The Prison Phoenix Trust helped former prisoner Nicola to turn her life around. She has now pledged a powerful legacy to the organisation that gave her the gift of hope
Photo posed by actor
Author Nicola Henneveld has decided to support The Prison Phoenix Trust with a major gift in her will. “The PPT does such valuable work. I want to leave what I have to people who really need it and make sure as many people as possible benefit.”
Find out how you too can give the gift of hope.
Nicola’s decision was informed by hard-edged life experience. Twenty five years ago, ‘home’ for Nicola was a prison cell. She was beginning a sentence at HMP Drake Hall in Staffordshire.
“These days I’m living my best life,” laughs Nicola. Now a successful author, she lives in the pretty little cottage she owns in the leafy countryside. “I’ve got my little house and my dog. I’m the freest I’ve ever been,” she explains. “But I saw the real world in prison,” she recalls. “It broke my heart.”
The realities of prison life, especially with the current crisis of underfunding and overcrowding, can indeed be stark – and the routes and reasons for women finding themselves inside have their own particular complexities.
According to research, some 50% of women in prison witnessed violence in their childhood home; 53% women have themselves survived physical, sexual or emotional abuse in childhood; 31% grew up in care. Researchers in Scotland found 80% of women in prison had signs of brain injury caused by violence.
“I’d done a little bit of meditation before I went to prison”, Nicola explains, “but never consistently. Then, a prison tutor gave me a book from The PPT. It became my ‘bible’.”
The book, and the support shown by her volunteer mentor, was a catalyst for Nicola.
“I would get up early in the morning and meditate for an hour or more to start the day,” she says. “Then again in the evening after we were locked in our cells I’d meditate before I went to sleep.”
At first, guided by The PPT, meditation for Nicola became a way to survive. Then, it became a way for her to truly thrive. “I learned more in that year than in a dozen years outside”, she explains. “I meditated on why I was in prison, the choices I’d made that had got me into this position. I looked at myself to ask what was it I did wrong? Why was I stupid enough to end up there? Am I bad person? Who am I?”
Nicola’s transformational journey continued after she was released. “Since leaving prison I’ve never stopped meditating and trying to improve myself – even if I can’t improve the world,” she says.
There’s a beautiful symmetry to her pledge of a powerful legacy.
“Once I’d made the decision to give this pledge to the PPT, it brought me a real sense of peace”, she says. “I’d like to encourage other people to do the same thing. By giving to PPT you’re giving people hope… that’s worth more than gold.”
Find out how you too can give the gift of hope.
