August 30, 2007 - There is No Rule Book: Finding Forgiveness After the Murder of My Husband: Katy Hutchison

HEALING THE GRIEVING HEART
There Is No Rule Book: Finding Forgiveness
After the Murder of My Husband
Hosts:  Dr. Gloria Horsley and Dr. Heidi Horsley
With guest:  Katy Hutchison
August 30, 2007
G:   Hello.  I’m Dr. Gloria Horsley with my co-host
H:   Dr. Heidi Horsley.
G:   Each week Heidi and I welcome you to Healing the Grieving Heart, a show of hope and conversation with those who’ve suffered the loss of a loved one and for health care professionals who work in this most difficult field.  As always the message is others have been there before you and made it, and you can, too.  You need not walk alone.  If you’re listening to our Thursday live Internet show, please join Heidi and me on the show by calling our toll-free number, 1-866-472-5792 with questions or comments regarding the losses in your life.  These shows are archived on our blog, www.thegriefblog.com as well as www.thecompassionatefriends.org websites.  All shows can be downloaded on Itunes and the transcripts are accessible on www.thegriefblog.com.  Good morning, Heidi.
H:   Good morning, mom.
G: I’ve been looking at our blog.  It’s getting quite amazing, isn’t it?
H: Yes, I’m so glad that people are connecting up with each other.
G: Yeah, we’re really getting some wonderful responses to the comments that people have made and the stories about their losses, and we’re always so sorry to hear about your losses and the reason you’ve come to our blog and our radio show, but we’re very happy that you’re here to join us.  Heidi, I want to talk a little bit about some of the comments on the blog because, you know, it just impresses me the way people come from such different areas.  Some people are arguing with God.  Some people are involved with family issues.  Some people are unhappy with friends or neighbors, and just the fact that they’re able to say that is so great, but it reminds me so much that all of our losses are unique to us and the way we respond to them are unique, wouldn’t you say?
H: Absolutely.  There’s a uniqueness in the way everybody grieves and then there’s a similarity, so it’s nice to know that you’re not alone and if you are, like you said, struggling with anger or forgiveness or these kind of things, there are other people out there that are in the same place as you are and you’re not alone, and everybody’s grief journey, like you said, is unique.  We all take our own separate journey.
G: And you were saying that you’ve been working with some of the 9/11 parents and siblings.  You’ve been working with the siblings for a long time but now you’re doing something with the parents, right?
H: We’re trying.  We’ve been working with the widows and the children for five years, and I’ve been doing sibling workshops for almost three years. 
G: And this is through Columbia University, right?
H: Right.  We’re looking at traumatic loss over time with people that have lost firefighters in the World Trade Center and now we really want to look at the parents’ experience and find out what is going on with the parents who have lost sons in the World Trade Center and where are they in their grief journey and how are they doing.  So for the last couple of weeks, I’ve kind of been immersed in that as well as how are the siblings doing, and it’s been really rewarding for me and they’re amazing people and they have been through such a trauma, and I know that our guest today will be able to talk about trauma and traumatic loss, and there are differences because, you know, I think when you’ve had a traumatic loss, you have to be careful about not comparing where you are to where someone else is because I do think it takes a long time to heal when you’ve had someone that you love die – die in general, but also die in a traumatic way.
G: Yeah and also with some of these families like our guest today, Katy Hutchison, who has had a family member who has been murdered, there’s a whole different set of issues there.  You know, I wanted to tell our audience, if you’d look at the topic today and are interested, I just looked over our past shows from ’05 and we’ve got an incredible array of shows.  We’ve got one July 14.  If you go to www.thegriefblog.com and look up our archives on July 14, you can hear Richard Dew talk about his son being murdered, David Daniels July 21, 2005.  His son was pushed under – he doesn’t know how he died but he died hit by a subway in New York City.  And Ceil Buonocore, Heidi.  Her son was killed by terrorists.  Her show is August 18, 2005, and in November 2005, you can listen to Ben Sieff whose brother was murdered.  And March 26, 2006, is a very good show.  You know, Lew Cox is a victim’s advocate and he’s on that show.  His daughter was murdered and he’s become a victim’s advocate so he’s great, a great one to listen to that March 26, 2006, show, and then of course, the Kiefers, Heidi.
