PEARLE’S STORY AND ANALYSIS

A few days before Christmas Pearle’s mom was kidnapped, forced to drive to a wooded area, and strangled to death. It took 12 days to find Jean’s body. From the beginning, Pearle felt it was important to relay to Hal that he took a life, sharing video and pictures at the sentencing and making eye contact. Pearle described her healing as long and throughout the journey she participated in every experience that came her way. She saw VOD as just the next stage in her journey, and during preparation Hal confirmed he had felt a connection to Pearle since the trial. There were many coincidences, which reassured Pearle she had made the right decision. The VOD resulted in an authentic connection and ended with a hug between two people deeply connected and fulfilled by their meeting.

My mom was forced into a car by a man named Hal with a knife, while she was Christmas shopping. He made her drive into a distant wooded area, get out of the car and then he strangled her. We knew she was missing because someone was using her credit cards. People went looking for her all over town. The police gave up their holiday for us and let us sit with them as they took calls about her whereabouts. A hiker found her body 12 days after she was killed. We had her cremated. No one saw the body because it had been sitting in the woods for so long.

When they found her body, I just kept screaming and thinking, “What do I do now?” I’d walk myself through my day just trying to figure, “How do I go on?” Fortunately, me and my two siblings managed to keep our closeness for the whole year and a half of going through the criminal justice system without a falling out. I stayed in a state of functional shock for months. That meant that I could function in the world but I was living with the shock that someone could do this to a 75-year-old woman. I had a lot of feelings for my mom. She was afraid of driving. I remember spending hours in the bedroom with my brother trying to comfort me.

Hal had absconded from parole in California. The police caught him on tape at a gambling casino using my mom’s credit cards. He pled guilty and was sentenced to true life. For my victim impact statement, I prepared and showed a 14-minute video of my mom’s life with photos from everywhere. I also made lots of eye contact with Hal during the sentencing hearing.

Of the three siblings, I was the one who healed most. I did a great deal of counseling. My mother and I were estranged. In fact, I’d been estranged from my whole family for nine years except for weddings and funerals. So here she was missing, gone, murdered and I hadn’t reconnected with her. I had a lot of regret about that because I love my mom but I’d lost sight of that love over the years. I started looking at mother–daughter love and how complicated it is. I would happen upon movies like Remains of the Day, Shadowlands, and Into the Woods that made me think about love in another way. For example, I kept realizing that my mom absolutely did the best she could, given all the circumstances. She made me who I am. She was a homemaker all her life, which is a lot of work. I just kept making the connections between the things I do in daily life and what she taught me.

Besides counseling, I did peer counseling and astrological work. I also participated in a community-based ritualistic healing ceremony. I had discovered that the ceremony was to be held on property that was owned by a gay and lesbian community. It just happened to be next to where my mom’s body was found so I called the community and said, “My mother was killed close by to your property. I’m a lesbian and I practice Wicca and I want to come.” The ceremony lasted 24 hours. At the end, we walked the path that Mom was forced to walk. We did a ritual where her body was found and left items on the side of a logging road. So my healing was quite intense and thorough. I approached it based on what came into my life and what I saw about more ways to heal.

This process happened with my decision to do a VOD. Most of my feelings after my mother’s murder were about her and what she went through. My feelings about Hal came up later. I couldn’t forget him and thought of him at least monthly over many years. I wondered what had happened to him and actually worried about him but I didn’t think about meeting with him. I learned about the VOD program while serving on an state advisory committee for VOCA (Victims of Crime Act). I began researching it and out of the blue I decided to call the program director. Although we talked for an hour, I realized later that she was basically interviewing me. She asked, “Why do you want to meet with this guy?” I said, “I don’t know. It seems like the next thing to do.” So my call and conversation with her just happened with no planning.

The VOD program director also assessed Hal to see if he was acceptable for the program. She told me that she had said to him when she met him at the prison, “I’m here because of the VOD program and one of the children of Jean wants to meet with you.” He knew which one of us it was because he had had the same connection with me at the sentencing that I had had with him. That was mind blowing. I went to see a former therapist as part of preparing myself for the meeting. In that therapy, I took a journey into very deep parts of myself which I wouldn’t have done except for my anticipation about the upcoming meeting at the other end of the journey. I chose not to tell any of my family members what I was doing. I felt I needed to do the VOD for myself and couldn’t take them along. They’d want to know all the details so I kept it a secret until two years after the meeting.

The preparation took seven-and-a-half months. Two facilitators were assigned to work with Hal and me. We talked on the phone every three weeks and met together three times. It took me a while to feel comfortable and trust them. I can be very intense. In contrast, they were quiet and soft spoken. We finally bonded when we had dinner together the evening before the actual meeting. The facilitators had also visited with Hal at least three times. He got confused at one point and came to one of the preparation visits thinking it was the actual meeting between us. He was very upset during that visit and everything seemed to break loose for him. He was talkative and really candid and ended up sharing a lot of himself. The details that the facilitators shared about that visit gave me a clear picture of what he was going through.

I decided to write Hal a letter. I told him I appreciated him for where he was coming from. I didn’t know his motivation so I asked him why he was doing the VOD. He wrote back and I read his response together with Josephina who was my partner, the VOD program director, and our facilitators. I could see from what he wrote that he was open and had put himself out in answering my question. So there was some relationship being developed before we had even met physically. There were also a number of strange coincidences. Hal had the same first name as my son. His middle name was the male version of my partner’s name. Moreover, Josephina and her former partner were prison guards at the prison where Hal is housed. So they knew him from afar. Josephina went to the meeting as my support person.

On the day of the meeting, I was calm because I had a very complete agenda, which I had shared with everyone. I went into the room first. I wanted to cleanse it so I did a ritual of walking counter-clockwise three times and said prayers to remove any negative energy. Then everyone came in. I put Josephina in a corner because I knew that would be a safe place for her and told the others where I wanted them to sit at the table. I insisted there be no guards present that we could see. When Hal came into the room, I stood up. He was so much smaller than he had been at the sentencing hearing. He had shaved his head and looked all clean and shiny. We exchanged silly grins. We sat directly across from each other. Once we got started, everyone else disappeared. Inside of me was a deep calmness and a profound readiness to do the dialogue. He knew what I wanted to say and what I wanted to ask him. I knew that he was in that same place. Everything fell away except him and me.

One of the facilitators introduced the purpose of the dialogue and gave the ground rules. I made a very brief opening statement that included what I wanted to cover in the meeting. Then I said, “Well, Mr. Habert, is there anything you’d like to say to me before I jump in?” There was a long pause and he started crying. Tears were streaming down his face and he got all red and said, “I am so sorry—so, so very sorry.” Tears were streaming down my face and I realized he was expressing all this regret. Indeed, his deep remorse was so totally evident that it set the tone for the entire meeting.

I told him all about my mom from her birth to her death. Josephina told me later that he just listened. He listened and listened. Then, I wanted him to tell me about his background from his birth to the present moment in time. He was confused. He didn’t understand why I cared and why I wanted to hear about him. I reassured him about how important it was to me to learn what his life had been like. I just let him talk. If he needed encouragement, I’d say, “No, no. Go on. I really want to hear this.” So the morning was all one-way communication for each of us. Then we broke for lunch. My partner and I had a bizarre picnic lunch in the hotel room and processed the morning. She commented that I hadn’t gone very deep with him, which was true. After lunch, I asked him to describe the crime in detail, from his parole in California until the sentencing. He said, “Are you really sure you want to hear this?” I said, “Yes, I really need to hear this.” I said this in part because my counselor had said, “Pearle, if it were me, I’d really want to hear every single detail.” I agreed. Throughout his story, Hal checked in with me about whether or not I wanted him to continue. I would just ask him a few questions and he’d go ahead with the specifics. I got to hear about my mom’s last words and how he strangled her. He told me she revived two times. He also told me, “It’s not easy to strangle somebody to death. It’s not what they show on TV.”

When he was finished, I told him what had happened to our entire family starting with my brother’s call that Mom was missing all the way through to the sentencing. Somewhere along the way, we started to go back and forth in learning about each other. It was very spontaneous and such a dialogue. That’s where the authentic connection happened that resulted in true intimacy. The most amazing thing was how much we had in common. I’m a recovering alcoholic and he’s in recovery. As we started to talk back and forth, he asked, “Well, didn’t you ever get mad? Weren’t you mad at me at some point?” I answered, “Well there was a point 14 months after my mom’s death when I came home and discovered my dog had chewed up this book. I went into the garage and I got the horse’s lunge whip. It stands six feet tall and there’s a whip part that’s another six feet so you can whip the end of it behind the horse. I was going to kill the dog but the minute I started whipping the whip, the dog disappeared. Right in front of me was this old, old cherry tree. I started whipping the tree and I completely lost it. I was enraged. I was yelling and screaming at the top of my lungs for around five minutes. In the process, all the rage dropped away.” When I finished telling Hal the story, he said, “Well, I love dogs too and I’m never going to be able to touch another dog.” He started crying again and I, too, just cried and cried because dogs are my love. I couldn’t imagine being without one. So we went back and forth revealing ourselves to one another with lots and lots of tears. When all this was finished, I realized I was done. There was nothing more I needed to say or hear from him.

In terms of my agenda, there were three things I kept to myself because I didn’t know if they would happen or not. First, I told Hal that I had talked to my therapist about forgiveness and in our discussion realized that I had already forgiven him. I had let go and released him as a human being. I’d clearly seen him as enough of a person that I could forgive him. However, the minute I said the word “forgiveness” to him, he got beet red and tears started streaming down his face. I said, “There’s a part of you that murdered my mother I cannot forgive.” He said immediately, “Well, of course not. I was a horrible person. I did a horrible thing.” Then I told him what I had said to my therapist, which was that “I couldn’t really forgive the crime but 79 percent of me can forgive you.” I told Hal that I shared that line with everybody and he kind of chuckled. I tell folks that the forgiveness came to me over a long period of time and had nothing to do with the facilitated dialogue.

Second, I asked Hal to do something, even in prison, to make a purpose out of his life and perhaps help other inmates. Third, I told him that I’d continue to think about him and send him good energy and that I’d like to shake his hand. He got a funny look on his face and stood up but without moving an inch. The big chaplain got down from his perch where he was sitting on the sink counter and stood up as well. I walked slowly around and put my hand out to take his hand but without thinking I took his hand in both my hands. Then, spontaneously, I just embraced him. The embrace lasted around ten seconds, not very long. Then I let Hal go and stepped back. I needed to step back so as not to compromise security. After that, we just spontaneously started debriefing what had happened during our meeting. It was stunning to debrief about dogs in prison and all that. As soon as I used the word “forgiveness,” however, and he started crying, I began questioning whether or not I made it up because it is something all inmates want to hear. But I didn’t do the forgiveness for any effect. I was only going to say it if the dialogue went well and there was sincerity. I hadn’t told anybody but Josephina.

Usually I would just leave because we were done. But we sat around debriefing for half an hour. It was like having finished an intense running race but then you had to keep walking to cool down. In describing our meeting, Josephina said, “It felt like rappelling where you’ve got somebody on the ropes and somebody going down a cliff face. You’re trusting the person at the top with your life. But for the two of you it was like you were rappelling but then switching places. One would hold the line and the other would go down. Then that person would hold the line as the first person went further down the cliff. And you did this together until you both reached the bottom safely.” It just summed it up.

This experience turned my life around completely. Because Hal acknowledged and took full responsibility for the evil thing he did, my whole life changed when I walked out of that prison. My whole life changed to the core of my being and I was in a state of grace. I felt like a totally new person. The burden of everything in the universe had lifted from me. I stayed in this state for 36 hours. When I went to see my counselor, I said, “I gave him his life back.” The next week, I said, “I didn’t realize this, but he gave me my true life back.” There’s no way that would have happened without direct eye-to-eye contact.

Some time after the meeting, I asked permission from the VOD Advisory Committee to speak about the meeting publicly. The committee talked about it among themselves and then talked with Hal. Although we had signed a strict confidentiality agreement, Hal was alright waiving it on two conditions: first, he did not want his name used and second, he asked me not to share something he told me. He told the committee, “She will know what that is” and I did know. The committee also allowed me to write him a year or two later. He answered me back and I wrote him again. I wrote him a second letter a couple of years ago but he never replied. That’s all that will ever happen.

Analysis: Crime story and its aftermath

The murder of Pearle’s mother, Jean, violated social mores at every level. Jean was elderly. Hal had broken parole. He was on the prowl for someone to kill. The murder happened in a small town where the residents otherwise looked out for each other. The murder happened when Jean was buying gifts for others at Christmas, a special and sacred time of peace. Having killed Jean, Hal used her credit cards to gamble, an act that was repugnant to Pearle—“I’m just so morally opposed to gambling.” Hal forced Jean, who was afraid of driving, to drive out of town into the woods where he killed her. Hal left Jean’s body to rot on the ground for 12 days before she was found.

