Healing from heartache

Several women on the Central Coast are getting ready to spend their Mother’s Day without their children. On Friday, they shared their personal stories of loss with men behind bars. But their message wasn’t about anger, it was about forgiveness.

“If they ask, “Is it true that your son, Stephen Joseph Aguilar, was shot? That’s what I heard.” From that moment on, I will share that. What I felt, what the soul took inside, what I felt, that terrible pain, what it did to me and my husband,” Debbie Aguilar, founder of A Time for Grieving and Healing said.

Aguilar’s 18-year-old son was shot and killed 14 years ago in Salinas. His murder is still unsolved.

Ahead of Mother’s Day, Aguilar reached out to inmates at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad. This is the third year she has done this, and believes it has made an impact.

“They said they never heard, never realized until that day hearing me, how much they hurt their victim’s mother,” Aguilar said. “And they wanted to ask me for forgiveness on behalf of their victim’s mother.”

After the panel, the mothers broke off into small groups with the inmates to ask each other questions. Inmate Johnny Howe said the groups help him gain insight into the pain he caused in the past.

“There’s a healing process going on in there right now,” Aguilar said. “There’s tears, there’s gratitude, there’s relief because again, the inmates have mothers too. They have hurt their mothers and the mothers of their victims.”

“The inmates begin to see a different perspective, what it’s like for a mother to lose a son or a daughter and how it impacts the family and community,” Roland Ramon, a public information officer for CTF said.