Unlocking Emotional Freedom Behind Bars: A Grief Recovery Story

The process of this group and the information about that was my conversation with Amanda. Amanda is one of the sponsors here for another self-help group at California Men's Colony that she's a participant in a facilitator as. And she brought this program and was very passionate about grief recovery. And obviously, being in the system for 21 years, my curiosity peaked at what is it about grief and grief recovery?

What is that concept? And over the years, I've experienced several grief and I've seen grief in many forms. And I want just out of curiosity, I want you to see what this method and what this practice is about and the content of that. So I was given an opportunity to join this group last year and I was able to participate in this group.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that infoteek.

And we kind of talked in the pre-interview. The goal today is for me and Amanda and Mona to kind of be quiet and we want to hear from you, Teek. Because again, you have a really important, unique perspective that the world needs to hear, right? Because just like we talk about day in and day out, whether I'm at a baseball game with my kids, whether I'm at the airport, everybody passing by me has a bunch of unresolved grief, right?

And as you know, that is no different in the prison system, right? Everybody who's incarcerating, every guard that works there, everybody has unresolved grief. That's where we are all, you know, the same in that. But I want to hear from you again, kind of what you have seen both in your personal story or what you've seen from a fellow inmates, right?

The specific things that you guys are dealing with in incarceration. So let me ask you this, when you first attended the group, right? I'm imagining your idea or belief system around what grief was versus at the end of the group. Did that change for you?

Well, great question. So the concept of grief, as we were told in our earlier years, the foundational years, was grief is about death, loss, and people, person losing a loved one. The concept of grief for me transformed as I took this group. It made me understand, it made me realize that grief is in various forms in our lives, as little as losing a, your freedom is being grieved at, losing your friends, not having connections, not being able to use a phone call as much as that within the institution.

And those little things that we think they are small, they compile over time. And if it's not processed properly, that grief stays within ourselves and it manifests negatively into our day-to-day lives. Well, yeah, I couldn't agree more and that's very interesting that you talk about that, right? Because that was when I first learned about this method and about grief specifically.

That was the one that really popped out at me as well. There are a lot of hope streams and expectations that we have in life, right? And when those aren't met, we grieve those things, right? And so I can't imagine how many unmet hopes, streams and expectations people who are incarcerated have, right?

I don't think any of us start off thinking, hey, this is going to be the plan for us, right? And along with those lines, those hopes and dreams are aspirations for these folks. And many of these folks, including myself, do not realize that in a day-to-day life, if you have a class here that you have to go to or you have a program or something that you have to do, and suddenly you're not able to do those things, that has impact on a personal life. That is a grief.

Yes. Living in an institution, if they're subject to a surge or subject to any kind of disciplinary measures, those are necessarily not, you know, notice as losses and at the same time they are grieved. Yeah. They compound because there is a loss there of something or someone.

And many times, those events were discounted, including myself. For years, I have discounted those events. I have discounted the impacts of those events and they have been unresolved until this group. And as I was taking this group the first time and after that, being a facility, a mentor and whatnot, it allowed me to explore those areas in my life.

It allowed me to not only explore in my life, but also share with my fellow incarcerated population of the negative impact that it can have if it's not being resolved. Wow. Yeah. That's very powerful.

And, you know, here's what I'll say is a lot of the time I think that people, again, it doesn't matter. Like, let me give you an example. When people say, let's, I want to work with the veteran community. I want to work with soldiers, right?

The kind of assumption is that, hey, we're going to work on something that's combat related that happened in the war, right? And people may very well want to do that work. But the truth is by the time that individual got to boot camp, they were already filled with loss from childhood, right? And we continually talk about people who go to prison, right?

We have a lot of unfinished emotional grief before we even get there. So I love that you're talking about the grief that it can accumulate in the prison, right? But we also, right, I think we want to highlight that a lot of folks make bad choices to go to prison because we have a whole backpack full of grief, you know, beforehand. So it is kind of both, right?

So you're walking in with that baggage that has been over time not being resolved, whether it's childhood issues, abandonment, family dynamics, societal issues, finances, what not. You're walking in with that baggage, which has not been resolved. And now, while you have that baggage that you have not been resolved, because we haven't been taught how to process a grief, we have only been taught. How to accumulate things and good for us.

Now, we have not been taught how to process loss from our childhood, most of us. And if we do not, unless and until people are educated in this process, the concept of grief is very one dimensional, and which is not, it is so many different forms. So as I said, when you walk in with this baggage of your history and the reasons for your incarceration, and now, with that baggage, you're accumulating day-to-day grieves, day-to-day rejections, whether it's not making groceries on time. If someone living in here is a time slot, you have a day for this person to go shop for their groceries.

As little as not making to that grocery line is grief-free. It's a backpull on an individual, and it can accumulate, and if not being processed properly, it can manifest negatively in our environment. Yeah, thank you for that. And, Tiquet, what are some of the ways where you see that manifest negatively in the environment?

All right. For example, a few months ago, they had a situation where few individuals were not able to get a grocery shopping here, and on their allotted days, the frustration of their, I mean, they were obviously grieving, but how it manifested was anger. Yeah. The feelings underneath it, I mean, anger is a secondary emotion, and at the same time, the root cause of that anger was the fact that these people were not allowed to have their groceries.