Pearle felt lost and functioned robotically for a long time just trying to comprehend how someone, with no forethought, could murder an aged woman. Jean’s death, however, laid bare the unfinished business between Pearle and her mother. Pearle not only had to grieve her mother but also had to face the fact that she had not done the work to reconnect with her prior to her murder. Her regret was intensified by recognizing her unabated love for her mother such that she started to do the work, herself, to internally reconcile herself with her mother. Her opening herself to that work was part of her letting the universe direct her healing as a new homicide survivor. Indeed, whatever she met on her healing path became, for Pearle, a sign of what she should do. Pearle believed, therefore, in synchronicity and that opportunities appeared, in effect, for a reason. Her job was to recognize and take advantage of each prospect as it presented itself.

For example, she discovered a healing ceremony on property next to where her mother was killed and owned by a group that mirrored her own sexual identity. She literally took the death walk her mother took and performed rituals where her mother’s body was found—“I approached my healing based on what came into my life and what I saw about more ways to heal.” Each thing she did opened her to more possibilities. For instance, Pearle had thought regularly about Hal but didn’t consider meeting with him until she discovered the opportunity to do so while serving on a committee for crime victims.

Preparation

The value she gave to her intuition and letting the path guide her was evident in her response to the VOD program director’s question about why she wanted to meet with Hal. “It just happened. It seemed the next thing to do.” In commenting on her process, Pearle said, “I approached my healing [such] that it was things just coming into my life of more ways to heal.” This philosophy fit well with the preparation process and the goal of becoming more open to the upcoming meeting with Hal. She struggled, however, with trusting the facilitators because she and they were temperamentally different but she felt they bonded just prior to the meeting.

Pearle worked to make herself be more and more open to the process. For example, she elected to do much of her preparation with her therapist to help her to be fully mindful during the meeting. “I intuited I needed to do this myself.” She therefore harnessed her energy for the dialogue, in part by being highly selective and self-protective about the details of her therapy and her decision to meet with Hal. Indeed, she did not tell her family what she was doing until two years after the dialogue. Several incidents occurred that increased Pearle’s openness and responsiveness to Hal. Hal was transparent in his response to Pearle’s letter and her question about his motivation to meet with her. Hal’s upset and reaction to mistakenly thinking that a preparation meeting was the actual VOD broke him open. As such, it gave Pearle an authentic portrait of who he was and helped humanize him in her eyes. There were several coincidences about names and relationships that confirmed Pearle’s belief that meeting with Hal was the correct next step in her journey, for example, her partner’s former employment as a prison guard. The conduit between Pearle and Hal was already being laid, prior to the meeting, through letters and knowledge of each other through the facilitators. Indeed, the information exchange and trust building that preceded the VOD played an important role in allowing the meeting to start strong and end quite personally.

Dialogue

Pearle entered the space for the meeting centered and inner connected. She established the space as sacred through the ritual she previously performed and as safe by assigning seats and insisting that the guards remain out of sight. Her anxiety about the unknown was reduced because she knew what would be said and asked in the meeting, as did Hal. Indeed, she felt calm, in part because she had stayed true to the dictates of her own process throughout. The silly grins exchanged between Pearle and Hal expressed their mutual awareness that they were the two main actors and what was to occur in the meeting was solely between them. “There was a deep calmness and a profound readiness” to do this. Pearle also experienced that she and Hal were entering a different zone of existence—“I realized it was a falling away of absolutely everyone else except him and I.” Indeed, their being together physically was like an energy sigh of relief, “At last.”

Within this conduit, Pearle requested a statement from Hal. He responded with sorrow, tears streaming down his cheeks and a deep apology. The emotionality of his statement likely brought Hal, psychologically, fully into the room but was importantly an indicator of the pain he already bore and accepted even without specific knowledge from Pearle about her pain. He listened intently to Pearle’s description of Jean, the woman he had killed. Pearle requested and encouraged Hal to reciprocate by sharing his background. This turn-taking helped establish the mutuality of their endeavor. Hal’s attentive listening and Pearle’s encouragement further solidified their investment in one another.

In the first part of their dialogue, Pearle and Hal were establishing the base for Hal’s sharing the specifics of how he killed Jean and how she responded. In the second part, they completed the full story of the murder for each other that included Hal’s story and the discovery of Jean’s disappearance and the impact of her murder on Pearle and her siblings. A subtle tipping point was reached during this unfolding, when the energy shifted from one-way reporting to a free-flowing interchange between Pearle and Hal marked by mutual comfort, honesty, trust, and curiosity. Within their mutually constructed climate of safety and acceptance, they allowed the exchange process to guide them and found commonalities through what they revealed to each other, such as doing art, being in recovery, and a love of dogs. The growing momentum of this back and forth energy was fueled by the reciprocal influence of the topics as well as the emotional resonance they felt between them. “The true back and forth dialogue is what resulted in the true intimacy.” Josephina described this shift in energy during their dyadic volley as holding the rope for each other so each person could climb further down the cliff. Her analogy underscored that neither could have climbed down or done it safely without the other.

Another tipping point occurred after Pearle expressed forgiveness both verbally and spontaneously through her embrace of Hal and he started crying. She knew she had forgiven Hal for herself but was otherwise testing him throughout the meeting to determine if he had earned the right to know about it. Indeed, she wanted the giving and receiving of her forgiveness to be meaningful and genuine. Although her expression that “79 percent of me can forgive you” reflected her singular decision prior to the VOD, it took the experience of Hal in the meeting to be able to release or forgive fully. Even though she did not verbalize it, Pearle had to trust the genuineness of his remorse and the authentic quality of his character through their dyadic interaction before she could release herself and him fully and be moved past the crime and likely past the limit of 79 percent to a place of emotional forgiveness. It was her movement in the dialogue with him that allowed this fuller sense of forgiveness. As such, the change grew out of the dialogue and required the conversation. The back and forth flow between them took the dialogue to a new level of intimacy which consequently provided a meaningful grounding for their interchange about forgiveness and Pearle’s embrace. This building process helped transform the pain and, in effect, allowed each to give the other back a freer and fuller life.

Although the momentum was building throughout the meeting, the positive energies created by their dyadic volley caused a bonding dynamic, which was further actualized in the half hour debriefing after the dialogue. Indeed, there was no formal ending of the meeting other than Pearle’s embrace while she and Hal were both standing, which, in effect, marked the finish of their business together. Rather than leaving, however, Pearle and Hal spontaneously began to debrief and the others in attendance joined the conversation. It was as if no one wanted to leave because they were still caught up in the combustion of positive energy that arose with the raw emotion and human connection precisely because the negative energy fields had been dealt with and had dissipated.

Pearle felt a strong sense of completion but also excitement because the impact of the VOD went so much further than she expected. There was no unburdening because she didn’t go into the meeting feeling encumbered. However, she felt “to the core of my being, my whole life changed” because Hal acknowledged “the evil thing he did and took complete responsibility,” that is, transferred the pain to himself. Beyond just the murder, she felt as well that “everything in the universe had lifted from me.” Pearl’s reinstatement of Hal was expressed in a myriad of ways including the easy back and forth flow of conversation between them, her face-to-face sharing of forgiveness because he was worthy, her embrace, his active participation in the debriefing, and her desire for additional contact through letters after the dialogue.

Pearle’s healing, including her participation in the VOD program, was directed by the universe. Indeed, she let the universe dictate her process including astrological work, her work with her therapist, the Wiccan healing ceremony, sharing the story about the horse’s lunge whip, her decision not to share with her family, her embrace of Hal, and her writing Hal after the meeting. Because her mode was to live in the middle of the process, she trusted it implicitly and worked continually, therefore, to remain open to wherever it led her. Also, Josephina played an important role throughout as observer. Her feedback to Pearle underscored the importance, for example, of Hal’s rapt engagement as listener while Pearle spoke about her mother or the need for Pearle to go into deeper territory, such as the details of the murder itself that would be more productive. Although the dialogue belonged to Pearle, her life-partner accompanied her through this significant venture, which made her an active part of Pearle’s healing journey.

Pearle experienced little, if any dissonance in her reactions to her mother’s death, the motivation to do a VOD, or during the meeting with Hal. Perhaps the only dissonance was the fact that she thought that she had the forgiveness issue under control and that she had given Hal her forgiveness by reporting to him about her therapy. However, her experience of him during the meeting unexpectedly moved her to a fuller acceptance and forgiveness of him as a person. The dissonance did not bother her, however, because of her basic commitment not to fight the dissonance but rather to resolve it by going along with whatever element was pushing her in a new direction. Similarly, she felt some dissonance about keeping her meeting a secret from her family with whom she otherwise shared her life. She managed the dissonance by contending that she did not want to sully the dialogue and, therefore, had decided to keep it to herself. She eventually told them about the VOD, however, which again resolved the dissonance.

KALICIA’S STORY AND ANALYSIS

Kalicia’s adult son, Darnell, was the victim of a DUI [driving under the influence] hit and run. Kalicia struggled not only with the loss of her son, but the indifference of the driver and the subsequent media attention which placed some of the blame back on Darnell. Kalicia’s situation was unique, because the judge allowed her to stipulate VOD in the offender’s plea agreement. Less than a year later she and her husband met with Ahmad. Although the dialogue was authentic and productive, the centrality of Kalicia’s focus on Ahmad and his lack of follow-through after the meeting left her frustrated and disappointed. Although the negative energy increased, Kalicia preserved her hope and humanizing of Ahmad by placing responsibility for his backsliding on external influences.

A hit-and-run driver named Ahmad killed my 28-year-old son, Darnell, when he was bicycling with a friend. Darnell was hit from behind and thrown in front of the other bicyclist. The driver was picked up about an hour later. He had ditched his car but told the police he’d been carjacked. Because he was drunk, he was charged with manslaughter 2, vehicular assault of a bicyclist, DUI, felony hit and run, and reckless driving.

I found out about the crash when a police chaplain knocked at my door at 5:00 in the morning and repeatedly called out, “Is this the family of Darnell Stanford?” I was completely clueless. When I finally opened the door, the chaplain told me that Darnell had been in a hit-and-run crash and had died. The second cyclist was at the hospital with injuries. He sat with me while I called the medical examiner’s office to find out what had happened and made arrangements for his body. I also called my children who live out of town and they all came right away. The chaplain and I watched the news together because it was the third bicycling fatality in two weeks and the second hit and run. My daughter and my husband plus my best friend, my sister, and her friend went with me to the scene of the crash. It was very, very sad. When we got home there were news vans and I decided to talk with them. Up to that point, my son was nameless. The news referred to him as an unidentified, deceased bicyclist. I changed all that by going over to the newsman, introducing myself, and telling him what I knew had happened. I also talked about how horrible it was for both our family and the family of the driver. The driver was 18. I never had any anger towards him, only at what happened. I never blamed or hated him. I never wanted him dead or run over, like I hear some people say. I was just terribly sad for both of our families.

I had to face things I’d never thought about before. For example, no one told me it was necessary to go to the morgue so I never considered seeing him. Because he’d been on a bike without a helmet, thrown 175 feet and died of blunt force head trauma, I just assumed we wouldn’t be able to see him or that we would want to. But the funeral director assured me that he was perfect. The death evidently was caused by a severe whiplash that knocked his skull off his spine, just separated it. He had a minor abrasion across the top of his head but there were no other visible injuries except on his hands. He also had some lung issues and his sternum was cracked in half. He didn’t have any broken legs or arms, just a junk of meat taken out of his thigh when it got caught in the headlight.

A number of people felt that Darnell’s death was his own fault because he was out at night without a helmet. Those comments, plus the “what if” questions, made me extremely angry. For example, “Wouldn’t it have made a difference if he wore a helmet?” Moreover, the police erroneously told the local newspaper that the deceased bicyclist, Darnell, was not wearing a helmet but the bicyclist who survived was. That message left the impression that Darnell would have been okay if he’d had a helmet on. The truth was that my son was hit full force, straight on at 50 miles an hour whereas only the mirror on the side of the car hit the other bicyclist. When I checked with the medical examiner, he verified that a helmet would have made no difference because Darnell was hit so hard.

I started researching crashes because I couldn’t believe how often they happened and I was mad at people for blaming my son. I also focused on the court system, which really needs help. We were advised to accept a plea bargain for criminally negligent homicide because it would be hard to get a conviction. After all, no one had witnessed the crash and Ahmad, the driver, wasn’t driving his own vehicle. For the plea bargain, my prosecutor asked me to specify the conditions for drug treatment and how much time Ahmad needed to serve. He had already done drug treatment for harder drugs like Ecstasy and this was his second hit and run. I wanted conditions in the plea, therefore, that would teach him life skills so that he would be a more responsible and safe person when he was released. I asked for as much rehabilitation as possible. Moreover, I’d discovered the VOD program by surfing the Internet and introduced my prosecutor to the idea. She agreed so we put Ahmad’s participation in the program as one of the conditions of the plea. We had an awesome judge. At one hearing, both families sat at a table facing each other with the judge between us. As part of the personal conversation with us he said to Ahmad, “I see you completed a year of treatment. How do you feel you did with that?” Ahmad answered, “Oh, I did good.” The judge said, “Well, apparently not, because you’re here for a DUI that killed someone.”

