Thanksgiving

I spent many years living and working with convicts, criminals, and addicts…spent with intent; the intent of helping to lead people out of misery and pain. Not alone, but with others who found their way out. With all my heart, I believe that people lucky enough to overcome their misery and pain experience far greater extremes of bliss and joy than people who have no misery and pain I have known - - A woman who wrote in the autobiography she was asked to write in treatment “my nightmare as a child began the day I was born. My mother was addicted to heroin”. -A daughter who begged her mother to come out of a “nod” to just talk to her -A mother “nodded” out for 25 years, never considering the option of stopping – her grown son didn’t know her without heroin. -A man who has served 25 years for a murder in a drug deal gone bad; he has more character and goodness than most people I know. -A 58 year old woman, who remembers a rage deep enough at age 17 to kill her stepfather; she stopped because of the tears welling in her baby brother’s eyes. -A young man serving life for putting a gun to his crack dealer’s head; the crack dealer who pressed charges; the grandfatherly crack dealer who owns an apartment complex and sells crack to women and children. -A woman robbed, attacked, raped by three ski-masked men; 25 years later, she cannot be in a house alone at night; the nights forever changed. -A child with no childhood, born addicted to heroin – yet still innocent, naïve, later, so full of pain, taken out by five bullets in his chest. -A bright young woman who mutilates herself with sharp objects; to erase another pain far worse. -A man whose only dream was to have a television in his cell -A woman out of prison 21 years, haunted still by the memories of the times she ‘sold out’ morally to ‘survive’. -Men and women that lust desperately to ingest something into their noses, mouths, veins, eventually their souls– to escape the pain of their existence. I have known men and women, who lived on the bottom, grew up on the bottom –and then rose above the bottom, never to return. Thanksgiving – what a great holiday; it allows us a pause – to just be thankful! We all have a story that brought us to this day, this moment–stories of pain, trauma, betrayal, loss and grief, and as well, bliss, laughter, love. When we are able to overcome our story, integrate and cherish it, we will find profound peace of mind, gratitude, and humility. We cannot give thanks unless we are humble – we cannot give thanks without appreciating the bittersweet fact that somewhere, someone is worse off. Somewhere -A man, woman or child is dying of AIDS, or cancer – alone -A grandmother spends thanksgiving alone; her children lives are too busy this year -A child cowers in a corner, afraid of the beating to come -A mother cowers in a shelter; her eyes blackened after the beating -Unkind strangers avoid the hollow empty eyes of the homeless man who asks for a quarter -A man or woman is doing life without parole -And someone today, mourns loss that words cannot express… I am thankful for all I have learned, have yet to learn and for being able to share it with so many. I am thankful that I’ve had the privilege of dreaming for people who couldn’t yet dream for themselves. I am thankful for the gift of friends, and family. I am thankful that beneath the grief, I had twenty-five years with the love of my life. With all my heart to all of you– Happy Thanksgiving

Why this book?

Now that there is the absolute potential to get this book published, I've been advised that it's time to really start promoting it. Here are a few comments made by one of the many who have helped me to edit Five to Fifteen as to why this book. "Five to Fifteen is the detailed, inglorious, and riveting account of my descent into addiction and finally prison, then my battle to be free and to thrive. In part of the book, I describe the hardships and traumas – some bizarre and extreme - suffered by my parents and my parents’ parents, tracing some of the threads of my own inability to cope functionally to their choices and patterns of thinking and behavior. Not for the purpose of assigning blame or playing victim, though: my choices were and are my responsibility. Five to Fifteen is my story of trying to live, which very early on became a struggle; and ultimately, a fight to protect what piece of my soul might still be intact underneath layers of coping mechanisms. Fortunately, there were also magnificent times and events to remind me of life’s beauty."

I’ve heard the song of life a million times before, and as though compared to infinity, a million is practically none. I’ve learned to walk, to talk, almost to sleep. I’ve survived, and not survived – my skin, at times, no longer fit my face and I grew tangled feelings about talking and dreaming, my mouth and eyes open most of the time, yet I saw and said nothing until I came through, to the other side of the sky…the place where I learned that if I figured out a way to cherish the pain - to integrate it –then it became invaluable and precious. The same place where I learned that the vast realm of human emotion, the extremes of pure pain and pure bliss is relevant and in all of it, there are lessons to be learned. There were times I wasn’t and still am not sure what the lessons were, but I am confident that they exist. I garnered the strength to overcome the pain, but only after figuring out that I didn’t have a patent on pain, that pain is relative and everyone has it; albeit the details may differ between people, but mine is no more or less than anyone else’s. This realization afforded me compassion, empathy and solace, as well as the ability to laugh at the absurdities in life, the instances that make absolutely no sense, the knowledge that what seems unbearable today will be humorous tomorrow.

