Chapter 31 — Bridging the Gap | Jailbirds In Flight

It was a hard day. Maybe it was because I went deeper in my meditation and that stirred stuff up. Maybe the trip to court earlier in the week. Maybe because I felt less connected to loved ones on the outside this week, or because “Party Row” behind us folks in “Religion Row” really was having a party. Or maybe it was just me— caught somewhere between effort and exhaustion, trying to convince myself I could coast on the trust fund of all my past practice instead of earning it again today. Whatever the reason, frustration moved in. The kind that simmers under the surface, then bubbles up, daring you to say something you’ll regret. I’ve learned that when anger doesn’t have a place to go, it turns toxic.

It corrodes the very thing it wants to defend. For years, I’ve watched the world do that—lash out instead of understanding. Just like I told Luciana, it took decades for people to see psychedelics as medicine, not madness. The same pattern is playing out again, just with a new target. The war isn’t on drugs this time; it’s on sex. The minute the word ‘sex’ is spoken, reason flies out the window. It’s a strange thing to dedicate your life to something people fear. To know you’re holding medicine, and still be called poison. There’s a philosopher who claimed culture always follows the same cycle: first ridicule, then attack, before finally reaching acceptance. Every truth goes through all three. I’ve made it to the phase of coming under attack.

An open footlocker blazing with golden light under a prison bunk

Oddly, that’s progress. The work now is to stay steady—to keep building understanding instead of outrage. You can’t scream your way to clarity. You have to teach the giant to see. There are moments when all I want is to rest on my laurels. To say, I’ve done enough. To stop being the one who keeps trying to explain the unexplainable. But I can’t. Not because I’m noble, but because I’ve seen what happens when you stop. The energy you don’t use turns inward—it mutates into resentment or despair. I sit here with a treasure chest of practices and hesitate to offer them, afraid of being misunderstood or, worse, depended on. The irony isn’t lost on me: I was accused of making people reliant on me, when dependency is the one thing I can’t stand.

Still, I know what it feels like to resist. I’ve been that woman— the one who was given every tool, every teaching, and still wanted a shortcut. The one who’d rather talk about transformation than do the work. And I remember the people who were patient with me through all that. It’s my turn now. I believe meditation is the master key out of every prison. It can free a person from gossip, addiction, loneliness, the endless loop of their own mind. I dream of offering it to every woman in here. I see how it could change things. The women seem curious. Some even say they want to learn. But then comes the application—the hardest part. A yoga teacher I once studied with told me, “There’s nothing more painful than bringing an ideal down to earth.” He was right.

A woman wrapped in a blanket on her bunk; through the barred window, a Himalayan blizzard with a tiny meditating monk

It’s beautiful in theory. But the moment you try to ground it, it gets messy. You dream of giving people the keys to the kingdom and forget that getting the key in the door takes grumpy, confused, impatient work. And I’ve been no better. I’ve had all the keys—yoga, breath, mantra— and still wanted the easy way. Now that I’m back inside the discipline, it’s humbling. I remind myself about the monks in the Himalayas meditating in the snow, and here I am complaining about my cold hands in a Brooklyn dorm. Comfort, I’ve realized, is the most seductive drug there is. It’s the quiet addiction no one talks about. It keeps you just numb enough to stop growing.

A woman reads a glowing book while women play bingo for candy behind her

I catch myself bargaining—telling myself I can skip a page of practice, let my mind wander, cut a corner, and it’ll be fine. But it never is. The fire doesn’t light halfway. It’s all or nothing. And that’s what makes me mad. The laws of growth are as unforgiving as the laws of physics. You can’t cheat them. You eat the pizza, you feel bad. You eat the greens, you feel good. The universe is that blunt. The dream always starts bright. Then reality crashes in: the gossip, the cold, the noise, the inertia. I read about enlightenment while women play bingo for candy. The space between the possible and the real feels like a canyon. There’s an old saying: When the solution becomes the problem.