For nearly 3 years, author R.G. Shore was incarcerated in a predominantly white and also racially divisive prison in the Pacific Northwest. During that time, Shore learned to meditate and create a safe space internally to work through his own traumas. In the memoir, “The Ocean Inside Me,” he talks about healing his own racial trauma as a person of color.
Since his release, Shore has started the non-profit Northwest Wisdom where he helps others work on their own healing journey.
OPB’s Paul Marshall spoke with author R.G. Shore about the book and his experience.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Paul Marshall: You were incarcerated for some time. How did it feel when you realized that your life was going to change for the next few years?
RG Shore: Any time something happens that’s traumatic there is a period of questioning and a period of time within the body where the thing feels surreal. Whether that’s a divorce or a loss of a loved one or in my case, prison, there is a period of time where you’re almost grieving for the parts of your life that don’t exist anymore. I don’t know if I can give an exact number of days or months where you’re kind of pushing against the is of your situation or of my situation. Part of the healing process is just accepting your own is right. You’re accepting what is and then you’re allowing that to sort of transform and create a space where you can heal and grow.
In my experience, the healing doesn’t happen until you let go of what isn’t happening.
Marshall: The title of the book is “The Ocean Inside Me.” What does that mean to you?
Shore: “The Ocean Inside Me” for me was a place that I created and went to visually to be able to do the healing that I needed to do. In trauma work or in meditation, it’s about creating a safe space first. I created a safe space within me through the elements of water. A part of that understanding of water had to do with the fact that I was putting on these headphones with white noise. Over time this white noise coming through the headphones started to sound like the elements of water, whether that was rain or the ocean. It’s referring to this space where I would drop in within my own body and drop in deep enough to be able to discover the things that I need to discover within myself.
Cover photo of the memoir The Ocean Inside Me
RG Shore
Marshall: Did you find water to be a healing agent?
Shore: I did. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I think I’ve always been sort of drawn to the outdoor elements, whether that’s hiking, being at the ocean or being at the river. A lot of my book refers to these natural elements that I obviously didn’t have access to while incarcerated. Water was definitely a way to at least visually allow myself to connect back to those important parts of my life.
Marshall: When you were writing the book, you combined parts of your own story along with meditation for readers to practice. How were you able to strike that balance in your own writing?
Shore: My goal in writing the book when I sat down with myself and reflected was to ask where I was going with it. This was to make sure that I’m creating examples for people to follow if they want to. I was very aware as I’m writing the narrative parts of the book and thinking about how am I going to incorporate the meditations. It became pretty easy to do because these are all meditations that I practice daily and also incorporated while I was incarcerated. These were examples that I was actually doing in my bunk. It was pretty easy for me to sort of incorporate the meditation aspect. These are also steps and meditation techniques and exercises that I practice with clients that I have today.
Marshall: While you were incarcerated you had this radio, what did it symbolize to you and how did you get it?
Shore: It’s funny. Hindsight is 2020 while you’re in it, you’re kind of just swimming, right? You’re not aware of the different waves when you’re in the water, you’re just trying to survive and you’re just trying to swim.
I liken it to a car crash. If you’re in a car crash and you’re rolling down the hill, you’re not thinking about all the different parts of your body that might be hurting later or what this actually means you’re just trying to hold on.
I think prison is very much that type of scenario where you’re just kind of trying to hold on. I was just trying to get a radio to drown out the noise and the racism and the hurt that I was experiencing from the men around me. I think also in real time, the radio allowed me to enter into that world that I talk about in my book. At first it wasn’t that I knew that this was going to lead me somewhere. It was more of needing something to distract me from the hurt and the wounds that I’m experiencing in real time.
Photo provided of author RG Shore
RG Shore
Marshall: You got a job in the prison law library and the job puts you in a position of power over people who hated you because of your race or the color of your skin. How were you able to navigate that power dynamic while inside?
Shore: I often think that what I was experiencing in my meditations was preparing me for that job. The sort of more macro way of looking at it is that meditation or healing should always lead you towards some type of social justice advocacy.
In this experience, if it weren’t for my meditation and if it weren’t for the healing that I was doing within my own body, I wouldn’t have been able to hold both the job and of working with my oppressor when I was in that position. You say position of power but it didn’t feel like power at first because these are men sometimes two or three times my size who, like you pointed out, just wanted to hurt me because of the color of my skin. It was more of, “Hey, I’m learning the law. I’m trying to do my best.” And what came of my meditation meeting me in real time was regardless of how these men treat you, you still need to do the right thing. The right thing is to advocate for them and to help them even if they don’t know how to help themselves. I think in sort of balancing that out I was never looking at it like a power dynamic or a power imbalance. I was just trying to do what felt right in myself and in my being for these men.
Marshall: What do you hope readers take away from this book?
Shore: That no one is too far from the healing. No one is not worth the healing. Everybody is worthy of healing and everybody is worthy of that journey.
The other thing I think is that we’re all connected. There’s so much in our world right now in the narratives and of the world of duality or us versus them language and mentality. And finding that common ground and finding the ability to relate and find connection, it is so important. Part of the end of my book really gets to the importance of realizing that wounds are not separate from each other. And as long as we try to wound people and push them away and put people in compartments, we’re just only growing that wound. We’re not actually healing it.
Understanding how our connection with each other affects sort of everything we do. The powerful side of that is that in choosing to heal together, that only grows in power. In choosing to find that connectedness and that collective healing that is going to only become more about powerful over time, if we choose to see that we can heal together.