Be Still: Carla on Trauma, Resilience, and Quiet Transformation

Carla came home from prison in January of 2021, already a longtime meditator. Yoga and her own quiet practices had traveled with her into the dorm and back out again. What she hadn't yet found was Centering Prayer.

She came to it shortly after release, through a Quaker meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska, where people gather to sit together in silence for an hour at a time, week after week. The Quakers' silence felt familiar to her. Centering Prayer asked for something different. Her first response was that it was uncomfortable, and she kept showing up anyway.

In this conversation, Carla shares what brought her to the practice and what has kept her there, including the slow work of learning to sit with whatever surfaces. She is part of Outside the Walls, the community of formerly incarcerated practitioners who gather weekly Zoom sit in the silence together.