With that grief, the anger manifested among themselves, and they had a display of measures, they had a pipe as a result of them not being able to shop. So that is one example of the grief showing up negatively in people's life, and then health aspects, blood pressure, and so many underlying issues that are manifested as a result of these little griefs that have compiled over time. Right, Amanda? Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, one thing that I want to say here is that for, for all of us, in our trainings, what we, what, what we ask people to imagine is, imagine me or Tiquet or Amanda or Mona, and we're just little, little kids, okay, and we start putting losses in our backpack or imagine a T-catal, and we are little, these little beings that can process emotions quickly and rapidly, right, like my young children can just process emotions as they have them almost in real time. And my job as a parent is just help facilitate that.

And as we get older, society tells us, no, no, no, no, stuff that down, don't show that, right? And so we put a cork in us, and what, but we're a T-catal. And, and imagine life and life events are just a fire that keeps getting hotter and hotter, but we keep putting that cap in there. Okay, well, what's going to happen if you keep building pressure in that T-catal us, and then you have nowhere for it to go, nowhere for the steam to go.

For some of us in society, we just maybe we overreact and we go, whoa, what was that? Why, I didn't mean to yell at you like that. Well, that's, that's steam bursting, right? And, and, and look, if we put enough loss in us, the extreme bursting of that T-catal is violence.

It's suicide. It's, it's domestic violence. It's anger, right? And it, again, we're all guilty of this.

It just depends on how big the explosion was. And so like what T-quat you're saying is for some of us, right, from an early age on, the explosion for us was taking an action of anger, right? And, and that manifested into, into violence. You used a different word than I used, but I love what, what the word was you used and of course I'm firtigating it now.

So if it jogs your memory, let me know. But, you know, a lot of the time these feelings we have, these, these expectations that we have that aren't met, I, I, I expect every week I get, you know, I get to go do my shopping this day and for whatever reason that doesn't happen. That's an expectation that isn't met now. And that is, that hurts, right?

That does not feel good. But everyone around you and ourselves will minimize that. Oh, it's not a big deal. But inside the body, it is a big deal, right?

And if you keep stacking those, then we go to our old behaviors, which is I'm very frustrated. And if no one hears that I'm hurt, I will show you that I'm hurt, right? And so we talk a lot in this method about, let's be a heart with ears. Let's hear the other person where too much in society, we're busy minimizing it.

Oh, it could have been worse. Oh, you'll get that tomorrow. You get to go shop in tomorrow. Oh, no big deal.

Right? Well, who's not being hurt in that situation? And if you stack too many of those on somebody, then they'll make sure you hear them, right? And so that's kind of what I see in your example, there, Tick.

Yeah, I love, I love you. I mentioned the phrase heart with ears. You know, that's something that's another concept and it's such a beautiful term. And as we manifest that in our lives, we are truly being the heart with ears.

And we are giving folks an opportunity to just simply speak and we are just there to listen. You know, many times the unmet needs and I love the fact you brought about the unmet needs. These needs have to be, when they're not met, they're manifesting to those actions. And that's why I love when you said, yeah, you can't hear me.

You don't know how I feel. I'll show you how I feel. Yeah, I love that when you say that. Yeah, yeah, thank you.

And let me ask you this, because I'm very curious, in terms of, one of the things I love about this method is how quickly within an hour or six or eight, but very quickly, as long as you set it up to where everyone is in a non-comparative, non-judgmental environment where people are not minimizing each other's pain, you know, people really start to support each other, right? And I can imagine a more important place than where you are, Tick, in terms of, hey, let's learn how to support each other, let's humanize each other, let's see each other's pain so we can understand we're all grieving at 100%. And I love, again, I love how that happens just in a hotel room somewhere. So I can't imagine kind of the power of that playing out, you know, Tick in the correctional institutions.

How has this allowed inmates to, you know, kind of, has it helped them come together more, kind of give each other more grace? Like, how has the bonding of the group helped out? So how it works is, for me and my experience, I've seen it, I've gone through this, it's the message. It's the message to let people know that you have been heard.

Again, the heart with ears. And once you have that trust, once they know, once I know that there isn't a judgment, there isn't a corrective action, there isn't a corrective measure. So if I have, for example, if I have a problem and I'm going through a, I'm going to a situation and I want to share, I'm sharing because I wanted to share that, not necessarily that I'm sharing to get advice for that. So having that trust factor and in a correctional setting, in this environment, you use the word grace.

There's many times that we give a lot of things that we have received a lot of things. The most important thing in my aspect that we fail to give and receive is grace, is grace to ourselves and to others. One has a story. Every life matters and everyone's story matters.

And when you give that time to this person and people to just simply say what they have to say and you're just there, not being judgmental, not being waiting to respond, but just to listen. Then it opens up the door that wait a minute for all these ears. And I'm speaking for my own example, for all these ears, I was misunderstood. For all these ears, I was not heard.

For all these ears in my youth, in my young experience coming to this country, grieving, grieving the loss of my motherland. You know, we're three of us right here and we are all from different countries. And there's that grief as well. The smells of our land, the smells of our food, the culture, the people grieving that aspect and not being able to understand and not being able to be understood is something that rich grace provides.

Yeah, beautifully articulated, Tick. Amanda and Mona, I'd love to bring you into the conversation at this point because again, you really started this all, right there. And Tick's not doing this work and the other inmates aren't doing this work unless you guys had the courage and the tenacity to say, hey, we need to bring this to these guys, right? So can I hear a little bit about that journey?

Because again, I'm just so grateful that you guys are doing this work and I'm so proud of you guys for the work you're doing. Thank you. So as Tick mentioned, I have been involved with another program called Freedom to Choose since 2006 and I've been a grief recovery certified facilitator since 1993. Wow.

