← This Is Actually Happening
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- [00:00]
Wit Misseldine
Wonder plus subscribers can listen to exclusive episodes of this Is Actually Happening by joining Wonder in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the Show Notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. Hi listeners, as we begin this new year, we've been imagining new ways to evolve the show and to do this we'd like to ask for your help. We've come up with a short audience survey which you can find linked in our Show Notes and on our social media pages. We'd love to hear your opinions and feedback. You're an essential part of the storytelling on this show and it's your chance to have your voice heard. So we'd really appreciate a few minutes of your time to share your point of view again. You can find the link in the Show Notes to this episode on our Instagram page and on the Facebook group. And now onto our first new episode of 2025, the harrowing story of Sarah Short for today's episode what if you were a political hostage in Iran?
- [01:10]
Sarah Shourd
You don't know if you're ever going to get out and when you have no power, who are you? Becomes a big question. What does it mean to have an identity when you have no agency, when all of a sudden you are at the discretion of the state?
- [01:36]
Wit Misseldine
From Wondery, I'm Wit Misseldine you are listening to this Is actually happening episode 345 what if you were a pollut political hostage in Iran.
- [02:02]
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- [02:18]
Sarah Shourd
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- [02:21]
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- [03:33]
Sarah Shourd
My father, Louis Shord iii. My mom met him when he was working construction on her home at the time that she shared with her husband and her two kids, my sister and brother. My mom had been married since she was still a child herself. She got married at 17. But you know, I imagine there was some level of like hope and possibility in that moment. And apparently he looked really good in shorts and there was a really strong chemistry between my father and mother and my mom ran away with him. Every life that was touched by that moment was really forever changed. It's a kind of no going back moment, you know. My sister and brother in many ways had the worst of it to lose their mom. Their father got custody because she was seen as abandoning her children, even though she went back the next day to get her children. But it was too late. The law in this case took the side of her ex husband. So she was very demonized as a woman for making that decision. Imagine blamed herself. So at that point she lost everything and didn't have support. My mom, she is a wonderful person, complex, feisty, sweet, vulnerable and brave. She's definitely got a punk rock fuck you. Deep rebelliousness in her spirit. Definitely wasn't a good thing for her to be a housewife at that time. She couldn't express a lot of herself. My father was not a supportive person, much more traditional and conservative. I think that what she was trying to get away from, like being controlled by a man, it only got worse before I was even born. Their relationship became very volatile. And my father, he was raised with an authoritative father and a lot of that stuff just comes out whether we like it or not. Things got really, really bad. My mother was the target of a lot of physical abuse before I was born. There are three instances that I know of that I almost didn't make it into this world. My mom was at the center of a lot of systems of violence, including the abuse that my mom suffered and self harm. My mom attempted suicide and she tried to get an abortion. She claims that when she went to the abortion clinic, she felt me say, no way, this is not happening. I'm coming in. So the fact that I came into this world at all, to me just strikes me as not guaranteed in any way. And yeah, I mean I came in as a survivor. Early on, my mother developed a relationship with a woman. Her name is Iline. Aline was part of the Communist Party. There was a lot of protesting against the war, but also for women's rights. Really connecting the dots. Of systemic inequality. Ilene started coming over for tea to talk about communism. And then eventually she said, I know what's happening. You know, I can see that you're being hurt, and if you don't leave, you may never make it out of this situation. She was the first person that really gave my mom the strength to leave. And we did. We at first went underground. I mean, the Communist party protected us, so we were moving from place to place because my father was trying to find us. I know that he was completely out of his mind at that time. So we were in a lot of danger. We eventually got an apartment and stayed a few more years in Chicago. I remember one place that we lived was in a basement and waking up one morning, and the asbestos from the ceiling had all fallen down during the night. So the entire apartment was covered in this asbestos. And I just remember, like, making it into a joke, like, making it fun, like, we always had so much fun. And that is the resilience that is my birthright. Resilience is the ability to feel joy and to love and to not be defined by your circumstances. Singing at the top of your lungs in the car together and finding comfort, even if it's freezing and we don't have heat or food in the house. Playing weird games and getting dressed up. And I really give my mom a lot of credit for the fact that I look back at those years and I have a lot of good memories. All my early memories are about me feeling this intense tie to my mother. It's an energetic tethering between the two of us that it was so strong for me as a child. I remember she was working nights as a waitress, and she was in nursing school during the day, and I was in childcare. And when she left in the morning, it was the most painful thing for the two of us to be ripped apart every time. And I remember being in her arms and seeing how exhausted she was and just wanting to be silly and sweet to, you know, bring her some joy. We left Chicago and came to start a new life in California. We came here when I was 6, and I grew up in Los Angeles up until high school. I got bullied at school. The rich girls were just awful, and the teachers were awful. And I got sort of humiliated and belittled around class stuff. And I didn't want my mom to worry about that. I wanted to learn how to handle it myself. And so that started to happen pretty young for me, protecting my mom. I wasn't around other poor white kids, so I didn't Feel seen, you know, I felt very much like I didn't belong and that I needed to pass in order to belong and sort of hide how different my life was at home and hide parts of myself. In high school, I got hurt on a date. I was the victim of date rape. And