Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Snapjudgment.org. Yes, we kept it super affordable on purpose. Hit it. Tell us what you think. We want to hear from you. Snapjudgment.org. Welcome back to episode two of the Fire Escape series, the story of one woman whose world burned down before she learned to fight fire from behind bars. If you haven't yet listened to episode one, you want to go back and start there.
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Amika Moda had been in California State Prison for less than three months when she was forced into solitary confinement. A guard marched her across the prison yard and down the concrete corridor towards the secured housing unit. She knew that the people in the cells on either side had been there for months or even years. And they screamed a lot.
You know, isolated housing like that makes folks mentally ill. Like what it takes to survive in that environment is to kind of disconnect yourself as this identity of a mother. It's super high, you know, maximum security. You're in your cell 23 hours a day. There's a like, you know, fold down door on your metal door where your meal is slid through three times a day.
What did you do all day?
Like stupid things like make, you know, flowers out of your tampons or like make things out of the little box, lunch boxes we would get. We had mice in the shoes. Some people would make pets of mice. And it's just total isolation.
She would not speak to or have physical contact with another human for 45 days. From Wondry and Snap Studios at KQED, I'm Anna Sussman, and this is Fire Escape. The story of a woman whose world burned down, and then she learned to fight fire from behind bars. This is Episode 2, Escape. Up until this moment, Amika's life had been both very ordinary and terribly extraordinary.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did Amika face during her solitary confinement?
She started as an apprentice and became a full-fledged midwife when she was in her early 20s, driving out to women's houses day and night to catch babies. She was on call 24 hours a day for six years. She had two more kids while she was a midwife, Soleil and Blossom. She worked with her own babies on her lap. It was an intense lifestyle, and it suited her needs.
You know, midwifery gave me a purpose, and it was one of the reasons that I stepped all the way back from using drugs, kind of the life that I'd been living before, was because I was committed to focusing on this, like, new love of mine, midwifery, and... There was something about that feeling as a midwife and this focused intensity that it required. Kind of this out-of-body experience.
Sounds parallel to... To being on drugs.
Yeah, absolutely. Actually, there's nothing for anybody that's ever injected cocaine. Your ears ring, things get silent, and there's this bubble. And that is as close to the feeling as I can describe. I actually would say that I used to get that same feeling as when I injected drugs. I could taste my breath. Something changed.
And it was just a massive adrenaline rush that did something that was like a kind of calming, strange effect.
Midwifing was amazing and fulfilling in so many ways for so many years. And then Amika made this huge, life-changing decision. I walked away from what I loved. Why did you walk away from what you loved?
I was working as a midwife for six or seven years, and I had been on call for 24-7. I was exhausted.
It was too demanding for a mother with three kids, so she left it. And when she quit her job and moved with her husband and three kids to this remote mountain area in California, that's when things started to unravel. The story continues right after this break. Welcome back to Snap Judgment. My name is Anna Sussman. Today, we're listening to our series Fire Escape, Already in Progress.
I stepped away and I moved to a different state and was like super, super isolated. I didn't have that work that gave me this type of purpose.
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Chapter 3: How did Amika's relationship with her mother influence her life?
Someone that has, like, committed this horrific, reckless crime?
Did you at that moment not know who you were anymore? Or was it just that other people didn't know who you were anymore?
No, I didn't know who I was either. I mean, I think it was at that point, I knew I could never go back to some pieces of my life.
Amika didn't really reach out to anyone much during this time. But there was another woman in her cell named Casper. She was pale. And Casper and Amika would sometimes watch TV together or eat together. And Casper was really young. Amika didn't quite realize the significance of that until one night, in their cell...
Casper had just had a pretty rough day. I think things were hitting her really hard and she just climbed up the bunk and laid her head on me and cried.
In the top bunk in the dim cell, Amika hugged her and wiped her tears.
She needed me to rub her head. She needed me to just love her up like a mama would. Just hold her, just listen to her. And that was just a moment that really, it was strange for me. And it was kind of uncomfortable because I always kept this guard up. And I didn't connect with many people like that.
Amika started waking up at the 5 a.m. count when the flashlight hit her pillow, and one morning she dug her journal out of her locker.
I had a dream, and it was like, it was just, I woke up with this clear, like the words ringing in my ear, that it was, I was doing a different type of midwifing there. And so I remember that moment of like, oh. I'm not here for my kids, but I had a purpose on the yard and I was there as a mother and I was there as a sister and I was there. It just, my purpose was clear.
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