverish pace.

Nonprofit sector experience spans most of my adult working life. For over twenty years, the people I’ve frequently interacted with professionally have been impacted by one or more, sometimes many, of the following: trauma, disability, addiction, dementia, a life-limiting illness or injury, loss, incarceration, isolation and/or stigmatization.

Incarceration is something that has touched my family.

As a visual artist, I experience the inherent usefulness and restorative power of creativity and self expression. Since 2008 I’ve sold and exhibited works in and around Seattle. I envision developing a program (or partnering with another nonprofit) to support children of incarcerated mothers in accessing volunteer mentors and other resources—and I am deeply interested in how the arts might play an explicit role in this aim. Arts are a tremendously valuable way to find one’s voice, tell one’s story, and to process and transform one’s experiences. Combining my passions in this work is my goal. In addition to this endeavor, I hope to eventually expand the volunteer presence at WCCW, doing related work, and also extend it to provide much-needed transitional support to women working to reintegrate into communities and establish meaningful lives post-incarceration.