Hades' Angels: An Inside View of Women Who Love Lifers and Death Row Inmates

By Charlyne Gelt

Hades' Angels: An Inside View of Women Who Love Lifers and Death Row Inmates is the story of twenty-six women who each experienced a transformative journey through their relationships with prison lifers and death row inmates. These women did not know these men prior to his incarceration. This work applies Kohut's understanding of the individual, th

• Language: English
• Publisher: Garden Wall Publishers
• Release date: May 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9780991629831

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Introduction

HADES’ ANGELS: The Transformative Journey of Women Who Love Lifers and Death Row Inmates Who Never Knew Them Prior To Incarceration

Copyright © 2002 by Charlyne Gelt. Ph.D.

Copyright © 2014 by Charlyne Gelt. Ph.D.

ISBN: Paperback: 978-0-9916298-2-4, eBook: 978-0-9916298-3-1

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission.

Cover design & production by Ken Rubin

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Charlyne Gelt, Ph.D.

1-818-501-4123

www.drgelt.com

or

Garden Wall Publishers

Sherman Oaks, California

www.kenrmac.com

[e-mail]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My deepest gratitude goes to the 26 incredible women, my co-researchers, whose lived experience and willingness to talk about it with me, made this work a reality. You all trusted me enough to share the intimate details of your lives. Thank you for your cooperation and your gracious way of welcoming me, a total stranger, into your inner and outer worlds.

I thank my dissertation advisor, Dr. Cathy Rives, M.D., for her clinical expertise, her guidance, her belief in me, and in the value of this work.

I thank Jackie Parker for using her writing talent to help me pull together the results of my research, the seven common threads, into story format [Part One]. It makes the findings understandable to academics as well as the general population.

Sylvia Cary, MFT, for working with me and jump-starting the dissertation into the idea for a book.

To my friend Lorrie Drogin who generously used her life time editing the second section of this book; to my sister, my friend, Judy Masliyah, MFT, a support and a sounding board and to my family and friends who, steadfast throughout this process, never left me but knew when to leave me alone.

To my husband, Stephen, who throughout this process, respected my space, learned to read me, and knew when to do his own thing. You were always there…to hold me, to listen, to give me feedback, and travel this life journey.

Thank you.

FEAR BEING THE UNSEEN JAILER

I dedicate this work

To those who risk leaving the safety of the shore,

To those who seek release from the inner prison,

To those who are open to change.

This book is also dedicated to

the women who the participated in my research and

to the many women I have met along the way

who are so good at doing for others,

but short-change the self,

who want to grow and

learn new tools to move beyond

the self-destructive patterns

And

To my husband, Stephen

Who, in his summer/autumn years with me,

Jumped into the depths of the deep, dark mysteries of life,

Bravely left the safety of the shore for parts unknown,

And has so flourished while in his earnest quest for his truth, for soul,

And who has grown, changed, evolved alongside me.

"It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.

--- e.e. cummings

FOREWORD

Hades’ Angels is the story of twenty-six women who each experienced a transformative journey through their relationships with prison lifers and death row inmates. These women did not know these men prior to his incarceration. This work applies Kohut’s understanding of the individual, the soul’s drive for potentiality from inner bondage, out of deadness and subjectivity, towards wholeness, to heal their early childhood narcissistic injury and sustain meaning on three levels: personal, interpersonal, and societal.

Their stories fly in the face of all the clichés and stereotypes that assume that such relationships are necessarily neurotic and dysfuntional. After all, what woman in her right mind would date or marry a man in prison when he can give her so little and with whom she can never have what society would call a normal relationship? Certain prison love relationships turn out to be positive – even transforming – for the women involved in them: a corrective emotional experience that is a clear step-up from earlier, destructive demon lover relationships that drained them emotionally and dragged them down. By contrast, their inmate relationships actually encouraged them to become more than they ever thought they could be, moving them towards self-discovery and healing.

