Verne, 70

Verne, 70

Meet Verne…

I have stabbed five or six people and immediately after each one, I felt no guilt or remorse, almost as if I were a psychopath or a person not conscious of wrong or right.

Verne, 70
Incarcerated: 28 years
Housed: California Health Care Facility, Stockton, California

I have stabbed five or six people and immediately after each one, I felt no guilt or remorse, almost as if I were a psychopath or a person not conscious of wrong or right. I did many things I am not proud of, but back then I gave very little thought. This is how I existed for thirty or forty years in and out of prison.  This was my life when I vaguely understood the way thought was processed. I came to prison in 1994, and for 26 years I maintained that same unaware demeanor. Then, in 2019, someone sent my name and number to the Syda Foundation, and in four years, they have vastly expanded my perspective and guided my understanding of my own mind.

Now please allow me to share with you some of my new perspective. I now understand that no one’s perception creates my reality except mine, and my reality is what I believe to be true. The way that reality is manifested into one’s experience is through his or her emotional excitement of that perceived belief. I now understand that you will receive no more out of your mind than you put into it, and to change one’s outlook, the thought perception has to change. Now I know what emanates or vibrates through one’s system and then reverberates back out through the aura is what is instilled.

This is what I have been instilling and its emanation is my total transformation: appreciation, kindness, compassion, thankfulness, harmony, humble humility, gratitude, gratefulness, loving understanding, friendship, respectfulness, spreading joy, inner laughter, consideration, humane kindness and last but not least – loving all with no exception. I have learned through the foundation that the meaning of a word provokes an emotional feeling. Then it reverberates back out in the form of energy where it is felt by all other forms of energy which is what connects humanity. Now that I have this new understanding, the energy flowing through me is totally positive. Now a flood of emotion has begun to surface, and remorse and regret have entered my conscious awareness. I feel sorrow for my past, and I ask for forgiveness everyday. Now I am a much better human being. The real reward is the positivity I am receiving from other people. That is the real blessing. Now I know I can return into society with a positive outlook and I know that positivity creates positivity. 

E, 42

Meet E…

I’ve learned in prison that I was both emotionally and mentally off-balanced. Worse were the similarities between prison and my childhood.

E, 42
Incarcerated: 18 years
Housed: Sing Sing Correctional Facility, Ossining, New York

The common aphorism, “You don’t know what you got until it’s gone,” rings no truer than with my kids. I am cuckoo about them and my nieces and nephews. They are all the motivation that gets me through each day. They are also the sources of my trepidations that sometimes keeps me up at night. Beholding the faces of my children, hearing their voices, their laughters and giggles, and those of my nieces and nephews is like the thirst-quenching glass of water on a hot summer day.

I’ve learned in prison that I was both emotionally and mentally off-balanced. Worse were the similarities between prison and my childhood. Prison can be a place of liberation for some, while for others it’s the total opposite, a place of frequent mental, physical, and emotional beatings. Similar to my childhood, here neither my feelings nor anything I say matters. The truths are considered to be lies, and the lies told about me are considered to be gospel; the caretaker is the abuser and the bully. I didn’t have a place of refuge while growing up, no one that I could trust and rely on for help; therefore, when needs or hunger came, which was regular, or when physical, emotional abuse came, I just accepted it, again, similar to prison.

Other ways that prison reminds me of my childhood is lack of help, and hunger. For reasons I will never know, other than two couples when growing up, people were unwilling to help me. In prison, all of my pleas and requests for help throughout the years were either completely ignored, or I was told they couldn’t help me. Child or adult in prison, it does not matter. Finding help has been an issue since childhood. For example, when I was younger, I lived with two family members. My late half-brother, who was my caretaker, was not around and my cousins, who never offered me any assistance, not even to bathe me or wash my clothes, which I didn’t know how to do then. Like everything else, being hungry in prison is no different from being hungry when I was growing up. It was and is a regular thing. My first prison-hunger incident, I was so hungry that I ate my nails to the flesh. I ate my own flesh! I didn’t realize it until I saw blood on my shirt and dripping down from my fingers. Even stranger still, I can’t recall tasting or drinking any blood, which I know surely had happened. Another time, I was so famished that I became delusional. For several minutes I kept opening and closing an empty food storage bin because each time I was convinced that I saw a piece of white bread in it. There never was. 