H: The Kiefer parents whose son, Michael, died in 9/11.  And then we had on the sisters, whose brother died in 9/11, and didn’t die.  I should say was murdered, and I think the show with the parents was very good because I kept saying that Michael had died, and Pat pointed out to me, “Heidi, I wish you would not say that, because he was murdered.”  And I said, “thank you for telling me about that,” and then she went on to say why that was important for her that I say he was murdered.
G: And then, Heidi, the Scotts – you know, Darrell and Craig Scott.  Do you want to talk a little bit about them?  Darryl’s show is July 13, 2006, if you want to listen to that.
H: Well, I think Katy has some similarities with them and she can speak more to it, but the Scotts’ daughter and sister, Rachel, died in the Columbine tragedy, and they have since gone on to forgive the shooters and have gone on to go out into the world and speak with school groups, etc., about forgiveness and compassion.
G: Exactly.  Well, I think that’s a great lead in for our guest today, Heidi.  Do you want to introduce Katy?
H: Sure, I’d love to.  Our topic today is “There Is No Rule Book: Finding Forgiveness After the Murder of My Husband,” and our guest today is Katy Hutchison. Katy Hutchison, author of Walking After Midnight will speak to us on this show about the tragic murder of her husband, Bob McIntosh, restorative justice, social responsibility, and forgiveness.  Katy has spoken at hundreds of schools and has appeared on national television and radio across the country. She was nominated for the “Courage to Come Back Award” and the “Woman of Distinction Award.”  She is the recipient of the “From Me to We Social Action Award” for 2006. Katy lives in Victoria, British Columbia.  Welcome to the show, Katy.
K: Thank you so much, Heidi.
G: Hi, Katy.  It’s great to have you on.
K: Hi, Gloria.
G: Could you tell our audience a little bit about what happened to you, and what year was it?
K: It was 1997, New Year’s Eve, so we’re coming up on ten years.  I was living in a small community in British Columbia with my husband, Bob, and our two children, twins, who in 1997 were four years old, and we were celebrating a quiet New Year’s Eve with friends when we were made aware that a house party was going on down the road at the home of a vacationing neighbor.  And my husband, Bob, called the house to make sure that the teenager had the situation under control and when he was unable to reach the teenager, he decided that he would just go down to the end of the road to check and make sure everything was all right.  He walked in on 200 young people in the middle of a very out-of-control situation.  We found out later that party had been going on since the late afternoon but by the time Bob got there at 10:00 o’clock at night, there was a lot of fights starting, a lot of property being damaged, a lot of kids that were drunk and stoned.  And when Bob went upstairs to check on the master bedroom to be sure there was no one partying on our friend’s personal space, he encountered a group of young people who were clearly not pleased to see him, and one young man punched Bob in the side of the head and knocked him out cold.  And then another young man – a 20-year-old by the name of Ryan Aldrich – came up to Bob’s unconscious body and delivered four soccer-type kicks at Bob’s head, and Bob died of a massive brain hemorrhage. 
G: Wow, he died immediately there.
K: We’re not sure exactly how long it took, but.
G: But he wasn’t alive when he went to the hospital.
K: No.
G: Wow, what a tremendous shock, and also from reading on your fabulous website – we’ll talk about that later – you talk about the fact that it took a long time for – the people at the party wouldn’t talk about it, right?
K: No one would say anything.  It began what we called a code of silence that just fell over this small town.  The population of the community was about 14,000 at the time, and, you know, we truly believe that there were eyewitnesses and that people saw what happened, but nobody would say anything, and the police arrived.  They could get no information.  And ultimately, it took five years to make an arrest. 
H: That is amazing.  So just the kids were trying to be loyal to each other, is that what you think was going on?
K: Yes.  I think this was a huge part of the group dynamic that we see, sort of mob mentality where kids get pulled into situations when you’ve got that layer of alcohol and drugs and you get very cloudy and move very quickly and there was an enormous amount of fear associated with what had gone on, probably fear of retaliation, and it became very important for whoever saw what happened to not say anything.
G: You know, it’s time for us to go to break now, but when we come back, I want to talk a little bit more with you about that five years and how it was for you and how it finally became that you found out about that Ryan was the person and actually did confess it eventually.  It’s a very fascinating story.  Today our topic is “There Is No Rule Book: Finding Forgiveness After the Murder of My Husband,” and our guest is Katy Hutchison.  If you’d like to call in, our toll free number is 1-866-472-5792.  You can access our show through www.thegriefblog.com.  Please stay tuned for more. 