There are six chapters in Section One which incorporate the historical, emotional and psychological factors that predispose, invite or attract certain women to the prison environment— factors that are part and parcel of becoming involved with an incarcerated man. These common factors are: Early Childhood Narcissistic Injury; Family of Origin Marital Dynamics of Dominance/Submission; Taking on the Family Caretaker/Nurturer Role; Identification as a Father's Daughter; Emotional/Intellectual Split; Involvement in Previous Demon Lover Relationships; True Self/False Self Split. Section Two breaks down the issues and common threads into factual, theoretical and psychological concepts that offer a deeper understanding of the inner transformation and healing.

In Section One, one Hades’ Angels story per chapter is used to exemplify the findings, the seven common threads of the research. It is these common threads that have drawn certain women to become involved with men in prison. Woven together they make a tapestry that describes their historical, emotional, and psychological findings. And further, though personal shame and stigma about the prison relationship is denied by each and every Hades’ Angel, it is the very physical circumstances of these relationships, prison, that is the stage set for their transformative journeys. Paradoxically, what is born in that setting is the nurturing, emotional interchange of empathic attunement, which acts as a catalyst for change and healing. Feeling nurtured rather than being the nurturer, is the fertilizing agent that launches a groundbreaking journey of self- discovery, of self-awareness, an unconscious drive towards wholeness, and the integration of the split-off aspects of the self.

The physical environment is part and parcel of that which creates the emotional environment, and vice versa. The actual descent from the outside into the hellish environment of a super-max prison serves as a dramatic backdrop, a stage set for these relationships in which the top-dog/under-dog splits are rampant; therefore, it is intrinsic to the lived experience.

When love is not easy or comfortable but is separated by external forces of an unwelcoming, harsh (prison) environment of polarities, split archetypes, what is it like? Popular literature pathologizes these women who, according to Isenberg, can’t help themselves and are in this relationship to fulfill their deepest needs, their most complex emotional dependencies, their ultimate fantasies, (1991). A great deal of literature exists about a surge in the male prison population, about the pathology of men who are incarcerated for murder, about the difficulties incarceration imposes upon prisoner’s families, the injustices of the prison system, a sensationalizing of women who choose to be with murderers, and a popular pathologizing of the women who stay with these men. Contrary to that popular pathology, what Hades’ Angels have in common is an unconscious search for that which transforms the ascriptive statements that have defined their inner sense of self. What they have found is far more powerful than turning lead into gold: found in the subtle body, that space in between, is the healing, soothing, transformative energy of feeling loved. They did not seek to change themselves yet they were changed, transformed, and feeling mirrored, held, and understood, was the transformative energy for a corrective emotional experience.

Perspective: According to Capra’s (1983) view of quantum theory, the basic structures of the material world, ultimately, are determined by the way we look at it; the observed patterns of matter are reflections of patterns of mind. Thus, historical emotional patterns of functioning as they might affect the perception of the Hades’ Angels lived experience, such as dominance and submission, were explored in the research and in this book.

A common mistake with perspective is that our own is often fixed, which makes the other a threat. What one perceives depends on our point of observation, who we are, and what we are looking for. One person’s view of a situation, even when observing the same thing, can be widely divergent from another. Additionally, our perspective can even shift with new information. Shedding old perceptions enables a different reality to shine through.

Psychotherapists develop the art of listening because people benefit from having their words, actions, and emotional experience understood. Many theoretical orientations exist for understanding that experience: cognitive, behavioral, developmental, analytical, depth. This suggests that the various theoretical perspectives frame, guide, and also limit the listener’s unique way of thinking, perceiving, and understanding the other. The interpretation of personal meaning of the experience is therefore the subjective view of the listener. A vastly underutilized point of view is from the perspective of soul. When reading Hades’ Angels I encourage reading between the lines and listening to these women’s stories from the perspective of soul.

Hades’ Angels contains relationship stories, which have the potential to be destructive- all the men are prison inmates convicted of violent crimes - but instead these relationships prove to be healing and empowering for the women involved. Hades’ Angels probes the hidden forces behind relationships. As such it draws on a wider readership, not only those who want to read stories about the Mr. Wrongs of the world, but those who want to learn how women--even those in relationship with prison inmates—are able to heal, to transform and grow so the Mr. Wrongs no longer find their way into their lives.

