I’ve experienced valuable self development in relationships with incarcerated individuals.
This subject has been in the periphery of my thoughts for a month or two, but I’ve noticed a reluctance to publicly share this particular point of view.
Which means I’m socially anxious around this. For good reason, this is a complex and nuanced subject, it’s like asking to be misunderstood. And, has all the markers of a neon sign, indicating that it might be valuable and viable to go, and grow there.
David Foster Wallace is well known for pointing out: “the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones hardest to see and talk about”. Feels acutely accurate to me as I seriously consider publishing this muse I am currently typing.
If I’m straight with it, I’m inviting you to evaluate your role in the dysevolution of society, toxic culture and community, through abandoning the incarcerated sector of society. And to consider that you might be missing out on valuable self development. A line of internal inquiry.
When I was a teenager, the only sibling I was close to (a step-sibling) robbed a bank. Which inevitably led to his segregation from society.
This personalized experience with the judicial process was a kind of formative education that I think most would rather not have (our aversion is part of the problem), and parents would shelter their children from. Which my parents attempted to do, but this was something I wanted to be close to, I’m not easily persuaded against my own ambition.
Even in the naivety of my youth, this formative judicial education illuminated the dysfunction of the system and the harmful effects it has on society.
I can’t unsee it, though a 30 year long obsession with crime in America gives me ample opportunity to try, and only seems to confirm this bias.
For the majority his nearly 10 year long incarceration, we engaged in weekly phone conversations, and I’ve got a sizable stack of written correspondence too. This was a decade long education in which I was mostly taught through and by my brother's willingness to oblige my curiosity around incarcerated realities. I’ve learned more than can be contained in an essay; about myself, him, our family, community, crime and punishment, the behavior of our species. All through closeness to what society would have me avoid.
An unpopular opinion painfully initiated and developed;
how American families and communities respond to the wounded and criminally reactive among us contributes to the perpetuation of crime and dysfunction within our societal systems.
Law abiders are part of the problem.
Families are part of the problem.
Communities are part of the problem.
Our primary problematic response, abandonment.
One need only look to judiciary statistics to confirm this particular American predicament.
Back in 2015 a baby girl I never knew, died. Her father was the kid brother of one of my close friends. Eventually both he and the mother served time for child endangerment.
I asked my friend for her little brother’s prison address, and then I asked him if he needed a friend to self develop with. We exchanged monthly letters for several years, and had a sort of book club thing going that enhanced both of our lives. I was processing a radical leaving of my own imprisoned state within my family and religion, in the felt sense we had a lot in common.
We also discussed the dangers and consequences of exiled isolation within the incarcerated community.
I watched his family restore some hope and do better than mine, but I still witnessed community abandonment and the total isolation of other inmates he observed.
We are abandoners.
I’m a survivor of toxic relationship with a violent criminal, my teenager years were fraught with energetic manifestations of internal conditions. (Wrote all about that here.) So lest I'm not clear, I’m not advocating self development and community responsibility through active relationships with perpetrators that have caused direct (or even indirect) harm that has left the nervous system dysregulated and traumatized. (I‘ve never had incarcerated contact with this particular individual, and I likely never will.) I understand the complexity in what I’m suggesting, I in no way intend to hurt those who’ve been personally impacted by crime, or suggest a negating of what is necessary for wellness.
And, I’m still posing this line of inquiry as a valuable one to pursue for many of us.
Do you know someone who is or has been incarcerated?
Maybe it’s your dog breeder's cousin?
A kid you went to highschool with?
Or someone you shared an employment container with?
Maybe closer to home like a neighbor or a friend?
Perhaps it’s actually someone in your family or you’ve been a victim?
Think on that person, for a moment.
What if any connection did/do you maintain with them?
Why or why not?
And if by chance, you are someone who, like me, maintains relationships with people incarcerated, how many others do you know that do the same?
Maybe it’s a TV personality?
I recently caught a glimpse of the financial scandal surrounding the Chrisley family, and that got me thinking about Utah local Jenn Shah. A little bit of research revealed her husband is instagramming some of her thoughts and experiences around entry into incarceration. I found within these vulnerabilities a claim that she was permitted to bring in a clear bag of toiletries, but not permitted to bring a contact list that contained the emails and addresses of those she wished to stay in contact with.
Weaponized isolation as punishment.
