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.