Her Remarkable Journey From Convict To Advocate
Perhaps no one is more surprised by Toby Dorr’s journey as a brain health advocate than Toby Dorr herself.
After all, not too many people have their own Dateline episode and live to talk about it. Toby not only survived but is determined to use her experience as a platform to help others. She may forever be seared into the collective consciousness as the mild-mannered woman from Kansas who broke her younger boyfriend out of prison. But being the subject of a nation-wide manhunt and getting apprehended by the U.S. Marshal’s office after a 100-mile-per-hour car chase is one of the least interesting things about her and her new life.
Every day, Toby is living a core message she teaches – you are not defined by your worst mistake.
Her Remarkable Journey From Convict To Advocate
Perhaps no one is more surprised by Toby Dorr’s journey as a brain health advocate than Toby Dorr herself.
After all, not too many people have their own Dateline episode and live to talk about it. Toby not only survived but is determined to use her experience as a platform to help others. She may forever be seared into the collective consciousness as the mild-mannered woman from Kansas who broke her younger boyfriend out of prison. But being the subject of a nation-wide manhunt and getting apprehended by the U.S. Marshal’s office after a 100-mile-per-hour car chase is one of the least interesting things about her and her new life.
Every day, Toby is living a core message she teaches – you are not defined by your worst mistake.
Serving her prison stint led Toby on a surprising journey of healing, self-discovery and, perhaps most importantly, a calling to help other women like those she served time with.
That sentence shaped how Toby thinks of traumatic brain injury. As far as she’s concerned, brain injury survivors also include people who have endured emotional trauma. And a wide body of research proves she’s not wrong. Emotional trauma changes how the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and amygdala function. This causes many symptoms of both C-PTSD and PTSD, or a condition often referred to as “trauma brain.”
Before finding herself behind bars, Toby built Safe Harbor, the largest prison dog program in the nation. Safe Harbor allowed prisoners to spend time caring for rescued dogs to help hardened criminals learn responsibility and compassion. The well-socialized dogs were then adopted into loving homes. Under Toby’s watch, over 1,000 dogs found loving homes and countless prisoners regained a sense of their own humanity.
Toby, at the time trapped in an unhappy marriage and what she describes as a self-made prison of perfectionism, fell in love with the felon who would lead to her own imprisonment, eventually leading to their escape attempt.
On her first night behind bars, Toby came face-to-face with trauma brain.
Toby’s cellmate, Jennifer, spoke in a frenetic, unending stream of words. Jennifer rambled about how she robbed a delivery driver and didn’t know why, wondered if her dog would still love her when she got out, and alluded to voices in her head telling her to do bad things. In a particularly chilling moment, Jennifer said she harmed people and didn’t know why – but that she didn’t think she’d harm Toby, because she thought she liked Toby. Jennifer showed Toby scars from cutting herself.
The mentally ill, traumatized woman was left to fend for herself. Coming from a poor family with little support, Jennifer had no one to advocate for her to get the necessary court order to get her medications while incarcerated.
“Every day she got more and more out of control,” Toby said.
One day, Toby found Jennifer hitting the wall with bloodied fists, screaming for her medication and that she soon wouldn’t be able to ignore the voices in her head. At that point, Jennifer had been without her psychiatric medication for six weeks.
Prison officials wanted to arrest Jennifer, but Toby intervened. Toby offered to calm Jennifer down and asked the authorities to get Jennifer psychiatric care. To Toby’s surprise, the guards came back with ice packs for the woman’s shredded hands and admitted Jennifer to a state psychiatric facility the next day.
Toby didn’t realize that this was the beginning of her advocacy work for women prisoners, particularly those dealing with traumatic brain injury, whether from physical occurrences or emotional trauma.
“If you do have any kind any kind of brain injury in prison, you’re just doomed, because there is no medical care in prison,” Toby said. “You are never going to care you need or the help you need.”
As the days passed on Toby’s sentence, she found herself forced to confront her guilt, shame, personal trauma, and demons. She filled an entire box of journals while embarking on a journey of deep, healing introspection.
Eventually, those journals became her memoir, Living With Conviction.
But she knew she had more to offer the women she had met in prison through her experience. After all, she’d had advantages not available to many of her fellow prisoners.
“I had two college degrees, and I had been a corporate manager, so I understood personal development, and I understood introspection,” Toby said. “And I realized that most of the women I had been in prison with wouldn’t know where to begin to do something like that.”
That’s how Toby created Butterflies Unleashed, a 12-week program for imprisoned women that helps them to heal trauma through introspection.
Over the course of three workbooks, women are taught to set healthy boundaries, overcome shame and learn how to build healthy communities to support themselves. The books include stories of famous women but, more importantly, real-life stories of other former prisoners. Each workbook is also centered around lessons that can be learned in nature. They are intended to give women a well-rounded perspective.
“They’ll learn some history, they’ll learn some natural science, and they’ll learn some true stories from people in their community,” said Toby.
Toby also teaches a two-day program about overcoming deep shame and unworthiness. The program stems from her realization that she was constantly telling herself she didn’t matter and had no voice. This was largely rooted in the shame she felt in her decisions and life path.
“So I had to work really hard to slay this shame dragon.”
But once she did, she realized her experiences didn’t mean she should stay silent. she came to understand she “had a stronger voice because of what I’ve been through.
“Which doesn’t mean that I should stop talking, it means I should talk louder,” Toby said.
Which is exactly what she’s doing today, through her book, her programs and her podcast. Every day, she is living a core message she teaches – you are not defined by your worst mistake.
ABOUT BRAIN INJURY ALLIANCE OF ARIZONA
The Brain Injury Alliance of Arizona (BIAAZ) is the only statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of adults and children with all types of brain injuries through prevention, advocacy, awareness and education. BIAAZ also houses the Arizona Brain Health Resource Center, a collection of educational information and neuro-specific resources for brain injury survivors, caregivers, family members and professionals.
What began in 1983 as a grassroots effort has grown into a strong statewide presence, providing valuable life-long resources and community support for individuals with all types of brain trauma at no charge.
The Brain Injury Alliance of Arizona:
- Works with Congressional Brain Injury Task Force
- Houses Arizona Brain Health Resource Center
- Hosts virtual and in-person support groups for survivors and families
- Has Statewide Opioid Use Disorder & Cognitive Impairment Response team with peer support, training, and family wraparound services
- Facilitates Brain Health Advisory Council
- Manages statewide Help Line: 888-500-9165