Well, Katy, when we went to break, for those folks who’ve just tuned in, your husband ten years ago, your husband at that time had gone to a party at the neighbor’s party that was out of control, the neighbors were out of town, and trying to kind of protect the house, see what was going on, and he was assaulted by some kids at the party and one of the young men kicked him in the head and he died.  Quite an incredibly shocking thing, I’m sure.  How did you hear about it?
K: The police were on my doorstep.  It was surreal.  It was just before midnight New Year’s Eve and I had to leave my children in the care of our dinner guests.
G: So you had four-year-old twins.
K: I had four-year-old twins asleep in bed and I left them with our friends and got in the police car, arrived at the hospital to watch a friend of ours who was the doctor on call desperately trying to resuscitate Bob.  Of course, at that point they didn’t realize that it was a head injury that had caused his death.  They were working on his heart and nothing they were going to do was going to start it so I had an enormous revelation as I was standing there looking at the health care professionals and police who were all doing everything they could in a situation that they clearly had been trained to do as professionals, and I realized that at some point each one of those people was going to get to leave.  Their shift was going to end.  But I wasn’t at work.  This was happening to me and I had two children to go home and not only tell but give breakfast to and they just lost their dad and they weren’t going to lose me to this, and I decided right then and there that I had to find a way to look forward in a positive way.
H: That’s amazing that you were able to have that revelation so close to your husband’s death.
K: I had it looking at him.  It was the oddest sense of – I mean, I can’t really find a word better than empowerment mixed in with the devastation and the fear and the gut-wrenching physical response to his death.  All those things were going on but in the middle of it in my core was this sense of having to move through and protect my children and look after them and not to be defined by whatever horrible thing had taken my husband away.  It was not about the way he lived clearly, and I wanted to celebrate always – from that moment forward, I wanted to celebrate the way he lived his life, not whatever horrible path had taken him away from us.
G: So you set that sense of resolve very early.
K: Immediately.
G: Now, you didn’t know at the time that it was actually murder, did you?
K: No.  They were suspecting foul play.  They wouldn’t allow me to touch his body and there were a few things I could tell from looking at him that weren’t right.  He had a bruise on the back of his hand that clearly was a self-defense wound and a bruise developing in his temple which of course was from the first punch.  It wasn’t until they did the autopsy that they determined exactly – that the cause of death had been a kick in the back of the head but it was clear that something was not right and this wasn’t a simple heart attack.
G: Now how did you feel when you heard that? 
K: I was fearful.  I was fearful.  I was disgusted but really most fearful of the world that I had brought my children into, the small community I was living in that we chose because it was safe because it was out of the big city.  It was just challenging everything in my belief system.
G: Now what happened?  How did you deal with the fact that they couldn’t find any information?  You must have been totally frustrated.
K: Well, I believed that they would and the difficulty I felt was that the rest of my world – my community, my family, people close to me, certainly Bob’s friends and family were angry and vengeful, and I didn’t feel that way.  I never felt that way.  And I think a lot of people misunderstood that to be somehow feeling less about my husband and it wasn’t that at all for me.  It was just all I could look at was the big picture here.  You know, what is going on in our communities to enable young people to get themselves in such a situation that they could commit such a horrible act.  There was no point for me in going back and trying to change what happened to Bob.  I couldn’t do that, but I really believed that I could put my energy into raising safe caring children and perhaps breaking the horrible cycle of anger for whoever it was that killed Bob.
G: You know, this is very interesting to me because I see some of the same patterns with myself and with our guests but I see it coming much later with the death of a child.  I remember setting a resolve that I wasn’t going to get sick but it was weeks and weeks later, and, Heidi, I know you’ve interviewed with parents and siblings.  Do you see that coming later?
H: I think Katy’s an unusual person but her story reminds me a little bit of Craig and Darrell Scott with the Columbine tragedy
G: Right.
H: because in those murders, because they felt the same way.  They really wanted to know what was going on that you two shooters felt so angry and felt so alienated that they would go in and commit these heinous acts.
G: But I think it was a bit later.  Maybe like a year later.
H: You know what, it may have been.  It may have been.  I mean, to have this epiphany so quickly it is amazing and wonderful that Katy was able to do that.