So I went into my antenna up, yeah, yeah, Russell, Russell, train the way back. So I always had my antenna up for people who are grieving and so when I was at the Freedom to Choose workshops, I was sitting listening to people going, they're grieving, they weren't saying I'm grieving, of course, but they were grieving and I have to get this in here. I have to get it in. So after many years, in 2018, I was at a weekend workshop at Balli State, President Chao Chilla and one of the guys who I knew that knew that this was my dream and he said, there's the warden.

So I said, could you introduce me, please? So I went to the warden and I said, I understand that you have somebody, you have to tell somebody who lives here that they've lost a loved one every single day and he went. Like that. And I said, and I want to help you.

So I got the green light to go in it was just like that. I actually, I had a call with Lois and the warden and some other people within the prison. So then luckily, it was right before our conference in 2018 and I got on the microphone and I said, I've got approval to go into a prison. I need someone to come with me.

I turned around, literally turned around and there was Mona. Me, me, me, me, me. That's so cool. Me, me, me.

I used to have telling you that. That was what happened. So if you had it. So thanks to our conference, I wouldn't have had Mona coming with me.

So Mona could talk a little bit about all of that, what happened with her. So real quick and I want to hear from you Mona in one sec, but I'm just curious Amanda. So I love that approach, right? You kind of put together as a warden, he is having to make really, he's having to conduct really difficult conversations on a daily basis, right?

And so you kind of approached it from that lens. And then after that, we all, and then kind of again, mention, hey, I bet these inmates could really benefit from this as well. Is that kind of how it went? Well, I was, I was salesperson.

I knew what I was doing. Yeah. I, you have a problem. I have a solution.

It was a simple. Yep. Yeah, it makes, it makes total sense. Okay, cool.

And Mona, it's great to have you on as well. I actually absolutely remember. I remember both of you at that conference, right? And we've got to have another one soon, but Mona, it's great to see you.

And yeah, I'd love to hear from your perspective, kind of what this, what this experience has been like for you, bringing grief recovery to all these guys. Well, thank you, Cole. You know, all my life, I love to watch shows that involves like detective shows. And in this shows, they always show the part where people get arrested, but it never goes beyond.

And I've always been concerned about what happens when they are in prison because there is a lot that goes into that aggressive behavior. It's all the childhood, unresolved grief and all of that. So I was already very much interested to be able to help these people. And when Amanda brought it up, I was, I just jumped at the occasion and it's an amazing, amazing experience.

Cole, it's just, yeah. People have to do it to realize. Yeah, I can't imagine. Yeah, I can't, I actually was thinking like I would love to come and participate in one of your guys' groups.

I would love to be a part of that and talk to the participants and be there as well. Like again, I just love that you guys are doing this. I also want to do just a shout out, Amanda, you mentioned her, but I want to do a quick shout out to Lois Hall. She was really a pioneer of getting this in the Ohio State prison system.

And we've had other people. And again, if I don't mention you by name, my apologies, but we have specialists doing this work. I just actually interviewed someone. I don't think it's aired yet, but she does this work in the women's prison in Montana and has been and really helping out ladies incarcerated in prison there.

So let's see, where do we want to go next? I want to hear from you guys. What are the insights that you guys want listeners to know, Tick? Like what, if you, if you could talk to decision makers at different institutions, what would you tell them?

How would this benefit their institution? Okay. So thank you for that. And I mean, beautiful Amanda are sharing your story and Mona.

Thank you so much for your shares. To your question, to the folks within the systems and institution, human lives matter. And what happens is many times, the folks that are within the system, whether incarcerated people, staff, civil staff, or whatnot, men and women, they all have a story. And with that story, they all have grief and life.

Life happens on life's terms. And if those instances and those moments have not been resolved and not being dealt with grace and love and compassion, then the trauma continues. The cycle is not broken. People come into the system as incarcerated men and women traumatize.

And then as they say, hurt people, hurt people. And they continue hurting people unless and until they have been understood. And how that grace and how that value is being shown is through compassion. And by giving that and to the institution and other administrative areas is to understand that people have unresolved grief in their life.

And when these moments and these griefs are not resolved, they tend to manifest into negative actions. And so that is kind of my message to them is to allow individuals to share their stories to be part of their stories and not to minimize their losses and not to discount their losses. Yep. Yep.

And I'm curious. I wonder, I'm going to, here's my hunch. But again, tell me if I'm wrong, Tick. Out here in society, we have people who could use this work, but they're not willing to do it.

And then you have other people who at some point are willing to do this method. And you know, because again, this stuff is scary stuff, right? And we're going to look at this stuff to unpack things that we've been maybe bearing for 10, 20, 30 years, right? How, what, what, what have you heard other participants say about the work?

What's the feedback you've heard? And also I, and what's in mandin, Mona or, or Tick, jump in? But my second question is what is kind of the process in terms of who gets to participate in this work? Who gets to, you know, attend the group?

Are people receptive and willing to do it? Or is it kind of like, I see, which is, yeah, some people are willing to do it and some people aren't even willing to open that door. Like, how, how does that all work? Can, can I just say something there?

So we have a wait list. We've always had a wait list. Oh, wow. From the very first session we did Valley State Prison, we had a wait list of 200 people.

Wow. Oh, yeah. That's incredible. 200 people. Right now, I think we have a wait list between the two sessions.