Glorious Chaos

The dream of being an author has been there since I a teenager. I had to figure out how to write myself out of reality. A reality of chaos, confusion, horrific abuse and beatings at the hands of my third stepfather, a mother who’s fear of him kept her from rescuing me, and three younger siblings who, no doubt, experienced helplessness at witnessing their sister slip that sixties subculture that was, both magic and madness. Fast-forward, fifty years…I finished that book, forty years in the making, and lately, find that I have nothing, and everything to say, but can’t write it out. (Writer’s block or reality block, not sure which) It’s a few days from a macabre massacre where a guy killed and wounded children, women and men who simply went to see a movie. Juxtaposed with such television fare as America’s Got Talent and the Olympics, the nearing football season (yippee for football!) and everything in between, I can’t write it out, can’t write out what my reality is now, at almost sixty years old, and young (young in my fantasy reality). I was able to integrate, cherish, and transform the pain, chaos, and consequence of my younger years into lifework that gave me heartbreak and miracles; both, which healed and gifted to me, such a rare and precious reality. I daresay, no other work or life could have been better. So, I’m semi-retired, with the finest circle of friends one could ask for, a complicated, yet loving, lovable family, and the love of my life, kicking it after almost 25 years of work, and I can’t write out the world in all its glorious chaos, or, perhaps I just did. Have a glorious day!

On sunsets, monsoons, prison, "the hole"- 1978 or so

For the next two years, I become intimately familiar with doing hole time for infractions of one kind or another. One particular point of contention came up repeatedly. That was about sunsets – or rather, being deprived of them. Sunsets were something precious, a big deal to me. Having lived in Arizona most of my life, during the monsoon season of the year, I had been privileged to witness the most exquisite on the planet; they took my breath away. It was rough losing those completely natural, free displays of magnificence, and my defiance on this issue resulted in my being sent to the hole three or four times. Officers Hatton or Valenzuela would announce across the yard on a megaphone “YARD CLOSED!!!!!” On more than one occasion, I resisted and declared, “No, and I’m not going in.” At this, the officers radioed for recruits and four- pointed me; in other words, I was tackled by four officers, who secured both my arms and legs, then dragged me to the hole. I was left there for fifteen days each time, punishment for refusing a direct order.

An excerpt from a day in that life....so long ago

Days and weeks passed. I remained unnoticed, provoked my own isolation and stared into the blankness of my living room. Rain. Soft thoughts and memories of convicts as they laughed, hands joined as they walked in the rain. Rainbow-skied reflections in steel prison puddles. We were, sometimes, ironically, happy. The beauty of some morning-bright sunrises tauntingly escaped my pen. I just couldn’t catch the words. Writers’ minds - be they poets, journalists, classicists - must be painful things, always, because of all that never gets written. Unspeakable, unprintable things occur in a day, or an hour, or in some unreachable recess of their mind.

