![\"group](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/group.shot_.jpg\")
Members of Women Healing Hearts Group at Yale School of Medicine\u2019s SEICHE Center, with Saunders (center, seated) in brown turtleneck.<\/p>\nMembers of Women Healing Hearts Group at Yale School of Medicine\u2019s SEICHE Center, with Saunders (center, seated) in brown turtleneck.<\/p>\n
Over her 18 years of marriage, Monya Saunders was routinely battered, pistol-whipped, and stomped on with Timberlands, she said. When her former husband started beating her in front of their young daughter, she stabbed him multiple times. She didn\u2019t kill him. She was incarcerated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in the jailhouse, the crazy house, the halfway house, the crack house, everywhere you could think of,\u201d Saunders told the 20 women assembled for the Women\u2019s Healing Hearts support group<\/a> at the Yale School of Medicine\u2019s SEICHE Center<\/a> for Health & Justice last week. \u201cI\u2019ve had DCF snatch my kids right from me. And here I am.\u201d<\/p>\n As lead community health worker and<\/a> critical case manager with the Transitions Clinic<\/a> since 2017, Saunders connects people recently released from prison with healthcare and social services, and conducts qualitative research with the SEICHE Center used to develop tools for improving the physical and mental well-being of women leaving incarceration. She educates incoming Yale nurses, social workers, and medical students on the stigma faced by the incarcerated population. She accompanies clients to court and to DCF, and visits them at halfway houses.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t just guide people home,\u201d she said. \u201cWe walk beside them.\u201d<\/p>\n For the last six years, she\u2019s been leading the lunchtime bi-weekly support group which she and Lisa Puglisi<\/a>, a Yale School of Medicine internal medicine doctor and addiction specialist, as well as Transitions Clinic director,\u00a0founded during the pandemic.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were in quarantine and we thought about the women in the clinic who were in active addiction or were in a domestic violence relationship and in lockdown with their abusers,\u201d she said. They created a Zoom group where the members checked in with each other and developed strategies to protect themselves, creating safe words they could text Saunders and Puglisi in the event they were in danger. \u00a0<\/p>\n Once the quarantine was lifted, the women of Healing Hearts started meeting in person. Its ongoing purpose, according to Saunders: \u201cTo chop it up about things that are going on, to share resources with each other,\u201d \u2014 in short, \u201cto encourage, enrich, and empower.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s going on, beautiful?\u201d Saunders asked a woman, as she went around the table, checking in with each member.<\/p>\n \u201cNot gonna lie, I\u2019m struggling,\u201d the woman said, the lasagna on her paper plate untouched. She was staying at a transitional house and had applied \u201ceverywhere,\u201d she said. She couldn\u2019t find work. \u201cI don\u2019t know if they saw my record, or what, but I always had a job, always. Never not worked. Even in jail I worked.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot to cut you off, but are y\u2019all familiar with the MATCH Program<\/a>?\u201d Tajuana Peoples said from across the table, referring to a training initiative that provides paid manufacturing skills to job seekers, including individuals transitioning from incarceration.<\/p>\n Peoples, a Healing Hearts OG who has fought addiction and done some jail time, was a recent graduate of the five-week training program. She said she had found a job with a business in Branford. \u201cThey help people like us, so don\u2019t feel like there\u2019s nothing out there for you, and once you graduate, they help you find a job,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are not going to leave you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly, I usually hate group therapy,\u201d said a woman beside her. \u201cBut the best thing I got out of shit like this is there are second-chance programs with corporations looking<\/a> just for people with felonies<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d Saunders said. \u201cWhen Yale said they were interested in me working here, I was like, \u2018Wait a minute. You know I\u2019ve been in jail?\u2019\u201d Then, she realized, \u201cwe are their degree. Who would you rather hear from? Have you ever been to prison? Have you ever been on drugs? Have you ever been dragged down the street? I\u2019d rather rock with somebody who\u2019s been there.\u201d<\/p>\n She turned to the group. \u201cYou all earned a degree. Maybe you don\u2019t have student loans, but you have knowledge, you have experience, you have overcome things that were designed to kill you, these employers see that. They see how motivated you are with a second chance to get things right.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey also get tax credits,\u201d someone said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s right too,\u201d Saunders said. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRight now I\u2019m just looking for stability in life,\u201d said another woman. She was chronically homeless, she said. She had been in an abusive relationship for years that landed her in the hospital. \u201cI almost lost my life,\u201d she said.She was in a custody battle.<\/p>\n