We had a wait list of 50 people. And now we probably got more than that. So I think what you're saying is a man, if you're out there and you're a specialist, right, get in touch with Amanda, get in touch with Mona, learn how to approach the decision makers at these different facilities and institutions, right? And show them what, what Amanda and Mona is doing.

Show them this podcast with TEEK because again, it is an absolute population. I mean, TEEK, again, I would imagine that at times you can actually feel the grief when you're walking through the holes there. I mean, it is all over us and it is around us. And there is no shame in recognizing that there is grief.

Right. You have to be able to give out this. And I like the way how Amanda said that, you know, how the groups are easy. And it is because of the participants' curiosity and willingness to change.

So to your question, when you said what do we say to the administration and other institutions and what not about promoting and having this practice with us, is the fact that most of these people, most of the incarcerated population and folks in here are curious as to what got them here. Everyone is searching for the lies in their life. Why did that happen? What led to what?

And that's where the change begins. And it's a change is a lifelong process. What grief recovery method allows us to look into ourselves, to look into it, allowed me to look into myself to see which parts of my life, what events and what happened that led me to do this and then led me to do that. And so that is one of the things.

And as far as the waiting list of the process of people coming in, a lot of people are having that desire to change and have that ability and willingness to participate. And what happens is once they have willingness to participate, the dynamic of the group is being stable because of their intention. They come in with their intention to learn something different. Yes.

Yeah. Such an important factor, Amanda. So speaking of enthusiasm, you don't know this, but I got a letter a couple of weeks ago from a guy I don't know in a prison I've never been in, wanting grief recovery books because his celly, as they're called, that you remember Matt Tick. Yeah.

Matt had gone to that prison and told him about grief recovery and he went, I want it. So I sent them two books that was back in January. Then I got another note from him two weeks ago saying, what can we do? We want this here.

Right. So there's a meaning. So, you know, I mean, it's the ripple effect of it just going and this is just because one person transferred to another prison. But there are, you know, there are only, that's why I'm speaking to my fellow grief recovery specialist to please do this because there are eager hearts waiting for this work, eager hearts.

Now, the other, now that's the good news, the not so good news is funding. So this has all been self funded that we've done so far. We've done five programs that have all been self funded. And we asked for donations.

I did write a grant to the California prison system which didn't get approved and I understand that the money is dried up now anyway. So we're just doing it by donation basis. I had a birthday fundraiser last two Mondays ago because my goal now is to, at the very least, is to get the grief recovery handbook into every single California prison library. That's something that I can do.

Oh, I love that. Yeah. But, yeah, but so, but I, but by the way, the other thing to is I do have, I did inherit a nonprofit. So if for donations, people can, if, if, if, so anyone get in touch with the, if they're raising money, they can do it on a, for a 501 C3 and get, get, get, get donations that way.

And Mona is on my board as well as the person who originally introduced me to the warden at Valley State Prison, who's now home. So it's full circle. Oh, that's great. And we'll make sure Amanda to link to, to your site or however people can donate to this cause.

Like we'll, we'll absolutely look in the show notes for, for that if you're inspired to do it. Also a shameless plug. If you're listening to this and you're inspired because either maybe you are previously incarcerated or you have friends or family who are and you want to help, we have seats remaining in our certifications for, for the remainder of the year. I mean, we got seats in certifications.

If that is something that you want to do more and more people are finding this podcast, they're getting inspired to, to help people in all different communities. And so that is available. Um, let's, yeah, go ahead, Mona. I just want to mention that this program because it is so unique.

And one of the things that we do that sits really well with the incarcerated is that we are the one who start sharing. Yes. About our losses. And I don't think any pro, any other program does this.

Even the psychologists that go there, they don't share about themselves. But once we do that, we, we immediately built that trust with them. And I, um, it's just great. Yeah.

And that, that's a great point, right? It's like we, we always talk about if you are going to be a leader of this work, if you're going to facilitate grief recovery, you have to be able to go first. You have to will be willing to go first, right? And that's what Mona's talking about.

And that is where we bond as groups as people much quicker than you do in anything else I've ever seen, right? I mean, time and time again, my job, I fly around the country. I go into hotels with total strangers, people from all different backgrounds, men, women, different religions, different countries, like all the stuff that you covered, Tick earlier, right? And within three, four hours, as long as we're all telling a little bit about ourselves and a little bit about our pain and we set the ground rules properly, we get to be human beings and cut through all that societal BS quicker than anything I've ever seen, right?

And that's where again, I haven't seen it myself, but I just have to believe that you guys in a very difficult situation are coming together in these groups in prison, more so than probably any other group could facilitate that. Tick, I don't know if you know a part of my story, but I'm sober and I belong to a 12-step group and I have for a long time. And what I loved about that is that we all go there and there's singleness of purpose, right? No matter how I voted and the guy next to me voted or he's rich and this person over here isn't, none of it matters.

It's like, hey, we're all working towards not doing this thing, not taking a drink one day at a time. And then with grief, it's not different. It's like, once I see Amanda's loss and I see Mona's loss and I see Teaks loss and we're not comparing and we don't have a pecking order of whose loss is the worst, then all of a sudden we all just come together and we all start supporting each other, right? And so again, I can't doubt that there's probably some real serious connections happening for guys that attend the groups together, you know?

It's the commonality what Mona was speaking and it gives us courage. So as a participant, when I first came in and I heard Amanda and I heard Mona and you're right, there isn't a pecking order. There isn't a competition that my grief is lesser than hers and whatnot. It is we are all grieving.