I think that really sent me back into, I'm not safe, I don't belong here. I don't want to be part of any of this. So I isolated. I mean, I had this huge father wound. And at that point, we didn't even talk about my father. But I was constantly afraid that he would find us. We were on the other side of the country, and I was haunted by the idea that I didn't know who my father was. Was he in prison? Was he homeless? What was he? It wasn't even like I would admit out loud it wasn't acceptable to talk about my father wound. I didn't understand it. No one helped me understand it. You know, why do bad things happen to people? That was a pretty big question that nobody had answers for. But a lot of this stuff I was just holding inside. And at the same time, I was also exposed to how messed up the world. I mean, my mom is very political. We talked about the climate crisis, we talked about systemic racism and poverty. And I was exp to a lot of how scary and messed up the world was. And not a lot of answers on how the hell do we make it any better. But the silver lining of it was that I was also at a really cool school. It was a humanities magnet, and I had teachers that saw my potential. And so I did kind of believe in myself that I was a good writer, that I was an interesting person. When you're carrying around this idea that maybe I deserve the bad things that have happened to me, and then someone's like, actually, you are really special. It's what you need to hear. And so I was kind of like, okay, I'm going to get out of here, and that special part of me is going to have a chance somewhere else. I'm just going to bide my time and get out of la and then I will figure out how to be a person in this world. Right after high school, I was really just kind of still trying to get the courage to come out of my shell. And then I moved to the Bay. I transferred to UC Berkeley from junior college. I was having fun for the first time, like a lot of fun. Partying, getting into being an artist, dipping into different communities, doing drugs. And then 911 happened. The future of the world is forever changed by this moment. And my first reaction to it was they did it for a reason. And I want to know why. I want to understand. No one around me was saying that, and I was like, fuck, I need to find some other people that are saying that. It's that call to who are my people and how do I find my people? I don't have to be alone in this my whole life or pretend that this is not who I am. That opened up a totally new path for me. I joined the anti war movement and I was very much on the front lines of that, doing direct action. And I decided at that time to travel down to Chiapas to support the Zapatista movement. I consider the Zapatista movement to be like my first great mentor. They built autonomous movements despite the fact that the government was trying to crush these communities. They were able to build sustainable and powerful space, to dream in and create new worlds. Not fight just against the world that we hate, but to build the world that we want to live in. To be exposed to that at that age in my life where I was so sensitive to the horrors that were happening in my name, you know, to be taken under the wings of a movement that was like, you can take whatever you learn here, we don't need you to save us. Just take it back to your life, continue on your path, and know that you're not alone, that we are a global movement. So I did that work for five years, going back and forth between the communities, raising funds for their autonomous projects. I just really threw myself into that work. And that's also when I started to become an artist. So I was writing, I was doing journalism, but we were also presenting what we were learning back to our community. So it was this beautiful global solidarity. But at the time I was flailing. There was a contradiction between the face I was putting out there of this courageous and activist warrior and the deep pain and sensitivity and wounds I felt I was holding inside. I was in an abusive relationship, I drank too much and, you know, we lost. Like, the war happened, a million Iraqis were killed. And there was a sense of like, you know, what we're doing here isn't making a difference. There was a lot of toxicity in the cultural context that all this was happening for me in. And I was also trying to individuate from my mother. My mom had moved up to the bay and I felt myself pulled back into the same patterns of protecting her and putting her needs before my own and always trying to be something for Somebody else. When I met Shane Bauer, we'd been in community together doing anti war work for a few years, but he moved to the Middle east as a journalist. And I really liked this person. And we were writing back and forth, but when he came back, it was clear that there was something really powerful between us, that he wanted to be in a relationship with me. With Shane and I, there was a certain level of like meeting someone that in his passion and his tenacity when it came to wanting so deeply a better world, we met each other like it was a very explosive and beautiful thing that happened. It felt like the two of us could do just about anything together, including illegally hopping trains across the country to meet my father. Meeting him for the first time was beautiful in many ways. He was a human being. He wasn't a demon or a monster. He was someone that suffered a lot in his own right and had limitations. There was a certain kind of just love we felt. You know, I'm his daughter, he's my father. I don't believe that there are humans that are monsters. After meeting my father, I think it was another year or two before Shane and I decided to move to the Middle East. There was something about our connection that felt like anything was possible. Sort of like what I'd experienced in the Zapatista movement that I wasn't experiencing in the movement here. And I started to feel like, oh my God, I want to get out of this country. So I was teaching ESL to immigrants in Fruitvale and saving money and learning some Arabic. Shane had already lived in the Middle east, he was fluent in Arabic. And we decided to go together. We were in love and we saw it as a very long term commitment, our love. There was a kind of invincibility that came from our love, but there was a way that, that invincibility doesn't come without a new set of limitations. I didn't want to be seen as any weaker than him. And he's an incredibly courageous person. But I think that I also over identified with him, with our love, and lost myself in it to a degree. But we traveled around Ethiopia, Djibouti, you know, we immersed ourselves in the cultures that we were in the best that we could. I mean, we backpacked in the Simian Mountains, we took a cattle boat from Djibouti across the Red Sea to Yemen. And being in Yemen, everything you've been taught up