Tuesdays in Jail: What I Learned Teaching Journaling to Inmates

Uniquely revealing, instructive, and inspiring life lessons learned by a novelist and writing teacher over ten years of teaching weekly classes on journaling to the inmates at her local county jail

A decade ago, Tina Welling began teaching journaling workshops for the mostly male inmates at the Teton County jail in Jackson, Wyoming, where she lives. What began as a little-understood impulse on her part became a meaning-filled enterprise with surprising results.

Welling was floored by how much she had in common with the incarcerated: "It's just that they had been arrested and I had not." They talked and wrote about self-esteem, anger, forgiveness, compassion, personal power, codependency. Welling viscerally realized that "we teach what we need to know." She gave the men one hour a week to explore their inner lives; they gave her an unprecedented experience of intimacy and vulnerability. Because Welling was often not privy to the fates of the men she taught, she faced a principle found in many wisdom teachings: becoming comfortable with not knowing.

Replete with the kind of gorgeous writing for which Welling is acclaimed -- for example, she likens her path to teaching as "tracking a moose in snowfall" -- Tuesdays in Jail is part memoir, part riveting exploration of a world most of us will never experience, and wholly an enlightening and compelling read.