#Empowered2Purpose: Proving the stories of Tulsa women are more than their worst chapter

(TULSA, Okla.) Now in its 15th year, Just The Beginning, Inc. has made it their mission to help those no one else will.

The State of Oklahoma has a history that includes injustice and oppression. That legacy continues to this day, reinforced by our justice system’s criminalization of women.

Just The Beginning has proven the stories of Oklahoma women are more than just their legal cases. Every woman they serve has lived chapters of adversity and hardship that delay but never dismiss their purpose.

For Maria Morris, those experiences include both parents having serious health conditions growing up. After her father’s death in high school, she fell into drugs and had her daughter taken away.

When a fire broke out and killed her daughter, Maria faced 15-20 years in prison. Not because she was responsible for the fire but because she could not save her daughter’s life.

With Just The Beginning’s support, Morris was able to process her loss and build a successful catering business that employs other justice-involved women as well as a non-profit in her daughter’s honor.

Trials relating to health are a common hurdle justice-involved women navigate. By helping women like Denise Hardeman learn how to love and accept their own bodies as they are, Just The Beginning is empowering women to become the best versions of themselves.

Hardeman lives with sickle cell disease, a red blood cell disorder that causes a constant shortage of red blood cells that often get stuck and block blood flow. She entered the Just The Beginning program with charges relating to anger that resulted from pain due to her disorder.

Just The Beginning has since helped Hardeman better navigate her pain and her life. She launched her own community initiative to match high school students and elderly people for their shared benefits and is a loving, actively engaged mother to her two children.

The bond between mother and child is a sacred one, and often the first to be negatively impacted by generational trauma, justice involvement, and systemic racism and sexism statewide.

Sha’Nika Finch filled her family void by selling drugs. After her arrest for trafficking methamphetamine, she faced 20 years in prison. Just The Beginning taught Sha’Nika how her mother’s decisions while pregnant and during her childhood may have impacted her later in life.

She ended up serving seventeen months in prison, but more importantly, learned how to have a loving relationship with her mother and her own child in the process.

Sha’Nika now works at Just The Beginning and launched her own business, Broken Crayonz Still Color, to empower local youth.

Oklahoma’s high female incarceration rate has made headlines for the last two decades. People of color are overrepresented in both state prisons and local jails. Past studies showed three‐fourths of the women had only a high school education or less, and two‐thirds had been physically and/or sexually abused as a child.

On February 24, 2024, Just The Beginning’s Empowered Women Leadership Summit will feature a moderated panel comprised of Morris, Hardeman, and Finch to discuss their experiences with Just The Beginning and what they found to be most transformative about the program. VNN's Brittany Harlow will moderate the panel.

Register as a table host or sponsor this year’s event here.

Just The Beginning is working hand-in-hand with justice-involved women to rewrite narratives and improve lives for generations. To see more about their work or get involved in helping women, visit www.justthebeginningok.org/.