until now in Yemen, I was like, I don't know shit about this. Like, it was so humbling and terrifying and exciting. It Was a paradigm shift of I truly am living in a world that I know nothing about and falling in love with it and wanting to just eat up the world. And this part of me that is always wanting to shed any kind of veils that are preventing me from seeing the truth. It was happening so rapidly at that time in my life. So we settled in Syria and got an apartment and I started to teach Iraqi refugees there. We lived in a Palestinian refugee camp, which is a well established and a vibrant, exciting neighborhood. And it was a hard year. But I also experienced things that so deeply touched me and seeing what a community could be like. It was a real community that I felt instantly accepted in because instead of seeing me as bad, they were like, you're here. You want to know about our culture, you're our guest here. So there was a tremendously beautiful welcoming and belonging that happened for me where I didn't feel at all lost. I felt called home. After less than a year living in Syria, a good friend of ours, Josh Fattal, came to visit. I'd been hearing about northern Iraq and Shane had been wanting to go there. Josh has Iraqi ancestry, and I think that was part of the idea. But I think he also was just down to go on an adventure with us. So we left early one morning. We got on a bus and went to Turkey. And then from Turkey we crossed in a cab into northern Iraq. And it was the part of the Middle east where people were very pro American, excited about being George Bush. And it was a hopeful time. They were celebrating their first democratic election. So there were fireworks in the streets. And it wasn't a conservative Arab culture the way that as a woman, I didn't have to dress as modestly. So our guards were down in a certain way. We were feeling it out and only been there for a couple days. And we kept seeing posters about this green area, Ahmedawa, where there was a waterfall. All three of us are nature lovers. We're missing the green and missing the hiking. So we asked the hotel person about it. A couple people were like, yeah, you can take a taxi there. You can stay by the waterfall. So we took a taxi to Ahmedawa, and when we arrived, it was very populated. There were a lot of families there. There were vendors, there was tea, kebabs, trinkets for sale. And then we hiked closer to the waterfall and there were a lot of families camping. So we were very much not thinking we were at a place where we had to be worried, but we didn't know exactly where we were at that time. There were no iPhones. We had our flip phones. So we roughly thought we knew where we were, but we really didn't know. And we were in a mountainous area that borders the Islamic Republic of Iran. We slept there that night, and the next morning, we hiked along a trail. We hiked for several hours. When we got to the top of the ridge, the trail continued to follow the ridge. And I was having a lot of fear come up. I felt like we had hiked too far, and I was worried. And the dynamic between Shane and I, which Josh was then now pulled into the middle of at that time, was sort of him being like, I know you're afraid. It's okay. It's okay, sweetie. We're fine. We're safe. Like, my fear was seen as a symptom of my trauma as opposed to something that we should really listen to. And I think that I was also habituated to be like, I don't want to be the scaredy cat with these two men. I'm just as strong as they are. So at that moment, we looked up and there was a soldier at the top of the ridge, and he was carrying a large rifle and motioning to us with the rifle to go farther down the trail. Immediately in that moment, all of these different competing narratives of like, oh, this is nothing. He's Kurdish. He's going to just offer us tea and say, yay, George Bush. And another one is, these are terrorists. We're going to be killed and raped. When we got there, he motioned for us to step off the trail towards him. And I later found out that that trail is the unmarked border between Iraqi Kurdistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran. And it's an unmarked border by design. There's a lot of smuggling that goes on there, and I'm sure the people at Ahmed Awed knew that. And so we were ordered off the trail by gunpoint. We did not cross illegally by choice. I think there was definitely some youthful hubris going on. And there was also just not properly interpreting the signs, which anyone who travels internationally, you know that there are going to be times when you can't actually interpret a culture well, you know, and that things like this do happen, and, you know, we made a mistake, and the consequences were immense. That is the beginning of the rest of my life.
- [23:38]
Wit Misseldine
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- [24:39]
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- [25:17]
Sarah Shourd
We were forced into a jeep and driven into Iran by soldiers. And we just kept telling ourselves this is crazy, this can't last for more than a few hours and Iran doesn't want to start a war with America. Basically it was just, okay, we have to get through this crazy ass experience. It may be a few days and then the rest of our lives we're gonna be like, oh shit. We got through that and that was the most I could imagine is that it would be over in a day. I went into like fierce lion mode where I was like linking arms with Shane and Josh and they won't separate us. And I could feel that I had a certain kind of power because our captors didn't touch my body. They wouldn't push me or force me to do anything because I was a woman. We got passed off from different groups. We were completely disoriented, slept in hotels, and then at one point they drove us into the desert at night and marched us at gunpoint. We thought we were going to be shot in that moment, but they were just trying to scare us. I think they were just passing us from one group to the next. They had no fucking idea what to do with us. And then eventually they got some kind of orders to take us to Tehran. You still just cling To. It's gonna be fine. It's just crazy. Some crazy shit's going on, and it's gonna be fine. But that's when they handcuffed us for the first time and put us in a van, like a dark window van, and blindfolded us and took us to Evin Prison, which is a notorious prison for political prisoners. The first thing they did is tear us apart. I screamed. I mean, I think I screamed that whole night. That was the thing I was the most terrified of, is being separated from them. That meant that all I could do was try to help myself. The early weeks and months, I was trying to figure out how to regulate myself enough so that I wasn't just weeping all day long and so that I could sleep at night in a tiny, empty cell. I didn't have a bed. I slept on the floor. I