Emily: How did you meet each other and start working together?

Sharon: I've been working for nonprofits since I got out in 2017. My passion is to work with my peers. I get bubbly, I get emotional, I have nothing but compassion for those that are left behind. I would like to say soldiers because my life in there was a challenge. Living in that kind of existence has its days and has its nights. I know what that feels like. When they call, my heart opens up. I want to help every way that I can. Which brings me to TCN. The model is extraordinary. How many people will hire you when you just got out of jail? Transitions Clinic looks for people like us. People that did our time and are out here trying to give back to society. 

When I was told about it by another colleague who no longer working here, it sound like the ideal thing. I got the call. I went over what the job would entail. The fact that I'm going to be on the phone every single day with people who are locked up and who are coming out – they're needing medical, they’re needing mental health, they’re needing MAT, they're needing resources. TCN has the resources. They're passionate about making sure that those that are inside and coming out get what they need. That was something that didn't happen inside for me. I had a terrible thought process about doctors when I was inside. That goes for a lot of my peers. That's the reason why we didn't go to the clinic. I can have an abscess and I'll just go figure out how to bust that thing myself not knowing what it could lead to. Getting out here and knowing that you have a doctor that not only understands your past, but wants to make sure your future and your present has some longevity to it – I get tearful. I don't have to hide who I am. I can go into the clinic and say, “I did 38 years.” I walk in and one of my peers is standing there, a community health care worker. If I don't want to talk to the doctor at that point, I can communicate with that person and tell them why. They're going to communicate with the doctor and be a liaison between the two. That's amazing. Because you're gonna get people that are coming out like that. 

Shira: Sharon applied to be our healthcare hub hotline coordinator and really stood out as an applicant that is a true community health worker at heart. As our network demonstrates, people coming out of incarceration have connected with each other during their incarceration and have these really robust networks and an ethos of supporting each other. A real desire to help each other and their community. TCN is just an opportunity for people to deploy that network through the health system.

When I met Sharon in her interview, it was obvious she is constantly thinking about how to help people, from staffing the hotline and supporting the callers but also just in our everyday life. She's always bringing cases to the team meetings of someone she met on the street who needs help. There's this desire to help others based on their own experiences of knowing what it's like when people or systems turn their back on you. It's a beautiful thing and it flies in the face of the story that society tells us about people who are incarcerated. We know that those stories are not true based on all of the work that our community health workers have done. It was wonderful to meet Sharon and it was clear that she was a great fit for the role and the TCN team.

Emily: I want to ask about storytelling. Earlier on the call, Sharon, you were telling me about the work that you've done producing theater in prison. Can you describe that work? How did you come to be interested in that? Were you always a storyteller?

Sharon: It began with me in fashion. I did a number of fashion shows. I'm a seamstress. I sew. So I started doing fashion shows. In the midst of that fashion show, I put on a portion where we had dialogue. Out of that was born that moment of me wanting to do a play. My first play entailed me having to write the script, read over the script, take things out. Not only do you have to get the cast, not only do you have to do the costumes, not only do you have to get a place where the lighting fits, not only do you have to make sure that there's enough seating, but there is more to that. You have to make sure that the people are going to be the strong points that make this a success. One of the things that I enjoyed after I did my first play was how the audience reacted to the play.

Emily: What was the play? Do you remember?

Sharon: My first one was about Helen Keller. We had a lot of girls that were deaf within the prison. It arise from actually a fight in the kitchen. Watching a deaf girl have to fight because she didn't understand what the girl was telling her. After we thought about that. I was like, “man.” We all went to her aid to tell the lieutenant that no, it wasn't her fault. After that, I was sitting in a room thinking, okay, maybe I need to let the institution and my peers understand what it's like for someone that's deaf. It touched me the most because my father's baby sister is deaf. When I seen that, I was like, “maybe I need to do that.” I was on the women advisory board. I went ahead and got the paperwork cleared all the way to the top, and then looked at Helen Keller the movie a couple of times to figure out how that happened for her. The hardest part was finding the person to play deaf. We didn't want the real person to do it. It was probably gonna be triggering I thought for her. But I had her as one of the cast. It was very, very cool. I started writing them right after that. One by one by one by one. I put them on until I got ready to get out. Probably a month before, I did my last show.

Emily: How about you, Shira? Any background with storytelling or the arts?

Shira: Just through work. I've been running TCN for a long time now. Prior to that I just followed my patient’s stories. That's how I landed here. During my residency I was caring for pregnant women who were incarcerated and was hearing horrific stories about the lack of care they were receiving during their incarceration. I wanted to hear more and understand. I tried to get a job in the prison and was not able to get in, but through my research to try to find how to get employed there I got a job at the Alameda County Jail and was working with pregnant women there. Through that work, I ended up working with UCSF on a project to improve care inside the state prison system. This was just right before the federal receivership got put in place. Basically, my job was to go from prison to prison to hear people's stories and find out what kind of care they were not getting. We were doing tons of chart reviews. Trying to understand where the gaps in the system were. Then listening, going to find the individuals who are incarcerated and hearing their stories. It became clear that when you're incarcerated you lose so much agency and your story gets lost. You lose your voice. You get a number instead of your name. You lose a lot of your autonomy. There's a lot of power in just listening to people's stories – not just power in identifying who's sick and getting them care, but that feeling of having someone listen and care about what is going on with you. It's a radical act to listen to people's stories. Then I started working with people coming out of incarceration and got involved in TCN. Every week I hear people's stories when they're coming out of prison and sharing what that was and how it impacts their health and their dreams for the future. I have learned the power of storytelling from my work. And leveraging those stories to change systems and create opportunities for people as part of healthcare teams. 

