I used to have a jail badge.
I worked on the ACT team, and part of my work was walking into the Glynn County Detention Center and teaching coping skills to inmates. Real coping skills. Trauma-informed. Peer-led. Grounded in the Eight Dimensions of Wellness. I sat with people in one of the hardest possible spaces and helped them find one small way to breathe, to cope, to hold on.
That was before I owned my own company.
Now I am the founder of Heart of Care — Full Spectrum Community Treatment Service. I went back to the jail system with the same credentials, the same heart, and the same evidence-based approach — only this time I was offering it as a community treatment provider, not as an employee of someone else's system. I went to the sergeant. I told him who I am. I told him what I offer. I told him I can teach coping skills inside the detention center, support officer wellness, and bring trauma-informed care into a space that desperately needs it.
He looked at me and said, "We have our own counselors."
That is irregardless of what I actually bring.
I am a Certified Peer Specialist — Mental Health. I am trained in the Eight Dimensions of Wellness. I deliver care in a trauma-informed way, from lived experience and professional experience both. I can also train the police — the same officers who roll up on mental health patients in crisis — to stop retraumatizing the community and the people they are called to help. I have seen officers traumatize community members and mental health patients simply for not taking their medications, or simply for being in crisis. I know it happens because I have watched it with my own eyes.
I have worked in mental health hospitals.
I have worked on ACT teams.
I have worked in crisis units.
I have worked in peer support.
I have lived it myself.
So when I say the detention center needs what I offer, I am not guessing. I have been inside. I have sat across from the inmates who are cycling through because nobody taught them how to regulate, how to grieve, how to come back to themselves. And I have been the one doing that teaching — badge on my chest, paperwork signed, walking back out through the same metal doors.
Three times to the Glynn County Detention Office administration
I did not take the sergeant's "no" as the final word. I went to the Glynn County Detention Office administration three separate times. I explained the service. I explained the credentials. I explained that Heart of Care is self-supported — funded by my own work, not by the county, not by a state grant, not by government money. I offered trauma-informed coping skills, peer support, and officer wellness training.
Crickets.
No return call. No meeting. No curiosity. No "tell us more." Just silence.
This is what "we have our own counselors" really costs
- It costs inmates access to a peer specialist who has actually been in the system, who understands what it means to sit in a cell and still believe you can come back to life.
- It costs officers access to trauma-informed de-escalation training that could reduce harm for everyone in the room — officers included.
- It costs the community a chance to stop cycling the same people through crisis, jail, and release without a single skill to hold onto.
- It costs the detention center nothing — because I offered this as a community service, funded by my own company, not by their budget.
"We have our own counselors" is not a sentence about capacity. It is a sentence about the refusal to look outside the walls. And the people inside those walls pay for it.
To the administration: the door is still open
I am not asking for a contract. I am not asking for a paycheck from the county. I am asking for a conversation. I am asking for the same access I once had with a badge that belonged to someone else — except now I bring my own table, my own materials, my own funding, and my own mission.
I can teach coping skills to inmates. I can teach trauma-informed care to officers. I can do both without making anyone the villain, because the system is the villain — not the people caught inside it.
I have a jail badge's worth of proof that this works. I just need someone in the Glynn County Detention Office to pick up the phone and say yes.
Until then, the badge is in my pocket and the offer stands. Three times offered, three times unanswered. The Honey Badger does not stop knocking because the door is closed. She knocks louder.
Honey and teeth. Always both. ✿