"My Unexpected Healing at San Quentin"

https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-justice/2024/12/grip-my-unexpected-healing-at-san-quentin/

In 2007, I visited San Quentin to see a transformational program for prisoners that was created by my friend, Jacques Verduin. The program was called Guiding Rage Into Power—known as GRIP. The men who participated had all been violent criminals, some had murdered, many had been gang members. They were “lifers.” And they had all been incarcerated for many years, some for decades.

I was a working journalist; I sat and listened. My reporter’s curiosity and detachment often were replaced by a kind of awe. Listening to and watching the men talk about their crimes, their traumas, and their struggles before and after they had been imprisoned, I was moved by the depth of their honesty and the deep healing that I was witnessing.

Through long discussions, journaling, and hard work over months, they transformed the rage that had destroyed their lives and the lives of their victims and families into something positive, solace that gave their lives meaning. I found that the circle had a grace, serenity, and honesty that transcended its walls and the crimes the incarcerated men had committed.

I never imagined that I would return not as an observer, but as a member of their “tribe.”

In late September 2019, a month after my 26-year-old son Ben took his life, I returned to San Quentin.

I had often thought about my visit there, years before and had come to understand that the group of men there had created a sacred space. A place where a powerful common bond was forged by sharing the details and stories of the pain and the trauma their actions had created for their victims and their families, their own families, and themselves. From that fire of honesty, vulnerability, spirituality, they found comfort—even love.

*snip*