Ahmad went to prison and I took a couple of months to just wind down. Three months later, I contacted the VOD program director to begin the preparation process. We were assigned two facilitators and it all happened quickly from there. I was recently married, so my new husband and I attended bimonthly meetings for seven months. The facilitators would meet with us and then meet with Ahmad. At one point they brought a letter he had written to us, which was very nice. I was thrilled with their support and their insights about Ahmad. Of course, they couldn’t tell us about the content of their talks with him but they were able to give us their impressions. They suggested I make a list of questions to ask Ahmad. When they saw my three-page list, they said, “Ahmad is a little bit on the immature side and rather introverted so this kind of a list would likely overwhelm him. Why don’t we go through it, narrow it down and pick out the most important items?” The facilitators helped me be more realistic in my expectations.

The meeting was scheduled right before Darnell would have turned 30 years old. My husband and I felt very prepared. Frankly, I was anxious to be done with it. I had learned through the police reports and the media that Ahmad didn’t have much positive support so I was wary that he might pull out. Indeed, I felt that without that support, he wouldn’t move in the positive direction I was hoping for. I liked meeting with the facilitators so I was somewhat unhappy that the preparation was over. I surmised that finishing preparation might be a let down for Ahmad as well.

I was pretty nervous about the meeting. I had a lot of concerns. My husband was my support person but Ahmad refused to have anyone present on his behalf. I wondered if, in hindsight, I had made a total fool of myself by giving advantages to Ahmad in the plea bargain. Honestly, I was never really angry with Ahmad. Rather, I was upset and actually devastated about the circumstances. Family members and Darnell’s friends were very vocal. They’d say, “He should be put to death.” “He should be run over.” I knew many of them could not understand my attitude. I too worried that I might be wrong. I thought, “What if they are right and this person doesn’t deserve to be forgiven? What if they think that I’m stupid for caring and that Ahmad is just saying what is necessary to get himself the lowest sentence?” Because of these misgivings, I needed Ahmad to demonstrate to me that I had not misplaced that hope.

We did a visit to the prison before the meeting and were shown the room for the VOD. At the meeting, Almad seemed to be quite open and receptive. He was quiet and listened thoughtfully as I told him about Darnell and showed him pictures from his life. I described how the crash and his death had impacted our family. Throughout the meeting, Ahmad seemed very, very interested and was extremely attentive. The meeting was focused more on us and our loss than on who he was. However, he talked about his family and his little boy who, at the time, was just a few months old. He also opened up a bit and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know how this must feel for you but I’ve got my own child now.” After lunch, Ahmad shared some pictures and other things that he had brought to share with us. He apologized for what he had done and stated that when he got out of prison, he wanted to speak to youth to stop them from repeating his mistakes. He really wanted others to learn from his poor decisions.

I loved what Ahmad wanted. I really felt committed to him, to his wish to turn his life around and to preventing this conviction from ruining his life forever. I had already expressed these thoughts to him at the sentencing hearing. They grew out of my conviction that people who want to help themselves attract other people who would love to help them. I felt that if he had the right attitude, even a homicide conviction on his record would not stop him from being successful. At the meeting, I got the sense that he was going to have the attitude that I wanted him to have. We all felt so good about it that we agreed to continue talking for another couple of hours after lunch. We ended the meeting by hugging and deciding that we both wanted to meet again. Ahmad asked if he could keep the pictures of Darnell that I had brought to the meeting. Although I had a nagging sense that he didn’t fully understand what he had done, Ahmad was remorseful. He had done some reflecting, was truly sorry, and really wished the crash and my son’s death hadn’t happened. We both were a bit tearful. My husband and I left the meeting feeling very, very positive. I was actually ecstatic. I even had the nerve to ask Ahmad if he would speak with me on victim impact panels when he was released. He said that he was a little shy and nervous but we were both hopeful.

I never felt there was anything to forgive. Ahmad didn’t deliberately pick my son or hurt him intentionally. He was just a stupid kid making the same kind of stupid mistake that 10,000 people a year make. After all, he was only 18 years old. Ahmad, however, brought up forgiveness. When I commented that he had the opportunity to make positive things happen in his life, he said, “I hope you can forgive me.” I figured that he brought up forgiveness because he realized that if our situations were reversed, that it would be a huge thing for him to forgive me. Alternatively, he may have introduced the idea because he assumed that saying it was the appropriate thing to do in our society.

I had several fantasies about Ahmad. I assumed that if he were in the public eye, he would get attention from people who would want to help him. Then, he’d see that the crash didn’t have to define his life forever. Moreover, he’d probably have opportunities that he otherwise couldn’t get. There is a Native American legend that if a man killed a chief’s son, then that man was obligated to become the chief’s surrogate son. I was prepared, if Ahmad had the right attitude, to be a mother-type support for him. I would go to bat for him as long as I felt that he warranted that type of backing. Actually, I was willing to take him in and love him just like a son if he reciprocated.

Several years later, I set up a second meeting but without any facilitators. I had gotten concerned that things weren’t going the way I had hoped they would. At this meeting, Ahmad complained about things he didn’t want to do and asked for my help in getting back his driver’s license. His explanation was that “I want to be able to drive my little boy around.” I didn’t know what he was thinking when he made that request. I have no pull with the Department of Licensing. I can’t go to them and say, “Hey, I know he killed my son but can you give him his license anyway?” Indeed, my response at the time was, “My little boy never gets to drive again. I think you can ride a bike.” That’s when I started to feel negative. Although he was remorseful, I felt that he didn’t really “get it.” Ahmad was starting to feel sorry for himself, wanted to get out of prison and forget about what had happened.

He’d gotten married between the two meetings. His wife was significantly older than he was and had a lot of influence over him. She was not willing to change her life or lifestyle to accommodate the things he had previously said he wanted to change such as the people he hung out with. When I met him the second time, he wasn’t willing to make the kinds of changes he had expressed the first time. He wasn’t interested in doing any kind of public speaking. I felt let down. The facilitators, however, had mentioned his immaturity level several times during the VOD. His desire to just move on with his life and put the crash behind him was congruent with the facilitators’ assessment.

I had more anger toward him as I got further away in time from the crash and his release date got closer. The injustice of my son’s death dawned on me as I realized that my son was dead and gone forever while Ahmad at age 22 was just getting out of prison and would have his whole life in front of him. I recognized that he hadn’t served much time. He got a five-year sentence but was out in four years, ten days. If I had been assured about how Ahmad would handle his future, I wouldn’t have wanted him to have any time at all in prison. But I felt my son deserved some measure of justice and I didn’t feel confident about Ahmad. He left my son on the side of the road like he’d hit a possum or a squirrel. He didn’t even stop to see if Darnell was okay. How can one human being leave someone else like that? I talked about the incomprehensibility of what Ahmad did in our VOD. He said he was so drunk he didn’t even know he’d hit someone. Indeed, the prosecutor kept referring to his state of mind at the crash as completely “blotto.”

I’ve had no direct interaction with Ahmad’s family. I have gone to their Facebook pages and seen a Mickey Mouse tattoo with his eyes cut out. Underneath the tattoo it says, “Snitches die.” There was mention in the police report of possible gang activity and I didn’t get a good sense from his family. Although I’ve had no contact with Ahmad since he was released, I was shocked to get a request from his wife on Facebook the other day. I feel negative toward her because she was influencing Ahmad not to take seriously the commitments he made to himself and me during the VOD. I knew as well that while Ahmad was lying to the police and saying he was carjacked, Ahmad’s wife (then girlfriend) and mother were standing just a hundred feet from where my son was dead on the pavement and lying to the police as well. I realize of course that she was lying for Ahmad to get him off. I just felt from the beginning that she didn’t want him to take any responsibility for anything that had happened. I’m angrier with her and his mother than I am at Ahmad for not telling the truth. Had the situation been reversed, I cannot picture myself trying to get Darnell off for what he did. I’d be saying, “Oh, my God, Darnell, what happened? Let’s get you the help that you need to make what happened as good for everyone as possible.” I can’t even imagine Darnell trying to get off because he was a very responsible person.

I have no idea about Ahmad’s life or what visions he has in his head about what happened. I am a little disappointed but I don’t necessarily feel angry. I just wish he had the wherewithal within him to follow through because I think it would be good all the way around. I’m thinking about responding to Ahmad’s wife. I want to ask her, “What is your purpose in reaching out to me? What are you hoping to gain from this?” I might be willing to meet with them in public at a restaurant. I’m still hopeful that the crash and the VOD would turn into something good for the families. But if it doesn’t, that’s okay too. I do show Ahmad’s picture when I do victim impact panels, not to disparage him but so folks can see that what happened was awful for both families. I never say anything about him on TV because I don’t want to make his life harder.

In terms of the VOD, I felt like we were both somewhat vulnerable to each other because we mutually felt a sense of trust. We were both there for a positive outcome. My children also hoped he’d have a good outcome. They agreed with my telling him, “I hope this doesn’t ruin your life. I’d like you to have a happy life.” I felt that if he had a happier life, he’d be a safer person and be able to raise his child better. He’d also do better in life if he didn’t hold onto some kind of grudge because we did this to him.

Analysis: Crime and its aftermath

Kalicia lost her son in a hit-and-run crash while he was bicycling. The driver was “blotto” and so wasted on drugs that he claimed not to have known that he had hit someone. This was not his first crash. Indeed, he had been incarcerated and received drug treatment for a prior hit-and-run offense. Kalicia initially minimized Ahmad’s history and his efforts to dodge responsibility for the crime. Specifically, both Ahmad and his girlfriend claimed that Ahmad, who had ditched his car, had been carjacked as an excuse for his whereabouts. Ahmad’s mother did nothing to counter her son’s story. Instead of having outrage at Ahmad, Kalicia’s anger was focused on the injustices she experienced from the criminal justice system and from the media’s depiction of her son as responsible for his own death. She initially spent time, therefore, researching the frequency of crashes with bicycles rather than concentrating on the loss of her son or on Ahmad. The research filled a lot of her time—“I talked about it a lot, so I’m sure people were quite bored with me or stressed that I wasn’t recovering.” Indeed, the stored, negative energy she carried came more from these injustices than the actual crash.

Being an activist, Kalicia quickly identified the flaws in the criminal justice system and responded to the invitation from the prosecutor to contribute ideas for the plea agreement. Although she had reason to be upset with the circumstances that hampered obtaining a conviction, she again concentrated on the larger issue, which was to provide Ahmad with life skills that might prevent harm to others and instill a stronger sense of responsibility. In that regard, Kalicia was extremely aware of Ahmad’s young age and the odds he would face in overcoming the trajectory of a criminal record associated with drugs and two hit-and-run fatalities. “I really did want this young man to…turn his life around… I expressed that to him in the sentencing phase, that I hoped that he could just be wholeheartedly out there afterward.” Kalicia never had negative feelings toward Ahmad—“I don’t want to say it was an accident because it wasn’t, but it’s not like he went and picked out my son or did something to him deliberately.”

Kalicia, therefore, used the plea agreement as a treatment plan for Ahmad with the goal that the crash and her son’s death not ruin another youth’s life. The prosecutor let her specify the amount of time to be served, drug and alcohol treatment, etc.—“Of course, I threw all of that stuff in there.” Indeed, Kalicia discovered the VOD option herself and proposed it be included as well. She clearly felt some responsibility toward Ahmad because he was so young. Her appreciation for his situation was likely informed by her experience of raising several sons and the challenges they faced as young adults. Moreover, the judge at the trial partially set the stage for the VOD by bringing the key stakeholders together at a table, engaging in conversation with Ahmad, and challenging the authenticity of his motivation. Specifically, after Ahmad’s statement that he had done well in treatment for his first hit-and-run offense, the judge said, “Apparently not, because you’re here for a DUI that killed someone.”

Preparation

Ahmad had only served two months of his five-year sentence before Kalicia initiated the preparation process. She resented her preoccupation with Ahmad and felt that completing the VOD might help refocus her energies on Darnell. Having recently married, she and her new husband attended preparation sessions for seven months. Throughout this time, Kalicia worried about Ahmad. Even though Ahmad agreed to the meeting, she was aware that she had engineered doing the VOD as part of the plea agreement and was anxious that he might back out. He had little backing, if any, from his family or from anyone in the prison and elected not to have a support person at the meeting.

