Shane Pema Tenzin Marcantel (he/they), now Shay Pema Bennett (she/her), wrote this horticulture journal in 2012-2013 as part of a vocational curriculum offered at the Pinckneyville Correctional Center. Around this same time, he began practicing Tibetan Buddhism. Both paths of study have nourished his transformation, offering him some liberation from the dehumanizing norms and narratives of the carceral system. Today, Pema is a formal student in the Nyingma tradition, an ordained chaplain and a meditation teacher. All while still incarcerated.

These pages burst with care and growth. They hold the joy and heartache of Pema’s lived experience. This is a spiritual evolution of bringing down walls –physical walls and walls in the mind.

To outside (free people) and inside (incarecerated people) readers alike, these pages are an invitation to heal and be with what's alive and blooming right now, right here.

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Shay Pema Tenzin Marcantel (she/her), born in 1978, was raised in rural Surgartown, Louisiana, by her momma, a full-blooded Choctaw. In her teen years, she endured violent homophobia and transphobia. She moved to New York with a modeling contract at age seventeen. In 1999, she was raped on a job in Chicago and retaliated in self-defense, which resulted in a twenty-three year sentence. While incarcerated, she became a formal student of Tibetan Buddhism in the Nyingma tradition. Continuing her studies, she went on to earn a BA in Sociology and an MA in Religion. She also began contemplative care training with the Udumbara Zen Center and in 2018 was ordained as a chaplain. She began offering hospice care at the prison, led the Buddhist services and co-founded the Interfaith Council. For several years, Pema also guided a popular meditation class of fifty people. In 2020, with Yakusan Stevens, she co-founded the Inside-Outside Study Group. Pema was released in July 2022 and is currently living in a stable home, working and speaking publicly about trans violence and reentry education.

Yakusan Stevens (she/her) is a formal student and chaplain intern with the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. In 2017, she responded to a letter Pema wrote to the Zen Center and their friendship grew. In 2020, they co-founded the Inside-Outside Study Group, which fosters spiritual and emotional connection through prison walls via study, contemplation and communication. In 2021, they published The Petunias Are Doing Amazing: A Prison Journal and Plant Care Guide, for which she served as editor. She is currently serving as a chaplain at a New York State Correctional Center.