The PrisonCare Podcast

A prison is an uneasy neighborhood made up of residents, officers, staff, and administrators. Compassionate people can learn ways to support positive prison culture from outside the walls. Join Sabrina Justison (whose son, J, is incarcerated) to deepen your awareness of often-ignored populations in our society. Educate yourself and your local community about practical ways to make things better on the inside. Learn to encourage and support incarcerated people AND those who provide for their custody, care, and control. Together we can work toward a better future where restorative practices and normalization efforts make life behind the walls better for EVERYone who must spend time there. Begin prison reform before a single piece of legislation is passed! prisoncare.org sabrinajustison.com

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The PrisonCare Podcast

Be Honest

July 10, 2023 • Sabrina Justison • Season 2 • Episode 56

Update on J, who is scheduled to be transferred to a new prison today, if all goes according to plan. Sabrina shares what he will face because of the transfer, and also makes available for the first time another of J's original songs, "Be Honest." Hear the story behind the song, learn how you can get a free .mp3 to add to your music library, and think in a new way about the things that simply must change in prison neighborhoods, for the good of everyone on the inside.

(theme music intro, “The Fool,” by incarcerated artist J. Bloom © 2022, used with permission)

“I want to be as relevant to you as you are to me…

…am I the fool who’s dreaming? I’ll wait.”

Support PrisonCare with a donation of any size:

http://prisoncare.org/community.html

Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT:
The Fool, original recording music and lyrics by J. Bloom © 2022.

For the full song, visit the PrisonCare, Inc. YouTube Channel:

https://youtu.be/cG8zHpQZDug

Support the show

This is THE PRISONCARE PODCAST! I’m Sabrina Justison, your host, the founder and Executive Director of PrisonCare, Inc. where we are committed to equipping compassionate people to support positive prison culture from the outside, because everyone on the inside matters!

“I want to be as relevant to you as you are to me…

…am I the fool who’s dreaming? I’ll wait.”

Support PrisonCare with a donation of any size:

http://prisoncare.org/community.html

Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT:
The Fool, original recording music and lyrics by J. Bloom © 2022.

For the full song, visit the PrisonCare, Inc. YouTube Channel:

https://youtu.be/cG8zHpQZDug

“I’ll wait. I'll wait until I break.”

================

Hello, friends.

This week’s episode will be a short one. I want to give you an update on J, but first I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of the encouraging messages you have sent. My inbox has been full of love and support, and that has been a lifeline.

I decided to share another one of J’s original songs with all of you today as I wait for that phone call where I will actually get to hear his voice for the first time since the chaos began 11 days ago. He had asked me, not too long ago, to make his song, “Be Honest” available to everyone sometime this summer, and this week felt like the right moment. I am determined to choose goodness in the face of pain.

So, please visit prisoncare.org/community.html to download a free .mp3 of “Be Honest,” if you like what you hear when I play it here on the podcast in a moment.

You can also listen on YouTube! PrisonCare’s YouTube channel is slowly growing, and I’ve uploaded the song there with the lyrics. Please share it with others, and help raise awareness about the needs in prison neighborhoods everywhere.

All I know since last week comes from a single phone call from J’s friend who told us that he was never moved out of the suicide watch cell in Medical. His psych designation had to improve by one level before he could be taken to Ad Seg - solitary - and because that didn’t happen quickly enough, they just continued to keep him in the suicide observation cell.

There were staffers who like him who were part of the crew assigned to watch him, and they got messages back to his friends to let them know that he was allowed to have books again last Wed., and that Wed. and Th. he had even been singing a little bit…a very good sign, if you know J.

Music grounds him. When the active symptoms of his mental illness flare, playing, singing, and recording are coping strategies he has used countless times over these last few years. So if he was singing, I have to believe that he was choosing to fight back against the anxiety and depression that came in the wake of being kicked out of the Incentive Pod and told he would be transferred to a new prison.

And that’s where we are now. He was scheduled to be transferred to a different facility today. Prison being prison, that may or may not actually happen as planned. But his friends were told that his property would be taken to him for the weekend so he could go through it all and be ready for transfer.

If you don’t know anything about this, being transferred to a different prison is VERY stressful. If you are a praying person, please pray for his peace of mind. If you are not a praying person, please hold him in your heart as he walks through these next days of change.

The biggest scary item is this: a new cellmate.

He has had such a good cellie for the last two years. He and Johnny have been like brothers, have gotten on so well and weathered various storms together. But J will now be placed in a cell with someone he has never met before, and that person may be a stable, respectful person, or he may be a walking train wreck.