had one wool blanket and nothing in the cell, you know, nothing. You are staring at the cracks in the walls. You know, your mind starts to play tricks on you. You don't know if you're ever going to get out. And when you have no power, who are you? Becomes a big question. What does it mean to have an identity when you have no agency, when all of a sudden you are at the discretion of the state and what happens to you is based on political equations and decisions and calculations that you have made, no idea what they are. And it doesn't matter, because all you know is you just want to get out. I just want this to be over. And that's all you feel, every moment of every day. There's no other thought, really, that makes any sense. We had grueling interrogation for over a month, and it was just absurd. The whole thing is like a Kafka novel with all of these insane people because they're part of an insane system, trying to pretend like there was something going on that made sense in some way. They had some translators and, you know, it would just, like, write your whole life story, and then they would read it and say, this is terrible, Sarah, and, like, tear it up and do it again. So the interrogation itself was a form of torture, for sure. I didn't know if my answers would result in my execution or my freedom. But I didn't know what's the right answer to live. If I admit to being a spy, does that mean I'm going to live? I don't feel very confident about that. So I just answered, you know, the questions and went back to my cell and cried. So the whole thing is absurd when you break it down. And it's kind of like just being in the center of the madness and knowing that your life is on the line. At first, I tried to appeal to people's humanity, to get people to feel sorry for me, basically, right? To plead, to beg, to manipulate the guards into just spending more time talking to me. We're not wired to be cut off from everything. Psychological torture. People don't understand. Like, human contact is like knowing that someone might smile at you ever again, right? I mean, that's just an example, the first thing that comes to mind. But it's a million things, right? Knowing that you may ever receive kindness again. Negative human contact is amazing when you have no human contact. It's a fundamental value that we hold, that somehow we don't need each other. We could be okay. I'd be fine. Yeah, lock me in a room, I'll be fine. I can handle it. But it's fundamentally not true that we are separate from one another. It's a myth. It's a misunderstanding of reality. It becomes very clear what a misunderstanding that is when you're in solitary confinement with no idea if you're ever going to get out. And I thought I was alone. That's the thing that is actually really tragic when I look back, is that I really thought I was alone. And when I look back to a lot of my life, I think I've really, deep down thought I was alone or had to do it myself. But when I was in that cell, I was not alone. My ancestors were there with me. 96% of my blood is Irish. It's Celtic. And my ancestors suffered an unbelievable trauma, forced mass starvation before they came over here to this country. And then on top of it, were sold the lie that they had to give up everything that they believed in in order to survive here. They had to let themselves be erased, all of their deep indigenous traditions. I was definitely being broken open. And there was, you know, a fundamental reorganization going on of, what is this life? You know, how did I end up here? And who am I, and what is my purpose? Why did I do something to deserve this? Is the universe inherently cruel? Even if you don't believe those things, your body is like, but I'm being punished. The pain of isolation is actually physical pain. It's like the grief and the loss is unbearable. The most difficult thing for me was worrying about my mom. I felt constantly tortured by the idea that she was suffering. It really shows you yourself, your own psychology. It was like, oh, I should be worrying about myself. But I guess it's Some kind of false agency of like, I'm responsible for my mother. So I have to fight, I have to be okay. I have to keep it together. I would have like structure my time where I was practicing Spanish, practicing Arabic, creating stories and performing them, exercising four hours a day. Then I would spend periods of time dancing, meditating. The vigilance and the discipline was probably the more dominant strategy. And being defiant, pretending that I wasn't afraid and standing up to the guards, learning energetically how to hold my ground too. Like feeling my power was really important to me, you know, really you just want to be as crazy as possible. And I did that too, you know, danced around naked and flapped my tits around in the guards faces to just try, like I did everything to just try to be like, this is insane, right? Or like, I need to express myself, I need to be a human. But then other times I was like, acted like I was like a devout Muslim and did the call to prayer devoutly and like had the guards like teach me how to do it properly. And you know, it was just like a sort of like, how on earth do I continue to express myself and feel like a human being in this insanity? I do think that incarceration is an abomination. But I also think that it's part of the human experience to experience the loss of freedom. It has been for a very long time. And it's not only in prison that that happens. Feeling like you're trapped in your own body or trapped in a situation where you're not seen, that your deep soul's journey is blocked, that is a form of captivity. And so I think there's a universality to anyone who's been in prison that can connect us to the human story, the story of separation, the story of loss. Torture is wrong. And it's part of the human experience. And it's important to understand why governments use it. Governments are playing with the deepest human mysteries, right? I mean, religion does the same thing. So there's so much being done to try to take us away from the mystery of life and to extinguish that flame. And for a lot of people it will, it does, it works. If you're in conditions that force you against your will into a state of consciousness that is so altered that you don't know who you are anymore. Trauma permanently hurts us. Some things about it are irreversible. But we also are incredibly adaptive, flexible on the neurological level and obviously on the spiritual level. Being broken open, being, you know, sort of devastated and stripped down, gives Us, the potential of a huge opening and a huge unveiling of who we are. Being able to let go and surrender to a sense of acceptance. I was starting to experience a kind of strength in myself. Like, I guess it just becomes evidence. Like, I'm surviving this and I'm figuring this out, and I feel like someday it's going to be