MY RESTORATIVE JOURNEY

Jammy is the daughter of Hector Luis Torres and Glorisel Caraballo, both Puerto Rican migrants who settled in Boston, Massachusetts (occupied land of the Massachusett, Wampanoag and Nipmuc people). In her young adulthood, she learned about the identity intersections and complexities that comes with being a Puerto Rican on the mainland. Learning that in her body ran blood of African Slaves, Taino peoples and colonizers from Spain, she began to explore her connections to all of those peoples and how they show up in her body, and in her mind. Soon enough, she embraced her indigenous and African roots but struggled with learning about her Spanish roots and how she may have inherited anti-blackness through her bloodline. While working to unlearn this, as a Behavior Support Team Lead in a public k-12 school, she was introduced to the insidious, disproportionate impact of punitive school disciplinary practices on Black and Brown youth. Experiencing body shock and vicarious trauma due to learning about the school to prison pipeline, she came to embrace Restorative Justice in her search for eradicating punitive responses to student behavior and healing. 

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