Part 4-of that Love Letter

I don’t think the people I have worked with are victims, except of their own ignorance and the ignorance of others. I don’t think they should be coddled either. I know they can be reached. I have worked with people related to top correction officials, the Qualcomm family, major-league football and baseball players, actors, politicians, as well as those who are invisible on the back stairs of society, where poverty, crime, drugs, and violence have been their only reference point for living. More than anything, they have been regarded and labeled as useless, hopeless, non-persons to be ignored, written off, and thrown away. They need teaching, about society, about decency, about themselves. For some, this learning begins with basic hygiene. They need lots of tiny pushes from people who believe in their potential and value as human beings. For over twenty years, I worked with hundreds of men and women who marked time behind prison walls, day by day, hour by hour, and minute by minute. I listened to them as they struggled to make their lives mean something. I listened to their tears, their pain, their regrets, and their guilt; later, their recovery and movement into laughter, amends, and consciousness. I am ever humbled by this work that is filled with such heartbreak and miracles. The feat of realizing one’s potential is a journey that does not end when a man or woman goes to a program, or completes the aftercare; it goes on. Helen Keller said: “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.” May the men and women still incarcerated by prison, drugs, or the streets remain adventurous and daring enough to change. May they never forget that with freedom comes personal and moral responsibility. May the families who so graciously support them remain hopeful – yet not enabling. May everyone begin to understand how powerful and awesome is the event of a life changing is. May we honor their journeys and their pursuit of finding the good in themselves. I have always loved this quote: “The sky starts at your feet; think how brave you are to walk around.” And of the committed and courageous helping professionals who demonstrate that change is necessary and possible; they are men and women with voices; passionate about giving other men and women a voice. You are all so special to me and to be commended on your heroic hard work, your relentless pursuit for knowledge, and for just hanging in there no matter how hard it gets. So that about sums up my fourteen years with MHS; I cannot begin to express my gratitude for the way that I was accepted to the MHS family from the very first day on March 1st, 1998. When I say family, I mean that in every sense of the word. I have not, by any stretch of the imagination been a perfect employee; I made many mistakes, but hopefully, never the same one twice. When I had cancer in 2010- I was taken care of, loved by many individuals of MHS, and have no doubt that the power of that love enabled me to beat that cancer. MHS has been the highlight of my life and my career and I take with me so much that I have learned, experienced and gained both professionally and personally. Even more than the professional gains, I have met, worked with and formed relationships with some of the best people I have ever met or probably will ever meet. Every one of you is a hero to me. It is with much sadness that I leave, but also relief as I can finally reach the goal of spending time with my mother while she is still here. What a ride it has been! Thanks so much for everything. P.S. I will be kept on at MHS as a consultant Grant Writer when needed – so, if it turns out that I’m successful at it (which is my intent), I will be contributing to the ongoing work and success of one of the greatest companies around- how great is that!!!!

The Details Matter

One would guess that doing this work for over twenty years renders the thousands of stories one hears as redundant or commonplace. But it never ceased to amaze and startle me when I heard yet another. The details matter; the details of a young woman having both legs broken after being hit with a detached kitchen sink; the details of a five-year-old being labeled hyperactive, and being prescribed psychotropic drugs after he bit the school vice principal; the details in the face of an eighteen-month-old baby girl with absolutely no affect - no tears, no smiles, no emotional affect whatsoever – after never or rarely having been rocked, nurtured, or touched. The details of the woman who came in during the first trimester of her eighth pregnancy, having never had custody of the previous seven babies she’d carried; they were all crack babies and in different foster or adoptive homes. It was a tremendous effort for our team to convince Child Protective Services (and even ourselves) to give her a chance with that baby. The details of all those who went to treatment the first time, and never looked back; as well as the ones who tried fifteen or twenty times to get clean, only to overdose and die a week after leaving the program. The details of that one counselor who had been to prison, used drugs, and had four or five years clean under her belt when she was found trapped inside a car, burned beyond recognition, presumably at the hands of an ex-boyfriend. Her story didn’t even make the local evening news; she was poor, black, and anonymous to everyone but us. The details matter. I spent over twenty years nodded out behind the mask of heroin; five of those were in prison. I don’t regret those years. They are integral threads in the tapestry of my being. What I do regret is how many people were hurt. Throughout those years, everyone who crossed my path was a victim of my crimes, my addiction, my misery and disdain for life. My greatest struggle these days is the loss of youth - the physical loss, not the mental. Youth fades more quickly than one ever thinks possible, and it’s a journey in itself to slowly notice that you’re less able to do things like open bottles, see fine print, garden, wake up pain-free, and stay up past 10:00 p.m. The upside is the wisdom one gains just by virtue of experiencing life. Twenty-four years ago I was lucky enough to find a place – a safe place - where I become conscious rather than unconscious, began practicing good deeds rather than destructive ones. Twenty-four years, filled with all the human emotions I spent so many years trying to avoid or pretend didn’t exist. Before that, my problem was that I had not been relentless in trying to figure out my disdain for life and love for drugs; when I got to a program in 1986, I was a bitter, jaded, cynical dope fiend, facing twenty-eight years back in prison for felony thefts. I had crossed every line I said I wouldn’t, and drawn new ones of self-degradation. I was in the program to beat my felony cases, kick my habit, and get healthy enough to start another run. I soon found, however, this was not going to happen. I was forced to take a brutal, honest look at my life and begin accepting responsibility for it. I am not cynical or angry anymore, and I don’t think I suffered any great injustice. I used to think I had, but have learned that all of my experience makes me who I am. My life is rich with joy, sorrow, pain, laughter, travel, friends, the love of my life, and miracles in my work. It is filled with the wide, exquisite range of the human experience, each year better than the one before it. I work with those who are like I was; to pay the moral debt I owe to the universe, and prevent people from doing harm to themselves and others, particularly their children.