over. Even if I don't get out of this, this is my life. This is all I've got. So what can I get out of this that's worthwhile? Other people have survived situations like this. Other people have survived solitary confinement for decades. The only power you have is how you respond. So what resources did I bring with me to this place that can't be taken? There's an outdoor cell that I would be taken to with, like, bars over the roof so I could see the clouds and. And, you know, even after not seeing the sky for a month, it's like, unbelievable how beautiful it is, you know, or one leaf that might come in because of a breeze, or I saw ants. The ants came into my cell. And just being like, completely transported by the miraculousness of any life, having that be the only thing that I had that gave me any kind of relief from the pain. There's a beautiful side to pain because that is life. You're going to have pain, and if it doesn't open you up, then it really does destroy you. You can become it. You can become, like walking pain. And all you can do is hurt other people. When you're like that, eventually you have to soften to the pain. You have to soften to reality. You have to surrender. There was a morning that I woke up and the light would stream through the windows, which were high up on the wall. But the light was enough to illuminate the dust motes in the cell. And I looked at the dust motes and they were so beautiful. I mean, just I can see it now, that, like, golden glow with all the fuzzy texture. Like every desmote. So much complexity. And to me, each one was someone I knew, a person. All these people, all these beings in this stream of life. And I was like, well, I'm still in it. That's amazing. Was like, the most beautiful vision I've ever seen. And that beauty is always there, right? It always is underneath. So if I don't get out of here, I just kind of got a sense that that was okay, that maybe there was more to this than I really understood. And it's like, oh, such a relief. I remember once I got the Strongest booming message in my mind, which was, you have so much left to learn. And at the time, I kind of felt like I'd sort of figured it out because there were all these structures I was clinging to. Like, when I get out of here, I'm going to get married and I'm going to be a mother, and I'm going to fight injustice, and I'm going to repay the world for fighting for me. But there was so much that I didn't understand at that time in my life, and I didn't realize at the time how much I had to learn. I was never beaten. I was a valuable political hostage, which is like money in the bank. They are going to, at some point, cash it in. I mean, it's not guaranteed. But with Iran, it's a pretty clear cycle where they stand up to the great Satan by defying, but at the same time, they're trying to normalize as a country, and they want international respect. And so if enough countries are angry at them and pressure them, it becomes, you know, we better cash in this investment now before it has no value. But it. It benefits both sides. I mean, that's the thing. The US could have gotten us out. The US Gets its own people out all the time. CIA agents. There's always backhand deals. But it's advantageous for the US Government to make Iran look bad just as much as it's advantageous for the Iranian government to look defiant to its own people. The situation reinforces the narrative on both sides. All the big bad governments in the world, they have a lot in common, a common interest, which is to continue to have power over us. And so they all are invested in this game, just we as people. It's completely not in our interest, but we just don't think that we can change it. So after 408 days, I was suddenly taken out of my cell and taken to meet a man named Salem Ellis Maili. He is an envoy of the Sultan of Oman. He was the person negotiating our release. I saw him as the only person I could influence that had any power over my life and my future. Everything is a survival strategy. When you're powerless and incarcerated, having a strategy to survive by identifying with your captors or trying to influence your captors is just survival. So the way that we found to bond immediately was spiritually. The first thing I said to him was, I see God in you. We bonded very deeply. He told me that he was very close to procuring my release and that I would be released first. And I told him that there was no way in hell that was going to happen, that I wouldn't leave without Shane and Josh. And I went back to my cell at that point. And then the next day I was taken out, and they let me meet with Shane and Josh, and I told them, and they were like, you have to go. You're much more use for us on the outside. So I was released alone, put on a small plane, taken back to Oman. And when the plane touched down on the tarmac in Oman, all I could see was bright lights and flashes, and I was completely numb. I was feeling absolutely nothing. I felt nothing. I walked to the bottom of the stairs very slowly, very reluctant, and I got to the bottom and I was like, where's my mom? It was just like, who are you people? You know, and then there's my mom. And she was there, and we were reunited, which was, you know, I mean, it was all very fucked up in a sense. I was ripped away so jarringly from what had become my sense of in the world, right? Shane and Josh and I were in it together now. I had power, and, you know, I knew I was going to use it, but I didn't really think that I deserved to be free. The survivor guilt is so intense, and also I couldn't enjoy it. But psychologically, I think it was really good for me because people that are able to get out of a traumatic situation and then use it to help others, they fare better in the long run. It definitely helps you get back your sense of agency in the world. So I was meeting with the US Government, Omani government, Switzerland, Iraqi government, and I brought in the Venezuelan government as well, because the former President Chavez has a relationship with President Ahmadinejad, who was the president of Iran at the time. And so I was able to do some pretty amazing things, like get Sean Penn to go to Venezuela because he's friends with Chavez and convinced Chavez to call Ahmadinejad. That was the first really big indication after a year that they would be freed. Ahmadinejad made a commitment to Chavez that he would do everything he could. So I kind of was just in, like, super badass mode, you know, that taste of that invincibility that I felt when traveling across the country on a freight train was now just kind of my identity. Just like I have survived this horror, and now I needed to feel my power. That was my safe place as not feeling that anyone or anything could take it from me again. In the early months and years after I got out of prison, I had, like, full blown ptsd attacks, panic attacks. Being on a