Keisha Nicholson started the Love Forward Foundation in 2015 as a grassroots movement to help the families of the incarcerated heal and grow. Today, the foundation’s "Creative Haven" in downtown Staunton provides a space for creative coping. WMRA’s Meredith McCool paid a visit and filed this report.
Founder Keisha Nicholson’s goal has been to create change with her Creative Haven.
KEISHA NICHOLSON: That's the art corner. Would you like to sit down and do some art? … If I’m sketching … you're not really thinking about what's going on, and it can just kind of naturally progress.
Keisha has created a warm and welcoming environment for everyone, but especially children and young adults with incarcerated parents.
NICHOLSON: It's very near and dear to my whole soul, my being. My dad did 26 years … and I lost my brother, my sister, my kids’ father to incarceration.
According to a Pew Charitable Trusts report from 2010, 2.7 million children had a parent behind bars. The Vera Institute of Justice reports that America's overall incarceration rate is slightly lower now than it was 15 years ago, although it has been trending upwards again since 2020.
NICHOLSON: As I became a mom and was able to notice the kids really are there to visit, but they're miserable. You can't talk to the kids that are beside you. You can't interact with, you know, other families. You're supposed to be there, you're supposed to sit, you really don't have that connection. But you see these kids. … Kids want to play, right? So it's like you really can't, because you're in a structured environment.
The origin story of the Love Forward Foundation is one of pen pals, connecting Keisha’s children and other children that they would see regularly during visitations. That evolved into care packages –
NICHOLSON: and then it just kind of blossomed into just what I have now, which is just this big Creative Haven.
As a licensed cosmetology instructor, Keisha –
NICHOLSON: Started with the hair, and then was like, okay, we can do some creative writing. We can do some painting. These little shelves are getting full of just different things. I have candles, jewelry-making things, Legos, tumblers you can make. We have our music corner, we do karaoke. … My son got into rug tufting. So he makes rugs. So all of these things really have helped us as a family, not just as individuals who had parents incarcerated, but my whole family.
McCOOL: Are there specific ways that how you have engaged in your healing journey manifest in what happens here?
NICHOLSON: My healing journey has manifested into just providing the space, because I can't cure people. That's the reality. … This is something that was manifested out of such a bad, traumatic situation, but what I can do is I can lead by example, and I can be candid and honest in my pain and suffering, so that I can hopefully prevent the next person from going through it because they don't feel they have a voice or a choice, and so they just self destruct. We have to, sometimes, we have to be that change.
Keisha’s latest effort is a collaboration with the Augusta County Public Library. In August, they hosted a Create & Skate event, where participants like Callie decorated decks and attached trucks, assembling brand new skateboards.
McCOOL: Can you tell me about your skateboard?
CALLIE: I got a unicorn that's super muscly, and then the cat with like a tiara of flowers, another cat with a hat and sunglasses.
Maddox, Keisha’s son and a skateboarder in his own right, meticulously applied grip tape to the boards.
MADDOX: I want to say I've been skating – like riding a skateboard – for about six, seven years. However, really skating, I've been only doing about two – two to a year.
McCOOL: So what does like, really skating mean?
MADDOX: Really skating? So skateboarding is just getting on a skateboard and riding. Really skating is getting out there doing crazy tricks … You don't have to risk your life to be a skateboarder, you know? As long as you're out on a board, you are a skateboarder – 1,000% – you are a skateboarder. As long as you get up every day and you say, “I want to get on my skateboard,” you are a skateboarder.
The same motivation that drives Maddox to “really skate” propels Keisha’s work with children with incarcerated parents.
NICHOLSON: I don't want to say it's a mission, I just really feel like it's just my life, that I just have to do this, like I don't even – I don't think about it anymore. I haven't thought about it for years. It's like when I wake up, I know that part of my day is going to involve me doing some type of work to help children who have a mom or dad that's incarcerated, because I, at my age, am still that child who is impacted by incarceration.
To participate in future events at the Love Forward Foundation’s Creative Haven, keep an eye on their Facebook and Instagram pages. For WMRA News, I'm Meredith McCool.