The message here is the entire world is grieving. Yes. It is inevitable. It is the loss is part of life.

How are we going to process that? And while these ladies come in and share their stories and their experiences, it gives us courage and it gives us an opportunity to open ourselves up to strangers. As the strangers are coming in into our circle and providing this for us, it builds a connection that is extremely important in the system and is day and time in California or in America and around the world, understanding human beings is the first step to understand another person is to have that connection, have to build relatively, as you mentioned about the A and the 12 steps. It does not matter who you are in the grief recovery method in that room.

It does not matter how rich or how poor or what is your orientation, what's your denomination, what's your culture, it does not matter. What matters is the grief is real. What matters is that they are valued. What matters is everyone in that room is valued and heard.

And heard. Yeah. Great. I love that you ended with that, right?

It's a key and it sounds so easy, it's a lot harder than people think, right? Everybody wants an opinion on your story, Tika or Amanda, right? And everyone can't wait until you stop talking so they can give you their advice or say it could have been worse or hey, I know exactly what you're going through. Let me tell you mine.

It's like if we can all just remember that most of the time when people are having an emotional experience, they just need to be heard, right? And please don't minimize it. That's another thing that sounds very simple and everyone listening goes, oh, I never do that. But when you actually deal with children, let's say for example, if you pay attention, watch how much you try and minimize their pain when they have little moments of pain and hurt.

Watch how quickly and easily it is for you to try and minimize that. Again, it's done out of love, but it's just ignorance, right? Because it's like, we can't do that. And so we can't do that for each other.

Amanda, I saw your hand. Go ahead. Yeah. So speaking of that, so we do surveys at the end.

And if the groups and one person just wrote, I now see how my first loss affected the rest of my life. Wow. Wow. That's it.

That's it right there. That's it. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's why we are so obsessed with this stuff as specialists because it is an epidemic, right? So look at the rates of incarceration or the rates of divorce or the rates of drug addiction or the rates of you name it obesity, right? At its core, it's a bunch of loss that totally went missing, diagnosed as grief, right? It's, it's as simple as this.

And if you're stuck on the term grief, you just use emotional incompleteness, right? You're either complete with an event from your past or you're not. You're either emotionally complete with mom and your childhood with her or you're not. You're either emotionally complete with your dad or you're not, right?

And so that is unresolved grief. But if you think of it more as wow, I just keep thinking about that memory or you know, that person comes to me and my dreams a lot, right? That's incompleteness. That's what we can help each other with is help getting complete with what is emotionally unfinished.

Teak, let me, let me ask you this because I was kind of naive. I'm, I almost hate to admit this, but when I was very new in grief or recovery, I was talking to Lois about how the, how the grief or recovery work, you know, goes in prison. Because again, like I said, she was already implementing it way back when. And I thought in my mind that everyone is going to choose the loss that, that got them to prison, right?

And I thought that the relationship graphs and the loss was all about, you know, whatever that event was. And she was like, Cole, most of these guys are working on mom. They're working on dad, you know, they're working on these pivotable, these core relationships that we're all unfinished with, right? And so it's not all about doing that, you know, that work.

Now again, if that work is on someone's heart and they want to do it, you know, then, then, then they have that ability to do that as well. But, you know, again, I didn't quite understand at that point. Oh, no, we all just have a bunch of loss scattered through our lives and the big ones, usually some of them are the ones that happen early on life. So, Tick, without getting into, we want to respect everyone's anonymity.

So, without getting into names, can you tell our listeners some of the relationships that you've heard, again, very vague, but some of the relate, like who are prisoners working on? Are they working on those core relationships? What, you know, parents, siblings are like, what is some of the stuff you've seen guys choose to work on? I personally have experience guys working on their friends, a relationship with their parents, a relationship with their ex and a significant other.

And even an ex-girlfriend or things of that nature. So, I've seen them work in their relationships with their family, not necessarily having to do with the reason why they are incarcerated. That tells me that the root cause of that, the cause of that pain and grief, has initiated and has manifested in a different relationship, which carried over in their life over time as those, I like to use the word completion, as those moments and those traumas were never completed. They were just avoided.

And that was the problem, that over time it was just masked and avoidance of that grief. And now the process can actually be completed and worked towards completion by doing a relationship graph, for example, or doing a timeline and things of that nature. Yeah. Have you seen, Teeke, when people are doing the graph, the relationship graph specifically?

And we start teaching about stirbs. And for those who are not familiar with our work, in the book, the grief recovery handbook, there's a term we use called stirbs, and that's short-term energy relieving behaviors. So if you go back to the Teeke, I used earlier in the episode, a lot of people to relieve a little bit of steam from the pressure building up in our heart and our body, we will go to things that for a short time do relieve pressure. That can be, again, that could be violence, that could be drugs, that could be alcohol, that could be promiscuity, that could be porn, that could be gambling.

The list goes on, that could be ultramarathons, that could be CrossFit. Again, it's not like a negative or a positive. I do this to distract from that pain that's bubbling up. Have you seen guys that are participating?

Have you seen participants connect the dots of unresolved grief and the addictions maybe that help land them there or that they're maybe struggling with even currently? Have you seen them kind of connect grief where maybe they didn't think grief had a part in that before? Well, I mean, I'll speak for myself first. I had seen that being connected in my own life first, and how it manifested that one of my stirbs, as you mentioned about positive or negative, it was an athlete.