Love Letter-Part II

Working in prisons, both men’s and women’s prisons, was the most rewarding, profound work I have done. It was filled with heartbreak and miracles, reaching into vast realms of human emotion. My team and I worked in a place where we had to foster growth, warmth, and hope in an unwelcoming, harsh, ugly environment. We were witness to women coming to us with stories of male guards sneaking into their cells in the deep, dark night and raping them; women who had no voice, no power, no support. We were witness to women who started doing time on the wrong foot by perhaps saying yes to the wrong convict, and then becoming property - to be bought, sold, or traded for a pack of smokes. We were witness to the stories of women from all walks of life who had been beaten, broken, exploited, raped, and oppressed in places where they learned that to survive, one had to either oppress or be oppressed; there was no in-between. We were witness to the “black market” that came to be when smoking was banned in the California prisons, and tobacco was worth more than any drug on the yard. It created yet another context for extortion, blackmail, and violence. One woman in the program had convinced a younger, weaker woman to get her mother to smuggle tobacco into the prison. The mother got scared and decided to stop. The one who had been getting and selling the tobacco had friends on the outside threaten the mother and the rest of the family unless she continued to bring it in. The mother called the prison authorities, prompting an investigation. Her daughter - the younger, weaker one - was attacked in her sleep with a lock inside a sock, after which she was in a coma for over a month. The first year working there brought all the memories back to me, the things I didn’t want to remember about my own five year prison term, the haunting memories of the ugliness prison creates. This dynamic of the oppressed oppressing each other has always been so difficult for me to grapple with, both from the perspective of doing time and then working in prisons. Knowing I had been one of the oppressors, for years I told myself I had to do it to survive. But on a gut level, I knew there came a point when that reason no longer applied, that I had crossed over to a place of just being a cruel, heartless person joining the ranks of those to be feared, and liking how that felt. Perhaps this work was a means to an end, to balance the karmic debt I figured I owed the universe for all the pain I had inflicted. The team I was so fortunate to have accomplished a miracle by building community - the antithesis of prison - inside one. No easy task, to be sure. By Thanksgiving, three months into the program, we got permission from the Warden to bring in Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings; all the staff spent a week prior to the event preparing various dishes, and we served the women dinner following an incredible moving ceremony of thanks. By then, I had spent years working with convicts, criminals, and addicts with the intent of helping to lead people out of misery and pain with others who had also found their way out. With all my heart, I believe that people lucky enough to overcome their misery and pain experience far greater extremes of bliss and joy than those who have no misery and pain. And then we danced, in that same gym, where they had poured out their hearts, tears, and stories to us and to one another- a day one doesn’t forget.

Letter to MHS....the best place to work in California, the US, maybe the world. Will be posted in parts-though it may be long, the end is pretty cool. Part 1...

