Keep your spirits up!

Hello all. I just wanted to take the time to remind my readers that we have so much in life to be thankful for. Although we are supporting a loved one who is in prison we still should not let that damper our spirits. I had a few down days recently and Dajon has been checking on me to lift my spirits. I had to laugh at myself later, because it was rather selfish of me to complain to a man who has lost his freedom. During our conversation he made me realize how lucky I am to be able to watch our son grow up daily, tuck him in bed every night and kiss/hug him whenever I want. I had to take a moment and apologize because he is correct. It was a lesson learned. I should also be thankful that my son and I still have his father in the flesh regardless of where he lives right now.



Thank God everyday for allowing us the chance to still be able to communicate with our loved one. Thank God for telephones, pen/paper, stamps, and visitation rights. If your loved one is in good spirits don't ruin that moment with your complaints. Don't make him/her feel worse than they may already be feeling but have some how asked God for forgiveness so that they are able to move through this new chapter in their lives. I spoke with a woman not long ago who has 2 children in prison and a grandchild in prison. She visits all 3 and she keeps them on the prayer list at church every Sunday. Not once during our conversation did she complain. She was very uplifting and I enjoyed my conversation with her. She told me some people let their own lives slip away trying to support a loved one in prison. She asked me what does Dajon expect of me during his time away. It didn't take me but a second to answer her. I said happily all he asks is that I continue to raise our son the best I can and when things get rough reach out to him and other family for help! She said to me, he is a good man. Those were my last thoughts of this woman and she doesn't even know him. I took her comment to mean that if he hasn't set his expectations too high, I shouldn't either and that would help me through my bad days.



Remember all things are possible through God and the day you give up on him is the day you have given up on everything else in life as well. Its okay to complain but if you talk to a person who has limited freedom inside and no outside freedom and they never complain , then maybe you have to reorganize your priorities. Life is too short to spend a lot of time thinking about the bad days, we all have them but we all need to learn to move past them.



Living with incarceration from the outside is no less painful than living with it from the inside.

When the sky is the limit....you shouldn't be ashamed

It's been awhile since I've been asked a question that I didn't know how to answer when I first heard it. Dajon asked me if I was ashamed of him or our situation. Had he asked me if I was ashamed of him I would have immediately said No, because I'm not. But I had to think about the question. I had to think about how to respond. I had to ask myself again the same question he had just asked me. Then I told him how I felt. I told him that I loved him and that I was not at all ashamed of our situation. In fact I have so much more respect for him as a man and as the father of my child. The respect came with the changes he made before this incarceration. The respect came the day we made the promise to always remove our son from our own personal differences so that we could give him all the love and support parents should give their children. The respect came the day we sat in the doctors office during my pregnancy and said we would never address each other as 'baby mama' and 'baby daddy'. There are so many examples I could give however the greatest of them all is when he accepted responsibility for his past actions in the streets. This acceptance is the only way to live. Like I have said before change doesn't start the day you come home, it starts the day you go to prison.

During this conversation we again spoke on shame. He asked me why is it that all the celebrities and people who have the opportunity to be seen or heard through the media talk about their successes but they never speak about their mistakes/failures. Dajon has had the last 8 months to reflect on his mistakes and the greatest lesson he has learned is that he never truly accepted his faults. He never took time to reflect on how his bad decisions have caused him to miss the chance to pursue some of his dreams........He would have made a great chef, and still can someday. Dajon had many many positive changes in his life. I'm really proud of him and where he is in life. I'm not proud that he had to learn certain lessons in life from behind bars however I am proud that he is not giving up on life. I am proud that he realizes he has a purpose in life. Proud that I have given him more than 1 reason to want to come home and stay home forever. I can not be ashamed of a man who has asked God to forgive him, asked his family to forgive him and he him self has forgiven the person from his past that truly brought about this case. A man who he hasn't seen in almost 3 yrs. Dajon has a good heart and his inner peace allowed him to forgive in order for him to be forgiven. I can't be ashamed of a man who already is looking forward to coming home and starting over vowing to never go back. That is a vow he has never taken before. That is a vow that was shared between him and the only man on this earth that can judge him, God. So who am I to shame him?

My final response was NO, baby I am not ashamed of you. I am not ashamed of our situation. This situation will make both of us stronger because it's different this time. I can't turn my back on him, ever because hat would be like turning my back on our son. i can't turn my back on him because I still have work to do. The same way he support my decision to further my education, it is now my turn to support him and help him pursue whatever advantages he is able to gain.
The sky is the limit. All things are possible through Christ. Prison separates you from the people you love and being separated by bars is not a reason to be ashamed.

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I got a message from an associate who basically needed to let out some frustration. I was happy to read her thoughts and after I read them I realized her thoughts are real. She didn't want to hear I told you so from her friends and I am not the I told you so type of person. Her frustration is that she has a friend who is in prison, like myself, and she thought he had changed. I'm sure that happens a lot. I can't speak for her situation but I think she is learning on her own that her friend has not learned his lesson.

Dajon I can say with a huge smile has changed. I can say this because of the changes that had been made well before 2009 even came in but most importantly I can say it because of all the times he has gotten in trouble with the law, he has never said, I'm never coming back. He now knows and says he will never go back, and yes I believe him. He is missing precious years of our son's life. This is nothing new to him however he never wanted to go through missing these years with another child, but he is. As I have said before going to prison will take you away physically but only God can take you away mentally.

The will of the prisoner can not be the day he comes home from prison. The will to change and never go back has to be the day he goes to prison. Prison offers something a lot of people don't have, time to reflect on your entire life and the decisions you made to get to where you are today. Sure we can all do that but how many of us do it? Prison is not the time to feel sorry for yourself. The time for that was when you were doing the crime. Prison is not the time to fall in love with someone else; but the time to fall in love with yourself. Dajon is at a place in his life where he experienced a lot of great things in life that he never paid attention to in the past and he just watched it all be taken away. Dajon is in a state of mind where he is at peace with his mistakes and is ready to accept his punishment like a man and not like the coward he had been in the past. I use the word coward because that is what he says of himself, when he was doing wrong he was acting like a coward and not a man , and I must say I agree, and I'm thankful he figured it out on his own.

Dajon has made up in his mind that he is not going back and I have made up in my mind that I will help him in any way that I can to accomplish that. I will send him encouraging words, I'll send him topics to research. I'll ask him to write down his goals each month and what he wants out of life as a changed man. These are all things he has to work on now. He tried working on it after the fact last time and as we see he didn't focus very well.

So anytime you feel your loved one is not on track and has lost focus remind them why they are there and how they got there. Remind them that they have allowed man to take their freedom
and your support is based on the fact you and the family are expecting to see a change. If the prisoner never recognizes they did something wrong they name never feel the need to change. If they never accept responsibility they will always be separated by bars!