I was a swimmer competing at our international level. And yes, in my earlier years, 17, 18 years, and I was competing for my country, representing India in open water swimming championships, during those times I invested so much of my energy, and that not knowing was a stir for me. That was one of the pro-economism I was using in my life at that moment, not knowing then, now working on myself, analyzing and recognizing that that was one of the stirrbs in my life, that I was using that behavior as a stirr. Yep, yep, absolutely.

And that's a perfect example where society will miss it, because society will pat you in the back, and they'll brag on you and say, you know, you're a great athlete, Tick, and my dad actually has a very similar story where he had so much abuse going on at home, and he was just trying to avoid the pain and the turmoil that was at home. He would just sign up for any sport, and he would, you know, work, and he'd stay after practice, and coaches just thought he was just so driven. And part of it was he was just running from the pain that was happening, right? And so a lot of the time, those type of stirrbs can almost go unnoticed as stirrbs, right, because again, people want to pat you on the back and say, that's so positive for you.

But I'll tell you what, like again, if you show me an ultra-marathoner that's going on their second hip replacement, I will show you an unresolved grieving person, right? It doesn't matter how much society wants to say, that's so incredible that you can run 100 miles through the desert, you know, every couple of months. It's like, okay, well, let's do a group of recovery work so that it's a choice and not something you must do, because we can't just sit home quiet at 11 at night, because that's when all the pain comes, right? So in terms, yeah, go ahead.

And even to that line, as far as these guys within the institution, I've seen their stirrbs being avoiding pain and investing themselves into the college or even work, and just using that addiction, alcohol drugs, all of those things are substituted as our stirrbs for those behavior and the root causes that they're really not addressing their pain and loss. Yep, yep, absolutely. Wow, this has been such a, this has been an incredible conversation. Yeah, it's, again, it's Amanda, Mona, and Tick, I want to just thank you guys for all you guys are all doing there.

And I just can't wait to see where it goes, because again, I think more and more people out there in society are putting together that unresolved grief, really, really is affecting our society, right? In every community. And we have more and more people that are courageous enough to bring this into the institutions, more and more people in the institutions incarcerated adults who are like, yep, sign me up. I want to look at this stuff and I want to see, again, like you touched on, how do I get here?

Because again, for a lot of guys that are going to have an opportunity to get out in the real world, I would love for them not to have to go back, right? The recidivism rate, right? Do we, Amanda, Mona, I don't know if you have any data on this. Are you guys collecting data on anything like that yet?

No, I do know that most of the people that I have known while they were incarcerated who parole don't reoffend. But I just wanted to add another grief thing, which is that when somebody transfers prisons, or when they parole, the people who are still left behind have grief events. But the other thing too is that paroling itself is a grief event. Because what happens is that Antique is a perfect example of how in his community he's respected and looked up to and called upon for things.

And now suddenly they're out the shoot, like you see in a cartoon, and suddenly here they are in the world and they've lost their status of being somebody who has their community. And now they're all by themselves. So even though we talk about getting married and graduation as grief events, it's what we've been waiting for. But yeah, oh, things are different.

So parole is definitely a grief event. But I don't have, we don't have, because we don't have any contact with people really, we don't really know. But I would be very surprised if any of the people that we know reoffend, very surprised. Yeah, no, that's a, and I'm really glad you brought up that point, Amanda.

You know, it's one of those things where people don't really understand grief again. And that's our whole job in this podcast. So let's redefine or use one of the definition we use, right? Grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior.

Let me say that one more time, right? Grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior. So someone gets out of prison and everybody in the community is excited to have them back. Maybe or maybe not, I don't know.

But you know, they're, but you're getting a lot of paths on the back, right? And you're getting a lot of, hey, and the, so, but we have conflicting feelings. Maybe we're really excited to, to be out. And then also we really missed like you said, the status and our friends and the camaraderie and what people and, you know, where I was in that, and that's that.

And now I'm here and that's vastly different. And again, no one's, no one is qualifying that as grief for that individual. They're only focusing on the positive and all the negative and the pain and the hurt and the, and the fear. That's all just being minimized or not discussed at all, right?

So again, who is not being heard? And if we're not being heard, for some of us, our go-to reaction for our whole life was, if you're not hearing me, I will make sure you hear me. And then we go back to an obsolete belief or action that we don't want to take anymore. But yet we're taking it again and we're not even conscious of how that happened, right?

Teeke, I saw your hand. I'll come to you in one sec. But, you know, one of the things we teach on, and people look at this in different ways, but thought, or stimulus creates a thought, which creates a feeling, and then we take an action, right? And unfortunately for a lot of us, because maybe in childhood, we just had to survive in a certain way or by in prison, if we felt like we were disrespected, we had to go stimulus, stop feeling and write to an action.

A lot of the time right in a group of men, that action could be violence. All those things happen at lightning speed for different individuals, again, depending on your background or what environment you've went in. All of a sudden, I'm out, and I'm not aware that that's all going on, and I feel disrespected by someone in the community. And then, you know, and it escalates, and I go overboard.

You know, a lot of these things, as my point, is a lot of these things can be addressed by the self-awareness that the grief recovery method gives us, right? I know that like, I want to go back to old behaviors and beliefs, and things I did when I was 18 or 19, but because of the method, I can keep those in check, and I can pause, and I remind myself, no, no, I'm responsible for my reaction here. And again, that's a lot of the time we don't get that growing up, right? So, again, there's so many things I think this could benefit folks just in the world, but, you know, TEEK, especially like the community that you're in.

