Equipment Failures

I have just completed the 16th session of “Reaching through the Cracks: Connecting Incarcerated Parents with their Children through Story.” The culmination of each workshop series is the recording of the stories that the participants have created for their loved ones and transferring them to a CD or flash drive to send.  Those CD’s or flash drives are then sent to the person for whom a mailer has been addressed.  It doesn’t matter to me who they are or where this final product lands.  It is their creative work and I have no rights to it or any say in where it goes.  I do, however, caution the participants not to send anything should any restraining order be in place.

I am technologically challenged, as are many people over the age of 60.  BUT I have never had such a series of equipment failures stalling the mailing of these stories.
I recorded 9 stories on January 21, 2020.  On January 22, I sat down and proceeded to download the stories from the audio recorder to my computer.  There were only 6 stories that could be retrieved. The other three were no where to be found.  I went through every file on the recorder and…nothing.

 Great.

I went to my local Best Buy to see if the Geek Squad could help me find the missing story files.  

 

The conversation went like this…
“Ma’am, how OLD is this (audio recorder)?”
“I bought it in 2008.  It got me through grad school and through 15 storytelling workshops at the detention center and the prison. Never had any problem with it until now,” I said with confidence, 

and just a chard of attitude.
“Ma’am, you might want to retrieve whatever you can and throw this one away.  It may not be dead yet, but its close.”
“Seriously?” I said.  “It’s never given ME any indication that that it was failing.”  (As in, “How dare this audio recorder die! It’s only 11 years old!!! It still has work to do!)
“Uh…yeah...it’s about done.
Just throw it away and get a new one.”
 
“What!?! Buy a new one?”  I was not happy.  Did not want to shell out the price of a new one just then.  And didn’t my audio recorder know that it was beloved?  A valuable part of my storytelling venture?  How could it possibly let me down?
Well, I bought a new one.  I went with the newest generation of the same brand and model.  I left Best Buy a tad poorer than I had been an hour before.   While that problem was solved, the problem of the missing stories was staring at me, and left me feeling quite chagrined.  An equipment failure.  Who knew such a thing was possible? Meanwhile, I made the CD’s for the six stories I was able to download and mailed them.
I had to contact the prison and explain the situation.  Fortunately, my point of contact had no problem with my coming back and meeting with the three participants whose stories disappeared into those digital Netherlands. As it turned out, they were actually pleased to have a second chance to record and were most pleased with their performances.  Whew!
I came home and sat down to complete the remaining CD’s.  Downloading from the new audio recorder was much simpler than before which was awesome.  Then I plugged in the external DVD Writer to my laptop.  That funny little noise that says, “I’m connected!” was music to my ears.  I opened Windows Media Player to burn the drive and….
It didn’t recognize the DVD Writer.  My laptop did not believe there was anything plugged into it besides the mouse, and the mouse certainly doesn’t know how to burn a CD!  I was confounded, and not very happy.  We had spent a bunch of money for the Geek Squad total protection so we would have help for just this kind of situation. So, I called the Geek Squad for help. It took an hour on the phone for me to get to the technician who could perhaps fix the problem.  After all, didn’t I know that the DVD Writer could be bad and the agreement didn’t cover that?  WHAT?!?  It took the better part of that hour to convince him that the DVD Writer was working just fine and that it was my laptop that was the problem.  After all, just a week ago it was working just fine.
Finally, there was an agent who diagnosed the problem and fixed it. HURRAY!  Turns out that a new driver needed to be installed, which really isn’t a big deal if you know to look for one. I sat down and quickly burned the remaining CD’s and put them 

in their respective envelopes.  

And Series #16 can be put to bed.
I realize that none of you reading this have ever had such experiences, but perhaps you know someone who has.  Please let them know they are not alone!

Grow or Go

One of the phrases I often heard in my early sobriety was “Grow or Go!”  While I haven’t heard it much in a long time, it is that slogan (or admonition, perhaps?) that keeps me engaged in the recovery process.  

It applies to other areas of my life as well.
I have just completed another 

“Reaching through the Cracks…” storytelling workshop at the prison, my 16th, in fact.  After the 15th workshop, I published and copyrighted the curriculum in the hopes that if I shared it with enough people, maybe some of them would try and replicate the workshop.  Little did I know that I would continually need to adjust and adapt my precious curriculum to meet the participants where they are.
There is research that indicates the majority of those currently incarcerated have a substance use disorder which led to their incarceration.  Whether it is a direct  or indirect cause of incarceration isn’t always clear.  Given that, my own history working in the addictions field, and my experiences with “Reaching through the Cracks,” led me to make addiction and recovery a large part of the course content and story making. Until now.
There is a dreadful lack of addiction treatment services in Maryland prisons.  Only a tiny percentage of inmates receive any treatment at all, so the vast majority of them simply kill time while they are wards of the State, and never address the issues that led to the behaviors that led to incarceration.  Most of the participants in “Reaching through the Cracks…#16” fell into that category.  

I was stunned.  They were stunned that I was stunned.  

And then several of them dropped out…never to return.
I had to step back and let go of any attachment I had to my precious curriculum that was conceived in love, just like a baby.  When I was able to do that, I realized their defenses were high.  Their definition of an addiction was limited to substances, but did not include alcohol or marijuana.  They did not believe in process addictions like gambling, sex, drug dealing, or the like. Any statement that could be construed as passing judgement on them and the path that led to their incarceration was met with denial and hostility.  I was at a loss.  How to connect with them enough to proceed with the business of story making baffled me.  Finally, I gave in to their positions, and simply asked that they reflect on the path that led to their incarceration.
In the past, those addiction stories were re-framed to be age appropriate for their children, so instead of real-life characters, animals could be used.  Sometimes, the language of fairy tales with knights in shining armor and princesses and dragons was used.  Sometimes a super hero motif was used.  I had always been delighted with the end results.  I had no clue how this set of stories would manifest. Would they even craft a story?  

I held my breath.
The day that we recorded, we had 9 participants show up and record their stories.  Even the most resistant and defiant participants put their egos in their pockets to create something unique for their children.  And truth be told, each and every story was about bad decisions, bad choices, and having to deal with them.  These stories weren’t so very different than the stories of those who owned their addictive behavior and wanted to pass on wisdom that they had not been given growing up.  I was not only delighted, I was blown away, which I shared with them.  As they left for the last time, I had to wonder how much I had missed by using the research about them instead of responding to them.
As I left the parking lot that day, the slogan, “Grow or Go,” floated across my consciousness.  I had to grow to continue to be successful in this setting with this clientele.  It really doesn’t matter what I know about incarcerated people.  What matters is that I get to know them, and accept them for exactly who they are, and who they are not.  I can continue to pray that they find recovery, and find the sweetness of a life well lived inside the laws of the land.
To be continued. Series #17 begins March 10.