Patricia Zimmerman
Mental health is often the unsung trauma of incarceration. Any mental health problems before incarceration are exacerbated by prison and then further exacerbated by the hardships of reentry. Without help navigating complex emotions and anxieties, the immense trauma of being in prison can overwhelm and prohibit individuals from moving forward on their journey.
That is where Patricia Zimmerman comes in. Zimmerman is the mental health counselor for Reentry Rocks, an organization devoted to helping formerly incarcerated individuals reintegrate into everyday life. Mental health problems can act as roadblocks in this reentry, and Zimmerman works with people in order to push through these roadblocks and move forward.
Zimmerman herself served 17 years in prison. She is long time friends with Sharon Richardson, the founder of Reentry Rocks. She has dedicated her life now to helping establish emotional and psychological stability for formerly incarcerated people. For example, she teaches how to understand one’s anger, essentially offering anger management classes with a twist that not only manage but validate and deeply examine one’s anger.
Zimmerman works to make sure that formerly incarcerated people are stable and can therefore pursue various opportunities. She offers what she calls “wraparound services” to her clients.
“Wraparound services [are] when we say we wrap our arms around individuals that come to our doors. That's exactly what we do,” Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman uses her own struggles with reentry in order to inform the way she coaches others. After 17 years away, Zimmerman began her reentry by asking a homeless man to explain how to operate a metro card. Though everyone’s reentry experience is different, there are common threads that many people experience.
“Reentry is something individual. Everybody that comes out experiences it a little differently. But I think the common thread for women and reentry is the difficulty,” Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman’s own story exemplifies this difficulty and the fractured relationships that often result from incarceration. Zimmerman’s son was just five years old when she left. Although there were many programs that allowed children to stay with their parents for a couple of days in trailers or attend boarding school nearby, Zimmerman soon discovered that it is impossible to truly raise a child from prison.
The first thing Zimmerman’s son told her when she came home was that he wasn’t sure he was ready for her to return. Zimmerman quickly had to recalibrate in order to view her son as an adult rather than the five year old boy she had to leave.
Though their relationship was fractured, Zimmerman tried to heal their bond and restore their relationship. However, while visiting her son at his new home in Texas in 2006, Zimmerman saw her son put his hands on his baby’s mother. This resulted in a physical altercation between the two of them. Zimmerman has not seen her son since then. Fifteen years later, Zimmerman has three grandkids, none of which she has ever seen.
“I thought I was doing something that was right, standing up for a woman. And because of it, it's caused this rift that we can't seem to bring back together,” Zimmerman said.
However, Zimmerman still believes she did the right thing, and coming to this conclusion has been immensely difficult. Though she knows her individual story is unique, she also knows that the emotions, the fracture of familial bonds, and the hardships she faced are not.
“These are some of the things that we deal with. But still we rise, because I still won't be moved. I still won't come off of that stand,” Zimmerman said. “I still won't be moved, I still won't be moved in my fight to help people like me, I still won't be moved in this work that we do.”
In her work, Zimmerman helps many people who have damaged relationships with children. Broken relationships with children and family members is a common thread in many stories of formerly incarcerated people, and Zimmerman helps others manage this wound.
“Many formerly incarcerated women tell [me] these difficulties that they have with their grown children, that they left when they were kids, and these are our relationships that sometimes never get mended,” Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman knows that not everyone has a good network or support system when they come out of prison, which can cause or trigger anxiety and depression. This is part of why she thinks working with Sharon Richardson on Reentry Rocks is so important.
“Reentry could really be a difficult piece to navigate, and to be able to have people that can navigate it the way Sharon [has] been able to navigate it is nothing short of amazing because the process in itself is absolutely complex,” Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman also feels that, although mental health does often get talked about, once it is discussed it is almost immediately forgotten. It is not dealt with. She sees this as a critical piece of reentry that is often skipped over.
“That's why we continue to see people go back to prison,” Zimmerman said. “We continue to see people in crisis, living their lives in crisis in reentry, not knowing what to do, not knowing where to go.
As Zimmerman likes to say, mental health after incarceration probably means mental health before incarceration. Years of trauma and mental health problems must be unravelled in order for formerly incarcerated people to move forward.
“So you have this thing that you go into prison with, that never really gets dealt with in the way that it should,” Zimmerman said. “So this means, once you're in reentry, you're compounded with the mental health issues from before the incarceration, coupled with the mental health issues that develop during incarceration, and then now you have to deal with what is going on in your life, after incarceration, with the added weight of all of the other issues that haven't been dealt with.”
Oftentimes people don’t know what to do with their consortium of mental health, behavioral, and psychological issues after exiting prison. The way Zimmerman sees it, the system is designed for failure as there are not enough programs in place to help formerly incarcerated people deal with their trauma. Without this help, many people are doomed to return to prison again.
“We haven't given people an opportunity to address what brought them into prison, and then we throw some more weight on top of that, and now we tell them, ‘Oh, you're paroled, go on out and enjoy your life. And people are like, ‘What life’? Like ‘What do I do now?’” Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman is completely devoted to her work, and is praised for her commitment by Sharon Richardson of Reentry Rocks.
“Pat has gotten in her car at 10 o'clock at night and has had to address some issues in person,” Richardson said. “By just driving miles away and addressing certain issues, we do the best that we can.”
Zimmerman loves teaching people about mental health and watching her clients from Reentry Rocks grow and learn to manage their mental health.
“I love showing people that you have the ability to get over and deal with mental illness,” Zimmerman said. “It might be in your life forever, but it doesn't have to affect your life forever. You have the ability to get up and over things.”
Abby Stern