Kalicia, therefore, went through the preparation with a lot of apprehension and dissonance. She found herself thinking more about Ahmad than Darnell or her other children. She now had a self-imposed obligation to care about yet another person’s life. She also put a lot of her energy into anticipating what Ahmad would do with his life in the future. During both the preparation and the meeting, therefore, Ahmad became a kind of project. Specifically, Kalicia’s decision to do the VOD early in Ahmad’s incarceration was based on her fear about Ahmad’s participation. She continually worried, during and after the first meeting, that some outside threat would interrupt or stop the process for him. That worry was reinforced, somewhat, by the facilitators who cautioned her to shorten her three-page list of questions because it might overwhelm Ahmad. More, Kalicia recognized that he lacked positive support generally and therefore had additional anxiety when the preparation was finished because the support they both had received from the facilitators during preparation was removed.

The relationship between Kalicia and Ahmad was fairly well established because of the plea agreement and the preparation process. Ahmad had written a letter to Kalicia during preparation, which further personalized their connection. Their openness to each other and the VOD process appeared promising. Kalicia was deeply invested in Ahmad and his future and Ahmad had been cooperative and receptive in getting ready for the dialogue. There were some critical caveats, however, that likely influenced the quality of the openness between them. Specifically, the startup of the process occurred shortly after the conclusion of the criminal justice process. Little time was given, therefore, for either Kalicia or Ahmad to process the crime, their feelings, or what impact it had made on their lives long term. Indeed, Kalicia’s motivation was tied up with her agenda for Ahmad rather than her own personal healing. Moreover, Ahmad was still an adolescent and under the influence of older people in his life. Because the VOD was part of a plea agreement, the legal mandate, although agreed to, likely influenced the timing and perhaps pre-empted the sense of need as well as the voluntariness of each person’s participation. These dynamics likely shaped the nature of the engagement between Kalicia and Ahmad both during preparation and in the meeting.

Dialogue

Kalicia had two meetings with Ahmad with vastly different outcomes. She felt that the actual VOD went well. Both she and Ahmad were vulnerable to each other. Kalicia talked to him about how the crash had impacted the family. Kalicia felt that Ahmad expressed genuine remorse. Kalicia brought pictures of Darnell so Ahmad could know him better and Ahmad asked if he could have them for himself. Ahmad also shared pictures of his new baby son and talked about wanting to help other youth learn from his mistakes. Everything that occurred in the first meeting seemed authentic and congruent with what Kalicia had wanted. She left feeling “very, very positive,” “a very extreme sense of hopefulness,” even “ecstatic.” Kalicia felt so buoyant that she proposed that they speak together at victim impact panels in the future and fantasized about being a mother and loving Ahmad “just like a son.”

For Kalicia, the concept of forgiveness was almost irrelevant. She harbored no anger at that point and had chalked up the crash to a mistake made by a developing adolescent. Indeed, when Ahmad had stated during the VOD that he hoped Kalicia could forgive him, she dismissed his statement as relevant to anything she thought or felt. She could only understand it as something he might feel if their roles were reversed.

Kalicia, however, had some lingering doubts because of the dissonance between her optimism and some of the incongruences she experienced throughout the process. For example, the facilitators had warned her about Ahmad’s immaturity. Because of his young age and lack of positive support, she worried that Ahmad might not follow through on his commitments to her and instead be negatively influenced by others. Even in the dialogue, she felt that he really did not understand the gravity of what he had done. Kalicia’s uncertainty began to rise. Her optimism after the VOD was based on the belief that Ahmad would follow through on his commitment and would develop the right attitude for success so that he could flourish when he left prison. Kalicia and Ahmad had agreed in the VOD that they wanted to meet again so Kalicia initiated a second unfacilitated conversation two years later. She had no specific agenda other than to check in and assess Ahmad’s progress.

Kalicia left the second meeting feeling frustrated, offended, and disappointed. Ahmad had no interest in doing any kind of public speaking himself or with Kalicia. Moreover, his attitude had changed such that he felt sorry for himself, was ready to move on from the crash, and wanted her help to get back his driver’s license. He was no longer willing to make the changes he’d committed to in the VOD. The negative energy engendered by this encounter shattered Kalicia’s positive feelings. For the first time, she began to feel anger and resentment that Ahmad had been given such a short sentence and would soon be released—“My thought was, ‘That’s not fair,’ over and over. ‘That’s not fair.’” She began to realize that Ahmad had not cared enough to stop after he hit Darnell and that Darnell deserved something more after Ahmad left him “on the side of the road like he’d hit a possum or a squirrel.” In spite of the results from the second meeting, Kalicia worked to maintain her optimism. She did not doubt the authenticity of the VOD or her hope for Ahmad. Rather, she placed the responsibility on his wife, his family, and other negative influences—“I am a little disappointed that he doesn’t want to do this but I don’t feel necessarily really angry. I just wish he had it in him to do it, because it would be good all the way around.”

The second meeting magnified the dissonance between Kalicia’s past positive response and the reality of Ahmad’s limitations. In hindsight, the initial success of the VOD was ephemeral. Kalicia doubted her perceptions, wondering if others, who were more sceptical about Ahmad’s motivation, might be right. Darnell’s friends, for example, wanted Ahmad put to death or run over. In response, Kalicia wondered, “What if I’m wrong and this person doesn’t deserve to be forgiven?” She questioned if Ahmad might be gaming her and thinking, “God, she’s just stupid to even believe that I care.” Indeed, Kalicia felt a little like a chump after Ahmad reneged on his promises. He was not willing to devote his life to the wrong he had done or to give the crash the priority that Kalicia gave to it by becoming a strong advocate for victim rights. Kalicia’s worry about misplaced hope reflected her reliance on Ahmad to change. She needed him to fulfill her expectations in order to resolve the dissonance between her optimism and doubt. Without his shift in attitude, Kalicia’s sense of resolution remained incomplete.

Although real to her, Kalicia’s idealism and positive response to the first meeting masked the gaps that likely influenced her incompleteness. For example, the motivation for the VOD did not evolve from Kalicia’s felt need or pain. Rather, it derived from her concern for Ahmad and what she could do to steer him in the right direction. Consequently, there was not a full unburdening of the pain and negative energy associated with the crash. Indeed, Kalicia began to have stronger negative reactions after the second meeting when Ahmad wanted his driver’s license back and as time moved closer to Ahmad’s release date. The positive energy associated with the first meeting gave the impression that dyadic shifts in energy had occurred when, in fact, there was a limited expression of need by Kalicia and little direct transfer of the pain to Ahmad. Although the conduit had been established between them for the back and forth flow of energy, the transformation of the pain was somewhat inconsequential. Kalicia felt hopeful that Ahmad was motivated to move in the right direction and that was enough. When he backed down, Kalicia did not have enough relief from her own pain to sustain what she had gained from the VOD. Indeed, she did not report any quality of life changes, no sense of being unburdened or of feeling complete.

Kalicia moved onto other activities to distance from and manage her disappointment with Ahmad. She already was strongly committed to being an advocate because of the meaning it gave to her life. Now, however, she re-subscribed to her mission of righting wrongs and making something better come out of her loss by greater involvement as a speaker on victim impact panels and leader for crime prevention activism in her city—“I usually do five to six victim impact panels a month and have formed a group to express our urgency to the lawmakers and city officials that they need to be more proactive about this stuff.”

Kalicia seemingly moved on from Ahmad. However, when Ahmad’s wife friended her on Facebook, it triggered the negative energy and lack of resolution Kalicia still carried. Rather than ignoring the request, Kalicia considered meeting with Ahmad and his wife at a public place like a restaurant to find out why his wife reached out to Kalicia—“I’m still hopeful that maybe this would turn into something good, for the families. But if it doesn’t, that’s okay too.” Indeed, Kalicia continued to have many private conversations in her mind with Ahmad. She noted that she shows his picture when she speaks and wonders if someone in the audience might recognize him. “I have had numerous people come up to me and say, ‘Hey, I knew Darnell’ so there have to be people who knew Ahmad.” Because of the wife’s outreach, Kalicia’s hope and agenda were reignited as well as her doubt. She did not want more disappointment but felt pulled to make contact because she felt incomplete. Likewise, if she did not respond to Ahmad’s wife, she might miss an opportunity. If she engaged, though, she might feel manipulated.

The distortions that flanked the VOD process were evident as well in the explicit and implicit dialogue about forgiveness. There were nonverbal implications, for example, of an energy shift between Kalicia and Ahmad. They hugged and exchanged pictures. Ahmad’s remorse was authentic. Moreover, Kalicia reinstated Ahmad in many ways. Her intent was to move him past the crash so that he could be an active and valued member of society. She asked him to join her as a speaker on victim impact panels. In truth, whatever forgiveness occurred was conditional and based on Kalicia’s agenda for Ahmad. The examination of forgiveness, therefore, varied based on what happened in both meetings and the difficulties with sustaining the results from the VOD.

In the aftermath of the second meeting, Kalicia was left with even greater dissonance that remained unresolved. Although she now had specific knowledge of Ahmad’s limitations, she refused to accept that Ahmad had been inauthentic and, instead, maintained that others were responsible for his backsliding and poor judgment. This positioning preserved her hope but kept her trapped in the unpredictability of Ahmad’s decisions. His shifts in attitude and her focus on external influences on Ahmad and on him rather than on herself increased the negative energy and distorted the VOD process. In actuality, the scheduling of the VOD was out of sync with the time necessary for integration of the crime and the events associated with the criminal justice system. Indeed, Kalicia likely needed more time to process her son’s death before meeting with Ahmad so that her personal needs specific to her pain took priority. Ahmad likely needed to mature so that he could address the consequences of his actions more thoroughly and with greater self-accountability.

Moreover, the context and motivation for the VOD was a part of the plea agreement, which legally mandated that Ahmad had an obligation to meet with Kalicia. The mandate, in effect, distorted the voluntariness of the VOD and the spirit of giving and gifting between two individuals who freely decide to meet. Kalicia’s control in constructing the conditions in the plea agreement likely set the stage for her to assume she had more control of Ahmad than she actually did. Instead of finishing their contact at the end of the VOD, she felt compelled to monitor his commitment to her. Moreover, there was little stored or negative energy based on Kalicia’s personal reactions to the loss of her son or toward Ahmad to propel movement toward each other. Indeed her movement was based on following through on one of the conditions of the plea agreement and her fear that Ahmad might back out. For Kalicia, therefore, the VOD was a part of the criminal justice process, which she felt she needed to complete before she could move forward.

TAMARA’S STORY AND ANALYSIS

Tamara was the victim of gang violence and survived three potentially life-threatening gunshot wounds. From the very beginning James, the shooter, expressed remorse for his actions but not in ways that allowed for dialogue with Tamara. Because of the nature of the crime, James was sentenced to 37 years in federal prison, a system that has no formal VOD process. It took over ten years, two wardens and some covert operations until James and Tamara finally arranged by themselves to meet. Their dialogue completed a process of accountability that had remained unfinished for years. Besides learning details about James that solidified her understanding of him and the shooting, Tamara committed herself to an inseparable and enduring relationship with James as “son.”

One night I pulled into the driveway of my home, not realizing that I had been followed by a group of four boys until I saw their car stop in front of a house several doors away. I didn’t open my garage door or go into my house because I knew my four-year-old son and his nanny were there alone. Even though it was drizzly and dark, I tried to watch what the boys were doing. Suddenly I felt somebody standing next to me. I looked and there was James, a young man with a gun. I threw my car into reverse and floored it. He unloaded his .38 into my car hitting me three times. I didn’t want to stop and go into my own house because I thought I was going to die and I didn’t want to die in front of my four-year-old. So I pulled up to the neighbor’s house and got out. Then I tried dialing 911 on my car phone but I couldn’t get through because I lived in a military neighborhood. Everybody there recognized gunfire so they were all calling 911. I didn’t realize three of the boys were in the cul-de-sac turning around. They were still firing. But the neighbors rushed out, grabbed me, and ran me into their house. I found out later that James hid in the bushes across the street until all the commotion died down and then he ran away. He had walked over to my car at one point, looked in, and saw blood all over my face so he presumed I was dead. He didn’t meet up with the other boys until later that night at their girlfriends’ apartments. At the trial, the other boys testified that James was in tears because he thought he had killed me and didn’t mean to.

I was transported by EMS to the hospital and kept overnight. Eight detectives came and tried to show me pictures. It had been so dark and fast and happened in a split second. I have no clue as to why I threw my car into reverse. You always think you will freeze in a situation like that but I didn’t. I also don’t know how I survived the gunshots other than that God was in the car with me. One bullet grazed across the top of my shoulder. One bullet went into my left shoulder and hit the scapula bone and broke it and went back out the same hole it came in on. That was a miracle. Finally, one bullet went in the base of my neck on the left and landed in the base on the right side. They took the bullet out six weeks later. The surgeon said that if it had landed one centimeter one way, I’d have been dead. If the bullet had landed a half a centimeter the other way, I’d have been paralyzed from the neck down. There are no other scars. Today, I am perfectly fine.

