My Lived Experience: Holding Space, Offering Hope
For nearly a decade, Linda has brought compassion, presence, and unwavering commitment to her role as a volunteer with Parents Helping Parents. As a longtime Prison Group facilitator, she has created spaces for reflection, connection, and healing in places where hope can sometimes feel distant. We are deeply grateful for Linda’s many years of service, and we’re honored to share this powerful reflection she wrote about her volunteer journey and lived experience.
Since 2016, I’ve dedicated myself to volunteering in spaces that are often overlooked — where vulnerability is heavy and hope sometimes feels out of reach. As an adoptive single parent, I know firsthand how isolating and overwhelming it can feel to navigate parenting without a clear roadmap. That personal journey is what led me to serve others — not because I had all the answers, but because I understood the questions.
My volunteering saga began as a way to give back to the adoption parenting community that had once held me up. Through peer support groups and one-on-one conversations, I offered encouragement and understanding to adoptive parents of children with special needs, trauma backgrounds, or emotional challenges. Sometimes, just hearing “You’re not alone” was enough to shift someone’s entire week — and I understood that feeling deeply.
That foundation of empathy and shared experience eventually opened a door I never expected: facilitating safe space conversations with incarcerated men at a state prison, with Parents Helping Parents. Inside those prison walls, I facilitate dialogue circles where men — all of them fathers — could speak freely about their struggles, their regrets, their dreams, and the families they’d left behind.
In those sessions, I saw men peel back decades of armor. I witnessed raw emotion, accountability, and sometimes, for the first time, healing. One participant told me, “You saw me as a person before you saw me as an inmate.” That moment reaffirmed everything I believe: people need connection more than they need correction. And healing can start wherever there’s space to speak and be heard.
Being a former foster parent, adoptive parent and a woman in these settings has taught me that transformation doesn't require perfection — just presence. Whether it’s a support group in a community center or a quiet conversation in a prison meeting room, I show up to listen, to hold space, and to remind others that even in pain, they are not alone.
From my first PHP meeting in February 2017 to our most recent group in July 2025, this work has shaped who I am: a more compassionate parent, a deeper listener, and a relentless believer in second chances.
Linda’s dedication embodies the heart of Parents Helping Parents: creating spaces where people feel seen, heard, and supported. Her years of service have left a lasting impact on countless lives, and we’re honored to celebrate her as part of our volunteer community. Fun fact: Linda recently checked off a bucket list dream: getting back up in the air. A former student pilot in the 1990s, she couldn’t pass up the chance to feel the thrill of flying again!
