Vision Keeping

     Connie Shaver grew up in Lawrence Kansas, a wonderful college town, and attended the University of Kansas where she earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Arts and a Master of Arts in Teaching. 

     After working in the Welfare Department in Kansas City, Missouri for two years, she moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and earned a Masters Degree in Social Work. 

     In 1977 Connie began her work at Horizons, Inc., a non profit, community based treatment facility for Women in the Criminal Justice System  in Milwaukee.   She became Executive Director of Horizons in 1987 and grew the facility to provide a full spectrum of cutting edge treatment services for justice involved women including residential, outpatient, family support, HIV prevention and a health curriculum for women in the justice system.   She also began teaching a curriculum called Awake and Inspired:   Creating the Life you want.  Many of the ideas in her posted entries have come from this curriculum.  

     What Connie and the staff of Horizons were successful in creating was a very powerful and palpable sense of community.  The staff at Horizons was dedicated, under her leadership, to providing the “walking wounded” who entered their doors with the respect, love and upliftment for which they had been searching. 

     After 32 years Connie left Horizons in the spring of 2009.  She is taking some time to create the life she wants and allowing it to emerge from the inside out.  This is the basis for the blog that appears here.