G: And I’m kind of wondering a little bit, Katy, how are your in-laws with it?  How are they with it now?
K: This is interesting.  Both my in-laws were deceased when Bob was killed, and I honestly think that that would have made a difference.  It would have been harder for me to have been so focused on the broader picture.
G: Um hm.  If Bob’s parents had been alive.
K: If Bob’s parents had been alive.  His sister, his cousin were very gracious in allowing me to do what I felt I needed to do, but it was complex.  The story was very public.  It was front-page news and television.  Bob’s funeral – a thousand people were there.  It was televised.  It was a very very public story and I spoke publicly
G: Now he was an attorney, right?
K: He was a lawyer.  He was also a world class triathlete.  He competed all over the world.  He was captain of the Canadian team a month before he was killed.  He was a very community-focused bigger-than-life character that a lot of people were connected to.  So when he was killed, there was huge anger and an outpouring of commentary about the scenario, and I had to be very very careful what I said, but I also – and I think this is really important.  When you’re grieving, whether it – it doesn’t matter how you’ve lost a loved one that you have to listen to your heart.  There is no set of rules.  Nobody came to my door the next morning and handed me a magic book to follow and I had to listen to my heart.  That was the only way that I could be authentic and I couldn’t properly grieve Bob and  
G: I love the word authentic.  That’s great.  Authentic grief and being authentic.
K: You have to, and, you know, I did push boundaries and challenge people’s belief system around grieving, particularly by falling in love with somebody while I was grieving Bob.  I think sometimes people think you’re going to wake up one morning and it’s going to be over.  You’re going to be finished with it.  Some people use a word that I can’t stand which is closure. 
G: Right.
K: There is no closure, you know.  I’ll always grieve Bob but I learned that no one but myself could continue living and bring my children forward and keep us healthy and create a life that was worth living.
H: Well, and I like what you say, Katy, that just because you were able to forgive and not hold on to the anger doesn’t mean that you didn’t love Bob, that you loved Bob any less.
K: Correct, or that the way he lost his life was any less horrific.  It was all those things but Bob was, you know, he lived life a hundred and ten percent and my children have lost their father.  I didn’t want them to lose me.  You know, the doctors were handing me tranquilizers.  My girlfriends were saying we’ll take your kids.  People were dropping off freezers full of food which was wonderful but I wanted my life back.  The way Bob died was not an extension of the way he lived and I wanted us to live a life that properly celebrated the way we had.
H: And like you said, your children had already lost one parent.
K: Exactly.
G: Now how do you balance with the kids now that you were talking about they’re going into high school and they were four when Bob was killed.  What do you do with his memory?  How do you balance all that?
K: We talk about how he lived on in them.  My son, Sam, is a walking talking constant reminder of Bob.  A physical risk taker the way Bob was, an amazing athlete, devastatingly handsome.  He’s going to cause me great heartache, I’m sure.  But a wonderful sense of humor and also embraces the idea of moving forward but keeping in his heart always the father that he never had a chance to get to know.  My daughter, Emma, more like me is a real emotional risk taker, and she painted and wrote, even at that young age, her way through this and continues as new issues come up around the way in which Bob died, the relationship we have with the young man that killed Bob.  She uses art and creative writing to deal with it just as the way Sam uses kicking a soccer ball around.
G: Well, one of the things we definitely want to talk about is Ryan, the young man who did kick your husband and caused his death, and I’d like to get to that after we come back for the show, and also I’d like to talk a little bit about being this national kind of hero in Canada.  How did all these kids at the party feel?  There must have been tremendous anger at them by the community, too, and how did their parents deal with it?  Some very interesting issues.  Well, we’re coming up on our break and I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and we’re talking to Katy Hutchison about “There Are No Rules: Finding Forgiveness After the Murder of a Husband.”  You can call into the show by calling 1-866-472-5792 or to talk about the questions or comments about your life and you can also email us on www.thegriefblog.com and put in comments and thoughts.  Poetry.  We have all sorts of things that you can do and articles that you can read on our blog.  Stay tuned for more.
Well, Katy, before we get on, I want to talk to you a little bit about the man that killed your husband, but first, I want to talk a little bit about your book.  Could you tell us about how you happened to write the book and when you wrote it and what your inspiration and tell our audience a little something about it.