Why can a nice girl, a former cheerleader, honor student, publishing executive fall in love with a prison lifer? And it is one question that many readers want to have answered for them. Hades’ Angels shows readers why this kind of relationship happens. The subjects are nice women, good women, independent, bright, self- supporting, caretakers/peacemakers, nurturers, who still have a history of failed relationships. Hades’ Angels shows readers the unrecognized shadow part in the lives of the women interviewed. Their unacknowledged anger and hurt, buried within since childhood, recognizes itself in the mirror of the other. Differently expressed, it is the unseen magnetic draw that forms their common wound. Beauty and the beast are polar opposites, but in the world of the emotions, the two are psychologically mated.

The reader of Hades’ Angels will understand how a woman learns to act-in, repress her feelings, and how her historical, emotional and family dynamics are the lens that infuses and defines her adult relationship attractions. She will be able to understand the powerful impact of the family of origin marital dynamics on future relationships. She will be able to understand her own attractions as a result of reading Hades’ Angels. I show how the unacknowledged childhood wounds affect even outwardly successful clients seen in private practice; the reader will learn to recognize how they impact her life. Hades’ Angels will not leave readers with questions but will hopefully leave many grateful for the understanding it imparts, freed to acknowledge and face the buried wounds of the past rather than act them out in relationships.

This book utilizes the laboratory of the prison to understand certain relationships that occur in the general population, difficult relationships that present in the therapeutic setting. These relationships describe the transformative journey from emotional submission to empowerment. This book helps us understand how women that society dismiss as worthless, who have connected with the discards of society, get from them what they have always wanted: emotional connection, and emotional intimacy.

For the millions of women who buy books to help them understand themselves and their relationships, Hades’ Angels will explain both who they love and how they love. I narrate the true-life stories of women who fall in love with and are emotionally healed in their relationships with prison lifers. And at the same time I discuss the hidden forces to help readers see how their own shadow parts are reflected in the men they choose to love. The relationship dynamics in Hades’ Angels helps to clarify what goes on in some couples who seek marital therapy and are unaware of the source of their problems, yet experience themselves as imprisoned or trapped by unseen jailers. Hades’ Angels reveals deep emotional experiences that repair and transform women with a history of destructive relationships. The backdrop for this inner transformation is the dramatic, threatening and oppressive prison environment.

Today there are hundreds of thousands of women in relationships with prison inmates, and the number is growing. In addition, there is the population of wives and families of the incarcerated who will find real value in Hades’ Angels because of the insights they will get into themselves and because the inmates depicted in Hades’ Angels are shown as human beings, able to provide emotional support and serve as vehicles for the emotional growth of the women who love them.

Hades’ Angels offers analysis and interpretation and teaches readers how to confront and heal the kind of wounds whose source remains a mystery. Hades’ Angels demystifies the suffering and offers readers the chance to look into their own lives and learn to confront the true source of their pain.

# # #

Part I: Common Threads in Story Format

Chapter One: Hades’ Angels in Love

The Long, Lonely Road…Common Ground…All For Love…What Hades’ Angels Can Teach the Rest of Us…Shamed for Wanting…The Transformative Journey…Giving Birth to the Self…The Twenty-Six Hades’ Angels: Search for Meaning...The Numbers Keep Rising…Big Questions

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate.

--- Carl Jung

The Long, Lonely Road

It is still dark. I have miles of long, lonely road ahead of me. Mother would turn over in her grave if she knew where I was heading. I can hear her now, ‘No one with a scrap of decency ends up even as a visitor in prison. Nice people don’t affiliate with people like that because people like that are bad.’ What my mother doesn’t know is that these past twelve years since I’ve been with him have been the best of my life, even though he is in prison. I get so excited because I can’t wait to see and talk to him. Every time I arrive at the guard gate I’m a nervous wreck, but the moment I walk into the visiting room and see his warm smile, I fall in love with him all over again. One kiss hello and goodbye and that’s it. Remember: Don’t touch.