plane. I was trying to deboard a plane and the lights went out and I was absolutely sure we were all going to die. Feeling like I'm going to die a lot was common. Or that someone I loved was going to be killed or hurt. Walking across the street with my mom and a car, like, almost hit her. And if I had had a gun, I would have killed that. The driver. I mean, just the degree of rage that would come out of me. I mean, I slammed my fists on his car. Or like someone coming up behind me while trying to bring my bike up the stairway. Getting off a bart and like a man coming up and kind of like grabbing my bike to try to help me. And me just being like, get the fuck away from me. It's just a total flood of aggression of like, I will you up. I will not let anything hurt me. I can feel it right away, this wall in me of like, they didn't take anything. And there's like, no fucking way. No one will take anything from me. This raw feeling that my life could be taken from me at any time, that was how I experienced ptsd. So much of how I've organized in life is like the capital T. They won't take anything from me that would mean that they won. Of course, I realize there's limitations to that framework because it doesn't allow you to feel the grief of what they do take from you. And what they've taken from me that I'll never get. Back in prison, I have this memory of my head being on Shane's lap and him just, like, running his fingers through my hair. And that person, that young woman doesn't exist anymore. I was really, like, at a point before prison where I was in love, deeply in love with a healthy person for the first time. And I could let my guard down with him and be this soft, flowy, open, vulnerable, safe, sad, sometimes sad person. And I grieve. I mourn the loss of that Sarah that I would have been. And I get her back all the time in many ways, and that's why I heal. But I also have to be able to sit with the fact that they do take things that you can't get back. And a big thing for me is I know I would have been a mother. And I always emphasize all the ways that I'm still a mother, that they can't take that. And I mother, you know, myself. I mother my own mother. I mother all the kiddos in my life. But it's hard for me to sit with the grief. And it's important for me to sit with the grief of the fact that a big part of what I was meant to be here as a mother, that I went on a very different path after prison that didn't allow for the conditions for me to have a child. And they did take that from me. Sometimes I can see what I've lost through other people's eyes. My partner talks about, like, when my eyes get soft. There's, like, a hardness in my eyes or an intensity in my gaze. I can actually feel that difference in my eyes when my eyes soften into my head and I'm actually receiving the world instead of, like, penetrating the world. And I can feel it in my whole body, this feeling of, like, I'm not safe. It's not safe in the world, and I need to be aggressive versus I can be receptive and receive the beauty of the world. We're here to live, to embrace life fully, not protect ourselves from it, and not to create and reproduce this idea of separation and domination. And so, I mean, that is something like some deep, fundamental loss that happens in our bodies because of the systems that are trying to destroy us. And you get glimpses of it back. And my eyes soften more as I open myself up to vulnerability and love. But I'm never gonna know what it's like to not have to fight for that. It's so damn hard to ever get back to the lightness that I lost. I mean, lightness shouldn't be work, right? Like, joy shouldn't be work. All the things that I love about my life and myself are a lot of work. My stubbornness and determination has saved me from ever giving up on any part of myself. It's enabled me to do wonderful things that require that you're a fighter. But that urgency has blocked me from feeling the grief. You know, when you're in fight mode, I bypass my own grief, you know, my own fear. And so now my practice is when I think about a devastating reality in the world, then I just sit on my hands and I feel the feeling, and I try to connect it to myself. Like, what am I feeling? What have I not allowed myself to feel? And that's how I address that raw terror at the knowledge, the terrible knowledge that I hold as a survivor of the forces that are trying to destroy us. In the early years after prison, my sleep was very disturbed by prison. I've never fully gotten back the way I used to sleep. I would wake up sometimes, and in that stillness of the night, I Had to sit with that hole inside of me. The feeling of this can never be filled. This is a. A wound that others can't see. Don't know. And I don't know how to fill this. I don't know if I can ever fill this. I have to figure out how to manage this in the world and not let it consume me. But deep down feel that I was abandoned, that I was hurt for no reason, you know, that I didn't do anything to deserve it. And that if that's possible, then what does that mean for all of it and all of us? If they could do it to me, they can do it to all of us. And they're doing it to all of us. Losing everything you love, having all of your rights stripped from you agency, having everything taken and not knowing if you'll ever get it back. Not knowing if who you'll be on the other side of that loss. This is real suffering and is an opening to understand the world. I can't get around the reality of the fact that it served both governments. It made them stronger. They had all the power and it reinforced their power to have me. It only strengthened the narrative of Iran is bad to people in the US and the US is bad to people in Iran. But there are enough people that don't buy into that narrative. People didn't believe their bullshit. People fought for me. I was high profile. I had a kind of power and privilege because of the nature of my incarceration that I wouldn't be forgotten about. And that's why I'm here, period. Otherwise I never would have gotten out, of course, I would never would have gone in either. So it's all, you know, but basically my incarceration, there's nothing liberatory about my incarceration. That's very important to understand. There's nothing liberatory about it. What's liberatory is that I was liberated and I didn't do that alone. And none of us do and ever will. But the only thing that becomes liberatory is when someone is freed and we are able to collectively reject the systems that are oppressing us, that are the boulders in our paths towards liberation. The path to liberation means getting to the root of where humanity has gone astray. We've literally created the conditions that are killing us. And we need to stop participating in those conditions and create other conditions. And in order to create the conditions externally, we have to create them internally at the same time.