Emily: You said something earlier, Shira, about the bigger stories we tell as a society about incarcerated people. Can either or both of you speak to that – that collective story? How does that go wrong?

Sharon: We're human. Although we do come in and we get WW203 – my number, which I'll never never forget. We get the last name and not the first name. One of the things of being inside, you understand right away that your identity is just a number for a minute for them. You try to figure out how to feel human inside of the walls. You hold on to any little piece of empathy and compassion coming from the outside. Anything, anybody that has good active listening skills. Most often you go unheard. You're in the background until you’re needed to speak. I remember what that felt like for me – when I became someone that the prison felt like was an asset and no longer a nuisance. I changed the way that I was living inside of there. I noticed that I was able to walk through doors. People heard me when I come through. Before it didn't feel that way. I would get ushered back out and locked in my room. We were always hushed, and holding on to anything that came in that felt like life again.

I was around when Shira was doing the advocacy for us. Making sure that she listened to stories about the health problems and stuff like that. I knew that there was several doctors coming in and trying to figure out why we were being treated a certain kind of way, what kind of medication we were missing and all that stuff. During that time, I was still in my rebel kind of life. I didn't think it applied to me. When I got out and listened to Shira talk, I thought, “dang, I remember that.” I remember so many times that I was called on to ask questions or tell my story and I kept it to myself. I didn't want to be bothered with it because I didn't think that – from what we were getting, being sterilized and not being told I was being sterilized. I figured it was another doctor with another hoax. You can’t imagine what that felt like to come out to Southeast Clinic and then walk up in there and have a doctor ask me, what is my past been like? What have I felt? What do I think? That word right there: “What do you think?” I shut up and didn't even know what to say. Because I've been told what I should think or what I should feel or what they feel is best. I don't want to make this sound weird or anything but I was too old probably to have children when I come out. But I still wanted one. I have only one son. I went to a baby shower and my friend is pregnant. I feel so sad about that but I also feel very, very happy. Because I realized when I got sterilized, I didn't know I was being sterilized.

Emily: Thank you for sharing that. Those stories are so important.

Shira: What you were saying, Sharon, about not even feeling like your story mattered is really important. When I think about the stories we tell as a society around people who are incarcerated – and I'm going to focus it on the health system – we don't hire people who have been incarcerated in our systems because we have these stories that people coming out of incarceration are dangerous or a threat. Once somebody makes a mistake we brand them with that mistake and the story of that mistake lives with them forever. We create policies that continually punish people even after they've been incarcerated. We've been trying to change the narrative of that story. People who've been incarcerated, it's the opposite. They're not a threat. They actually have a lot of value in this work. In fact, that's the most valuable thing that we can do, working with this community. That's why we created these opportunities for people to become community health workers. All of our community health workers are hired and embedded within the healthcare team. It's like taking a baseball team and adding a whole new position. You have to reframe the story. That's something we're very aware of, pushing back against stories that are really not true. That's why we're also excited about this opportunity.

Emily: What's your vision for this event, even if it’s still in early stages? What are you hoping for? 

Sharon: One of the things that I'm hoping for is awareness. One of the biggest things about telling a story is that there's always someone in the room that has a kinship to what you've been through. It's also a way to put out information. TCN has a great model. It has a model about lived experience, meaning you’ve lived through this. We worked inside for a penny. That's the amount of money that we were given. There was no such thing as minimum wage. We had some of the most strenuous jobs there is. This job teaches you while you earn. I have a team that I can always slack and find out whatever I need to find out. I can always in a morning meeting say what I'm going through and they will tell me that this is the best way or this is the best way. Always learning. Always learning while you're earning. If another clinic is not doing that, Shira’s gonna get on the ball and make sure we know why. That sort of stuff feels safe and protecting. When I talk to my peers and I tell them about my job, it's amazing. They can hear me sometimes working in answering a phone – “You're talking to somebody from the prison?” That's what I do every single day! It's great.

Shira: I agree. That connection. The one thing I would want people to feel is the connection to each other. Seeing themselves in other people's stories. That's a way of reinforcing that your story matters – when you hear others tell their stories, and you see that point of connection. It’s a time for us to slow down and reflect on the work that we're doing. Both celebrate that work and the successes, and process the challenging and hard pieces of that work. We don't often have that kind of time in our professional lives and I think nothing better than to do it in community with each other. Really excited for this event.

Emily: I'm also very excited for this event. I can't wait to see what you all come up with. 

Sharon: You were a good host. 

Shira: You're gonna describe how beautiful Sharon and I are. Younger than our years. We're so youthful!