--- Hades’ Angel Callie

Certain women in this society count themselves as involved with, even committed to, men who will spend the rest of their lives behind bars. I am not talking about women already in relationships with these men prior to imprisonment. I am talking about women who reach out, meet, and then become involved with lifers or men on death row after they have been incarcerated. I call them Hades’ Angels.

There are thousands of such women all over the country. We’ve heard about the more high-profile examples sensationalized in the media, like Doreen Lioy and Nightstalker Richard Ramirez, or Tammi Menendez (interviewed on 60 Minutes and Larry King) who met and married convicted murderer, Erik Menendez, after he was imprisoned. The women in this book are not involved in high-profile relationships.

This book informs you, through the lens of the women who live it, what motivates certain women who rise at the crack of dawn to make that lonely, early morning trek to the prison to visit him. It tells you what motivates certain women, Hades’ Angels, to link their own lives with men living in a prison environment: to stand in long lines, to experience the bars, the concrete, razor wire fences, clanging electronic gates, watch towers manned with guns, and then wait patiently for the visiting room guard to call out their name, anxiously hoping to pass. It tells you why certain women, inwardly armored against verbal slights for associating with an inmate, undergo humiliating physical searches to descend into the deep, dark underbelly of a prison hellhole to spend their lifetime with a prison love they say fills me up!

To look at these women you wouldn’t peg them as being desperate for a man. They are not fat, ugly, or hooked on welfare. They present as strong and confident, although they may feel fragile inside. They come across as articulate, caring, thoughtful, strong-willed and they are remarkably self-sufficient. In fact, most appear as though they could do perfectly well on their own, yet they choose men with whom they will never have what our society terms a normal relationship. Why? What are their relationships like and what is their story? Do certain women somehow benefit from these relationships? My answer is a resounding Yes. Do their partners benefit from these relationships? Yes, again. And can society as a whole ultimately benefit from these relationships? Once again, Yes!

I became aware of this unique segment of society of women who meet, fall for, and then commit to men behind bars---the Hades’ Angels---when, under the umbrella of Friends Outside, I began facilitating a support group for families with a loved one in prison: mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and adult children. Although the group was intended for families with loved ones in prison, over the years many women came in and out of this group who were not bonded by blood, they were bonded by love.

Being a psychotherapist, the professional part of me was curious as to what psychological factors contributed to the initial attraction to a man who made his home locked away in a 6' x 9' cell. Neither dragon nor dragon slayer, I wanted to understand them and what motivated them. Over time, I became aware that many of these women made profound and positive psychological changes, even healings, as a result of being in their prison relationship. It was as though they intuitively knew they needed to heal from early childhood wounds and the harmful impact of previous unhappy, even destructive, relationships.

This work cracks open the door for the reader to enter into this unique relational world where this unique population find meaning: the inner world, the realm of soul. It also informs us about the internal, psychological world of women who are drawn to find their true love in prison, for life.

Even more surprisingly, many of these women reported similar positive changes in the men they were visiting, though I never met the men and couldn’t judge that for myself. There appeared to be a win/win situation occurring: the women, the men (apparently), and on a larger playing field, even society. It seemed as though nobody was getting hurt. These women did not seek to change themselves yet they were changed, transformed, by their experience. I was fascinated listening to them reveal their lived experiences. I wanted to tell about it in order to shed light on what for them appeared to be a corrective emotional experience. That’s when I decided to do the research and to write about it.

Hades’ Angels: An Inside View of Women Who Love Lifers and Death Row Inmates is born from this fascination. Initially, it was the topic of my doctoral dissertation; then it became this book. It is based on in-depth interviews with twenty-six of these remarkable women from all parts of the country, each involved with or married to a lifer or on Death Row. Again, I want to make it clear that none of these women were involved with men who were serial murderers or child molesters. I am well aware that not all women involved with inmates have positive transformative experiences. This book is about is the twenty-six women who did.