You know, but that's another example I wanted to cover, but I know, you had your hand up, so I want to go back to you. I just a great point, and I just wanted to add to that recidivism aspect that you were speaking about in our community, and from here, and to connect that with what Amanda was saying, how the loss of even when someone is paroling, and you would think that this is an absolute, we're working for this for years, and they have, someone has worked on themselves, and in that community, and have really put their work in rehabilitation, and having that self-awareness. While having that self-awareness, what this program allows me, and has is allowing me right now, is even to process that change, the, you need to say, we're not, we're not, the change in the pattern of waking up in an institution is different than waking up in a free world.

I would not know that right now being in here for 21 years, and the self-awareness that this program provides me, allows me to give myself an opportunity, allows me the capacity to learn, allows me to capacity to work on myself first, and the thing is, I strongly believe, if I'm not good to myself, I am not good to anyone else, or for anyone else. So the recidivism rate, for this program, I strongly believe that when folks are, are sharing this message, then when the folks are doing this program, and applying this method, what, what first and foremost is doing is, is reclaiming, it's, it's removing the old slate, the old message that was given to them. From the childhood, removing those languages, removing the minimizing words that it's okay, they're, they're just people get over it. By saying those words, we're minimizing the loss.

Now, acknowledging that loss, making that, that awareness is there, and then one more point of grief, and Amanda would, I've learned this from her, is when people say, oh, they have passed on, or they're gone, they're no longer with us. We, we as a society, I have learned myself, as a society, we have a problem by using the word death, and there, and death has to be celebrated. That has to be acknowledged, and the word has to be spoken, the, for the simple fear fact, for the simple fact that, that that's what actually is. And when you're acknowledging that, when you're making, when you're using those words, you're, you're, you're, uh, bringing, bringing awareness to what actually is, rather than minimizing with these, um, superficial, uh, other words, which may or may not be similar, but again, it minimizes the impact of, of a dialogue.

So that, I, I just wanted to highlight that, and, um, want to bring awareness to that, that our language, uh, matters a lot, our, our language, how we, how we speak about things, and how we interpret things, matters a lot. So yeah, you're, oh, go ahead, Mona, I saw your hand. I just wanted to add something that, when we work with the incarcerated, we teach them, this program teaches that this is something that you have to do daily. Otherwise, it will not be effective.

I mean, if we do this for one person, and it's done, as Amanda always says, we had one incarcerated person that's, said, look at me, I have done this many letters, um, because I have gone back into my past and addressed all the losses. So it's a daily challenge and something that we need to work on. Yeah. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm really glad you brought that up because where I was going to go, before, before that comment was exactly, uh, take what you were talking about, which, which is when we, a lot of us, right, especially in, in, in, in, in institutionalized, right, I'd say, right, if you looked at the statistics, um, there's a high probability that a lot of those folks growing up had a lot of stuff put into their belief system about who they were that wasn't accurate, right?

So in other words, if, if I'm raised and dad tells me that I'm a, a POS for my whole life, when I'm young, um, I don't have a filter. I can't be like, well, that's his opinion on me, right? No, we're, we're children. So we take these messages from these adults that, that are either negative or positive, and we internalize them and we believe that is accurate information about us, right?

And we, we form our belief system about ourselves that way. Okay. So a lot of us don't even have a chance, right? Because someone else is putting into our belief system, inaccurate stuff, right?

Now I can intellectually tell someone that and that can click for them intellectually, but if I'm emotionally incomplete with the person that put that into my belief system, it's a lot harder to kind of, yeah, you know, reaffirm who I am or turn a new leaf and really understanding, no, that was old garbage out, you know, and that's not who I am. I'm actually this person, right? And that's another thing I'm so excited about with this method is that again, we can go look at some of these old belief systems and these old habits that we came up with and, and, and give those back to people that, that maybe didn't have our best interest at a harder, you know, again, did the best they could with what they had. It's common, but that nearly killed me, you know, again, none of that is relevant.

What, what really matters is, is, is if we are trying to change who we are, we have to know how to emotionally get complete with that other stuff so that we have the ability to move forward. And the reason I'm saying this right now is because like you said, Mona, when people come to the grief recovery to do that versus, look, some people come to the grief recovery and they say, you know, my son was killed in an airplane accident 20 years ago and I want to work on that loss, okay? And they do this, this amazing work and this really emotional work and they find tremendous benefits from doing this work on that. And then they go on and they live rest of their lives and that's great and we're happy for them.

Other people say, hey, I had lost after lost after lost in childhood, right? And, and I've, and I'm, you know, wanting to do work. And for those people who, who want to change again, their belief system, who they want to change, and really understand who they are, right? And, and love themselves and learn to love themselves and learn to honor themselves.

Those people, like including me, right? We need to know how to do work and that like you said, Mona, that's daily work, right? Well, that doesn't happen overnight, but what I love about the method is for many people, they choose to do that. They choose to do 10, 15 different relationships from their life.

They choose to do mom and dad and other, and their siblings and all the different people. And so that they can actually really show up and know that they are not the product or what people told them they are, but they can understand who they are truthfully from, from their point of view. Not someone else's point of view, right? Go ahead, Amanda.

So that is the big plus of doing this with an incarcerated population, because guess what? They have their classmates who are going to be their hearts with ears and continue on with the work. Yes. Yeah.

I encourage at the end. It's like, you know, because people in, people in different yards in every prison. So at Valley State and here, there were four yards, but so you kind of know like, okay, who's on, who's on your yard? So you can find somebody to be your heart with ears to to listen to your relationship graph and then to listen to your, your letter.