The boys were all members of a gang. There were two 14-year-olds, a 17- and an 18-year-old. They caught two of the boys trying to steal another car with the same gun they used on me. They started pointing fingers and ratting each other out. Eventually the police arrested all four of the boys. The two 14-year-olds were juveniles and so they were released early. The 17-year-old was adjudicated to be an adult. The 18-year old was already an adult. We went to trial 13 months later. The case was tried in a federal court because carjacking is a federal offense. Specifically, my vehicle was traced back to being partly manufactured in Canada and then brought into the United States through Detroit where it was a simple hold crossing state lines into Nevada where I bought it.

The boys faced charges of federal carjacking, conspiracy to commit carjacking, weapons, and enhanced gang activity. I gave testimony at the beginning of the five-day trial but was otherwise kept at the top of the federal building for my safety because what happened was a gang-related crime. I was allowed, however, to attend the final arguments. The two older boys were convicted. James, the shooter, was given 55 years in a federal penitentiary with no parole. The driver was given 30 years with no parole. They were both given an opportunity to speak. James stood up in front of the court and apologized. He looked me straight in the eye, which according to my friends and family was the first time he had looked up from the courtroom floor. He looked first at me and apologized, then at my family, his family, and the judge, and apologized in turn to everybody. The judge lowered his sentence from 55 to 37 years. In contrast to James, the driver just said, “Well if I did have anything to do with it, I’m sorry.” He’s actually in maximum security up north somewhere. He’ll probably never see the light of day because he keeps committing more crimes in prison. Both of his parents were already incarcerated. James’ parents were at the trial and sentencing. His father was Black and his mother was Filipino. They came up to me after the sentencing. His mother was crying and asked if I would forgive James. They wanted to stay in touch with me. I said, “I don’t know about that at this point.”

Five years later, James went back to court on appeal to lower his sentence ten years. I had an opportunity to speak and I did. Then James spoke and told the judge, “I didn’t ask for this hearing. I don’t want this. I don’t deserve any time off. I deserve to serve every day I received for what I did to her and her family.”

I was in therapy for eight years. I knew there was something different about James. He was very remorseful from the beginning. I tried to do a VOD but it was not possible because the program had not been adopted in the federal system. The State of Nevada, therefore, tried to help me. They went to bat with the Federal Bureau of Prisons and got permission for me to do a VOD. I went through preparation and all the paperwork, which was about one-and-a-half feet high. The folks from Nevada made a presentation to the warden of the prison but he said “no.” That decision put a screeching halt to everything I was trying to do. The warden argued that James had rights too but they never even asked him if he wanted to speak to me.

After that, I began to participate in an in-prison restorative justice program called Bridges to Life that brought together offenders and crime victims. I found that program gave me the surrogacy of a VOD because it involved offender participants. There, I could work with and learn to talk to offenders as well as care about them. It helped me realize that they were real people who were no different than I am. They just made some bad choices. So, my preparation was many years in the making. I knew I was doing it on my own. I thought a lot about it. I wrote a lot of things down. I had a list of questions for James to answer. A lot of those questions were “Why, why, why, why, why, why me?” So my preparation lasted from 1995 to 2011.

I tried to meet with James for a second time ten years after his appeal. Again the State of Nevada stepped in to help me. They were even willing to facilitate the VOD. I got another “no” from the warden. I reported what had happened to the offenders and crime victims at Bridges to Life. I said, “I’m not giving up. I’m going to get into that prison one way or the other.” At this point in time I was divorced and my boys were all grown and in college or married. I had just sold my house and my ex-husband was helping out by picking up the mail. Out of the blue, I got a phone call from him that I had received a letter from James Arbuckle. He read it to me and by the time he finished, both he and I were in tears. The letter was absolutely incredible and beautiful. I was not sure what to do. I sat on it for a week or two and talked to some advisors about it. I talked to a woman from the Federal District Attorney’s office about possible ways to contact James. She said, “Well, I guess as long as nobody knows [what you are planning to do], no harm, no foul, right?”

So, James and I emailed and wrote back and forth for about three months. Then he said that he wanted to call me. I still remember that call and how weird it was to actually talk to him. He didn’t tell me a whole lot because he wanted to tell me everything face to face. I said to him, “They’re probably not going to let me into prison.” He said, “Well, it can’t hurt to try.” So he sent me papers to complete on a Monday so I could get on his visitor list. I sent them back right away. James had told me that it would take at least three weeks before I was approved but everything went through in three days. It’s unheard of to get approved that quickly. I think the administration at the Department of Corrections did not know I was the victim. I had remarried and my name was changed so they put the paperwork through. I was so grateful that I was finally going to get to see him.

On Saturday morning, I drove down to Three Hills Federal Penitentiary and had my first visit with James. There was no formal preparation or facilitation. It would just be the two of us using our time together to do what otherwise happens in a VOD. When I got to the prison, people seemed to know who I was. They knew I shouldn’t be there but they weren’t going to stop me. They wanted to see what would happen so they watched James and me while we met in the visiting room for the whole time. When James walked in, he gave his ID and turned around and looked at me. He walked over and we hugged. Then we just sat and talked for the next six hours. We laughed, cried, and talked. It was the most amazing six hours I’ve ever had. I learned that he was never offered the opportunity to meet with me. Two different wardens never even approached him with the possibility. I learned that James was now doing a chaplaincy stint at the facility. He had been at Three Hills for ten years. He’d never told his story until we started talking. He told me everything—his whole life, how he ended up in such a dark place, how he ended up in the gang, the events that happened the night he shot me, and how he really lost it when he thought he had killed me. He actually threw away the gun that evening and then went back and got it. Otherwise, he’d probably never have been caught. But he felt that he would likely be dead today if he had not been caught.

At our first meeting, I made him tell me everything from the beginning. “I want to know it all,” and he did. At the time of the shooting, James was in a very dark place. He knew that his mother, when she was in the Philippines, got pregnant from a man in the United States military who was already married. He left her alone with James when he returned to the States. She married another man in the military when James was four years old and moved to the United States. James became a citizen and had several siblings. He was a straight A student and excelled in sports. His stepfather, however, would not allow his mother to show him much affection and was not very kind. No one in the family showed up to celebrate his accomplishments or make a big deal about his good grades.

By the time he became a teenager, he got himself wrapped up in gangs where he was loved and cared for. James’ goal was to rise to the top of the gang. He told me awful things that he did that he’s not proud of but wanted me to know everything. I had learned from the trial that the four boys were on drugs and smoking cigarettes laced with embalming fluid. However, James told me point blank that he did not do drugs that night. He was completely stone cold sober. He was just angry. Apparently a rival gang had tried to kill him the night before. The four boys wanted to steal my minivan so they could go retaliate and the rival gang would never see them coming. Who would think that a gang member would be in a minivan? That’s why they had targeted my car.

Although I got all the answers I asked for, I didn’t want to hear that James shot me without being on drugs. I had always used that excuse, “Oh, well they were on PCP.” If someone is on PCP, they are acting outside of what they would normally do. I would share that piece when I told my story and everyone would respond, “Oh, yeah. That’s why he did it.” When I found out he was cold sober, that was hard to hear. However, I prefer the truth straight up and to my face. Knowledge is power, period. It was gut wrenching, however, knowing the truth and hard, as well, for him to say. There were a lot of tears during that visit on both sides. Every light at every end of the tunnel, every piece of closure that anybody ever talks about, I felt all that day. Although what he shared was scary, I saw more that he was capable of the truth and remorse. I walked out of that prison, probably as whole as I will ever be.

After he told me about his life, I told him about mine. That’s when we began to really start bonding like mother and son. We started sharing and laughing and talking. It was almost silly and giggly. It was like the child who has just told his mom all the little bad things he did and now it’s time to go for ice cream because he told the truth. He heard my side of it too and what had happened to me in my life. That included the destruction of my marriage, the drugs, and the addiction one of my sons was thrown into. He needed to hear all that ugliness and it hurt him because he had a responsibility in it. As much as I cared about him, I also needed him to understand the weight of what he did and what I told him was harsh. I had a lot of years getting through the shooting. At one point, I was suicidal and almost jumped off of a penthouse patio. I went through a drinking binge of about nine months, where I don’t think I was sober. I neglected my children while I was trying to put the pieces back together. There were a lot of repercussions from what he did and I didn’t excuse any of them.

By the end of the first visit, he and I were inseparable. It was the most powerful day of my life. I got the answers I needed, which was why. Why did this happen? I got the truth, the real, honest-to-God truth. I learned about his whole life, the darkness, the blackness, and how he ended up. James called me after I left there. He told me that when I walked out of the visitation room the guards were all in tears. So everybody watched us talk and was absolutely blown away. I visited him for about a year before somebody ratted us out. Even the warden knew what was happening but when another inmate brought it to people’s attention, the prison had to stop it. But we still talk every week. He calls me every Friday and we still email. He calls me “Mom.” I call him “son.” We shared everything. In fact, there is probably nothing that we don’t share at this point. We tell each other everything. It’s very strange, very weird. My family was a little concerned, especially my boys. But after they read his letter, saw the peace this has brought me, and heard how amazing my visits are with him, they can’t wait to meet him.

I don’t know how to explain that people have choices like he did and still choose to do the bad things when they know better. After hearing all the stories of offenders with Bridges to Life, however, you see the similarities and begin to understand why some of the inmates like being in gangs and doing things like what happened to me that particular night. Then you see James who had lived with abuse and pure neglect and realize that all a child ever wants growing up is to be loved, accepted, and acknowledged. He never got, “Good job.”

I do forgive what happened and I’ve learned to put it all in perspective and in place. My getting shot broke me to my core and the feelings I have about it will never go away. They just become a part of who I am. I wanted to meet with James so I could find some peace and a place to put what had happened. Although I wish there were things that hadn’t happened, when I look at my life today and my children today, I wouldn’t change a thing. I have been a Christian the majority of my life. I cried out to God that night in the car. I always felt that He picked me for a reason and that there was something He wanted me to do. I still believe that to this day. I never really thought about forgiveness or what it means but I grabbed a magazine one day in my therapist’s office. It flopped open to a very short article by a professor whose mother had been brutally murdered. I was beaming when my therapist came to get me for our session. He looked at me and asked, “What?” I said, “It’s been here all this time. I got it. I got it. I’ve forgiven him but I didn’t even know I had.” The article said that forgiveness is when you no longer wish ill will on somebody for what they’ve done to you. I knew I was way past that time. I remember being so angry at the beginning. I remember asking the detective if I could have ten minutes in a room with James. I never really knew what forgiveness was until then. I had so much weight lifted off me that day with James. The honesty with which he told me everything just solidified everything for me. I heard the real, honest-to-God heart truth that was so pure that it solidified it all.

The hardest thing for James was forgiving himself. He’s still working on it. He holds himself accountable for what happened. When you see that quality in somebody, you know there is a real, good-hearted person in there. Somebody just needs to love them so it can come out. I told him I forgave him but he struggles with understanding why I forgave him. He has to let go of it because he did it and there’s nothing he can do to take it back. He just has to do better moving forward. He’s been in prison so long that I don’t think he has had enough life skills with non-criminal people.

For me, forgiveness is letting go of the anger, hurt, and pain. You shouldn’t forget that it happened, however, because everything that happens makes us the person we are today. I believe we should allow those things to become part of us and let us be who we’re supposed to be. I believe that not forgetting prevents us from getting back into the same situation or position. Even though I did nothing wrong that night, I am hyper-vigilant to my surroundings. I don’t want to be like those people who live in the bubble and go, without thinking, to get a gallon of milk at 10:00 at night. I wouldn’t go out to get that milk because it’s not worth it to me. You would think I was perfectly normal but I don’t live like other people. I have fears and security issues. I don’t park in parking garages. If somebody’s walking towards my car, I will immediately get out of the way of them. Everything in my house has to be locked. I bought a gun and learned how to shoot it right after the shooting. But the gun scares me to death.

After my first meeting with James, I invited his mother to dinner. We sat and talked. I told her I had forgiven James, which gave her some peace. That’s all she had ever wanted. She never tried to defend him or give excuses. She just listened. We talked a lot about James and where he is in his life right now. I haven’t talked to her since. I somewhat blame her for what happened to James and that’s why I don’t want to have an ongoing relationship with her. I guess it’s a little strange that I forgive him but hold her accountable. I have no desire to meet his stepfather because I know what he did. Yet James I hold so dear. I don’t understand it. I really can’t explain it.

Our meetings were exactly what I thought they would be. I just never imagined loving the man who tried to kill me. What I had hoped for was just peace. I didn’t know that along with that peace, I was actually going to get an amazing person in my life for the rest of my life. I think that’s the best part. I look forward to the day he gets out. I do plan for him to be completely and totally in my life, part of my family and probably will come and live in my house. I think he and I telling our story of peace and forgiveness can change lives. He’s amazingly bright and intelligent. It’s so sad that this happened but both of us feel the same way. We wouldn’t change a thing. We’re trying to write a book together. It’s hard to get his stuff out of the prison to me. I have to keep track of all emails that he sends so I can use them. That first night that I met him, I just didn’t see anything in his eyes. They were empty. I see everything in his eyes now. I don’t know how to explain what an amazingly open and beautiful heart he has.