All for Love

So why would any woman put herself through long drives, the long waiting lines, the expenses (phone bills, gas, food, motel rooms), and then arrive at the prison gate only to find all her efforts are for naught? She may not be wearing the right clothes, or they are the wrong colors, or the prison may be on lockdown. All this obviously makes it extremely difficult to maintain a relationship with an inmate. Yet, these women do it.

What is the payoff?

For many women, the payoff, simply, is love. Surprising as this may sound, it is also an opportunity, although an unconscious one, for personal growth. The prison marriage or romance gives the woman an opportunity to begin dealing with painful emotional wounds buried deep in her psyche: that which got pushed down or split off from awareness. Her prison journey becomes a journey towards wholeness and individuation. How does this happen? What do these women learn in this prison setting and how does it impact their lives?

Asha Bandele, though not a Hades’ Angel, is such a woman -- a poet, intelligent, beautiful, educated, and black. Invited by her professor to visit a New York maximum-security correctional facility, she met and fell in love with Rashid, a prisoner there, and later married him. In her book, The Prisoner’s Wife, she states: Rashid and I, convict and student, gangster and poet, resident host and visiting performer. He gave me something I never had: romance. No-one, and I am not exaggerating, no-one has ever treated me like a woman who ought to be handled with care.

Other women like Asha Bandele believe they have fallen in love with an inmate because he helps me live from the inside out. One Hades’ Angel comments, He encourages me to be all I can be, and in return, she believes she sees the part of him the world doesn’t see: the man’s true inner soul. These women set aside their own comforts, open their ear to the great below and descend into the depths of Hades, prison, to nurture a prisoner because as they say, he fills me up emotionally. To those Hades’ Angels aware of an empty, dark, isolated, lonely place within themselves, these visits feel like remedies. They get caught up in the man’s prison experience, issues, and sometimes the chaos of his prison life. The woman may question her choice of partner, yet may remain unaware, unconscious, of what lies beneath her unusual love choice.

Historically, Hades’ Angels are caretakers and nurturers who learned in childhood that their own needs were unimportant. Early on, they internalized messages about the self: You are never good enough; you are never smart enough; you never do it right. They also internalized destructive family beliefs that kept them anchored in destructive relationships: Women are worthless; women are nothing without a man; and women exist only to take care of men. Women who believe these deeply ingrained messages as true, think they are not good enough or not entitled to receive love, which leads women to accept crumbs, so they suffer their lot. Hades’ Angel Michelle told me, I was deceived by my first husband, and deceived by my second husband. Finally, I had to examine what I believed in.

What Hades’ Angels Can Teach the Rest of Us

Destructive relationships figure prominently in a large segment of the general female population, inside and outside of prison where the hidden, unknown, or un-nurtured aspects of the self play a critical, though often invisible, role in one’s choice of mate. Many women find themselves in relationships with the kind of men who probably ought to be behind bars, but aren’t. In my clinical practice in Los Angeles, I treat many women who are involved in destructive relationships, silently imprisoned behind invisible glass walls: women whose full potential is locked away inside their inner emotional prison. They enter therapy hoping for enlightenment about the self, build healthier relationships, and be freed from their destructive life patterns. They want to change their lives.

Demon Lovers

There is some unseen subtle body, an intangible energy, felt in the dynamic between certain women and the type of man I call a demon lover (Woodman, 1982). It keeps these women stuck in toxic emotional environments. As a psychologist, my focus is on awareness and insight as an avenue towards emotional growth, wholeness, individuation and transformation. Similarly, for the Hades’ Angels who seek love relationships inside an arena behind bars, narcissistic healing and transformation often occurs. Somehow these women transcend the limits imposed by their early childhood wounds and their previous abusive demon lover relationships and find comfort, even happiness, with their prison partner. How this happens may hold lessons for women among the general population who want to learn to change their relationship dynamics.

