by Keith Erickson
The scars of my childhood are the very parts of me that so many men like me, incarcerated men, want to keep locked away from the rest of the world around them. The Alternatives to Violence Project Workshops bring out the courage in men that you would never expect to witness within a prison. This weekend was like a whirlwind of emotions and laughter that left many of us crying, yet with the realization that our personal af ictions are so much bigger than just ourselves—they also belong to so many others within and outside of these granite walls.
Fatherhood/Parenting: this was the focus of this weekend’s workshop. New faces, some familiar, yet uncharted territory for many of us to share due to the scars that are concealed beneath the billboard display of tattoos that take up much of out bodies. It is a well-known fact amongst us prisoners; the Alternatives to Violence Project is designed to make you comfortable in order to make you comfortable. There is no growth without the pain of nally beginning to confront the damage that’s been done to you, including the damage we’ve all been guilty of dong to others. That’s the beauty of these workshops: we learn to love, trust, and support men around us regardless of where it is that we’ve been, all within a crash-course un-fold of three days. In the bigger picture, we’re restoring our humanity while helping one another heal.
For me, this workshop hit closer to home than all the others I’ve been so fortunate to experience because it is my deepest void: having a traumatic childhood that in uenced my relationship with my mother as well as my like as an adult. I believe in God’s compass, his timing, and I knew in my heart that the men around me needed to hear it just as much as I felt compelled to share it. So, through many moments of staring down at the oor beneath me, through the tears that swam around and fell to the ground like drips of water from a sink-spout, I told them my story.
My father walked out on us (my brother, my mother, and myself) when I was three years old. Shortly after a stepfather came into the picture who had become an abusive heroin addict that beat all of us under his roof on a regular basis. Those years of my childhood were developing under the negative in uences of abuse, control, dysfunction, and extreme violence mixed with cruelty. At the age of eleven my stepfather nally put his hands on me for the very last time; he nearly killed me. Much of my childhood at that point was spent in the care of foster homes and boys’ ranches throughout California. My stepfather went to prison and my mother/brother too were nally free of this man’s control. It was me that continued to feel the after effects of this man’s damage.
The damage was done long before I’d even developed into a man, and I believe wholeheartedly that this happens to most of the men that end up spending much of their lives incarcerated on whatever installment that befalls them—it was no different for my own self. Prison would become my permanent home for the rest of my adult life.
You never quite realize just how quiet a room full of twenty- ve men is until you can actually hear your own heart beating within your chest. It was time. I needed to show my courage. So, I revealed the deepest scars of who Keith is behind the tattoos and the past reputation of a prison gang member. There was so much more to me.
It was a late Friday night in 1993. I had been out of prison for well over a year, and working as a roofer here in California. Though a prison gang member with a past that would not let me go, I was still trying to live a life that gave me come small sense of normalcy—I took any amount of normalcy I could hang on to because I’d never had much of it. The phone in my bedroom rang late that night and it was my mother calling me from a payphone just minutes from her ranch home where she lived with a boyfriend. I knew little about this man on a personal level, yet I knew that he was an alcoholic that became a Jekyll and Hyde split-personality when he would drink. It wasn’t the rst time that my mother had called me at home where I lived with my girlfriend and her parents, sobbing hysterically as she went on and on about his drunken antics. That night it was much deeper. Her words cut me like a knife, and it was as if in those moments I was just a child all over again watching my stepfather in ict his abuse upon my mother as if it were a reunion of torment. This time, however, it was a man that I knew little about.
“I need you to come out here and do something Keith”, she pleaded through her sobs. “Pack up your things and I’ll come get you”, I told her through my agitation. “I can’t just leave all my things behind”, is all that she kept saying. Then, the silence happened. She cried for what felt like an eternity, and the guilt in me began to rise in me like a thermometer rising past its breaking point. And the words nally came through the phone line that no man ever wants to hear coming from his own mother, let alone believe that she could ever ask of him something so dark and sinful.
“Will you come out here and get rid of him before he ends up killing me?” is all that I heard as my body went numb. “Are you serious mom?” I asked her. In my heart, I knew my mother was serious. That evening my mother drove out there to pick me up from my home, as we drove out there to her ranch much in silence, with less to no eye contact whatsoever. A part of me knew that I was making the greatest sacri ce of all—my life for hers—but another part of me felt this greater need to protect my mother under any circumstance, and that’s where my misconception of loyalty came into play. As she handed me the gun while her boyfriend lay sprawled across his bed in a drunken stupor, we looked each other in the eyes for the rst time that awkward night. I think about that night often, and if she would have said, “no, we can’t do this”, I would have stopped. But, she didn’t. I did what I thought was going to protect my mother. I went into her bedroom and shot this man.
Weeks later my mother and I were arrested for the murder of her boyfriend, and eventually convicted of rst degree murder. That was nearly twenty-three years ago, and so much has changed since then.
Last year my mother was granted parole by the parole board, as I remain behind these walls serving out my life sentence for the life we had taken, as well as additional life sentences for in-house prison crimes. While incarcerated, my mother sent me as many greeting cards and no letters as I can actually count on one hand—still, I felt that sense of loyalty towards her because she brought me into the world. We do this, so many of us—love, honor, and protect our parents despite their faults because we’re made to feel that we “owe” this to them. I knew so many of the men sitting in the room this weekend felt the same way, because many of the exercises revealed it; though we expressed our pain and heartaches relating to our parents, it was hard not to want to still protect them from anyone else’s judgments.
I looked up at the faces in our circle. I wanted them to do more than just see my honesty and sincerity. I wanted them to feel my need for forgiveness. And, I re-read the question written in the board at the center of the room one more time:
In order to forgive yourself, or receive forgiveness from others, what would you need to let go of that might cause you a great sense of pain, yet freedom at the same time? This was the question, and I knew my answer long before I’d even entered this workshop. I spoke as if I were talking directly to my mother after all these years of guilt, shame, and confusion dictating so many poor choices in my life. It was time to let go…
“Mother”, I said, “I love you because I want to love you, not because it’s my duty to love you. I will always miss you because there’s a big part of you that I’ll always want to protect, but there comes a time when you too will need to accept responsibility for the lives you took—not just Ronald’s, but my life as well. I no longer resent you for the hardships if my childhood, and I no longer resent you for my own actions as an adult. But today I am letting go of this loyalty that no child ever owes a parent—loyalty is earned by love, protection, and guidance—not obligation. More importantly, it’s unconditional, where expectations should never be imposed for its validation. I love you, but I’m letting go. I want forgiveness for taking another man’s life, and if I cannot forgive myself, then how can I expect God to forgive me with a sincere heart? It’s time…I love you.
It was a moment to surrender that took minutes to conquer—but I found courage where I knew it would be at the right moment. And this weekend’s Alternatives to Violence Workshop was that moment.
My story was not the only scar revealed this weekend, and I’m honored to have shared another experience like this with these men on the same conquest for redemption. I learned so much about myself, fatherhood, and allowing others to see the best of yourself despite where we have been or what we have done wrong in our pasts.
The banner we created is to show our love, support, and unity this weekend as a collective group with one heart/one soul. We hope that the kids in our communities will nd the joy and encouragement to follow their dreams to matter where they may be. Many of us, like myself, are living our own dream by nally giving back to our communities.
We love you AVP. We love you, prison letter for our struggling youth. We love you “The Beat Within”. And, we love those who support a world of positive change.