| Judith Clark Harriet Clark |
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Simply and Beautifully Woman
The Walk to Prison
Summer Series #6 out of 7
How Do We Say Goodbye?
I met with some women on a porch today, drinking lemonade, and they wanted to know when I was going to write about Judy again.
She is no longer a "prisoner" to them, but a woman,
a mother...who is in prison...a new "friend".
They wanted to hear more.
Next week is the last I will write about Judy in this series,
but it will be the most important thing I write.
It is the "Beyond" Story of
the Walk to Prison and
how you can help to make it a very special "Beyond".
July 19, 2012 |
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"I have always felt her mothering and this, as much as any of the amazing work she's done inside prison, is why I believe in the possibility of change and the possibility of forgiveness."
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A New Summer Series #6 How Do We Say Goodbye?
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Greetings!
Tonight I was reading some of the articles Judy has written in prison. They are scholarly works, written, as she prepared to complete her thesis for her Master's in Psychology. She wrote about the relationship between mothers in prison and their children. The articles are a forward thinking response to the very real problems.
Judy has taken her "turn around" and has become a productive member of society...even while behind bars.
"Judaism's rituals of atonement helped provide me with a context to begin to respond to my paralyzing guilt.I lit the candle  and said the prayer (my father had died), and thought about my father being the first person who came to see me in the county jail, and how he screamed at me for what I'd done. As I felt my loss and grief, I finally allowed myself to think of those three fathers who were killed, whose children were growing up without them, whose wives no longer had them. As I prayed, I spoke their names aloud. I remember asking myself: Do I have the right to pray for them? I wept as I felt the human toll of so much loss, and my own intimate relationship to that."
Judy took her gift of "T'shuvah" (turning or returning) with great solemnity. and filled it with purpose and meaning for herself and others.
We all carry guilt...maybe it is feeling as though we are bad mothers or daughters, or we have failed someone, or we have truly done great harm to someone. God holds out the gift of forgiveness to all of us, and a chance to "move on".
Judy teaches us how to gracefully accept this opportunity of "turning around" and live again with meaning for ourselves and others.
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 Below are some of the ways that Judy has lived out her chance for a new way of living... her turn around. May ours be as beautiful in our own way, using the gifts that God has given us and the limitations that life has sent our way. Until next week, Sharon
The information below and Judy's "T'shuvah"quotes are taken from the link:
Judy's earned her BA in Behavioral Sciences in 1990 and a Masters Degree in Psychology in 1993. She has taught pre-natal Parenting classes for pregnant women and has been a mentor and role model to the nursery mothers who live with their babies on a special unit in the prison. There was an Aids epidemic at Bedford Hills during the 1980's and in response to this, Judy co-founded ACE, an organization so effective it has been replicated at prisons across the country. She was co-editor of Breaking the Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in a New York State Maximum Security Prison (Overlook Hardcover 1998). Judy also helped to rebuild a prison college program when public funding for it was eliminated in the 1990s,
and, as a result,
more than 150 women have been awarded Associate's or Bachelor's degrees in the past ten years.
She continues to be an ongoing informal adviser to many of those students.Judy lives in a special volunteer unit with inmates who participate in the Puppies Behind Bars program. Praise and train puppies to become guide dogs for t he blind, explosive detection dogs for law enforcement agencies, and service dogs for disabled veterans. She is currently raising her eighth puppy.
Judy had her dog with her when we visited at Bedford Hills. She is training him for explosive detection.
Perhaps her most significant accomplishment
is that,
despite incarceration, Judy has been a warm, loving and influential mother to her now 31-year-old daughter, Harriet, a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City, Stanford University, and the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Currently, Harriet is a post-graduate writing fellow at Stanford.
Judy's poetry has been published in numerous journals
and The New Yorker, she won the 1995 PEN Prison Poetry Writing Award, and her scholarly essays have appeared in such journals as The Prison Journal, Zero to Three, and The Women's Passover Companion: Women's Reflections on the Festival of Freedom. For the past four years, Judy, who was raised in the tradition of radical secular Judaism, has immersed herself in religious studies and Clinical Pastoral Education and she has just completed certification as a Chaplain. The training lends a framework to her ongoing role as an informal mentor and confidante to women like herself, who are serving lengthy sentences and are trying to come to terms with their pasts and lead compassionate, fulfilling and useful lives. |
I thank God for the prison guards who were there for Judy, when she was touched by love, along her path of solitary confinement.
Who will you touch with love today?
Father Jonathan will be writing more at length about Judy's gift of gratitude in his book that will come out this coming Spring. It will include his personal interviews with her and more of Judy's own words.
I will let you know when it comes out.
I'm looking forward to it!
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