K: Sure.  I began speaking to young people’s schools in 2003 because I really believed the story spoke a lot to the need for social responsibility around the use of alcohol and drugs and specifics in the area of how to host parties and how things can so quickly go sideways, and through that work, I realized that young people could hear the story and, you know, in an hour, an hour-and-a-half, take it all in, ask great questions, and process a lot of information, but the adults in the room would kind of be pasted against the wall struggling with the whole discussion of the loss and moving forward, their own personal experiences and biases and, you know, all the baggage we carry as we age making it hard for them to take it all in in a short period of time, so I thought the way to get to those people, the way to give them the story in a way that they could process in their own time would be through the writing of a book.  So the book came out exactly a year ago in September and the process was cathartic for me.  I’m sure you’ve heard that from other people who have written their grief stories.  I learned a lot
G: It’s not always easy to write your own story.
K: Oh, it’s not.  It’s not.  I really had never dealt with losing my own father.  He died when I was 25, and in the writing of the book I realized that a lot of the reasons I handled things the way I did was because of my father and, you know, I kind of went there, so those chapters took me longer and required a lot more walks on the beach and fresh air to get through.
G: Now who would you recommend this book to?
K: Well, I would recommend certainly this book to anybody who has lost a loved one.  Certainly people who are dealing with anger.  We get very wrapped up in anger and I think it stops us from moving forward and I chose to break the cycle of anger for someone else in order to free myself up.
H: We were talking on break, Katy, what advice would you give people that are stuck in anger and are unable to forgive right now but yet it’s kind of wreaking havoc on their lives and they do need to somehow work through that.  How would they do that?
K: Well, I think first of all we need to acknowledge that anger is a healthy normal emotion, but where it takes us is something we need to consider and try and control.  There was no future for me in living an angry vengeful life.  It was not going to help me parent.  It was not going to help me live the life I deserved, and by consciously choosing, and I think that that’s the point we need to make is that in any situation in life, whether we’re dealing with a neighbor dispute or a problem in the work place or conflict within our marriages or with our families that we get to pick the person we’re going to be.  We can’t necessarily pick what happens to us, but in every situation, we get to choose who we are going to be, and I made a conscious decision to not allow the anger to control my life, and once I made that choice, I just laid my life out in a way that supported that decision.
G: Now you did that fairly early.
K: I did it right away.
G: You did it right away.  Yeah, for some of our audience, oh, what’s his name – daughter was killed in Oklahoma City, Heidi?
H: Bud Welch.
G: Bud Welch.  Yeah, if you listen to Bud Welch’s show, he got there too but it was after a year.  He almost drank himself to death and really had tried
H: He had to hit rock bottom.
G: Yeah, he had to hit rock bottom in order for him to make that decision, but he did make that decision and says the same thing you do that he could have let the anger destroy him, right, Heidi?
H: And felt like it was starting to destroy his life and his relationships and his health.
G: But he had a different relationship with the person who was responsible for his daughter dying than you do because he met the family of Timothy McVeigh, who did the Oklahoma City bombing.  He met the father and forgave them and understood that they loved Timothy but he never forgave Timothy, you know.
K: I can see that.  I also, you know, I think when we talk about how easy it would be for instance to slip into a situation of drinking yourself into your anger or out of your anger, because my children were at the age they were at, when I told my kids that their father was dead, my son’s reaction was to ask for a bowl of Cheerios.
G: At age 4, of course.
H: It’s so normal.
K: Right, and I knew I had to get those Cheerios and not just that day but every day after, and I think that helped me in my decision to choose the person I was going to be because I had to.
G: Now has your son moved into any kind of anger or your daughter?
K: No, they haven’t.
G: And they have kind of followed the pattern that you’ve set.
K: Yeah, they have.
G: Now you remarried.  You were talking about that love, falling in love off love.
K: And, you know, I certainly was not looking for another partner, believe me.  I was really focused on my children.  They were starting school.  I moved back to the community I had grown up in so I would have the support of family and friends and in the process met another attorney who was handling all my personal legal affairs, and he was concerned that I wasn’t looking after myself, just taking care of me, and at one point just suggested we go have dinner, and, you know, I frankly thought he felt sorry for me and I was kind of pathetic because I was just working through everything that seemed negative, but I really felt he was the one person in my world that wasn’t grieving Bob.  Everyone else was.  And we struck up a friendship that blossomed into a relationship and Michael and I were married eight months after Bob was killed and everybody said it was too soon.  It’s wrong. 
