BREAKING OUT OF THE PRISONS OF OUR OWN MINDS

“Why did you choose to talk about your imprisonment when so many people would rather hide away and not talk about the fact that they served time?”

We have just completed a meeting with CleanStart’s Chair Dr. Patricia Murugami, Founder/CEO ?Teresa Njoroge and the main stakeholders of the upcoming Chandaria Foundation training workshop at the Lang’ata Women’s Prison.

The conversation rolls around to what challenges formerly incarcerated women face upon release from prison.

When the gentleman on the table asks about the challenges that the women face, Teresa does not even miss a beat. “Stigma”, she says. “Once people know you have been to prison, even if you were successful in your appeal… even if you were in remand and your case was thrown out, they still brand you a criminal and that brand remains with you. In this country, arrest and being charged, makes you as good as guilty in the minds of most people.”

She pauses then adds, “It is worse if you were a public person or if you had a prominent position. More people knew you or knew of you. So, the ridicule and the shame are shared across a wider audience. People who never knew you suddenly become your judge and executioner and people love destroying others. That's why these popular people who are charged or imprisoned disappear completely and are hardly heard of again.”

Pain flashes across her face as though she has suddenly been punched. It disappears as quickly as it appeared.

“I remember I would see memes about me branding me a thief and worse. What had happened did not matter. I would go to places where people would not even give me a seat. People I knew and used to serve or work with would walk past me as if we had never met. I no longer existed. People would talk down at me and there is nothing I could do.”

Another pause. She looks down. Her voice is quieter, constricted when she next speaks.

“It’s like people want to bury you alive. It is so suffocating. Imagine being put in a hole while you are alive, and sand being poured into the hole until you suffocate and die.”

“That’s why people who have been imprisoned, don’t want to talk about it. Prison is already so dehumanizing and demoralizing, then you talk about it and people reject you. It’s unbearable. It is just unbearable.”

IT IS AS IF PEOPLE WANT TO BURY YOU ALIVE...        

As she talks, I feel my chest constricting – almost like I am standing in that hole, sand being shoveled by people I know.

“Why did you choose to talk about it so openly?”, I ask her, hoping it is not too indelicate a question.

“Because I realized that as long as I keep quiet it would continue to be used as a weapon to keep me down. That woman was in prison. Ex-convict. Jailbird. And the facts would never matter.”

“I was so far down, I had hit rock bottom and I knew that if I allowed myself to remain there or to give up, I would be finished. I would die. And I couldn’t accept to die or be killed while I was just lying there. I had to do something. Plus, I had my kids. They could not be without a mother. I was not going to allow them to suffer another injustice.”

The look on her face as she says that is just raw maternal protection. She will do anything for her children.

So what did you do?"

"I started talking about it. I would preempt people by talking about it myself. I would be the first to say I was in prison. That way, they could not use it against me. I accepted that the past had happened. And that it would not define me. They would not define me. I define me. No one else does."

I DEFINE ME. NO ONE ELSE DOES.        

I recognize in her something about all great humans. PURPOSE. A compelling reason for her to get up each morning. What started as her own healing, is now about serving the over 7000 women and children negatively impacted by the criminal justice system currently. But it is more. It is an absolute refusal to allow others to define her identity and to determine her worth. Yes, she did go to prison. But that was an episode in the epic biopic that is her life. It is not the whole story about her life. And she’ll be damned if she will let you or me define her or determine her self-worth with our “holier-than-thou”, self-appointed judge-and-executioner utterances.

Who today is defining you?

Who is determining your self-worth?

#RediscoverYourPurpose #AuthorYourLife?