- [53:14]
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- [54:39]
Sarah Shourd
The story that I grew up with as a woman, that I wasn't safe in the world, that I'm not safe in the world, that I at any time can be victimized and that my power is in confronting and almost like hurting myself more. So prison hardened that story and I was aware this is how I need to survive in this context. But I do not want my heart to harden. That's why you put up walls in prison, because you can't let that hatred in deep enough that you become it. Yes, they still do. Did take things that I'll never get back. And also things have been unleashed in me that may never have been unleashed in me. And this is kind of the contradiction of being human and dancing with the reality of pain and suffering and devastation and loss. It's all wrapped up in this kind of paradox. When Shane and Josh were finally released, that was the happiest day of my life. I would still say there was a sense of like, oh my God, we did it. It's real. And now life begins. For them to be released and to just have that moment. We went up on the roof together of the embassy in Oman and we finally had a moment, just the three of us, where their families went to bed and we sang the songs we used to sing together. We drank wine, we held each other. The sun rose. And I just needed that moment. I didn't know if it would ever come. And it came in a sense, at that point. I wanted it all. Shane and I were going to get married, and I wanted a perfect marriage, and I wanted it to last forever. And I had a lot of things that I wanted, and I had a lot of ideas about how life should go. But looking back, all I really needed was that moment. We only get so many moments like that in life where we know that in that moment, everything is okay and everything is what it should be. Sheen and I were married after he got out of prison. We were in similar modes. We were both, like, wanting to get shit done and having ambition around that. So we both worked on the issue of mass incarceration in this country. Shane as an investigative journalist and myself first as a journalist, then a playwright. Fighting against solitary confinement and mass incarceration, exposing the horrors, was what drove me for many years. People cared about what had happened to me. And so every time I was asked to talk about my own experience, I would pivot it to what's happening in this country. I went into prison knowing that our prison system was broken, that mass incarceration was an abomination, that there's really no comparing what is happening in this country to any country in the world or in history. I mean, we have 5% of the population in the world, but 25% of the prison population. You know, I often don't use the word abolition because I think that it sparks fear in people, and that's understandable. We live in a violent country. Country. So people are like, what do you mean? If you let everybody out of prison, there's just going to be more violence? Right. And that is totally understandable. We haven't built the structures to replace mass incarceration. So I'm not saying let everybody out of prison, but also, you can't make the argument that mass incarceration is keeping us safe. You can't make the argument that it's producing harm. It's increasing harm, increasing trauma, increasing violence. And people have to understand that it was designed to do that, not deliberately. Like somebody decided one morning, let me come up with this design. But it helped to maintain a system of racial control and economic control that capitalism thrives on. So abolition, it is a call for clarity around what are we doing in the world that is increasing our safety, strengthening our ability to resist systems of power that are trying to destroy us. Versus systems that are keeping us weak and divided. And at the end of the day, are they protecting us? I don't think so. The way that I frame my work is around reimagining justice. Abolition is involved inviting us into the possibility of reimagining justice, reimagining safety, reimagining how we treat each other, and whether or not we're able to treat each other in a way that, you know, truly creates a world that is in alignment with each of our prayers as individuals. But being in warrior mode eventually caught up to me. It's a shape that is a gross diminishing of any one person's full being, and it doesn't allow for the softening that healing requires. You can't stay hard and heal. I mean, literally your body, if it's constricted and defended, the energy can't flow out. The stuck patterns will stay stuck. You can't experience other modes of being because you are only limited to this constricted, tight, hardened version of yourself. The inner work is just as important as the outer work, and you can't do the outer work without the inner work. So it took my marriage falling apart and kind of blowing up in my face for me to realize I had to do the inner work first. I had to experience grief. So losing what I thought was going to be forever love. I'd never allowed myself to grieve. I'd never seen grief growing up. My mom would be sad a lot, and that was always really scary to me. Like, with depression, sadness. It means mom's not okay. I'm not okay. So I'd really spent a life trying to avoid sadness as much as I could. And losing shame, losing my marriage. It just brought it all out. The grief of prison, the grief of the part of me that had died there, you know, part of me that I would never get back. Grieving opened up for me the possibility of softening. I also connected my pain to something bigger than myself in fighting to ban solitary confinement and deepening that work, which is what I've been doing for the last 14 years as a storyteller. I wrote a play based on my journalist investigation into solitary confinement, based on the California prisoner hunger strike, which is the largest hunger strike in history. And the demand was the end of solitary confinement. I traveled the country with my play. I'm still doing abolitionist storytelling. I'm working on a film right now, the End of Isolation, which is about our epic tour across the country in 2022 where we performed our play. That tour was actually sort of the completion for me, of the warrior mode, because that was a heroic journey. And somatically and spiritually, it just kind of completed that for me of like, okay, now I can just rest and drop into all the wisdom that's already there. I do think that these deeply disruptive experiences, these experiences that shake us, there's no going back, and everything is redefined on the other side. I mean, I redefined. What does it mean to be strong? What does it mean to be vulnerable? What does it mean to be open or to be protected? What is love? What am I looking for in love? All of these things have profoundly different meaning as we evolve as people, if we let them. And it was one of the reasons why my marriage could never work, because I was trying to cling to, you know, a smaller definition of love or a smaller definition, definition of myself in relationship to love. So it's been nine years since my divorce, and I'm polyamorous now. And that's a more honest, to me, representation of love because it's actually how I am in the world. And I hope that I can be a better community member, you know, a better friend, a better love, a better freedom fighter, a better auntie, and better to myself with that orientation than some of the orientations that I held in the past. I feel like I was put in a position to care for my mom emotionally in ways that I was not able to do. I didn't have, you know, the level of maturity or life experience. It was developmentally not healthy to carry that kind of a burden. As a child, I was grieving not having a father As a child, all those years, I was grieving, seeing what my mother had to put herself through