As I leave toward a new journey, a journey back home, back to my roots in Tucson, Arizona where my 83 year old mothers lives, whom I cherish and whom I feel urgent about spending time with before she is gone, how do I begin to describe a fourteen year career with MHS? How do I begin to describe encounters with literally hundreds of clients and staff members? A dear friend of mine, David Conn and I worked together at another agency prior to MHS; when he left there to join MHS, I asked him to keep me in mind if anything came up, and he said he would, and he kept his word on that. Six months later, he called me about a new contract that MHS got, SARMS, and offered me a job to help implement and design a new program with CPS and Juvenile Family Court. I and my boss started with two beach chairs in an empty office. From there, we built a program with four regional sites, over eight hundred parents, and fifty case managers. Parents, whose children were removed by CPS, were mandated to us for assessment and placement into treatment. Their children had been removed due to alcohol and/or drug use. The presiding Juvenile Court Judge, James R. Milliken, was instrumental in securing funding for the program. He was a unique man who for years had witnessed the long-term damage to children in foster care. The average time children spent in foster care was nearly five years before the cases were resolved. Judge Milliken told everyone who would listen that this was detrimental to their emotional development; he knew there had to be a better way. His goal was to shorten their time in foster care. Within five years, the time frame was reduced by half. As far as I was concerned, Judge Milliken was light-years ahead of his peers, a down to earth kind of man, and someone I regarded as a saint. Between his efforts and MHS, the program succeeded not only in shortening foster care, but in reunifying a great many parents and children, and saved the county millions of dollars. A year and a half later, MHS was got a contract to start a three-hundred-bed program in a women’s prison in Norco, California. I was offered the job of Program Manager. When I realized the magnitude of the job I panicked several times over the next few weeks. I had never done anything that big, and had never managed anything. The program was located in a double-wide trailer that was being built, but it wasn’t finished yet, so we started in a gym. The women were mandated to the program. On the first day, they came to the gym, a hundred-and-fifty of them; they were disrespectful and just plain pissed about being forced into the program. Prior to the program, they had pay numbers; so as a result of the mandate, they lost their twenty-or-thirty-cents-an-hour wage. The lessons and experience I had from working in a men’s prison before MHS came to bear. I knew that we had to do three things to get the women to buy in: one, target the “shot callers”; two, use our experience, strength, and hope (an expression borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous); and three, build community. Being in the gym presented its own challenges; it was August and over a hundred degrees with no air conditioning or fans. There were swarms of bees circling in and around us, and formidable acoustics. The room echoed badly. We had no desks or office supplies yet, and were doing intakes and assessments using cardboard boxes as desks. I evolved into the management role quickly, and was able to convey to the staff the notion of “community building” as a critical element. Truly, the staff was so amazing and courageous just to show up every day to such adverse conditions, resistance from the clients, and the prison staff, who made it obvious they were not in favor of drug programs. The clients were convicts first and foremost and they put us through constant tests. They cussed us out, ran games on us, and in general, gave us hell. But slowly, some of them began to wonder if perhaps what we were selling might be worth buying; a different life, one without the misery and heartbreak that comes with drug and alcohol use. A tiny glimmer of hope that one can get out of prison and never come back. Eighty percent of the women were mothers - mothers who had abandoned, lost, or given up their children, mothers who were deemed immoral by most of society because they put drugs and alcohol before their children.

On the Precipice of Something Precious

On the Precipice of Something Precious

While preparing for a move, back to Arizona, home, family, most of all, back to mom, I reflect upon her pure goodness. I think there comes a time in everyone’s life, no matter the extent of the damage of childhood that mom becomes the most important person in our lives again…this is that time for me. She is nearly 84, crippled with Osteoarthritis, Osteoporosis and who knows what else and this renders her in pain every day and it breaks my heart. She has never had much, and three out of her four marriages were brutal, or rather, she was treated brutally by ugly-minded men. Like so many, until I grew up-(emotionally), I blamed, resented and punished her for the things that she couldn’t have done any different –she did what her mother did, and her mother’s mother before her- I punished her with years of drug addled lunacy-let her watch me shoot a quarter million dollar inheritance into my veins while promising to buy her that house she would have never been able to afford (never did get that house). For at least the past ten years, I have longed to be with her, to spend time with her, to take care of her, and due to circumstances beyond my control, the housing market crash, my own battle with cancer, etc.; it has taken longer to get to her. Her name is Stephanie, Stevie for short….she is perfect in my eyes –she is the most tolerant, patient, and humble person I have ever known, at the age of 70-something, she out-danced everyone at our wedding and was a great joke teller. She loves to read herself to sleep most nights…likes Dancing with the Stars, Grays Anatomy, American Idol, and Ozzy Osborne, and loves Judge Judy. She’s slower now, sometimes it’s difficult for her to get the words out...or remember what she had for breakfast or if she saw American Idol last night. What I know is that she is precious and the thought of hanging out with her is just about one of the best things I could ever ask for in this life. So, if you still have your mom – cherish her – we only get one!

