On Hope, Barriers, and Superpowers: a Twinning Project Participant Reflects on Her Experience

Last week, a group of incarcerated women at the Century Regional Detention Facility gathered for their graduation from Angel City’s six-week program in collaboration with the UK-based Twinning Project, a nonprofit that pairs football clubs with prisons and jails where they lead courses in coaching and refereeing. Angel City is only the second US-based participant, and the first in this country working in a women’s facility.

Over the course of the twice-weekly program, participants at CRDF learned soccer and coaching skills, as well as life skills like leadership, teamwork, and accountability, from three volunteer coaches, Dani Hanson, Fish, and Tori Lathrop. Hanson and Lathrop are also participants in ACFC’s coaching network. Angel City forward Simone Charley attended one session, where she told the group about her journey to professional soccer and sat in on the soccer portion in the facility’s rec room—still on crutches at the time, she even showed the group how to perform a Cruyff turn.

The non-soccer part of the curriculum was based on the book Wolfpack by former USWNT star and current ACFC investor Abby Wambach.

One participant, Ana*, graciously agreed to let Angel City publish her speech from the ceremony. Ana is from East LA, where she grew up, in her own words, “in a trap house.” Her family’s struggles with substance abuse shaped her upbringing, and by her mid-20s, she was battling her own addiction issues. She is a mother of three, including a 15-month-old son she delivered while incarcerated.

Ana has been at CRDF for about two years and says that her time inside has allowed her to reflect and grow. “When people come at me with words or violence now, I don’t respond the same way,” she says. “I say, ‘Hey, are you ok? Do you want to talk?’ It changes everything.

“At some point I realized I could break the cycle in my family.”

Ana’s remarks from last week are below.

*The names of the incarcerated participants have been changed.

Hello, everyone. I would like to start off by giving thanks, first to God, for blessing our lives daily. Even though we may not see it, he is with us.

Thank you to all CRDF staff that helped make this project possible.

Thank you to the CEOs of the Twinning Project and Angel City Football Club for believing in the change in us and the renewal of our minds, for taking a chance on all of us, and for giving us the support from the free world that we ladies here desperately need.

And of course, I saved the best for last. We will never be able to express how much gratitude we have for our coaches: Fish, Dani, and Tori. Thank you for taking time out of your lives and the lives of your families to come here and show us support, for teaching us vital tools through the game of soccer that we can use in our daily lives, for giving us a sense of normalcy in a very difficult chapter in our lives, and for loving us for just being us.

So here we go.

Hope.

Hope is holding onto something in your heart and continuing to press forward, knowing that whatever you hope for is possible.

Hope is the anchor for the soul. We hope for forgiveness one day, we hope for freedom one day, we hope for acceptance back into society as new women one day, and we hope that barriers that have affected generation after generation will be broken for all, so that this cycle of repetitive incarceration will no longer have its grasp on us.

This program fueled the hope that is burning inside of us that we can and will be accepted, qualified, and capable. It not only taught us strategic game plans for on the field, but also taught us how to implement those in our daily lives.

For instance, finding space on the field: it’s used to seek the next best opportunity for a play. Now, in our daily lives, we need to find that space so we can step back, control, and evaluate ourselves or figure out the next play that we want to make.

Now, every play doesn’t happen on the field like it’s supposed to; that would be a pretty boring game, and no one would ever win.

The same thing occurs in our lives. Not every play or next step is going to play out exactly how we intended. Nothing is perfect, so just like on the field, we need to react and press forward with endurance and determination to not let anything or anyone hold us back.

But of course, good ol’ life tends to test us.

Whether we are doing great or not so well, life tends to step in, interrupt everything we think we’ve got going on, and bench us.

Then we’re arguing with our coach, God, or ourselves, saying, “Let me back into the game (the free world). I got this—follow directions, follow the rules, stop cleating up, no more penalties!”

But it’s not just about following the rules and not receiving any more penalties. We need to learn humility, compassion, and most importantly, a new way of analyzing the field—our life—by believing not only in ourselves, but also the person next to us, whether it’s on the bench (jail) or on the field (the free world).

We need to be team players, and not because we want to win in life, but because we want our whole team, family, friends, and all people to win and be successful. As Abby Wambach said, “One woman’s success is everyone’s success.”

I’ve learned that every single person has the potential to become a leader by leading with a humble heart, compassion, and understanding. Not everyone has the same story or the same resources. That’s where our potential can come into play and we can break barriers. One of the biggest barriers of all is inequity.

Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. It’s the process for addressing our imbalanced social system.

You may have the resources and support you need, or you may not. In my opinion, the majority of us currently incarcerated experienced some form of inequity as a child growing up in the streets in LA. Many had parents or guardians working all day long to make ends meet, who were unable to pay for sports or other programs. Some had parents or guardians addicted to drugs and alcohol. Others had no one to confide in when they were raped, or even worse, they were called liars.

So what did we do? We became addicted to drugs and alcohol; we turned to the streets for comfort and support, and to make money to get the basic necessities for survival.

So the question is, how do we break the huge barrier called inequity?

By using our superpowers. Yes, I said superpowers. During the course, we learned that we all have them.

Brianna’s is communication. Dee’s is the ability to feel empathy and show up for others when needed. Silvia’s is her fantastic energy—she’s always able to comfort people through laughter. Raquel’s is acts of service to all, which came into play when she helped me by listening to my speech over and over. Muñoz’s is shyness, which leads others to safety and helps them open up. Jade’s is positivity and good advice. Lola’s is her strength and ability to keep pressing on no matter what. Mine is advocacy and helping others see their potential.

Imagine if we all worked as a team, with every one of our powers, and stood against inequity, statistics, and the people who believe we can’t be rehabilitated. Imagine if we implemented the mentality of a team on the field in our everyday lives. Who would we become? We could be attackers, doing advocacy work; defenders, protecting others; midfielders, showing support; players on the bench, encouraging others to press on.

So who are we? We are daughters, sisters, aunts, grandmothers, wives, and mothers. We are changed women and we refuse to let anyone or anything take that away from us. We will continue to fight for our lives and the lives of our families. We will break barriers and rise.