to give me the life that she gave me. Once you process and you let go and you forgive. And, yes, that child Sarah didn't get all the things that she needed, but emotionally, my mom and I are finding our truth together again, I'm saying again, but maybe it's for the first time. There's a very unique and specific dynamic between an abused woman and her daughter, you know, and her child. And what my mom and I have been able to do over the last year in therapy is we're the first women in our line that we know of to do the work of breaking these patterns of challenging and getting to the heart of the legacy of how the trauma we've experienced affects our relationship. She was a deeply wounded, hurt, young mother surviving alone in the world. And so it was us against the world. A lot of the dynamic between My mom and I revolves around that survival structure and those early adaptations that enabled us to get through those years. And what we developed in those years is this really complex system of trying to protect each other from our own feelings, which were often too intense and overwhelming to handle. So pretend everything was okay is one, or be really powerful and bold and just fuck the world together. And what ended up happening is that we, by protecting each other from our actual, real feelings and there not being space for that, there was a shrinking and diminishing of our. Of the authenticity of our relationship. And because of that, an emotional unsafety like, I couldn't tell my mother when something really hard happened to me. I had to learn to bear that alone. I had to protect her from it. So protecting each other from the world in reality meant putting up so many walls between us that we lost each other and our relationship became inauthentic. And then it would explode in anger sometimes on my part, because I so badly want it to be seen and heard authentically. And then my anger would mean that she would retreat into a vulnerable, more victim stance of like, why are you being mean and angry with me? And so, again, it's just this cycle, this pattern. It's hard work, but we're able to do it because we have the resources and because we have the love for each other to do it. We're able to do it because we have this framework of feminism. If we didn't have feminism as a framework, we would have been destroyed by that situation. Feminism as a framework, and also enough privilege as white women and resources, cultural privilege, a lot of things, right? But think about all the people, all the women that if feminism didn't exist, would not have been able to survive or get out of situations of oppression. But the thing that has been really hitting me hard with this process with my mom is that my mom and I have been on this path of liberation together my entire life. But I don't think that men have that. I don't think there's been a movement that's given men a path to liberation. And I look at my father, and I know that the way he sees it is I've hurt him by rejecting him, which is actually not true. Like, the door is always open, but he is framing himself as the victim, saying that I hurt him, and refusing to take accountability. It is a patriarchal model of, I am his daughter, therefore I am supposed to act like xyz, and I don't fit into that framework. I look at my father and I'm like, he's been stuck in that very small limiting story. There's definitely a very deep divisive us and them impulse that comes out of families that have experienced a lot of trauma. I was taught to see my father as a demon. I met him and I realized he's a human being being quite tender one at that. And I used to see my mom as a hero and I tried to be a hero too. And getting past those really limited paradigms, binaries is what allows us to expand into our full humanity. And that's what we're creating. We're creating a world where more people can be fully human. My prison experience absolutely left me with a deep and unshakable belief in the possibility of liberation. You know, I've experienced it in myself, I've seen it in others. I see it in my family. For liberation to happen in these systems, you have to be so all in. And the commitment to me came from almost losing it all and then getting it back. Knowing that it's possible is also coupled with the knowledge of knowing how for hard it is like how you have to be all in, all in and how it looks for you. It's not like there's a prescription, but there is an all in ness that is necessary for anyone's liberation to happen. And I deeply believe that. When I say anyone, I mean anyone. Something that takes you out of the status quo of your life and what you've been taught your life should be and calls you into a bigger story. To get beyond your own limited experience and understand another's is the impulse of every storyteller. It's the impulse of love. It's inherently what life is, is to bridge outside of your own limited experience to understand who you are and clear yourself enough from the baggage that you can get outside of it. And I have like victories every day. Oh my God. I've softened to myself and to people. I definitely believe that I am a more humanized person because of what, what I've been through, you know, that suffering, if we allow it to humanizes us in a way that these systems never create the conditions for unless you create them yourself. Opening up your spirit to like, oh man, oh my God, we're here, you know, and we're together and so much is possible.
- [70:49]
Wit Misseldine
Today's episode featured Sarah Short. Sarah is an award winning narrative change leader and somatic coach trained in trauma transformation. She is an author, playwright, investigative journalist, producer and former Stanford John S. Knight fellow. She is currently co directing a documentary called the End of Isolation. For nearly a decade and a half since being held as a political hostage by the Iranian government. Her work has focused on exploration, exposing the impact of mass incarceration, elevating communities and resistance, and using storytelling to reimagine justice outside prisons and jails. If you'd like to contact Sarah, please consult the Show Notes to find her email, social media and websites about her work, her documentary film and her substack from Wondery. You are listening to this Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or on the Wondery app to listen ad free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the Episode Notes you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host Wit Misseldine. Today's episode was co produced by me, Andrew Waitz and Aviva Lipkowicz with special thanks to the this Is Actually Happening team including Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illibi by Tipper. You can join the community on the this Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook or follow us on Instagram Actually Happening on the show's website thisisactuallyhappening.com you can find out more about the podcast. Contact us with any questions, submit your own story or visit the store where you can find this Is Actually Happening designs on stickers, T shirts, wall art, hoodies and more. That's thisisactually happening.com and finally, if you'd like to become an ongoing supporter of what we do, go to patreon.com happening even 2 to $5 a month goes a long way to support our vision. Thank you for listening. If you like this Is Actually Happening. You can listen to every episode ad free right now by joining Wondry plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts Prime. Members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey@wondery.com survey.
- [73:18]
Sarah Shourd
Price tracking by Expedia. You were made to use your do not disturb mode.
- [73:26]
Wit Misseldine
We were made to track flight prices.
- [73:28]
Sarah Shourd
To out of office Expedia made to travel available as a member benefit.