Stigma...Addicts....Women

The stigma attached to female addicts is vastly different than that for males, for a few reasons, the greatest being motherhood (or lack of it), prostitution, and abortion. (god, just look at the most recent republican efforts to ban abortion, birth control!!!). These are highly-charged emotional issues, rendering female addicts with far more shame and guilt than their male counterparts. Society is quick to single them out, judge, and persecute them rather than dig deeper and understand that an addict is an addict is an addict; and when people are addicted, their actions are involuntary. Their ability to choose is gone. Although they may commit despicable acts to feed their addiction, when one graduates from using to being addicted, his or her actions become a necessity versus a choice. This fact is lost on those outside the realm of drug and alcohol treatment, although, in recent years, there has been more education about addiction. One only need look as far as television, i.e. Intervention, Relapse, Dr. Drew Pinsky’s Celebrity Rehab, The Biggest Loser, and hundreds of other documentaries and popular movies. Even so, female addicts still face distorted and ill-conceived perceptions about their decency. In my experience, I have witnessed no guilt worse than that of a mother who has lost, abandoned, or hurt her children. Even when she begins to understand that while she was addicted, she was unable to make any other choices, the guilt consumes her.Working in prisons, both men’s and women’s prisons, was the most rewarding, profound work I have done. It was filled with heartbreak and miracles, reaching into vast realms of human emotion. My team and I worked in a place where we had to foster growth, warmth, and hope in an unwelcoming, harsh, ugly environment. We were witness to women coming to us with stories of male guards sneaking into their cells in the deep, dark night and raping them; women who had no voice, no power, no support. We were witness to women who started doing time on the wrong foot by perhaps saying yes to the wrong convict, and then becoming property - to be bought, sold, or traded for a pack of smokes. We were witness to the stories of women from all walks of life who had been beaten, broken, exploited, raped, and oppressed in places where they learned that to survive, one had to either oppress or be oppressed; there was no in-between. We were witness to the “black market” that came to be when smoking was banned in the California prisons, and tobacco was worth more than any drug on the yard. It created yet another context for the use of extortion, blackmail, and violence. One woman in the program had convinced a younger, weaker woman to get her mother to smuggle tobacco into the prison. The mother got scared and decided to stop. The one who had been getting and selling the tobacco had friends on the outside threaten the mother and the rest of the family unless she continued to bring it in. The mother called the prison authorities, prompting an investigation. Her daughter - the younger, weaker one - was attacked in her sleep with a lock inside a sock, after which she was in a coma for over a month.

Sometime around Winter, 1979

Dedicated to Sergeant Singh...and pot!

Singh Singh Revisited
The morning began routinely enough. We were rousted out of bed in the usual rude and loud manner. “BREAKFAST,” blared over the loudspeaker. They had made all meals mandatory at this new prison to keep better track of us. After a brisk walk in the cool morning mist to the dining room, then lining up for cold waffles over which butter refused to melt, we just drank coffee and went back to our house. By this time it had begun to rain, and Sergeant Singh was escorting us cattle-style, looking more and more like an enormous, floppy whale as the rain drenched her huge body. Suddenly, she snatched Michelle and me out of the line and whisked us off to the Security Control office, where she ordered us to sit quietly and wait. Mystified, we asked another officer what was going on, but he told us to sit, keep quiet, and wait until the “fat lady” came back.
When Sergeant Singh returned, she grabbed another officer and headed with him to our house, while Michelle and I, still groggy with sleep, trailed behind. She fumbled with the lock for several minutes when she reached our house, so we finally opened the door for her. Once inside, she made straight for the bathroom – focused, surefooted, and determined – to where a spider plant nurturing a baby pot plant in the same pot hung in stillness in front of the tiny window. She snatched the plant, declaring dramatically that she was confiscating it. Michelle and I had to bite our lips to keep from laughing out loud – all of this hysteria over a baby pot plant?
Sergeant Singh informed us she was writing us up, then commanded us to leave and get to work. The 115 would be processed and served later. After getting ready for work in our house, we returned to the Control office for passes to the recreation office. On this second trip to Control that morning, we discovered that the fat lady had been busy. There she sat at a desk, eating, looking very smug and satisfied. Surrounding her were six or seven other baby plants that had obviously been confiscated from various houses.
Immediately we saw how easy it would be to rescue the sprouts. Within an hour, a few of us managed to get all the baby shoots out of Control, back to our houses, and in water until we found their rightful owners; Sergeant Singh’s evidence for the 115’s was gone. When she found out, she looked like she was having a coronary malfunction, screaming at the two guards who let the plants slip right out from under them. How disappointing it must have been. All that great investigative police work for nothing.
With the evidence gone, we knew they had no reason to keep our spider plant, so we asked for it back. We were told they were keeping it for thirty days for observation. What? No way were they going to kill our plant! We waited until mail call, stole it back, and hid it in another room to ensure its safety from greasy, fat kidnappers. An hour later, Singh came running out of Control, screaming once again and demanding the plant back. We told her we had no idea what she was talking about, and if our plant was gone, it was her fault!

