Alison has worked with people in prison for 22 years as a Therapeutic Recreation Practitioner. She has developed interventions to support healing for people with complex challenges resulting from childhood trauma, poverty, and mental health issues.



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Alison Granger-Brown

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  id="h-alison-granger-brown-lives-on-gabriola-island-bc-canada-and-works-with-indigenous-women-in-the-prison-system-she-shares-one-woman-s-story-of-courage-and-personal-transformation-it-is-a-reminder-that-even-the-most-marginalized-can-find-their-way-toward-peace-and-purpose-in-life">
  <strong><mark style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #a1481f">ALISON GRANGER-BROWN
    </mark>lives on Gabriola Island, BC, Canada, and works with indigenous women in
    the prison system. She shares one woman’s story of courage and personal
    transformation. It is a reminder that even the most marginalized can find
    their way toward peace and purpose in life.</strong>
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<p>
  This is about my journey alongside an Ojibwa woman who was my client and who
  became my friend. We met in the women’s correctional system in British
  Columbia, Canada. At first I was afraid of her. That fear diminished as I
  became increasingly involved in her healing passage, and she grew from inmate
  to mother to researcher to colleague and finally to hospice patient. I
  traveled through many systems with her and saw first-hand the deeply ingrained
  racism in every institution and government organization with which she had to
  navigate and negotiate.
</p>

<p>
  She was the victim of childhood poverty, daily sexual abuse, and
  intergenerational trauma as the daughter of a residential school survivor. She
  experienced institutional racism from early childhood when she was removed
  from her family at the age of six and taken into government “care” through her
  childhood, to her involvement with the justice system’s over-incarceration of
  Indigenous people, especially women. From an early age she used drugs,
  alcohol, and violence to survive and manage the emotional pain of a life
  fraught with injustice. The group home she was sent to as a little girl was so
  diabolical that she set fire to the school room. How hurt is a child to act in
  such a way?
</p>

<p>
  Gradually, over time, her strong self-will and determination transitioned from
  harmful manipulation to healthy independence to helpful influencer in
  supporting other women like herself. She drew on her strengths and reshaped
  how she applied them, for example her sense of humor. She could see the
  absurdity in some rules and shifted from aggression to humor. Her survival
  skills turned from anti-social and criminal, to creative and legal, in order
  to meet the needs of herself and her young son.
</p>

<p>
  I watched and wondered at her resilience and commitment to change, with the
  absolute devotion to breaking the cycle of her family’s trauma from colonial
  oppression to the growth and development of her son and his future. She
  succeeded in change; the system did not and has not. This is the lesson – we
  cannot change the situation, the system, or the story, but we can change how
  we respond and react. That pause between input to output is where we have our
  personal power.
</p>

<p>
  Her resilience stemmed from the true ability to live in hope. Not false or
  unfounded wishful thinking, not a mulling over the potential probability of
  optimism, but a real belief in the possibility that we can effect change in
  our own capacity to manage and succeed. Here lies the lesson of hope.
</p>

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    <img decoding="async" width="600" height="659" alt="hope2-1" class="has-img-center lazyload"
      src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/hope2_1_1b731d7820.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T12:58:42.391Z" />
  </figure>
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  <mark style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #e08d09">This is the lesson
  </mark><br /><mark style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #e08d09">– we cannot
    change the situation, the system, or the story, <br />but we
    can change how we respond and react.</mark>
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<p>
  We may dream of systems changing, of the “other” seeing it our way …well good
  luck. Hope rests on finding and nurturing our self-will and building our
  capacity for creative thinking to find new pathways, new strategies, and new
  solutions. Every one of us has this capability if we look inside. We are the
  system, we are the only change possible, “We got this.”
</p>

<p>
  My friend died of cancer because she went undiagnosed, even with repeated
  requests for an examination by her doctor. That is another story. She never
  lost her sense of humor, her acute observations of the absurd, and her fierce
  determination. She survived several years longer than predicted out of pure
  love for her son, to make sure he would have a memory of her. He was six when
  she died. He is now sixteen, six foot five, and a gentle, funny, healthy,
  hopeful young man. He has already overcome painful challenges in his life, and
  I believe he will draw on the resilience he learned from his mother for the
  rest of his life to continue to grow and heal the historical wounds his family
  and his people have endured. He is the best next generation image of his
  mother, as she hoped he would be.
</p>

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<h4 class="has-text-align-center">
  <mark style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #e08d09">Hope rests on finding and
    nurturing our self-will </mark><br /><mark style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #e08d09"
   >and building our capacity for creative thinking </mark><br /><mark
    style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #e08d09">to find new pathways, new
    strategies, and new solutions. </mark><br /><mark style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #e08d09"
   >Every one of us has this capability if we look inside. </mark><br /><mark
    style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #e08d09">We are the system, we are the
    only change possible, “We got this.”</mark>
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