H: So people pass judgment on where you should be and what you should be doing in the grief process, and they felt like eight months.  They do.  People have judgments on.
K: I shouldn’t have moved for one thing.  What did I leave my house for so quickly.
G: Well, we have all these rules
K: I know.
G: And as therapists, there are all these rules that people have made up.  Whose rules are they?
K: Like why was I going to stay in this town where, you know, I’d go and have my gas pumped and wonder if the kid that was pumping my gas killed my husband?  I needed to leave.  I needed to start again.  I had to reinvent as a family and I certainly wasn’t looking for a relationship, but when one came along, you know, my kids.  Little Emma answered the door when we went out for dinner and there she is.  She’s five years old.  She’s looking Michael up and down, and she says to him, are you going to marry my mom?  And he said, well, actually, I just thought I’d take her out for dinner.  And Emma said, well, look, if you decide to like her and you think you might marry her, it would be great if you would do that before the first day of school going to kindergarten.  So we got married on Labor Day, right before school.
G: And that was ten years ago.  Nine years ago.
K: It was – we’re coming up on our ninth wedding anniversary.
H: But it worked out despite what people thought and despite their judgments.
G: Yeah, it’s such a great example of, you now what, it’s our own time.  It’s our own schedule.  It’s our life.  It’s nobody else’s. 
K: And Bob lives on in my heart.  He lives on in my children.  Michael has made room for Bob’s memory in a healthy way in our relationship and forward we go.
G: Now do you have stepchildren, then?
K: Yes.  I have a twenty-seven-year-old stepson and a seventeen-year-old stepdaughter. 
G: Um hm.  And does that – is there any kind of impact with Bob’s death in that?  You do go around and speak on it so it must be a part of your life.
K: Oh, it’s a huge part of my life and my family has been very, very gracious in supporting the work that I do because it can’t be easy.
H: And I know that you’ve gone, I mean this book is really on forgiveness, and you’ve forgiven the guy that killed your husband.  His name is Ryan.
K: Yes.
H: Does he speak with you as well?
K: He does.  The way Ryan and I met was when I was finally told that an arrest was going to be made five years after Bob
G: Now how did it happen?
K: Undercover.  They went undercover.  And when they called to say okay
G: Now what does that mean, they went under cover?
K: Well, they put Ryan in a situation of thinking that he was working for an organized crime group and it turned out to be undercover officers and so at some point in that investigation, he was put in the position of discussing what had happened that night and he thought he was speaking to friends and he was speaking to the police and he confessed so they called to say we’ve got the evidence, we’re going to lay the charge, and I said, great.  I want to be there.  And they just said, are you crazy?  Why would you want to meet the person that killed your husband?
G: And now how many years was this after?
K: Five.
G: Oh, five years, wow.
K: And I said look, I’ve been married to an attorney.  I respect the justice system, but I know that I’m not going to feel any better watching him get taken out of a courtroom in handcuffs.  This is another family that is going to be devastated by that.  I want to sit down with him face to face and look him in the eye.  Tell him how hard this has been, and ask him some hard questions about what was going in his world and then choose to work with him to try and find some kind of way of repairing all this damage.  So the police were.  I mean, they didn’t know what to do with that request.  They made a video of me having the conversation I felt I needed to have with him, and they showed him the video when they arrested him.  Well, as soon as Ryan saw the video, he confessed, and then the police said, okay, well, he wanted to meet me so they brought me in.
G: So he wanted to meet you.
K: He wanted to meet me and I met him sixteen hours after he was arrested.  And then I asked him to plead guilty because I didn’t think it was fair to put either family through a trial, and he did that.  And he was sentenced.  And then as soon as he went to jail, I started to worry about him.
G: What was his sentence?  How long?
K: Well, this is Canada remember.  Five years.
G: Did you feel all right about that?  Some people would be very angry about that.
