When things get heated in our teams of prison residents, they pause the conversation or argument and invite everyone to take a deep breath. It's amazing how just one breath can create the space to start recognizing the difference between the realities we're creating and the deeper truth of what's likely going on.

Do not be fooled by the simplicity of this tool!!

Invitation: Find a way - via an app, anchoring to the day’s activities, in partnership with a family member - to regularly throughout the day take a deep breath. And then simply observe the changes in you.

This is part of a series. You see, on April 1st, I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. For the month of April, I will provide a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes. Go forward and back to enjoy each daily lesson.

In prison, the residents go through phases during which they realize the realness and the permanence of their situation. Imagine coming to grips with

• Their wrong choices, including those that landed them in prison

• Missing their kids growing up

• The life events they’ll miss: birthdays, Christmases, weddings, deaths, funerals

• The hurt inflicted on loved ones, victims and so many others

As one resident moved through his dark phase of coming to greater grips with his life-without-the-possibility-of-parole sentence, he became the "gold standard" in dealing with the dark cloud and struggle of accepting a negative situation.

Learn what he did and what you can emulate in the above video.

Invitation: Assuming you have not been hit by a dark cloud yet, take this week to practice the actions highlighted. It’s often easier to practice when we’re faced with a “mole hill” before having to implement them when hit with “Everest.” And if you’re hit, then practice the actions with a lot of grace for yourself and others.

This is part of a series. You see, on April 1st, I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. For the month of April, I will provide a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes. Go forward and back to enjoy each daily lesson.

It's my birthday!!! And while I would have preferred hosting a bunch of friends and family over as I love to do, I can't. This doesn't stop me from celebrating.

Here again, prison residents have shown me that my circumstances do not dictate my celebration. They know how to get creative! And find replacements for rituals, like blowing out candles.

In addition to redefining how we celebrate milestones, let’s also take a moment to recognize the power of also celebrating the daily small steps. Milestones are a collection of successful small steps. The journey to the milestones is not only a lot more fun, but also a lot more easeful, when it’s sprinkled with regular acknowledgement and celebration. We recognize that whatever the outcome, we've done the best we can. This is worth celebrating!

Invitation: How have you celebrated yourself today?

This is part of a series. You see, on April 1st, I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. For the month of April, I will provide a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes. Go forward and back to enjoy each daily lesson.

Yesterday, I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. For the month of April, I will provide a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes.

Today, acknowledging the fear and anxiety we likely have all felt over the past days and weeks, I turn to prison residents to learn from them.

When they first arrive in prison, prison residents are often stuck in believing that their situation is happening TO them, which creates a victim mindset.

Some, at a point in their incarceration, realize that their situation is happening FOR them. Hidden in the constraints, negativity and violence of their daily struggles are opportunities and gifts.

Watch the video to hear how prison residents shift their perspectives.

So, I ask you, is your current situation happening TO you? Or FOR you?

My invitation: Every day, take a moment to capture all the ways the current confinement has worked FOR you. Similarly to a gratitude practice, this is best done as a family, or written down in a journal.

Please do share the gifts and opportunities this situation is creating FOR you.

This is part of a series. You see, on April 1st, I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. For the month of April, I will provide a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes. Go forward and back to enjoy each daily lesson.

Thanks Marco Chilese on Unsplash

Day 11 of self-quarantine after returning from Thailand. 

In the same four walls.  Basically 24 hours a day.  (I’ve gone on a few late-night walks with no contact with people.)  My partner Pete has had to describe the scene in grocery stores as I have not yet seen it.

These conditions of confinement feel oddly familiar.  Not that I’ve been confined for longer than 16 hours in an economy seat.  But, in the past 4.5 years, I’ve spent between 10 and 20 hours a week in prison.

Those prison residents know confinement.

Know being locked up.

Know not being able to move as they please.

Know being told when and how to do just about everything.

Know sharing a 6’x8’ space with another human being.

Know being far from family in times of joy…and time of deep sorrow.

Know needing to get creative to eat because there’s nothing good available.

Know becoming resourceful to answer to their needs.

And most importantly, prison residents

Know how to transform their confinement into a great gift.

