Doug Noll teaches emotional regulation techniques to incarcerated women in a violent prison. One inmate, Sarah, serving 25-to-life for a fatal DUI, used the skill of naming emotions to write to her son and received a loving reply and a promised visit.
Chapters
We were standing in front of 15 women in the largest, most violent women's prison in the world, all of them serving long sentences— lifers, life without possibility of parole— and I could see it on their faces: anger, skepticism, cynicism, doubt, and a little bit of curiosity. So we started teaching them how to become peacemakers and mediators, and the first skill we taught them was how to name emotions. But then Sarah told us her story. I've been in prison for 18 years. I'm serving 25 to life for a fatal DUI, and I killed a family of 4 as an alcoholic drunk driver. When I came to prison, I I had to give up my 3-year-old son to my sister to raise. I've written him every single week for 18 years and he's never called, he's never written back, he's never visited. Last week I decided to write a different kind of letter and I thought about all the emotions he must be feeling and I went through all the layers that you've taught us: anger, frustration, humiliation, sadness, abandonment, feeling unloved and unlovable. This week, in fact today, for the first time in 18 years, I received a letter back from him. And at the bottom of the letter he said, "Mom, I love you. I'm bringing my girlfriend. I'll come visit you in 3 weeks." weeks. And I watched Sarah. Her hand was shaking as she held the letter, and I could see where tears had made the ink run, and her thumb was over the word "love" like she couldn't believe it was real and didn't want to let it go. That's when it really hit me. We weren't just training these women to be peacemakers and mediators. We were training them how to restore their humanity.