Keep in mind, too, that cellies get locked in together the very first day they are introduced. That means sleeping a few inches from someone you know nothing about. That means having a bowel movement in a toilet a couple of feet from someone you do not know, without the benefit of a privacy half-wall. It means dealing with all of your super-complex emotions — fear, frustration, anger, loneliness, shyness — while locked into a very small room with a stranger.

The second scary item is: being unknown.

Five years in the same prison made J a known entity to a lot of people. He built a reputation for himself — no gang affiliation. Not a troublemaker. Not a thief. Musical. Hard-working. Funny, but not usually at the expense of other people. Physically strong, but not a bully.

Being known provides a layer of safety in a prison. If someone new enters your corner of the world and is considering messing with you to see what will happen, a reputation like J’s means that other people speak on your behalf without you ever even knowing about it. “Nah, J’s not like that.” “Yeah, J’s okay. He’s a little goofy, but he’s a good guy.” That’s the extra layer of protection J had at the prison he is leaving, and he will now enter a neighborhood where no one knows anything about him, and he will likely be tested.

There are all sorts of other stresses associated with a transfer. Routines are different. He won’t have his job to go to. He will be in General Population housing rather than incentive. He won’t have easy access to musical instruments. He won’t have a gym workout rhythm he can rely on to help regulate his brain chemistry. His property may not get handled right, and he may lose things temporarily or permanently. His access to commissary may be delayed, and phone calls may have to wait even longer than they already have. He will know that people on the outside love him and want to help walk him through this trial, but he won’t have any assurance that he can access that support. It’s incredibly frustrating to have the extra layer of “feeling the loss of your freedom” when your contact with the outside is cut off.

So keep him in mind, and know that I will update you again next week, when we will also pick back up with topical explorations of prison neighborhoods. If you want more connection to PrisonCare and J and me in real time, join our Facebook Group.

And now, “Be Honest.” Here’s the story behind the song:

Story behind the song:

In county jail, I was in isolation and had been for some time. But Cal, my most persistent halloo, finally came back after months of being absent.

He scolded the hell outta me. Up until his reappearance, I was constantly analyzing and finding faults in everyone else’s actions leading up to the crime while trying to ignore my own. That’s when Cal’s eyes dug into my soul and said, “But when you’re lying all alone, there is no one else to blame.”

He was right. And those words helped me understand that good intentions aren’t enough. Sometimes when bad things happen, we truly did mean well. But you can’t hide behind the victim role.

Reality is, even if we desired to do the right thing but were incapable of perceiving what it was, our actions still brought suffering.

I’ll also share the lyrics with you before I press play, and you can find the lyrics on the YouTube of the song and on the blog at PrisonCare.org.

“Be Honest” on YouTube: https://youtu.be/QcezRX0EjmY

“BE HONEST”

Used with permission on The PrisonCare Podcast.

LYRICS:

I couldn’t keep that promise, those words they fell apart

I just wanted to be honest, but I never had the heart

I said I’d keep you safe, I said I’d keep you warm

In the heat I’d be your shade, be your shelter in the storm

But this lion lost his mane when he ate from evil’s palm

Now these charcoal-colored veins are tearing out my arms

I couldn’t keep that promise, those words they fell apart

I just wanted to be honest, but I never had the heart

And you kept too many secrets, they terrorized the light

You said you would be honest, I guess you never had the mind

We spent out nights waiting for dawn, we gave each other every star

That country highway was our lawn, and we made our home out of that car

I dreamt I’d build a stage and there we’d always reign

Every night receive applause, counting roses every day

But there’s just this rusted cage, and the king and queen are slain

When you’re lying all alone, there’s no one else to blame

I just wanted to be honest

Oh, why couldn’t you be honest?

We could have saved our shallow hearts

When you can breathe, don’t look for me

That highway sleeps beneath the deep of yesterdays

Now I’m the one dancing in the sun

And those charcoal veins flow red today on a brand new stage

And now I know how to be honest and how to let go these captive stars

To myself I make this promise:

To speak my mind with a braver heart

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That’s it for this week’s episode. Thank you for journeying with us through the personal moments as well as our work for reform in prison neighborhoods at PrisonCare, Inc.

Thank you for getting involved in choosing goodness, even in the face of pain. Thank you for agreeing with me:

that catastrophe will not get the last word in the story,

that Corrections Staff will not be ignored, forgotten and unsupported,

that prison inmates will not be forever defined by their worst moment,

and that we, as a society, will not turn a blind eye to the unacceptable and unsustainable system that we have for incarceration in the United States.

To learn more or to contribute to our work, visit PrisonCare.org. Thank you, friends, for caring.