The Second Chance Stoic

Founder & Facilitator

James E. Paulk II

James E. Paulk II co-founded 2nd Chance Stoic Healing with Lilly Wilbur and facilitates the practice at its center. The company delivers a peer-informed continuum he has lived his way into — specified for institutional rooms, not a catalog of consumer coaching.

Lived reconstruction, used as method

Life taught me to survive long before it taught me to breathe. I grew up in chaos, lived in addiction, and spent years inside a prison culture built on division and reaction. I bring more than twenty-five years of lived experience with the criminal legal system and prisons, including nineteen years inside. In 2014 I chose a different path and began the long work of reconstruction. Healing did not come from hitting bottom. It came from learning to stop running, stay with discomfort, practice accountability, and rebuild through spirit, mind, and body.

Lived experience is used as pattern and principle, never as graphic detail. The room is not a stage for war stories. Agency partners should expect a facilitator who has reconstructed a life from inside the system — and who will not perform harm for effect.

Credentials that hold in a facility

Training behind the work includes ISSA personal training and nutrition credentials and an A.A.S. with a psychology focus. Movement and food can appear as methods of regulation and self-respect. They are not what a facility is contracting. The credential door for institutional work is the Washington peer path (CPSST to supervised hours to CPSS). For 1115 reentry benefits, the company subcontracts under facilities or qualified agencies. It does not bill ProviderOne as a solo coaching LLC.

Pain was my Teacher. Discipline became my Path. Service is my Purpose.

How the room is held

Facilities need to know the container before they put people in it. Facilitators exist to protect the room and model the work.

• Regulate first — the room borrows the facilitator’s nervous system.
• Protect agreements every session: confidentiality, no aggression, no war stories, pass option.
• Teach briefly. Practice longer.
• Never force sharing. The pass option is inviolable.
• Lived experience only as pattern and principle — never graphic detail.
• End on agency, not on shame or inspiration theater.

We are not here to become someone else. We are here to stop being run by the old automatic reactions.

Co-founder, Operations & Strategy

Lilly Wilbur

Lilly Wilbur co-founded 2nd Chance Stoic Healing with James E. Paulk II. She leads operations, strategy, and institutional partnership development.

Her background includes nearly two decades with the Washington Department of Corrections — community corrections, reentry navigation, organizational change, and strategic analysis. She is the institutional bridge: facility and system fluency so the continuum is specified for the rooms agencies already run, not adapted from consumer coaching.

She does not facilitate the participant room. James does. Lilly specifies the work for directors, superintendents, clinical leads, and reentry coordinators — schedule, complementarity, and a clear next step.