K: It’s not the amount of time you spend in jail, it’s what you do with the time, and if he was going to spend five years changing patterns of behavior, getting cognitive therapy, dealing with his substance issue, and was going to come out and be a safe neighbor to you and not somebody my children had to fear, then that’s five years well spent.  But simply building more prisons and putting people away for longer is not giving us safer communities.  So once he went to jail, I started to worry about him because I knew the statistics about drug use and crime in jail and I educated myself about that in the system and discovered this whole school of thought, which is a topic for another radio show, which is restorative justice.  Bringing people together, the victims and the offenders—to talk about the harm, and we did a fully facilitated reconciliation a year after he went to jail and it was about time I told him about the work I was doing and I offered him a job.  I said, when you get out of jail, come and work with me.  Come and talk to kids about your story.  It’s powerful.  And so that’s where we’re at now is we work together whenever we can.
G: Now, he’s been released then?
K: Yes.  He’s on parole until December.
H: And what does he say about that night?  Just that he didn’t – I mean, what does he say about kicking your husband?
K: It was a culmination of – I mean, picture a kid at four with a speech impediment being teased by his friends, bullied, not telling his parents he was being bullied, wanting to deal with it himself.  His parents splitting up.  I mean, it’s pretty classic.
G: Yeah, the Craig Scott.  The Scott family.  One of the big things they talk about is that not to harass kids and the kindness.
K: Yes, absolutely.  So Ryan was bullied.  His parents split up.  He felt disconnected from everybody in his life.  You start stuffing that anger down, and there’s that anger word again, right?  He’s suppressed all that anger and then one night at a very young age got drunk, got into a fight, and discovered the power of his fists and the numbing effects of alcohol and that became his lifestyle.  Getting drunk.  Looking for fights.
G: You know, this is really a fascinating story, but I know there are some people out there who are saying this guy killed my daughter.  He’s a bum.  No, he’s not going to talk about it, and as our friend, Lew Cox, who’s a – he’s a mediator and he goes to court with people.  Some of these hardened criminals.  This is a whole different story.  They’re not even going to admit that they did it.  They’re never going to have any remorse. There’s going to be nothing there for you.
K: Totally different story.
G: So we do have to look at what kind of a story we’re talking about.
K: Absolutely.  It’s a completely specific story and restorative justice doesn’t work.  We have somebody that is not acknowledging the karma they caused but Ryan acknowledged it because he wanted out.  He wanted to break the cycle.  He was suicidal.
G: Well, I was thinking that he must have suffered himself for those years when he knew he’d killed somebody and it was never brought up.
K: And didn’t have the inner strength and resorce to step up and tell the truth, and he says that the day he went to jail was the day that his life began because then he could work on all that repressed stuff and he came out the other end a better person.
G: Um hm.  Well, fascinating story.  We’re coming up on break now and I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and we’re talking to Katy Hutchison about finding forgiveness after the murder of her husband.  Please stay tuned to hear more and you can join our show by calling our toll free number, 1-866-472-5792.  You can email Heidi and me about this or upcoming shows through our blog, www.thegriefblog.com.  Please stay tuned for more.
Well, I can’t believe, Katy, it’s our last break and I meant to mention it during the break, if there’s anything that you feel like we’ve missed.  For sure, I want to mention your book, Walking After Midnight.  What’s the full title?
K: It’s Walking After Midnight: One Woman’s Journey through Murder, Justice, and Forgiveness.
G: Great, and I would highly recommend you get that.  And you can get it through amazon and do you have any other places you want us to get it?
K: I think amazon, Barnes & Noble, all the usual outlets.  It’s published by New Harbinger.
G: Great, and you’ve got a wonderful website.  Talk about that.
K: Thank you.  Well, the website was sort of a necessity once I started doing speaking work just as a way to disseminate information and also a place for the young kids who had heard me to contact me.  www.katyhutchisonpresents.com, and I’ve just found all kinds of great resources to share with people as they go through their own journey.
G: And we’d love to put that link on our site.  We’d love to put ours on yours.
K: Absolutely, a pleasure. 
G: And you do give speeches so people can line you up to talk in their – where would you talk? in schools and civic groups and
K: I do a lot of work in schools and youth detention facilities, parent groups to conferences, or service providers, health care professionals, mental health people, the justice system.  I do a lot of work as an advocate for restorative justice.  The story sort of spans a lot of different areas.
G: So, Heidi, did you have anything before, we, you know, this is our last segment.  Do you have anything you wanted to say or ask any questions?