Analysis: The crime and its aftermath

Tamara was the direct victim of a gang-related aggravated assault that nearly took her life. The unexpected shooting occurred outside her home and in a quiet neighborhood where most of the families were connected with the military. One of the bullets almost killed her. Although severely injured, she had the foresight to put her car in reverse, floor it, call 911, and not escape into her home where her four-year-old son was waiting. She wanted to protect him from witnessing her death. She miraculously pulled through even though the bullet was within centimeters of killing or paralyzing her from the neck down.

From the moment of the shooting, James was unique in his response. After seeing the blood covering Tamara’s face and body, he assumed she was dead. He cried because he did not mean to kill her. He and the other boys only planned to take her car. At his trial, he offered no defense and publicly apologized to her directly. He disagreed with his attorney’s efforts, at the appeal hearing, to reduce his sentence, stating publicly that he deserved the time he’d been given for what he did to Tamara and her family.

Tamara waited 15 years and pursued a number of avenues before she was able to meet with James. During that time, she went through numerous medical procedures and sought years of therapy to address the physical and psychological trauma she endured. She went on a drinking binge for nine months and struggled with being suicidal—“I had a lot of years getting through it.” In her efforts to put all the pieces together, she found that she neglected her children, all of whom had serious problems because of what happened to their mother. Her marriage could not survive the immensity of the trauma and violence associated with the shooting. Tamara became hyper-vigilant about her surroundings. To this day, she will not park in parking garages and has a concealed handgun license to carry a gun—“I learned how to shoot right afterward… But the gun scares me to death.”

The primary issue for Tamara, however, was not the physical injury to her body or the emotional scarring but, rather, her compelling need to talk with James. Although she had given victim statements at his trial and the appeal hearing, it was his outreach and recognition of what he had done to Tamara’s life that touched her. Indeed, James held himself unabashedly and publicly accountable to her at the legal proceedings where attorneys were zealously fighting to ensure he did not spend most of his life behind bars. Although there had been no meeting yet between them or verbal expression by Tamara of the pain differential, James had visually seen what he had done when he peered in the window of her car and saw her bloody face after he had shot her. That visual and the fear that he had killed her were not distorted by drugs and made a lasting impression on his mind. James’ voluntary and honest acknowledgment of what he had done was, in effect, the beginning of the pain transfer. Moreover, he made his comments directly to Tamara. She felt the surge of positive energy that he conveyed at both the trial and the appeal hearing such that the energy flow between them began to construct the conduit for future ongoing communication.

The core dissonance for Tamara, however, was created by her desperate need for a dyadic engagement with James for her healing and the restricting impediments she faced from the criminal justice system, which, rather than helping her, blocked her ability to heal. Indeed, James was already trying to have dialogue with her when he saw her at the legal proceedings but neither could get to the other. James was trying to communicate his remorse and deservedness of punishment to Tamara in a setting in which he had to fight the system to do it. Tamara heard his comments as meant for her and likely felt them in a way that cemented their ongoing connection. Their desired dialogue, however, remained stalled and frozen because neither James nor Tamara had an avenue open for completing it. Although James made meaningful statements in court to Tamara, he had no way to assess her response, which left him empty. Likewise, Tamara had no way to communicate her reaction to him, which also left her empty. This circumstance created a gulf between them. Indeed, the yearning for completion but with no outlet was the primary source of frustration and stored energy. It increased as Tamara encountered ongoing resistance in her efforts to arrange for a VOD with James.

The statements made by James produced an unusual dissonance. Usually it is the victim who holds the offender accountable. James, however, held himself accountable, even going against the position of his own attorney who wanted to lower his sentence. He knew that he owed something directly to Tamara and reached out to her first and in a variety of ways. This shift on his part resulted in Tamara never seeing him as a monster. She had to work around the system to meet with him but she did not possess the anger that most victims otherwise feel toward the offender.

Preparation

Tamara did extensive formal and informal preparation over many years before she was able to meet with James. Initially, the Department of Corrections in Nevada agreed to help because the federal facility was located in Nevada and the Federal Bureau of Prisons agreed to allow the VOD. Consequently, Tamara went through the formal preparation process, which involved reflecting on and completing numerous self-assessments that probed her reactions to the crime and to James as the offender.

When the warden at the federal facility refused to allow the VOD, Tamara began volunteering for Bridges to Life as a substitute opportunity for meeting with James. Tamara’s involvement with offenders gave her extensive exposure to their backgrounds and struggles and began to erase the line that otherwise divides crime victims and offenders—“I could work with, talk to, and learn to care about these offenders and realize that they are real people.” In many ways, Tamara’s experience with Bridges to Life was her first major energy shift. She understood how the stories of offenders aligned with the theme of making bad choices because bad environments such as gangs surrounded them. Although this experience served to open Tamara up emotionally and psychologically to the realities of an offender’s world, she was aware, throughout, that the offenders in the Bridges to Life program were stand-ins for James. In that process she was limited because she could only transfer her knowledge to James mentally. However, she remained internally in dialogue with him all the way through.

James’ statements to Tamara conveyed both remorse and empathy and his deservedness to face whatever punishment was necessary to atone for what he had done. Tamara’s respect and admiration for James established her openness and receptivity to him early on. The knowledge gained from the offenders in the prison program helped humanize James and gave her clues about why he was involved in a gang and such dangerous activities. Tamara’s openness to James, as well as her determination, were generated, however, by her anger with the criminal justice system. Indeed, the more rejection she experienced, the stronger was her desire to connect with James. The opposition from two wardens ultimately joined her and James against a common enemy even before they met.

Indeed, because James had behaved in such an unusual way, which Tamara actually normalized through her positive contact with the Bridges to Life offenders, she was able to have a positive experience in her preparation for meeting James. In contrast, the behavior of the wardens diminished the significance of James’ allegiance to holding himself accountable because they responded as if he was a stereotypical criminal they were warehousing. Consequently, their response was dissonant with the person James had already shown that he was. That dissonance propelled Tamara forward in her determination to get into the prison to see James no matter what.

Dialogue

It is difficult to guage the start of the dialogue between James and Tamara. James’ statements in court, his letter to Tamara, their written correspondence, and telephone call occurred before they ever met in person. Moreover, because of the wardens’ refusal to allow the VOD, there was no preparation that included James or the facilitators shuttling back and forth between the participants that otherwise occurs. Indeed, before they ever met at the prison, they had schemed together to get Tamara into the prison. Their mutual determination was already propelled by the energy flow between them. Consequently, the conduit for energy transfer was well established. Although they had been bridging toward each other for a long time, the strength of their dyadic will finally brought them face to face. In many ways, the outcome of the visit could have been predicted. They just had to fill in the pieces. Their hug at the beginning of the visit was further evidence of the shift in the relationship that had been present from James’ initial apology and subsequent stand against serving less time.

Tamara’s primary need was to get answers to her longstanding questions—“I made him do just like I do [with the offenders] in Bridges to Life program. You tell me from the beginning. I want to know it all.” Consequently, James took the lead and described in detail what happened the night of the shooting, how he got into gangs, his family background, and the countless wrongdoings and harms he had caused as part of his history. Tamara got the answers to her questions. Indeed, it was only through their face-to-face contact that she could see his eyes and how he had changed. James too needed Tamara to directly see his remorse. For example, he did not want to talk to her over the phone about the shooting. He would share his story only in person.

Tamara most appreciated his honesty and accountability both to himself and to her. Tamara’s reciprocal sharing of her hard and painful truth helped humanize each to the other and complete the dialogue that had started years ago at James’ trial—“I walked out as whole as I will ever be.” Their mutual truth-telling served to clean out the negative energy. It worked like an acid to cut through the stored-up ugliness of the past as well as a healing balm but it was harsh, raw, and real. The honest-to-God, gut-wrenching truth dissipated the negative energy as shown by the fact that both Tamara and James were able to laugh, cry, and talk, and begin a bonding process. Tamara described it as “kind of like mother and son.” Indeed, at one point, “It [was] kind of almost silly and giggly.”

James’ resourcefulness in writing the letter and advocating for their visit along with the work he’d done on himself changed the ownership of the meeting from it being “hers” to it being “theirs.” They became co-conspirators with a shared narrative. Their single-mindedness actually brought their relationship to fruition and continued it past the initial meeting at the prison.

Although Tamara had prepared for years, she was shocked to discover that James was stone cold sober when he shot her. This admission erased any illusion or excuse that Tamara might have had to explain what had happened. She struggled with the dissonance that he had chosen to shoot her alongside her belief that he was a good-hearted person. She partially resolved the dissonance by recognizing that his choice was about getting the car, not about her. She also resolved it by understanding that his drive to hold himself accountable and to confess his life to her was connected to trying to give back to her what he took when he shot her. Their mutual unburdening, in effect, helped unburden Tamara.

Tamara had struggled with forgiving James during her therapy. James’ mother had asked her to forgive him right after the trial. However, Tamara was not sure what forgiveness was or how to get there. Her reading of the article by the psychologist helped her first to identify that the critical issue was letting go of the anger or vengefulness and second to discover that she had already accomplished that. Although she logically derived that she had forgiven James, she felt the full impact of her forgiveness after James conveyed his whole story with such honesty. “Everything just solidified. I had so much stuff, so much weight lifted off me that day.” Indeed, the nature of James’ sharing showed Tamara how deserving James was of her forgiveness. Her response to his invitation and her giving of herself and her pain to him reflected her sense of James as worthy, which may be partly responsible for the lifting of the weight from her shoulders. For Tamara, the larger issue, however, was the difficulty James had with self-forgiveness. She recognized that James’ honesty and insistence on self-accountability held him hostage in ways that made it difficult for James to left go of the pervasive negative toxic elements, which is what Tamara learned was necessary for forgiveness.

Over the years, Tamara worked on the idea of acceptance and the belief that in letting go of the negativity, it made room to accept what had happened so that it could be absorbed—“When we forgive then what we’re forgiving just becomes a part of who we are.” She applied that same philosophy to the horrific event that happened to her—“I don’t think you ever get closure. An event that drastic never goes away. It becomes part of who you are.” As such, the meeting with James allowed the dialogue about the crime and its impact on both their lives to come to completion so it could be absorbed and shared. This meeting and their coming together, in effect, transformed the pain Tamara otherwise carried. A major shift for Tamara, therefore, was accepting that her losses and the impact from the crime, including her relationship with James, had become a part of who she is. The transformation was not loud and intense. Rather, it was manifested quietly as a sense of peace.

Because of the circumstances, the guards and staff of the facility witnessed the meeting in the prison’s visiting room. They sanctioned it with their amazement and tears and made it safe by keeping the secret about Tamara’s status as victim until it was exposed and they were forced to stop their visits. Tamara’s reinstatement of James took many forms. She continued to meet with him five more times. She continued to correspond with him and have weekly calls after she could no longer see him. She planned that he would be an active part of her world when he was released and laid the groundwork with her sons to accept him as a family member. Finally, Tamara and James decided to write a book together about their shared experience of the shooting and its aftermath.

MONIQUE’S STORY AND ANALYSIS

Monique’s 19-year-old brother, Eduardo, was killed while working security at a local convenience store. Edwardo lived for 21 days in the hospital before succumbing to his injuries. The family scrambled for details of the crime and the shooter but it took more than a year before law enforcement disclosed they had caught the perpetrator, Manny, and he had already been sentenced. Monique’s motivation for meeting with Manny was based on his impending release from prison. She saw him as a monster who deserved prison and never to see the light of day. Through the dialogue, Monique began to humanize Manny and restructure her understanding of the crime. Manny paradoxically gave Monique her freedom by guiding her to live in ways that moved her forward but with her brother’s memory beside her. Years later, she gave that freedom to another offender who, unbeknownst to her, had witnessed her brother’s shooting and subsequently became a hostage of guilt and self-recrimination.

When I was 24 years old, my 19-year-old brother, Eduardo, was killed while working as a security guard for a convenience store. There was a confrontation in a huge parking lot between three guards, including him, and a crowd of 50–75 people who were not supposed to be there. The guards were White and the crowd was mostly Black. People in the parking lot felt that the guards were racist because they had arrested three young kids who had stolen beer from the store. The crowd started pushing and shoving. In the confrontation, one of the guards, who was in a pick-up truck, grabbed his shotgun and fired into the air thinking everyone would scatter. But a man in the crowd pulled a gun out of his car and, in response, fired into the crowd. My brother was stuck in the back where the bullet hit his shoulder blade and then came out the front. It could have been so much worse but my brother was the only one hit. Finally, the guard in the pick-up truck fired back and peppered the shooter’s car and the shooter.