Let’s be clear, they would all prefer to be walk free beyond those gates.  And yet … many of them attribute prison for saving their lives, for teaching them another way of life they did not even know existed.

Does your safe-at-home feel like incarceration or an invitation?

While you may not have a choice to being locked up, you have a choice about how you feel about it and what you do with it.

So, here’s my invitation.  Come learn from those we’ve so often outcast as evil, inhumane, even monsters – who also happen to be the world’s greatest experts in thriving while confined.  For the month of April, I will share a daily thought, reflecting a lesson learned from our prison residents that has enlightened me and has the potential to provide you with this same gift.

What do you want to learn?

This is part of a series. You see, on March 30th, I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. For the month of April, I will provide a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes. Go forward and back to enjoy each daily lesson.

Thanks Tarik Haiga on Unsplash

Last Monday, the 16th, I had a flight leaving Thailand on April 12th.  On Tuesday, it was moved to April 6th.  By Wednesday, it was on March 26th.  After the US's "do not travel" order, I got a ticket on Friday night, around midnight, to leave Thailand a mere 10 hours later.

Since landing in San Diego, I’ve discovered a new sensation; I’m calling it the “evacuee syndrome.”  I’d think with my constant travel with its share of mishaps and emergencies, I would be OK returning from Thailand in such chaotic fashion.

I recognize the familiar jet lag with the 14-hour time difference.  I also realize the impact of the ambient anxiety and stress we’re all currently living with.  But there is a new sensation.  I feel torn apart, not whole, neither here nor there…

And yesterday, I finally put my finger on it.  I’m struggling with “evacuee syndrome.”  In my own experiential analysis, it stems from a departure without proper closure, with no ability to finalize an experience, in which things are left incomplete and unfinished, and without adequate good-byes.  I literally feel like parts of me are still in Thailand.  And the smallest of things are really big deals:  I had planned on gift shopping during my last week of travel with Pete and, as I left in just a few hours, I came home almost empty handed.  My family and friends don’t need goodies beyond my safe return.  But as I had already planned what I wanted to get for several of them, this sense of incompleteness adds to my “evacuee” struggle.  Minor, I know, and yet, a really big deal for me right now… 

I have cousins who evacuated the Congo at its civil war, risking their lives and leaving everything they owned behind.  My experience is not that.  And yet… it hurts, maybe a little like theirs likely did.

After facilitating last summer’s Storytelling Intensive, volunteer Lori Chien is back inside Donovan prison, facilitating the art program that is designing the visuals for a study guide, created by the prison residents for high school students (Thanks La Jolla Country Day teachers for the mentorship!)

Thanks Jessica Johnston on Unsplash

We’re sitting in our usual circle.

“The theme I picked to draw was Redemption,” one of the artists explained. “I’ve been down since I was 16 years old. I have a life sentence. I’ve spent half my life in prison. I’m still trying to figure out how to live and interact in prison. Art helps me survive. I’m trying to become a better person.”

In drawing Redemption, “the image that came to my mind was Tupac’s A Rose that Grew from Concrete,” he continued. 

As the Core Team works on the study guide for Writing After Life, five artists were chosen to create visual representations of the book’s themes. Artist after artist proclaimed art was and is a resource for them in prison. The thing that keeps them sane, a daily habit that allows for a break from the reality from their situation in prison. One of the artists said, “You can’t even imagine the mental strength it takes to have hope in this environment.”

He was right, I couldn’t even imagine. I’ve been coming into Donovan Correctional Facility to volunteer on and off for the past year or so. What keeps me coming back are the residents’ strong sense of resiliency, their brutal and beautiful honesty, and the deep trust they have for life while existing within the grey walls of Donovan. Every week, they teach me gratitude, humility, truth and faith in life. They are indeed the roses that have sprung from concrete and I celebrate their tenacity daily.

Tupac Shakur’s “A Rose that Grew from Concrete”

“You see you wouldn’t ask why the rose that grew from concrete had damaged petals. On the contrary, we would celebrate its tenacity. We would all love its will to reach the sun. Well, we are the roses - this is the concrete - and these are my damaged petals.”