Celebration indeed!!!  Things are starting to move on the inside!  With our drop in tiers and the vaccination of every prison resident desiring it, the Donovan gates are starting to creak open.  Visitors - meaning people with personal relationships with the residents - were allowed to visit one weekend.  The volunteer clearance process has started for the hundreds of volunteers; wow, we're glad we're not the ones handling those logistics.  And they continue to discuss how to reopen programming in the safest and most efficient manner.

Our team is stoked at the prospect of being back inside within a couple of months or so.  It may still be a rollercoaster as the system learns and adapts to the optimal processes as well as the prison shuts down if and when any person associated with the prison comes down with covid.  When there are 4000ish men inside, 1800ish staff and 100's of visitors and volunteers, it's a lot of people to monitor and keep safe.

But "soon," we'll be inside with our teams!

Are you interested in joining our team inside Donovan as this world opens back up?  If so, simply reach us to us on the Contact page so that we can discuss your availability and interest.  We'd LOVE to have you join!

In the hopes that your worlds are also feeling more open and more free while staying safe and whole, we hope you're also excited at the prospect we're soon inside.

One year ago tomorrow, California prisons shut down and, almost overnight, we radically shifted our support to the residents of our prison system (as well as radically shifted our lives…).

Like I suspect has happened to many of you, the past year has put a stress test on what we stand for and believe.  I cannot stand for brilliance and the authentic, continuous exploration and expression of brilliance without ensuring that Brilliance Inside stays aligned with its own brilliance, even as the whole world shifts around us.

Since our brilliance is not what we do but who we are, these “stress tests” invite us to better identify and articulate who we are so that our brilliance can show up in any circumstance life presents.  As we explored more deeply what makes Brilliance Inside Brilliance Inside, one mind-shifting key surfaced:  instead of problem-fixing, we future-form.

Most of us believe that creating change consists of identifying problems and fixing them.  While this problem-fixing approach has its relevance, it also has significant limitations: (1) limiting the space of transformation to our current construct and (2) creating a ceiling for transformation.

Instead of seeing the problems to fix, instead of fighting against a system that’s broken, my intent is an immersive co-creative approach in which all of us come together across all parties, even – and actually especially – across those we consider “toxic” or “enemies.”  It’s because of our differences that we create a powerful transformation, and not despite them.  Long-lasting productive solutions come by bringing together what we have separated.  They serve ALL and therefore are designed (or “future-formed”) with everyone at the table.

By creating space for and honoring every person’s, entity’s and institution’s beliefs, values, needs and desires, we find common ground.  This is where the true answers lie. Instead of looking for what cannot work, we look for what does.  All is possible when we allow ourselves to open up to what is possible.

So, we don’t fix a system by pointing fingers to everything that’s wrong with it.  This transformation happens by pointing to what’s right with it.

Invitation:  Look for what’s right in you, your families, your organizations and ultimately our systems, structures and world?  How does this change your perspective and your actions?

Over this past month, we explored co-creation with our team of Donovan residents.  It’s the critical ingredient #5 of our 7-ingredient Journey to Brilliance.   With this ingredient, we work in collaboration with others to create something new.

This co-creation takes place between our volunteer team and the Donovan residents.  We also co-create with each of YOU.  Without you – your thoughts, your visit(s) to prison, your financial support – the rest of us would be incomplete and lack the power of transformation to which we have all been witnesses.

This ingredient focuses on stepping into your own brilliance, as well as seeing and respecting others’ brilliance and boundaries. You problem solve together, define and implement solutions together, tweak and refine them together.

It reminds us that people don’t lack ideas; they lack the resources, opportunities and tools to bring their ideas to life.

So, what new ideas are you currently co-creating?  How are you taking what you’ve experienced in prison and using it to ignite your light and others’? Let us know by below or by reaching out through the Contact page.

PS:  Update from the inside:  After months of preventing its intrusion, Donovan was hit hard with Covid in December and January.  Every resident we've heard from but one got sick at one point. We understand that the situation is getting better and hopefully those walls are protective once more.

Happy new year!

May you become an even brighter light this year, for yourself, for your loved ones, for our entire community and world.  We all need it!  As you explore what this means for you, we invite you into a journey we take with our Donovan residents every year:  creating our vision board.

I was floored when, in December, I reviewed 2020.  Despite being a year that radically blindsided all of us, I achieved almost every item on my vision board!  This just shows that when it’s meant to happen, it does!  Even if it’s not the way we had originally expected.

Over the past 9 New Year’s Days spent building the annual vision boards, I’ve learned that a successful, actionable vision board sets intentions, not expectations.

