A week or so ago I received a letter from one of my students who is part of a prison yoga/meditation course. In his correspondence, he lets me know that he began his sentence when he was 20 and is now 60 years old.
In nine months he will be set free.
His question to me centered around the possibility of finding himself. He wasn’t sure who he was. In order to survive these past 40 years he has had to wear a mask everyday. It has been the only way for him to make it through the violence of living in prison.
He wondered what mask to put on to enter my world. He questioned his ability to transition. He would receive little or no help once outside. His prospect of finding a job are slim. I don’t know if he has any family or friends outside.
It took me a while to answer. I’m sharing with you my response because his question is one that is not merely one that an incarcerated person asks. We often hide behind masks to survive.
Response
I had a two part response. One of them my student will not see. It was a yoga class I shared some days after receiving his letter. His letter infused the practice.
The other, was this letter:
Dear John,
Your letter and question is profound. I don’t have an answer for you as you most likely imagined. How could I?
I can say that I hear you. I know I can’t understand deep in my body what it feels like to have lived your life. I can also say that I am very sorry that you experienced 40 years in prison. Your sentence points to a systemic violence in how we address human problems.
I recently came upon a word that has had me thinking. The word is nepantla. It comes from the Nahuatl language. The word is multifaceted; it literally translates to “Tierra de en media” or land in between.
Nepantla became the in-between space that native people created to survive the violence of Spanish colonialism which aimed to erase their culture and souls.
I mention this word because nepantla maybe a good practice for you to consider as you navigate your life outside the prison doors. The in-between land is sometimes not an actual physical space but one that we create internally.
It’s a place that reminds us of our humanity, our strength, creativity, and worth. The space is necessary when the spaces in which we navigate deny us those things.
Having an awareness that we can create nepantla within ourselves and in community with others allows us to survive and maybe gives us enough space to thrive.
I would imagine that in these 40 years of living you have not only used masks to navigate the uncertainty and violence of prison life, but I’m thinking that you have also created nepantla. The fact that you can write to me points to this possibility.
Reframing or re-storying is a critical tool we can use and should use if we want to enter nepantla. As you leave the prison doors, know that you have lived through an experience that many people would not have been able to survive.
As confused as you may be, you can’t be confused about the good qualities that have allowed you to come to this point in your life. Fear is inevitable. It is there to help guide us. We can use fear and work with it so that it does not debilitate us.
I would encourage you to reflect on the qualities that have served you these many years, name them, and begin the process of re-storying yourself (restoring). I hope that the bit of practice and wisdom that flavors this course is useful to you. Being able to name our emotions and nervous system states and then shaping these toward connection and creation are great skills to use as you close this chapter of your life and begin to live a new one.
Finding community as you reenter the world outside the wires will also be an important step. You may want to research local organizations of formerly incarcerated people. I’m not certain if you can do this, but if you can, this is a good moment to at least find out and reach out if possible.
The world I live in created the world you have lived in for the past 40 years. It’s the same world. Another world is needed and possible. You bring this world we both are in, as you step out of the prison, insights that are sorely needed. Take time to notice these. You have gifts to offer.
I look forward to your next letter,
-Carlos
I am not confident that my letter has been of any use to my student or if it has been of any use to you reading it. Words have limits.
I do sense, however, that this letter and working with incarcerated people, has helped me tremendously. I can more easily see double—noticing two or more worlds existing all at once. I can acknowledge the ease and privilege of my life, and I can come closer to having a very small glimpse into another world that is the outgrowth of the one that I’m in, a world where people are discarded, forgotten, and treated as objects.
Being able to move from one to the other as my student is actually going to do in nine months is daunting. He needs an in between space, a safe place to relearn this world. I’m not sure how he will do it.
I think of my own life and realize that I, too, am navigating many worlds. As I feel my body aging, I can see how the ultimate transition will be my last breath. Before that last shift, however, I know that there will be others. My student reminds me of this. How about you?
Your letter to your student moves me and sinks like a lead weight into my soul—feeling in my throat as well his isolation, the heaviness of the masks he wears—how sad that my world tortures his world. The solace you offer will move me later maybe, but the sadness surrounds me now. And, yet my mind repeats “We are not on our own.” joannie
We can’t be free until everyone is free. Interdependence feels like lead sometimes, especially when we have been taught that we could fly up into the sky on our own. I’ve learned that from you. Giant hug!