“I now know there’s a difference between an ultimatum and a boundary.”
A LOVE IN THE TIME OF INCARCERATION excerpt!
Today is the day LOVE IN THE TIME OF INCARCERATION comes into the world! (And after today I will ((mostly)) shut up about it.)
When I set out to see what was up with people falling in love with prisoners, I didn’t realize how longitudinal this project would become. I also didn’t realize just how enmeshed I would become in the most intimate, tender, complicated parts of peoples’ lives, and what a huge honor and responsibility it would be.
I met Jo for the first time in 2016, when she was shopping for outfits to wear during a week of visits at the prison where she would marry Benny. I was walking her down the aisle of a maximum-security prison a few weeks later, to marry a guy who was in prison for attempting to run over his last girlfriend with a car.
“But what happens when the guy gets out of prison?!” That is what inquiring minds want to know, and this brand-spanking new edition of the book includes an epilogue with answers. Here’s a lil excerpt:
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I’ve walked down to the Brooklyn waterfront with Jo on the phone more times than I can count. I’ve made this walk in every weather, in every season—the bite of February, the humidity of August. When I started taking these long walks to hear about her life, her marriage, her friendships, her struggles, I was living in a roach-infested apartment with a roommate. Now I have two kids, a house, a husband. The dog who used to pull the leash the whole way down to the pier is too old to hobble more than a few blocks. Then, Jo’s twins were in first grade. In a few months they’ll be starting high school. Today, it’s early March. The wind blows an edge of winter, but the sun is warm. We’ve lived through a pandemic. We’ve all come to the other side of . . . a lot.
“Deciding to end the marriage was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my adult life,” she tells me. For a long time, she was consumed by grief, anger, and shame. “I asked God to let me die,” she says, through tears. “I’m glad he didn’t listen, because I’m better now.”
[DRAMA ENSUES!!!—find out what!]
I’ve reached the waterfront by now. She has to let me go. She has things to do to get ready for work, for school, for her boys. She says one last thing before getting off the phone, and it’s to no particular question I asked her. It’s her own lesson, distilled. “I now know there’s a difference between an ultimatum and a boundary,” she says. “An ultimatum is if you do this, then I will do this.” I think back to the ultimatum she gave Benny about using drugs, that she would break up with him. How he did, and he went to the hole, and she gave him another ultimatum around his sobriety, working a program, having a sponsor. He did, until he didn’t.
“But a boundary,” she continues, “is this is what my life is. This is what I choose to allow for myself. I am in charge of me, my actions, and my decisions. I’m responsible for my choices. I’m in charge of determining what is good for me. And if you fit into that, then great. And if not, I’ll be over here, living my life in honesty and truth, in peace and power.” I know this is not the love story Jo imagined on her wed- ding day. But right now, the present, with its beautiful boundaries, makes a lot of sense. Relationships end. Love evolves. Her story is still a love story.
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I spoke with national treasure Jo Piazza about what people can learn from prison wives—a lot! Pre-order her banger of a novel The Sicilian Inheritance!
And to the medal committee, take note: Today is Day 30 of Whole30!!!! We did it, Joe! You’ll find me facedown in a tub of popcorn at the stroke of midnight.