Begone expectations and SMART goals!  :-)  These have their place in our lives and businesses.  And vision boards aren’t it.  With expectations, we set our eyes on an outcome, on a rigid definition of success.  Then life presents circumstances than we could not have predicted (hello covid), so we often set ourselves up for disappointment and failure.

When we set intentions, we visualize a future towards which we are called to move, without attachment to the journey or outcome. There is flexibility for the unknown.  It opens us up for creation.  It creates the space for our brilliance to show up in ways we could have never imagined.

Plus, contrary to popular belief, I have stronger results when I set intentions versus expectations. 2020 is yet another perfect demonstration!

Here is the exact document we sent into Donovan in the first days of this year, inviting the residents into our annual process of vision boarding.  Let it be an invitation for you to create yours.

As you set up this new year, be sure you’re setting intentions, not expectations.

In the last packet, the Donovan residents reflected on their journeys of liberation.  As I read their insights and reflect on my own journey, I realize that

Freedom is expensive.

In its chrysalis, it seems that the caterpillar sleeps.  And yet, inside that immobile cocoon, an unimaginable metamorphosis is taking place.  Same goes for us.  On the outside, nothing seems to be changing.  And this can create a lot of impatience and frustration.  And yet, on the inside, we are dissolving, to then rebuild into a completely new creation. 

The cost here is two-fold.  First, we dissolve. This means letting go of past ways of being, past ways of doing, past values, past identity.  Nothing is harder to release than identity.  There is a dying of self that takes place.  And it requires the courage and humility to release and allow this dying process.  With its undoing, pain, mourning and ugly cries (no later than yesterday, for me).

Second, it takes a huge amount of energy to (re)build.  And I find that the greatest amount of energy is not in the construction, but actually in getting – and staying – out of the way.  We live in such a culture of control and doing that I naturally want to take things into my own hands and make things happen.  Oh my, the energy required so that I don’t get into my own way.  Because if I build according to my beliefs, I’ll simply recreate my past.  In other words, re-become a caterpillar.  To become a butterfly – something the caterpillar knows nothing about – I must trust that it’s happening as long as I stay out of the way.

So, freedom is expensive.  AND its return is priceless.  As is evident in several residents’ writing, the peace, joy and wellbeing – in all circumstances – is worth every ounce of work to achieve this freedom.

So, as we invite you to reflect below, what is your liberation?

As we edge out 2020 and step into 2021, what do you release and leave behind?  What have you learned and in what ways have you grown that you embrace and bring with you into 2021?

We wish each of you a massively merry Christmas and the happiest of New Year’s.  May they provide the gifts of love, peace and growth that each of us deserves.  And take a moment of gratitude as you hug those you love extra tight, as the Donovan residents won’t be hugging their kids this Christmas.  We are blessed, today and every day.

On behalf of the Donovan residents, a huge THANK YOU!  Much gratitude in this month of thanksgiving. Many of you responded to the call for books.  One person ran a university-wide drive; several of you shipped books; still others offered what they had and lightened their bookcases in preparation for moves.

Thanks to you, we're bringing over 560 books to Donovan!!!!  That's enough to supply the libraries across ALL yards, including Administrative Segregation (AdSeg or the "hole")!  Books have become critical in this season of unprecedented confinement conditions in our prisons.  In our bimonthly correspondence with our inside team, several of them mention the rescue and escape their books provide AND, unknowing of the book drive, they speak of the decreasing supply of books of interest.

Self-help books.  Biology and physics books.  Spirituality and wellbeing.  Bibles and daily devotionals.  Meditation and cooking.  Spy novels and mysteries.  Self-discovery and breathing books.  Mystical and inner transformation.  History books.  Political analyses.  Non-fiction and fiction.  Law and legal books. You name it, it's in these boxes.

As we near this country's most significant holiday, we wish you joy, thanksgiving, health and yummy meals with family.  As some of you may choose to spend Thanksgiving with less family members this year, we offer you what we tell the guys every year:  They are with us at our Thanksgiving tables.  We take a moment to celebrate their lives, their choices, their brilliance and their transformations.  May you bring your distant family members and those dear in a similar manner that matters to you.

Mariette had a significant a-ha during her 3-month Peace Fellowship that transforms her view of leadership:  moving away from focusing on strictly fixing a problem to, instead, creating the brilliant future and taking the steps towards it.  It turns out this approach is called "Positive Peace" in peace studies and leads to more sustainable and more powerful results.  If you want to start listening after the intros, here's the shortcut.