We are hardwired for connection and the business of imprisonment knows this, the American system is built to demoralize and destroy the soul and psyche. A narcissistic punishment based system that’s not as much about public safety as they’d like the public to think it is. The they being those we are in community with, that create and uphold the system staying the way it is. If it were about public safety, there would be a considerable investment in psychological rehabilitation, that’s where the criminal behavior derives from, and also where perpetuation stems.
I’ve actually been discussing the glue that holds relationships together, with my previously incarcerated brother. We’ve been theorizing convenience as a factor, applied to any relationship as an exploration of what works and what doesn’t. It’s got me wondering if it’s the barriers created through segregated incarceration that exceed our limitations for relationship effort? But then again how inconvenient is it to send a book directly to the prison from amazon, to take a call when it comes in, or write a letter? It’s psychological for us too.
The taboo nature of this topic within society as a whole, seems pretty indicative of our abandoning tendencies.
Do you talk about the incarcerated? (Known or unknown to you.)
If you do, is your talk a bunch of gossip, judgment and slander?
If you actually know someone incarcerated, has their name just disappeared from your lips, imprisonment that generates a taboo non-existence?
We don’t even know how to speak about wounded humans.
Or wounding humans wounding humans,
the incarcerated sector or otherwise.
What if we swap the criminal for the sinner? And consider how interchangeable those two words really can be.
America was built on puritanical traditions, naturally the prison system is shored by the same perceptions and behaviors of othering, these tendencies come from and are alive in religious law.
As an ex-mormon, I’ve got loads of personal and observatory stories in which the sinner was exiled, isolated, and abandoned by family and community, even with only a perception of the occurrence of sin. And with no consideration for the nuance within.
To draw on the examples already in play, while my brother was robbing banks I was having sex with a violent criminal. My brother and I experienced almost simultaneous abandonment from family, and community. For the breaking of religious and legal laws.
Decades later, I am keenly aware of the fragility of community relationships through the ‘sin’ of apostasy. As are many walking alongside me in a collective mass exodus from toxic high demand religious systems.
Have you any idea what emotional, energetic, relational and therefore community issues arise from abandonment wounds?
Crime for one.
Abandonment is in many ways the root of the cycle.
Boomer divorce rates have left a palpable and damaging imprints on gen-xers, and therefore society. Generally speaking, boomers are emotionally immature and weren’t able to co-parent effectively, many of the dads from this generation chose an AWOL approach when it came to parenthood, and many of the mothers were circumstantially and emotionally unavailable.
I know this wound personally, for the entirety of my childhood I saw my dad once or twice a year. I lived with my step-dad who I watched abandon his kids. My husband from 8 years old on, saw his dad not at all.
The psychological data now surfacing illustrates the harsh realities that permeate the adult life of familial and community abandoned children. I’ve got a library full of literature that studies it, often the root of addiction, and toxic relationship behaviors.
Not all the abandoned commit crime, I know.
Trauma responses vary, and those that don’t employ criminal behavior are usually found to be chronically ill, and have major relationship or lifestyle dilemmas.
The evidence is there, I dare you to look into the lens of reality. We are more alike those criminals than not.
Have you witnessed the ‘step inside the circle’ project? Might be a good place to start educating more specifically. A striking behavioral science visual of how the majority of incarcerated individuals had abandonment wounds prior to lives of crime.
Gabor Mate, in his book “The Myth of Normal: trauma, illness, and healing in a toxic culture” defines a toxic culture simply as, “unsuitable for the creature it is meant to support. Or worse: dangerous to their existence.” and he spends a good measure of the book illustrating just how toxic our species wide culture really is, but particularly in America.
The darkest corners and the most isolated sectors of our society are a striking demonstration of the toxic culture we are all participating in.
All of this to say,
my intuition is inviting me to invite you, to consider how you’ve abandoned the incarcerated sector of society, and how this under and un-develops us as a community, and perpetuates crime.
I love you so much, because you are me.
Audrey
Looking for ways to reconnect with an incarcerated friend or relative.
Write a letter.
Exchange a call when viable.
Ask about their experience.
Invest time and attention outside of convenience, go out of your way, be intentional. Move through the painstaking process to become a visitor.
Send books directly from Amazon. (find my favorite list of text to send here)
Do some research, and explore this internal line of inquiry.
Tap into your human life-force creative energy, and affect change.