The police, who were three blocks from the store, were called over 50 times to come to that parking lot but no officer showed up until after the shooting. Eventually, the crowd dispersed and my brother and the shooter ended up at the same hospital but we did not know that fact. I learned what happened from my mother and we all went down to the hospital. Everyone who was in the parking lot at the store had ended up in the hospital parking lot. It was just chaos. People were yelling and screaming at us and calling us names. We had no clue what was going on. By the time we figured it out, the police had cleared the hospital parking lot and everyone settled down. There was so much confusion that, initially, nobody knew who shot whom first. The hospital released the shooter within a few hours. My brother lived for 21 days but there was so much damage that his body could not survive it.

The police told us nothing about the shooter, whose name was Manny. We kept pushing to get details. We wanted them for my brother during those 21 days because he could not remember anything about that night. We were denied at every turn. I think I was discounted because I was just a sister. The truth was that I had raised Eduardo as if I were his mother. I would go to the District Attorney’s office just begging, “Please, just tell me something. Have you arrested somebody?” After a year, the lead detective contacted us and told us that the police had arrested a man shortly after the shooting and he’d been in jail ever since. He decided to take a plea bargain and got a 15-year sentence. We had had no communication with the criminal justice system. That started my mission to meet Manny.

At first, I was angry with the shooter. My brother and I were so close and Manny took him. A nagging question played repeatedly in my mind. “How does somebody get to the point where they think shooting another is okay? What goes on in their life so that this is the answer?” Eventually I moved from the anger to just wanting answers and ultimately, “the” answer. When I would tell others about my desire, they would think I wanted to do something bad to him but that was not my intention.

My brother’s murder really did a number on the whole family. Everybody who was in a relationship ended up divorced because they and their partners were not on the same page. My mother and I both divorced. I ended up being a single mom raising two kids. I felt like I went on autopilot. It was the only way I could continue to raise my kids and not let grief totally consume me but it just kept coming out in different ways. I was really depressed a lot, just going through the motions, and not really living a life. I tried to shelter my kids but they were affected as well. The truth was that they could see how shut off I was and not the happy mom they had known. I was so wrapped up in my loss that I didn’t realize what was happening to them.

Indeed, I was pretty fixated on the shooting. I knew Eduardo was a great guy. I adored him. He was nothing but friendly and loving. I felt like I was chasing my own tail, however, because I couldn’t get answers about Manny, nor could I see for myself who he was. All my thoughts were very negative and I was almost obsessive about what had happened. My fear held me hostage because that was all I could think about. For example, I’d sit and feel the loss and how horrible this world felt without my brother. I’d wonder how anyone could take his life. Then I’d get angry about it because Manny only got 15 years. I began thinking, “Maybe if I talk to him and he sees what life he took, he won’t want to do this again.” Indeed, I felt that if you take someone’s life, you should know whose life you took. Who are they? What were they about?

So I started sharing with everybody and anybody who would listen that I would like to meet Manny. Indeed, I even talked to his parole board when it was time for his review. I said, “You know, I really wish I could meet him. I need to know more about him and I want him to know about my brother.” That’s when I learned about the VOD program. That was also the point when I learned, for the first time, some facts about Manny. The parole board told me that he was going to school and hadn’t been in trouble. A staff person connected to the parole board sent me the paperwork to complete. I signed up for the program even though I was convinced that Manny was “probably not going to do it.” I was thrown for a loop when he agreed to it. Sometimes when you say you want something and it happens, you’re not quite sure that’s really what you want because it’s scary. I’d never been in a jail or prison. I’d never been in trouble. So, going into a prison to meet my monster was terrifying.

I had two reasons for wanting to meet with Manny. The police reports were so sketchy that I felt driven to know what had actually happened the night my brother was killed. When you have that many people in a parking lot and take everyone’s statements, it’s amazing how different the accounts are and how difficult it is to figure out whose recollection is correct. I needed answers that I could understand, know, and be at peace with. My other motivation was my fear. Manny got a very short sentence of 15 years for a deadly weapons charge and I didn’t think that was right. Moreover, he only had to serve half of the sentence. I was deathly afraid, therefore, that he’d get out and commit another crime. I was scared for society. Because I’d been fighting his parole for years, I even told the parole board, “No, no. Please don’t let him out until after the VOD.” Indeed that fear kept me wrapped up for many, many years.

I went through preparation for six months. I loved my facilitator. She felt like a friend. She counseled with both Manny and me and cared a lot about us. She wanted to be sure Manny and I were on the same page. Every time I got scared and thought, “I don’t know if I can do this,” she’d bring me back saying, “But this is really what you wanted. You asked for this. So think about it before you don’t do this.” She would sit with me, let me go through my fears, and talk it out. I’d respond saying, “You’re right. I do want to do this. It’s my one chance to do this in a safe environment. I could have hunted him down when he got out but this was a safe way to do it.”

I went on a tour of the prison the day before we met. It was terrifying to go into a maximum security facility. There were guards and all the wire and dogs. I was deathly afraid. My facilitator helped me. She kept me calm and breathing. “I’ll be here the whole time with you and we can do this.” In the prison visit I got to see how Manny worked and lived. On the day of the meeting all my apprehension melted away as soon as we got to the meeting and I was faced with him. I thought to myself, “That’s the guy that I’ve been having nightmares about for ten years?” I had made him up to be a big monster in my head but when he walked in, he was just a guy. So why was I so afraid?

The facilitator introduced us to each other and I shook his hand. That was an awkward moment. How do you greet someone who has harmed your family in that way? We then sat down across from each other. The facilitator talked for a minute about the sessions she had had with each of us. We had both written letters about what we wanted to get out of the meeting and even though that information was known, the facilitator read the letters out loud so we could hear in each other’s presence the expectations of one another. That procedure helped calm our fears. Actually, Manny was more afraid than I was. He’s told me many times that he didn’t know what I wanted to say to him.

I asked Manny to start by telling me where he came from and how he was raised. I also wanted to tell him about our childhood, how we were raised and who my brother was. So we kind of went back and forth with childhood stories and what led up to the night of my brother’s murder. We kind of held back, dragging our feet about the night of the murder because both of us were a little nervous to talk about it. We needed time to warm up to the idea of going there.

I brought a photo album to the meeting that I had arranged in chronological order. Toward the end of the album I had my brother’s autopsy report and a picture of the headstone I had made for him. I also had pictures of when we were with him in the hospital. He was awake and talking at one point. Because he was a macho man there were many pictures where he was saying, “I’m going to make an album so I can pick up girls because I’ve got this gunshot thing.” The photo album was important because Manny could see the actual damage he had done. When he saw the pictures, he cried. I felt for him. I realized that in all the chaos that night, it could have been anybody who was shot. I can’t imagine being responsible for someone’s life and being brave enough to own up to it. So my heart kind of switched at that moment. I told him, “You are so brave for agreeing to meet with me, not knowing what I was going to say to you or do to you when we got in here.” He answered, “I’m not going to lie. I was scared. I didn’t know.”

Because I could share the actual event with him, he could answer more questions for me. I didn’t know, for example, if he was actually trying to kill my brother or not. He told me that he had just fired into the crowd because he heard someone else shooting. He also told me he was very heartbroken when he found out that he had hit my brother with the gun because he liked him. He had known him slightly because he had been in the store where my brother worked many times, but they weren’t friendly. That made things a little easier for me to absorb. I could see the emotions warring in him when I pulled out the autopsy report, my brother’s pictures, and the headstone. It made it more real for him. He told me that since he had been locked up, he had tried not to think about it a lot. He explained that when you’re in prison, you are just trying to survive and you cannot be weak and let all those emotions take over. So I saw that he hadn’t had time to properly absorb what had happened. Later he expressed to me that the meeting was a great help because he could actually digest what had happened and work through it.

As we started just opening up about our families, the mood in the room shifted. I felt like I was just meeting somebody for the first time and having a really nice conversation with the person. There was definitely a shift from us both being scared and then recognizing that we were really both human. We weren’t there to hurt each other. Once the apprehension melted away, we began talking like we were just swapping stories. I learned so much about him and his past and could see where the road took him. I do not condone what he did, but I could see how he reacted out of fear. I think I might have done the same thing.

We spent seven or eight hours together that day. We laughed and cried. It was a beautiful experience. At one point, we broke for lunch and went right back to it. It was just a life-changing experience for me. He was very accountable for what he did. He was curious about my brother and wanted to know more about him. That made the meeting easier for me because there wasn’t any hostility and I could share fully about Eduardo. Moreover, I was able to get the answers from him that I needed to fill in the blanks about the night my brother was killed. For example, I always had wondered about Manny’s life. In the meeting, he told me about himself so I could understand his background and how he ended up thinking that firing into the crowd was the answer. That helped a lot. People always wondered why I cared. I’d respond, “I do care. There’s something that happened to him in his life that made him think that it was okay to behave the way he did.” I needed to understand what that was. I think I wanted to know so that I could feel more sympathy and empathy for him. After the meeting, I didn’t have to feel bad about having caring feelings for him because now I had an accurate picture of what it was I was feeling.

During the meeting, Manny asked if I could ever forgive him. I had to take a break to compose myself because it was a topic I hadn’t considered much. By the time I rejoined the meeting, I had decided that forgiveness was on the table and it was something I wanted to do. Before we left that day, I hugged him and told him I forgave him. That felt like such a tremendous relief. I can’t say I believed it 100 percent the first time I said it. I wanted it to be true and I knew that I would have to work at it to make it more permanent. For example, there are days that come back as a reminder that I’m missing my brother, that he’s not in my life, and that Manny took the person from me that was so precious. Now I remind myself that the forgiveness was never for Manny or to tell him it was okay what he did. That was my twisted thinking. I even thought that if I didn’t forgive him, I would have a power over him. I gradually realized that was false and, in fact, I would be imprisoning myself. Indeed, something during the meeting changed in me. I realized forgiveness wasn’t about him, that I could keep myself hostage with all that negative energy and I didn’t want it. I saw that forgiveness was about setting myself free. I also saw that I had to separate him from his actions. I had to realize that we all do things that are not right, all the time. Does that make us a bad person? It just means that we did something dumb or stupid and out of character even for us. So we have to forgive people for stumbling and making mistakes. Forgiving him was empowering for me. When you’re actually able to do it with the person, it just makes forgiveness a hundred times stronger because both people find peace that way.

Before the meeting, I was robotic and shut down emotionally because I had all these bad feelings and I didn’t know what to do with them. It was just easier to function by shutting them down. That meant everything was on lockdown because I couldn’t feel one emotion without feeling guilty about not feeling another emotion. Lockdown included joy, happiness, and love. However, when I walked out of the meeting, I thought, “Wow.” I felt alive again. It was absolutely wonderful. I told my facilitator, “That was the most beautiful experience I’ve ever had in my life.” I’ve had kids but the meeting just topped that. It healed me in so many ways. I was able to actually feel safe again, let my guard down, and feel what I was feeling without all this guilt.

The negative energy was no longer in me. I think it slowly faded away during those hours we were together. Before I had no way of knowing if all the negative thoughts I’d had were true. A typical person doesn’t go to jails or prisons all the time. You only hear the media stories, the sensationalized cases and you think that everyone in prison is just like those cases. Suddenly you see that’s not true because you can clear up all those unanswered questions and speculations. Perhaps we could have written letters back and forth without meeting but it would not have been as profound as when we sat down across the table from each other and looked at each other when he talked. We could see the emotions on each other’s face and go through those emotions together. I needed to see Manny. I needed him to know who my brother was. It was safe for us both. If we’d met on the street, it would have been in total panic because neither of us would have known each other’s intentions. This way, we both knew going in what to expect.

I think of the time that I did the VOD as a positive time in my life. There was such a shift inside of me when it happened. It met every expectation I had and then some. The core shift happened during the VOD. I’d had no interaction with anybody who had ever been to jail or prison. The meeting taught me that even though you’re incarcerated for a crime, you’re still a human being. You’re still a person. You’re not a monster. You’re not garbage. At the time of the VOD, everybody, in my opinion, who was in prison was a horrible monster, deserved to be there, and should never see the light of day. Now I don’t feel that way at all. Manny, like other offenders, made bad choices and hurt people but they can change that reality. The meeting put things in a better perspective for me. When I left the meeting, one of my first phone calls was to the parole board that was reviewing him. I said, “Okay, no more. Please let him out.”

The meeting was difficult because some of my family members were not pleased that I did it. They were still stuck with their anger and tormented by my brother’s loss. They still are. Although I’m free from all that negativity, my family doesn’t see Manny the way I do. Because I forgave the man who murdered my brother, my family feels I’ve betrayed Eduardo. My mother barely speaks about my brother at all. It’s like he never existed. I couldn’t talk to her while I was preparing and doing the VOD because she didn’t want to know about it. Now through the years, she has been somewhat curious. Manny and I wrote several letters to each other after our meeting. He even wrote a letter to her. I gave it to her but I don’t know if she’s read it because we don’t talk about it. Indeed, I’ve watched my family stumble through life still feeling that anger. It’s hard for me because if they would open their heart a little bit and look at this, they wouldn’t have to feel all those negative feelings. I think they could find some peace in what happened.

