You are stronger than you know. I only burden your ears with that cliché because when it gets hard, you must know, it is possible to get out of the pit. The difficulties you face will make the beginning of the story that you write for yourself. The time of letting others write your story in exchange for temporary comfort has ended.
— Mitchell Adair, Snake River Correctional Institution
Recently, we’ve spent time inside a couple of youth facilities, having been charged with delivering some of the content of the Letters to a Younger Self project. Last week, we visited a couple of groups in Tillamook and one at MacLaren. It’s a bit intimidating. Tracy likes to say she has no problem going into a maximum-security prison, but standing in front of a bunch of teenagers is scary. To be clear, the Oregon Youth Authority (OYA) houses youth up to age twenty-five, so there were quite a few over eighteen. The lifers and other men with long sentences in our groups (many of whom spent time at MacLaren) see themselves in these kids.
Earlier this week, we went back to the minimum side at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, the women’s prison. I played a solo concert in the chow hall, and we used the time to gauge interest in starting the writing workshop again. We talked with them about what we had been doing with youth and where we have gone. We learned that some of the women also spent time in OYA facilities. Lifers or not, they also see the connection from where they were, to where they are now and have the same impulses to try to help in any way they can to steer the younger generations away from the inside of an adult prison.
The Letters to a Younger Self project has picked up steam and keeps showing us additional directions to go with it. Frankly, we didn’t have much of an idea of how it would go. We had hoped for, but didn’t expect the kind of responses we received from some of the youth. Yes, absolutely, we had some kids who showed their disinterest and may have even answered some of our questions or questions from our writers at OSP with all the smart ass-ery that you expect of a 16-year-old trying to rebel from authority. But we also had serious deep thinkers who are already on their own path towards turning things around for themselves. They wrote serious comments and questions back to our writers at OSP, connected deeply with some of the excerpts of the letters, and asked for additional guidance that we took back to all our writing groups to answer.
At OSP, the ground zero of the project, receiving questions from the youth turned their enthusiasm and sense of purpose to another level. This week’s workshop was filled with a brainstorming session into the “what’s next” for the project, including some delusions of grandeur anticipating a nationwide roll out. Big thinkers. Big hearts. There has always been purpose in the lives of the people we know in our prisons. We were surprised to learn early on how much help groups from the inside give to others outside the walls. We shouldn’t be surprised at this point that helping youth any way they can to avoid ever meeting them inside a prison would be so important. There was a lot of enthusiasm, determination, and caring inside that classroom for something outside of themselves.
In fact, the caring and concern is directed in all directions, unsurprisingly back towards Bridgeworks Oregon. It has happened more than once, and again this week, that one or more in our group expressed concern for our burnout (really specifically Tracy, they like her more) because they understand the massive undertaking this is, not just the letters project, but all the workshops, running this website, writing grants, etc. Honestly, it seems a bit strange to be cared for by people who we know have a much harder life day in and day out, but that’s just how they are.
Next week we will have a new theme, again based around input from our folks in the workshops. You’ll hear a song by one of our men at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton that he wrote about parenting from prison. It starts us down our new theme of Near and Far. Luis sings about being too far from his kids. We really love some of the writing we are getting on the theme and think you will also.
By the way, the things that the 16-year-old wrote that were only meant to provoke us – we took those to our group at OSP (we don’t share names and keep all of it anonymous) along with all the other writings from the MacLaren session. That 16-year-old is going to be getting some writing back, words of encouragement and hope, from men who recognize their younger selves in his attitude. | DJW