For example, Joyce, a patient on the outside, thought that marriage and financial self-sufficiency would be her escape route from the negativity, put-downs, and physical abuse of her family. That premise proved faulty. Not long after marriage, her husband’s affairs first gave her an embarrassing disease then his physical abuse brought on an emergency abortion. To her demon lover husband this seemed the perfect opportunity to run away with his girlfriend. Joyce was abandoned, discarded, alone, and left to pay the hospital bill.

Lucy, also a patient on the outside, was married to an alcoholic who simply refused to leave. Lucy spent her days caring for their two young daughters and worked nights at the hospital to pay the bills. Meanwhile, her husband languished in bed until noon or hung out at the neighborhood bar where he explained to anyone who listened how to get a woman to support her man. Linda, yet another patient in the general population, worked full-time and turned over her paychecks to a spouse who never tired telling her how inept she was handling money. Unbeknownst to her, while she was working, he was molesting their children, and he threatened to kill their mother if they told her. When Linda discovered the truth, she reported him – and ended up losing custody of their children because the judge found her neglectful of their welfare. The husband got off with a warning. As you will read in another chapter, when Hades’ Angel Lisa Heart came face to face with her husband’s indiscretions, it was a really jolting experience.

Such chaotic, toxic, and traumatic events in the lives of these and other women often stem from historical patterns of control, dominance and emotional submission, and family belief systems leading to learned helplessness that devours the soul. These negative messages have a trickle-down multigenerational effect. Women caught in these traps know exactly what I’m talking about. Believing they cannot survive without their husband’s economic support, some women perpetuate this dynamic by choosing financial security over emotional freedom. Others continue unconsciously in patterns of emotional and verbal abuse because it is familiar; not all that different from what they knew at home growing up. It becomes a real comfortable shoe, says Hades’ Angel PJ. Such women are painfully aware of their quick willingness to sacrifice their fragile sense of self, allowing themselves to get eaten up alive in order to be loved.

Like a virus, family emotional injuries, lack of love and affection, faulty boundaries, or an inappropriate sense of entitlement can pervade and infect the family system. When the most primary relationship, the family, is dysfunctional it casts dark, ubiquitous shadows over one’s entire life. In families where mothers model how to lie down and play dead, their daughters need no formal training to teach them that women are worthless. The impact of these messages get played out in one relationship after another, including relationships with the inmate spouse until a healing energy motivates change.

Women who get drawn into destructive demon lover relationships describe being sucked in by some unseen energy or magnetic force. That draw makes them feel special and wanted; they get hooked. However, what they don’t know is that they are being singled out by the kind of man who sees a healthy filly; harnesses her energy, her strength, and even her finances for his own purposes; then uses, abuses, and drops her.

It is no surprise that these are just the kind of women who can end up as Hades’ Angels, unconsciously drawn by unseen internal ties they don’t understand to connect with men doing serious life time. Some early narcissistic wound fates them to bind themselves to a prison relationship that society assumes hopelessly pathological, even stigmatizing. Therefore, it is a huge surprise when many Hades’ Angels end up having a corrective emotional experience with partners living inside prison walls. Here, the outer reality becomes a holding environment (Winnicott, 1958), a stage prop to the inner world of Spirit (Lozoff, 1985). Perhaps on some unconscious level they knew exactly what they were doing.

Shamed for Wanting

When love is a mysterious quantity, dreamed of but never felt, it breeds a longing for it. The child left hungry for love, yet shamed for wanting it, survives by denying that very neediness. Denying that desire exists is a survival tool that protects the fragile part of the self, as is walling it all off and withdrawing from the hurt and the anger for not getting it. When, if ever, do those invisible scars, those protective walls come down? When does giving love, all the while knowing it will never be reciprocated, become too heavy for the lonely heart to bear? When does one courageously declare it’s time to turn the page, time to say, Enough, stop! when called crazy, put down, chastised or abused? What will gently coax the wounded part of the self from hiding? What turns daily life crises into turning points?

As I learned from my twenty-six Hades’ Angels, the unconscious can undergo a sobering jolt out of stuck, on behalf of change. There is no guarantee that this will happen, but it can happen. Hades’ Angels