After the meeting, my facilitator suggested I participate in Bridges to Life, an in-prison restorative justice program for crime victims and offenders. I’ve been active in the program for ten years. I get to almost relive my experience with Manny over and over again because Bridges to Life is done with offenders who can’t have VODs with their victims. So now I’m using what was a negative thing to produce a positive thing. My brother didn’t just die. He still lives on and I think his story helps people. My family’s reaction has been worse, unfortunately, since I decided to go back to the prison after my meeting. I told them “It’s what I need to do. It’s what I’m called to do.” I have since remarried and my husband is very supportive of what I’ve done.

One night when I was at a Bridges to Life meeting, I spoke to a group of 70–80 men. I was telling the story of my brother. When I got done I asked the inmates if they had any questions. This gentleman stood up. He was openly weeping and very upset. I worried about what I had said. “Why is he crying like that?” I know my story is sad but he was really touched by it. Then he started telling me specifics about that night, specifics I don’t usually share. At first I felt afraid. “Who is this man? How does he know all this?” He knew my brother’s name, the gas station, the name of the street. He knew it all. The whole room just stepped back. It’s like the men were all thinking, “What’s happening? How does he know this?” It turned out that this inmate was standing in front of my brother when he fell. He was 15 and just watching and experiencing what was happening. His life spiraled out of control after he witnessed my brother’s murder. He started drinking and doing drugs more. He just didn’t care any longer about his life. He was never implicated in the crime but he was definitely there and involved. After I listened to him, I walked over and hugged him and told him, “I forgive you too.” He was still trapped living in the murder when both Manny and me had already gotten past it. Yet here was this other person that we didn’t know or think about who was suffering.

Manny and I stayed in contact for almost a year after the meeting. We’d write back and forth two or three times a month. He had promised to do whatever I asked him to do including finishing his education, which was really sweet of him. I’ve talked to him a few times on Facebook. He’s out now and had a child about a year ago. He was going to college. I always tried to be encouraging of him and believed he could do school and change his life if he wanted to. I was proud of him for doing it.

Everything has just changed for me. It’s been night and day. The guilt has gone away. I managed to put myself through school and raise my kids. Manny had told me at the meeting that he had to live for himself and my brother and he wished that I would do the same thing. Life became happy again. I fell in love with doing prison ministry because it gave me the chance to do something positive with all this ugly. If I hadn’t done the meeting with Manny, this would not have happened. Instead, the meeting gave me the first step up to really look at people in prison in a different way. I’m thankful I did the VOD. I’m just sad more people don’t know about it.

Analysis: Crime and its aftermath

Monique lost her younger brother, whom she had raised as a child, in a racially charged random exchange of gunfire that unintentionally resulted in his particular death. Indeed, the shooter, Manny, did not know the identity of the victim until sometime after the shooting. Monique and her family members attended Eduardo for three weeks in the hospital, but he could not survive the extensive damage done to his body. This touch-and-go situation was particularly grueling because it kept the family teetering between hope and despair for days.

The chaos associated with shooting and near-riot crowd made it difficult to get accurate information. The police withheld details so that Monique knew nothing for a whole year—“We were denied at every turn.” When she did get some specifics, she learned that the shooter was at the same hospital at the same time as her brother and that he had been arrested and jailed since the shooting. This poor treatment by the criminal justice system was compounded by the fact that Monique felt disenfranchised because she was only a sister to the victim—“I don’t know how many times I heard from people, ‘Well, you’re just a sister.’” Consequently, Monique had a difficult time finding support groups that would make room for her. She did not fit into Parents of Murdered Children and was told directly that even though “I raised my brother but that didn’t matter because I was only his sister.”

Eduardo’s murder had a huge impact on the family. According to Monique, everybody who was married got divorced, including Monique. She managed to function and raise her children by suppressing her grief but that took away the mother they had known. Indeed, her shut-down closed off all of her other emotions as well, which left her numb—“I couldn’t feel one emotion without feeling guilty about feeling another emotion, so it was just easier not to feel anything at all.”

Monique was depressed for many years. She would obsess about losing Eduardo, question how someone could have taken his life, and then get angry because Manny only got a 15-year sentence. Eventually, that the shooting was incomprehensible became dominant but she could find no answers. The eyewitness accounts were contradictory and police reports were sketchy so it was difficult to reconstruct what had actually happened. Monique’s questions, however, went deeper than any information she could obtain. She truly needed to understand how Manny got to the point where it was permissible to shoot another human being—“Something happened to him in his life that made him think it was okay to behave that way.” She concluded, within herself, that having the answers would allow her to understand, which would bring her some peace. Only Manny had those answers.

Monique also worried about Manny’s release. She feared that his short stay in prison would do little to stop him from killing someone else. In her search for something that might prevent another egregious crime, she began thinking that talking to Manny about her brother and the life he took might be a strong enough incentive to stop him in the future. She had tried to protect society by fighting his parole. However, the desire to meet with him remained constant over many years. She learned about VOD only after voicing her wish to the staff person who was interviewing her for Eduardo’s next parole review. Monique signed up for the program never expecting that Eduardo would agree to their meeting.

Monique had voiced her wish to talk with Manny repeatedly over the years. Her wish was driven by the stored energy that accumulated from the grip of anger, obsessiveness, and shut-off emotions that otherwise careened around internally with no outlet. It wrapped around and consumed her for many years. She also had dissonant feelings that needed resolution. On the one hand, Manny was a monster that had malevolently shot her brother. Monsters are dangerous and less than human. They should be avoided. Yet, Monique yearned for greater understanding about how he could have done it in hopes that answers to her questions might put to rest what was otherwise incomprehensible.

Preparation

Although Monique wanted to talk to Manny, she was also scared because she truly pictured that he was a monster. Her family, who disapproved of her decision to meet with him, fed her apprehension—“I have family members who are not pleased with me…They see that I have betrayed my brother.” The facilitator, who prepared her for the meeting, however, was extremely supportive and caring—“She would sit with me and let me go through my fears.” During the six months of preparation, the facilitator regularly reminded Monique of her desire to meet, which strengthened Monique’s yearning and resolve and dissipated some of her family’s influence.

Monique, however, also had an internal battle about being open to Manny and whatever might occur when they met. She was plagued by deeply held societal stereotypes about offenders. Besides seeing Manny as “the worst monster on the face of this planet,” she felt that he “deserved to be in prison and never see the light of day.” She recognized that the understanding she so desired ran straight into these deep-seated judgments, causing a war of emotions between vengefulness and empathy. She had to walk through the fire of all that negativity, which continued until she met Eduardo. Although she was in internal conflict, Monique went ahead because of her trust in the facilitator and the positive clues she received from Manny, such as his willingness to meet with her. Each time she took a step back, the facilitator would push her gently forward.

Dialogue

For Monique, the real picture about Manny and his life started with the tour of his world at the prison. Going into a maximum-security prison escalated her apprehension because she was being introduced, for the first time, to a netherworld of guards, wire, dogs, and monsters. At the same time, she saw for herself how Manny lived and worked. When Manny walked in for the meeting, Monique immediately experienced the distance between the fabricated monster movie in her mind and the immediate reality that “he was just a guy.”

During the first part of the meeting, Manny and Monique carefully constructed the conduit between them before they talked about Eduardo’s murder. They drew each other in by reciprocally sharing their childhoods. As each communicated something about themselves, the other responded with a similar piece of information. Their resonance to each other was deep and likely accelerated the continuing reciprocity of their sharing. For example, Monique learned that Manny was afraid like she was. Indeed, “he was more afraid than I was.” The reading of their expectation letters by the facilitator made the process trustworthy because it joined them in terms of hearing what each wanted from the meeting.

Monique, however, discovered that although she initially was scared of Manny because of the unknowns in meeting a “monster,” Manny didn’t know her either and was terrified of what she might say to him. In explaining how they spent the first part of their time together, Monique again recognized their commonality and said, “Both of us were a little nervous about getting there. It did give us more time to warm up to the idea” of talking about Eduardo. By first building the connection between them, it set the stage for later sharing the most important information. Moving together toward discussing the killing of Eduardo was gradual. The slow pace was not the result of a psychological blockage or mistrust of each other but rather because of the deeper emotions they both carried and the honoring of their respective pain and shame by inching their way into the territory—“We had to go through the emotions together.”

Monique communicated the pain differential by showing Manny pictures of her brother in the hospital so he could see the actual damage he’d done. Her showing the autopsy report and Eduardo’s headstone brought the reality of his killing Monique’s brother closer to the surface. Monique watched and listened as Manny absorbed what he had done. She saw his struggle to control his feelings as she pulled out the autopsy report. Monique felt his remorse as Manny received her pain onto himself, cried, and expressed his willingness to do anything she asked him to do. At that moment, Monique opened up to seeing Manny differently. She recognized that he never intentionally shot her brother. In fact, Manny liked him. The shooting of Eduardo, therefore, was a random event. The fact that Manny had unknowingly shot someone he liked created a heavy burden and internal dissonance for him as well. Monique saw his struggle but also began to realize that although he had taken Eduardo’s life, he was brave enough to meet with her and face what he had done. It was like raising a curtain and behind it, she saw a human being— “He’s just a person. He’s just a human like me.” As Monique woke up to who Manny was, she experienced a major transformation in how she saw and related to him—“There was a shift inside of me when it happened that met every expectation I had and then some.”

Moreover, Manny answered many questions for Monique so she could make better sense out of what happened. She learned that he shot into the crowd without targeting her brother, that he was bereft when he found out he’d shot Eduardo. This meeting was his first chance to actually digest what had happened. For Monique, the switch in her heart was the turning point. She felt no more fear or guilt. The negative energy was gone. Most important, she could feel again. She described the transformation and shift in energy as taking something ugly and allowing it to become beautiful. It literally gave her back her ability to feel joy.

Monique also experienced a major shift in how she thought about forgiveness, which was not a conscious issue for her prior to the meeting. Manny’s initiation of the topic, however, forced her to consider it. She “decided” to forgive him but regarded it as one-way and as an act or gift that one person gives to another. She had already experienced deep forgiveness toward Manny on an implicit level. She felt tremendously compassionate given what had happened between them in the meeting and there was no remaining negative energy for her to address. The shift for Monique, however, was her realization that her gift of forgiveness was actually a gift to herself. Instead of forgiveness setting Manny free, she set herself free from the bondage of all the negative energy. Besides feeling unburdened and complete, Monique’s reinstatement of Manny was profound. She literally humanized him fully in her mind, feeling that the shift happened because of their dyadic process and what they went through together.

Indeed, part of her feeling freed was due to Manny’s guidance, which was to live both for herself and her brother as he himself does. Instead of warring emotions, which created ongoing dissonance between moving forward and remaining loyal to her brother, this “both/and” model became a way to stop the burden of having to make an impossible choice. Her acceptance of his advice absolved some of the guilt that otherwise attended any positive emotion that she felt—“Life became happy again.” Monique recognized the importance of their mutuality. She forgave him and he helped her recognize that it was okay to let go and be free of the ways she held herself hostage. Paradoxically, therefore, the person who was a monster in her eyes provided her with her freedom through both taking responsibility and telling her how to live in a “both/and” way. In describing her forgiveness experience she commented that doing it together, or as part of a dyadic rather than singular process, made it more significant because “both parties find peace that way.” As part of her forward direction and evidence of Manny’s reinstatement, they exchanged letters. Rather than a rehash of the past, their ongoing communication focused on their present lives and plans for the future, including Manny’s education.

Even though the VOD was liberating, Monique continued to live with the fact that her meeting with Manny was unacceptable to her family. Indeed, they were unable and unwilling to consider that he was anything but a monster. Monique, therefore, was faced with conflicting needs. If she tried to move forward with her life she would incur her family’s disapproval. It she stayed where she was, she would remain stuck and negative. Monique resolved some of that dissonance and also found a unique way to move forward while remaining close to her brother with Bridges to Life. Besides reinforcing her new outlook, the program let her do something positive through her continued contact with, and humanizing of, offenders who would not have had the opportunity she gave Manny. Bridges to Life, therefore, became a ministry for her that also sustained the impact from the VOD. The irony of meeting one of the men who was involved with and present when Eduardo was killed was an exemplar of the ripple effect from her meeting with Manny. She was able to see how Eduardo’s murder had changed and stalled the man’s life and how badly he needed the burden lifted so he could go forward as she had. She forgave him too, both explicitly and implicitly, by her statement, “I forgive you too” and her hug of acceptance and reinstatement that was witnessed by all the Bridges to Life participants that night.

1 The VOD with Gregory was conducted with both Maya and Duncan (see next case), parents of Kaitlyn.

2 General Education Diploma.