H: I’m just struck with the fact that Katy has been able to help people in forgiveness and have her own forgiveness and move out of the anger and working with the 9/11 families, like Katie said, anger is a legitimate emotion and it’s understandable that we have that emotion; however, I’ve seen the flip side of what happens when we hold on to rage and, I mean, with 9/11, which is what I’m familiar with because I do work in this field, the terrorists are not remorseful and, you know, a lot of the people that died that day were terrorists and they are not remorseful and they’re dead a lot of them and the ones that are alive are not remorseful, and there’s a lot of anger and rage that some – that some, not all – some of the people that I work with have which is now wreaking havoc on their health, so it’s inspirational for me to hear that Katy’s been able to move forward and let go of this anger and rage and you did it, like you said, fairly quickly.
K: I think one of the things that people misunderstand about forgiveness is that somehow it is saying that what happens was not awful or somehow condoning what happened, and I don’t see it that way at all.  I mean, we could never condone Bob’s murder.  We could never condone 9/11.  Of course not.  But what forgiveness is for me is saying I choose not to be defined by this act, you know.  I choose to live a life incorporating my grief, my sadness, my memories in a place that is most of the time manageable, sometimes not manageable.  There are days, as we all know, there are those days, but I will not be defined by this.  And one of the people that I had to forgive before I forgave Ryan, and I think your listeners will find this interesting
G: And Ryan’s the person who killed your husband
K: That’s correct, is myself.  I needed to forgive myself for moving forward with my life.  For choosing to live a full and productive existence.  For remarrying.  For
G: reinvesting
K: Reinvesting.  For celebrating life. 
G: Isn’t it interesting that we have to forgive ourselves for reinvesting?
K: Yeah, but I did.
H: That is such a good point.
K: And once I did that, then I could offer that forgiveness to Ryan to say you are not your crime.  You committed it.  You’re responsible for it.  You need to pay the price but then, the greatest legacy that you could create for me would be to break the cycle of anger.  To raise children in a safe home.  To be safe in your community, and if you do that, then we’ve cleaned up.  I have this belief that we have a moral responsibility when bad things happen to get involved, roll up our sleeves, and clean up the mess, and that sometimes when we’re cleaning up after a mess, we find ourselves standing right alongside the person that caused it, and it’s at that moment you see a huge amount of power possibility and, I think, if all Ryan and I have accomplished is cleaning up this little corner
G: Talk a little bit about cleaning up the mess.  Are you talking about an altruistic helping society?
K: Yeah.
G: Because I could see some really violent person saying yeah, let’s go out and clean it up and, you know.
K: Well, I just think.  I think when we come across a mess, you know, people say to me why should you have anything to do with Ryan?  Why is it your responsibility to even care about him?  Well, I’m saying, who better to care about Ryan than me?
G: But first as you say you have to forgive and care about yourself.
K: Absolutely.
G: Well, it’s almost time for us to close the show.  Do you have any closing comments for widows?  Do you have any thoughts or for people who’ve been involved with murder?
K: I think one of the things I learned in my own journey is I was very judged by the belief system that I held and the actions that I took.  When I look at my life, and I think I did a pretty good job considering, and I learned not to be judgmental of others and the way they handle their own grief journey, and I think
G: It’s starting with you, right?
K: Yeah, it starts with you.  Listen to your heart, and if you have a friend that is on a grief journey, support them.  Be there for them but give them lots of leeway.  Don’t tell them what to do.  Don’t say if I were you.  If this happened to me.  Don’t use those words just bear witness.
G: I love that.  Bear witness and be present as you were today, Katy.  Thank you so much, and I know you’ve helped a lot of people.  It’s time to close our show, and I want to thank our guest, Katy Hutchison.  Please stay tuned again next week when our guest will be Dr. Dianne Kane and our topic will be “The Widows of September 11th, Where are They Now Six Years Later?”  This show is archived on our blog, www.thegriefblog.com, as well as www.thecompassionatefriends.org website.  Please stay tuned again next Thursday at 9:00 Pacific Standard, 12:00 Eastern, for more of Healing the Grieving Heart, a show of hope, renewal, and support.  Remember, others have been there before you and made it.  You can, too.  You need not walk alone.  Thanks for listening.  I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, with my co-host
H:   Dr. Heidi Horsley.  Katy, thank you for helping people find forgiveness.  Bob is gone, but he is never forgotten.  His memory lives on in all the lives he touched.  Thank you.
K: Thank you so much.
G: Thank you Katy.