The things I went through as a child, while growing up, are still happening now. Thus, my trust in people is extremely limited. From 1-10, ten being a lot of trust, I am between 1.6-1.4. I am trying to trust because I need to survive; and all relationships require a level of trust. For a very long time I thought something was wrong with me. For people to have treated me the way they did. I reasoned then that I must have done things to people for them to treat me so badly and I was just swimming in denial; I didn’t want to take responsibility for my wrong doings. Now, I know I was not treated poorly because something was wrong with me, it was the hand I was given. I hope and strive for a better ending for my kids and myself.

Clayton, 31

Clayton, 31

Meet Clayton…

I learned to face my past head-on by writing, speaking, and accepting all that happened, I could have done this so years ago and prevented a life sentence.

Clayton, 31
Incarcerated: 6 years
Housed: San Quentin State Prison

As I crunched the paper, twisting it into a cross to place into my dad’s open casket, I never assumed I’d be made fun of for it. The bullies at school made sure to remind me of the open casket legacy which my father left behind after his overdose on heroin. While their dads were at ‘Meet the Parents Day’ all I had to present was a picture of a tombstone. Though their dads were important, I was belittled to live up to the curse my father left behind for me. Whether reality set in or not, one thing I knew for sure, “Like father, like son.” Addiction plagued my father. He passed it on to my siblings, and they passed it on to me. At age 16, my sister told me that by the age of three,  I was exposed to meth’s intoxicating high. Through tears she told me, and through anger I went forward. This admission was all I needed, to dive deeper into my progressing addiction. Years into my life sentence, I realized something. Rather than face the fact that I am resilient, I withered away behind the trauma. The young man who stroked his father’s cold, pale skin one last time.

Now, with nothing but time on my hands to think, I made a huge discovery. I found the source of my anxiety, fear, and discomfort stemming from the traumas of my childhood. Every day we choose, and these choices define our lives. I chose to perpetuate the trauma and the pain I carry, by passing it on to others. Just as I learned to face my past head-on by writing, speaking, and accepting all that happened, I could have done this so years ago and prevented a life sentence. Had I been strong enough back then, I would have spared so many undeserving people from so much suffering. I realize today that I am my father’s son, and my Father is God. Through the transformation which has occurred while walking in the fire, I will be able to reach others still trapped behind the tempest of trauma. To all the people I have harmed over the years, I owe my transformation to you. I will honor your lives everyday, as I continue to learn, grow and change; as I work to leave behind a new legacy on this Earth.

Ashley, 60

Meet Ashley…

This is a new experience for me to be so open about who I am in prison and out. There will always be haters, but I don’t really pay any attention to that.

Ashley, 60
Incarcerated: 24 years
Housed: San Quentin State Prison

This is a new experience for me to be so open about who I am in prison and out. There will always be haters, but I don’t really pay any attention to that. I’ve served 24 years but will go back to the Board for a suitability hearing next October. I want to go home. I want people to know that I’m not a mean person. I’m kind, understanding, and sympathetic. I’m not a mess or running around causing drama. I would also like to put it out there that maybe if people would sit down with one of us and ask questions they would have a better understanding of transgender people. I’m not a threat to anyone. My childhood was happy, including a white Christmas’ in Dayton, Ohio. Things were so nice, that is until the steel plant closed down. We had to move and came to California. My world was turned upside down and at the age of seven I was molested by my father and Uncle Bill. I was told that I had to dress up like a girl and do things that no child should have to do. This went on until I was eleven. That’s when I started getting locked up. It was a way to escape the pain. There’s one person here at SQ who has been there for me and whom I really love and care about. Her name is Sage, I call her my daughter and she is always here for me. We take care of each other. Women are more sympathetic and understanding and have always been there for me.

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