The heart will heal, tho it may have turned to stone.

Before prison and the chance circumstance of being regarded as a convict, I had mostly been a victim. Honestly, I don’t know which did more damage to my soul, being a victim or a victimizer. But in prison there was no in-between. You were one or the other. I got schooled quickly and almost too easily became victimizer.
My transformation to convict was most evidenced by a situation involving an inmate named Josie. There were one or two major dope connections on the yard – meaning anywhere in the prison, not necessarily just in the outside yard. Judi, Josie, I, and a few select others were privy to when there was dope on the yard, which was most typically on visiting days. During one such weekend, Josie made the mistake of letting either too many or the wrong people know who was holding the bag, and her punishment came swiftly and severely.
My role was to help pin while two other women tied Josie, using her own long hair, to the hot water faucet of a deep laundry sink outside dorm one. The women then turned on the hot water and left it running. I stood with the others, silent and unmoved, while the hot water scorched Josie’s face and neck, resulting in second degree burns. Her hair had to be cut off to free her from the faucet.
This and many other abhorrent events took me far away from myself, and my heart eventually turned to stone. It was at this point that I began to record my life on paper. I don’t think the reality of my five-year term hit me until about two years into it, but certainly, those tests that secured my convict status made it real. The tests would continue, I knew, but I was growing confident that I could pass them. Doing time was sometimes glorious, other times horrific, always intense. Strangely though, it was also like coming home, in the best sense of the word. My childhood had been mostly chaotic, violent, oppressive, and confusing; and as I adjusted to this bizarre place, it began to fit. To some extent, my time in juvenile prison for a year at age seventeen, as well as being on the streets doing drugs - a period of over ten years by then - had primed me for prison. For years when I spoke about prison, I recounted only the most entertaining vignettes and glamorized my time there. The harrowing details came out much later, as I had buried them deep in some remote corner of my mind, along with all the monsters of my childhood dreams.

It's Been 32 years....still going strong

The whole notion of institutionalization, criminal justice (a definite oxymoron) both comforted and nagged at me; twenty years in a system that renders one a survivor, or not. The weak became strong and conformed, conformed to the violence, the injustice, the inconsistencies and the little freedoms that one never considers until they are lost. Some died or did life on the ‘installment plan’. Either way, you’re screwed. War is hell, prison is war. What do you do when you’re all out of breath, and the world eats your heart out, piece by little piece and all you got is one last shot to get it right again?
Life outside was strange. I felt I belonged everywhere and nowhere. I was, and continue to remain, humbly grateful that I am free to pee whenever I want; eat what I like; watch the sunset, and be outside at night. Before prison, I had taken so much for granted. During the first two years out of prison, it still felt as though these freedoms were not mine to have. It felt as though the outside world had lived while I was confined and was still living all around me - but just beyond my reach. I couldn’t seem to make myself fit and often thought how much easier prison had been. Thoughts would come, that perhaps I belonged there. Perhaps Warden Poole was right; I could not survive as a little fish in this big pond.
I could never rid myself of that seed that the warden planted in my psyche of being unable to survive in the free world, rendering me a small fish in a big pond; her contention that I could only succeed as a big fish in a little pond. It may be the most profound statement ever told to me in terms of the long term impact it had on my perspective, particularly when I wasn’t making it. This ex-convict thing was no easy task. Surviving five years in prison necessitated making a life in prison; getting out meant reversing that process, the latter being much more daunting-that big fish pond.
I had managed to stay out of prison nearly long enough to assume I wouldn’t return there, but afraid that that assumption would turn on me in the midnight shadows of a bad dream and prove how one can never be assured of freedom. Today was tomorrow and yesterday, and it’s all the same fucking day at the end of the day. I smoked cigarettes, drank coffee, and believed I could write a book before I was forty. But the haunting evils of prison and heroin didn’t shake loose and I didn’t think that freedom was tangible. I was trapped in the web of hopeless, helplessness, so congested with life, and so tired of fighting to get educated while simultaneously self destructing.