The Lioness Tale Prison Project

You live in a world of cages, Silent One, in one of the monstrous worlds. But you can wake up. You can wake up and choose your own path, even here. This is not greater than your own heart. Nor does it run deeper than your own soul.

From "The Lioness Tale", by Diane Pendola


 

Exploring the Enneagram as a Tool for Addiction Recovery through the lens of The Lioness Tale.

 

SKYLINE HARVEST,  a California non-profit corporation located in the foothills of Yuba County, offers a distinctive addiction recovery program designed to address the unique experiences of women in prison.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: Integrating a communal reading of The Lioness Tale with an understanding of the Twelve Steps and the Enneagram Theory of Personality the women in this program are led to examine their own life stories and choices. Through various awareness practices, shared reflection and discussion, the essential wounds underlying defensive patterns of drug use and other destructive behaviors are uncovered and resources for change and sobriety made available. Inmates will easily relate to the Lioness of our tale whose story mirrors their own yet leads to a resolution that is both healing and personally liberating.

THE ENNEAGRAM is an ancient tool for understanding ourselves and others. At its most accessible the Enneagram describes nine different personality types or ways of seeing the world. It helps us understand how each type has certain ways of filtering experience so that attention returns in habitual ways to repeating patterns. When taken to extremes, these repeating patterns can lead to active addictions. By revealing these largely unconscious patterns underlying our addictions and driving our personalities, the Enneagram provides a key for unlocking our capacity for greater choice, freedom, self-awareness and thus for addiction recovery.

THE LIONESS TALE by Diane Pendola, brings her knowledge of the Enneagram together with her long experience of working with the incarcerated into a powerful story of healing and transformation. The story of Lioness helps us embark and reflect upon the significant turning points in our own lives. We accompany Lioness on her life journey, beginning with her primal experience of the basic goodness of reality. We feel with her the freedom and empowerment of living close to the natural world and her own true nature. Then, in the wake of tragic loss, we witness how this wound to her essential nature gives rise to defensive patterns of thought and behavior. The internal armoring that results restricts her freedom and defines her even more powerfully than the external bars that eventually come to imprison her. Ultimately it is through the power of love and the courage of self inquiry that she comes to experience her liberation. The Lioness Tale brings the principles of the Enneagram alive, allowing inmates to engage with their own life stories at a deeply insightful and transformative level.

We need financial sponsors in order to bring this life-changing program to women in prison. If you are interested in sponsorship and would like to know more about the program, please contact Diane Pendola, 530-288-0308, thelionesstale@gmail.com

Donate to The Lioness Tale Prison Project

 

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