And so you've got built in support their versus in the community, you have to get together in a follow up group. Whereas these guys can just get together in their part and do it and really click them out. So that's the huge benefit of doing it with incarcerated population because they're there with each other. Yeah.

And like you said, it sounds like a lot of guys are willing to do the work, right? And that's amazing. And that's, that's a lot of the time what I wish people, you know, out in the community would be willing to do the work, right? Because it's like it changes everything.

It changes your relationships with everyone that you come in contact with. Tick, I saw your hand, bud. I think the key is people are willing to do the work. They just don't know how to.

With Amanda and Mona bringing this program in here and how we are going into our next cohort next week, essentially. We're saying a lot of folks in here are having the capacity and having equipped and giving them ability to process these feelings and these traumas and what now willingness is there. And now to provide that platform is what this group has done. And this method has provided us with is the platform that they're giving us.

Yeah. Great. Great. Seth, Amanda.

The other thing too that we encourage people to do pretty much from the beginning of the workshop is to go and be hearts with ears in their community. So be a heart with ears with the CEO, be a heart with ears with each other, be a heart with ears with their professors. Just be a heart with ears and see what happens. And we get amazing stories about one person said that he was on the phone with his wife and she said, are you still there?

Because he was listening to her. Wow. Yep. Yep.

So they do it. People can do it with their families with everybody. But yeah, I mean, that was amazing. Are you still there?

Yeah. And he was being a heart with ears. I mean, that, that plus the, I now see how my first loss affected the rest of my life. Those are the two things that are like the big wow's for me.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I, we are, it's crazy. This time, the time flew by, but we are, we're at the end of this conversation.

I would love if possible to have all of you back. Because again, I've just the, the amount of knowledge that Amanda and Mona, you know, I expect you guys have knowledge. You guys got trained. You guys have helped a bunch of people.

Okay. So I already knew you guys had a bunch of knowledge and I knew where your heart was. But, Tick, I, I am just so impressed with your heart and with your knowledge of this method. Okay.

It is obvious that you have studied the method that you've done the method personally. It's obvious that you have helped others with the method. And I am just again, I am so impressed with, with you, just you're embodying this grief recovery method. And I, you know, I don't want to thank you for that, for all the guys you're helping.

And I, you know, I can't wait to hear about the third group that you guys are launching. And then again, Amanda and Mona, I would love to participate. Tick, I'd love to meet you in person at some point. I know I'm getting a little ahead of myself here.

But, you know, again, everybody, guys, keep doing what you're doing. You're inspiring. And, and, and again, thank you on behalf of the Institute. Thank you, each and every one of you guys.

Thank you, Coca-Cola. Thank you, to my tone. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, you know, for being here. Thank you, Amanda. Thank you, Mona. And, and to the folks that are watching us and listening to this.

Thank you for giving your hearts with the years. Yes. And I am going to just so you know, I'm going to link to Amanda and Mona wherever you want people to be able to donate. If this inspired you, if this touched you, you know, again, guys, it's not like, it's not like we're, you know, we're some really well to do company where we can just do every passion project we want, right?

Just like everything else it takes money, it takes funding. And so, if this touched you, please, please, please donate to Amanda and Mona, help them get this work to more inmates, help them get this work to these communities that that don't get access to the stuff we get, we get outside. Please, please, please donate. Like, share, subscribe to this podcast.

If you think this could help someone else, please, please, please share the word about this work. This is an epidemic, right? And we all at our core have a bunch of loss in our backpacks. And it's heavy, right?

And we can help each other out. But like TEEK said, a lot of us have willingness, but we don't know where to start. We don't know what the roadmap is. I think we could all agree.

The beauty of this method is it's action based and it's simple, but the changes that happen in the heart are profound. But it is accept, it's accessible to everybody, right? The book, we wrote the book at a sixth grade reading level. And that will never change because we know that every great, griver, no matter what your educational background is, is has reduced ability to concentrate, has lack of energy, right?

We, we know this. And so we have designed this program so that it's accessible to anybody. And that's like truly worldwide, right? And so please share this and spread the message that this is a good thing for anyone to look at, right?

Because we all have unresolved unfinished emotions from our past. Amanda? Just one quick thing. We're talking about, uh, brief not being in other languages, necessarily.

So I know that the Spanish book is called emotional loss. And we have those books because as, as you state in the, in the materials that if English is not someone's first language, we encourage them to write the letter and do the work in there are the language. So we have Spanish books, we have the Spanish homework sets. And even though they, they hear the class in English, they go off and do the reading and their homework and read it to other people in Spanish.

And that has been huge. Oh, yeah, that's, that's a great point. And obviously, I know we can't do this, but if you're listening, the book is in 26 languages and we're really proud of that. And again, we help people on every continent, but I think Antarctica, I don't, I'm not sure we've done grief recovery there yet, but we will.

But again, right? This is, this transcends our backgrounds, right? Unresolved emotional pain. This, this is, we all experience it.

And again, we can all help each other. I have not seen anything out there that brings people together like the grief recovery method, right? And that's just why I think we're also passionate about getting the word out on this. So we got a rap.

But again, I want to thank the three of you for your time. Keep doing what you're doing. And, and again, thank you for listening. If you're listening out there, spread the word.

If this touched you, if you think anyone could benefit. And until next time, this is the feel free again podcast. Have a great rest of your day or evening and we'll, we'll catch you next time. Thank you.