Many of my friends are self-surrenders and have encouraged me to write about the first 24 hours and what to expect. I personally had to turn myself into the marshals and that is a totally different experience that I am currently writing about to post later. I watch new people come in scared and uninformed and I think that needs to change. Although people are generally devastated upon arrival, most are shocked at how friendly everyone is and they feel it is so much better than they ever expected. Orange is the New Black seems to be the source of a lot of fear and misunderstanding for so many people. Honestly, I had picked up my expectations from watching that show. It was so far off from what it is like at Pekin, it actually made coming here that much easier. So, if you are about to self-surrender to a prison camp, the first 24 hours goes a little like what you will read below. Make sure to call ahead of time and find out the earliest possible arrival time for the day you are going to report. Arrive as early as you can and make sure you eat before

One of my favorite classes is my Discipleship class. It is a 32 week in depth study of the bible and recently we have been studying Exodus. Week before last we studied the plagues that led up to this week’s parting of the Red sea. If you have no idea what I am talking about check out Exodus chapter 3 through 15. You might just be intrigued enough to keep going. I have read this section several times, but this time was a little different in that I found myself comparing my own life. I had just been praying for guidance on what topic I would write on this week for my blog and when we were asked about our Red Sea moment, I knew that was what I would be writing about. As I read about all these crazy plagues to get Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go, I couldn’t help but to think about what kind of nut would keep going through all of that and not see that change must happen. Why would anyone keep putting themselves through that endless torture and heart break? Then with my Red sea moment in mind, I started to

When I think back over this journey, one of the most painful parts was receiving my PSR and because of that, I want to educate people on this significant part of federal cases. It is important you know about the PSI (pre-sentencing investigation), PSR (presentencing report), and the probation officer assigned to investigate and put it all together. This report will be used at sentencing and I believe it is important to know about it in depth before it takes place. The PSR contains personal background/family history, facts of your case, statements people have made whether they are true or not, and your criminal history. Hopefully sharing my story will bring someone comfort, clarity, and some help in a time full of despair. In Missouri, most federal drug offenders must turn themselves in at the time you take your plea. Then you are held at a federal holding while waiting for your sentencing. This was true for my case. Turning myself in was traumatic. I had kissed my loved one’s goodbye and was heading toward the unknown. As soon as I was done with court, my attorneys assistant had me meet with the PSI/PSR investigator that was assigned to my

When I took my plea for my federal indictment, I had to turn myself in and go to a federal holding facility to await sentencing. I was on a large indictment with 29 people, so I knew it was going to take a while. They don’t sort through security levels, so everyone is automatically put in maximum security. This means we were locked down in our housing units for 23 hours a day and could go outside for an hour if the weather permitted. While inside, you can go in the dayroom and watch TV, you can read, sleep, do a prison style workout in your cell, or you can sometimes take classes. I’m not much of a sleeper and TV doesn’t interest me much, so I pretty much bounced off the walls working out. However, when a class was offered, I was jumping up and down to get signed up for it. I’m a college graduate and I spent a year in law school but that didn’t stop me for signing up for every single class including GED prep classes. I even took the pretests for fun. Yes, I am kind of a nerd. I have mad respect for

There is truly an art in this prison suffering. It can be such a struggle to find peace while incarcerated even though we have all our basic needs met and life is easy here. At some point your loved one will experience being melancholy, distressed, and angry. Your loved one is going through tragic times and they can really benefit from your help. Your influence on them is so much greater than you know. If you are positive with your sights set on hope, your attitude and demeanor can really bring comfort to your loved ones during emotional times. So, what can you do to help them? Let me tell you a story. These past few years have really seasoned my emotional side. I often find myself being the voice of reason for a lot of people around here and sometimes it is just weird. For most issues, I have become good at separating my emotion from whatever issue I encounter so I can think in a strategic manner. This works way better than my old raving lunatic mode that seemed like a good way to go but inevitably I always crashed and burned like the crash test dummy I

With the holiday season quickly approaching, I flash back to my first round of holidays after my indictment and it is heavy on my heart to write about my experience. If you have a loved one incarcerated, I want to know the warmth and joy that can be found even in an institutional setting. More importantly, for those people with prison on the horizon I want to alleviate some of your fear and anguish at the thought of your future, it is going to be ok. I want people to know that it is ok to find joy even while incarcerated and I want you to give yourself and your loved one permission to find joy and be happy. Don’t let the lies driven by shame and guilt lead you to believe you aren’t worthy of love and happiness. After I was indicted, I was overwhelmed with fear of the unknown road that lay ahead. While I was on pretrial, I didn’t know how long it was going to take before I took a plea and turned myself in. Holidays were especially hard. I had a hard time enjoying them because I was so focused on my uncertain future. I

When I was little, I took dancing lessons. All I really wanted was a horse, so these dance lessons were my way of passing the time until I could convince everyone that life only made sense with at least one horse. I was a terrible dancer. I think I maybe got a little better, but it just wasn’t for me. I kept doing it long enough to do quite a few recitals. The recitals ruined the whole experience. I loved the sequins and the fancy costumes, and it seemed like it was going to be the best thing ever. Then one of the mother’s backstage went into some diatribe about fires and if there ever was one, we would surely all die. I guess there weren’t obvious exits and according to her the place was set up all wrong. I have no idea who this woman was or where she got this professional opinion from, but she gave me my very first anxiety attack. I remember looking down and thinking about all my beautiful sequins engulfed in flames. I never felt comfortable in that place or on that stage. So, I did what I do when I feel anxious, I

Coming to prison I decided I would do everything I possibly could to better myself. I promised myself that this would not be wasted time. I encourage that for anyone that is incarcerated. There are a lot of classes available for mental health, drug treatment, relationships, etc. I have learned a lot from what I have taken so far. There is one thing that stands out more than anything to me and that is the power that comes with sharing stories. I’m not talking about swapping war stories and glorifying bad behavior. I’m talking about really thinking about your life, writing about it, and sharing it with others. One of my classes started with 14 women all from different places, different ages, and very different walks of life. It was an extremely diverse and interesting group. I can’t say I knew any of them well before class began. They were just people I knew by face and a few by name, but that was it. We were given an assignment to write about our life story. Not a book, but a short recap of our life so far and what brought us here. Then we were to read our story

I really don’t feel worthy to write on such an important topic. Maybe the most important topic of all. I know that forgiveness has changed my life and made it 100% better and for that reason I have a lot I’d better say. For most of my life I have been an unforgiving, vengeful person. I spent so much time getting back at people. Whenever I felt wronged, I thought I had to make that person hurt in some way too. Looking back, I realized I kept positivity vampires around for this very reason. I didn’t even have a chance of being a positive person living this way. I was a negative hateful person myself and I regret wasting so much of my life living this way. I could not let things go. I would let the tiniest thing drive me to the point of insanity. Simple words, often misconstrued by me, festered for days, months, even years. I would just think of that person and immediately flash back to some unimportant moment that they uttered something, that in all honesty, hurt my feelings. That stupid memory would immediately fill me with rage. I never gave any thought to what

I haven’t always been this positive upbeat person. I wasted a lot of my life being negative. The negativity became a runaway train. Of course, as years went by, I found myself more and more negative and as the world began to swallow me whole, I found myself engulfed in negativity. I chose to focus on negative things, speak about negative things, and let myself fester on negative emotions. That is a recipe for disaster and unfortunately, something major must happen to promote a change. For me, prison happened. It is where I decided to choose to let go of the anger, pain and everything negative and change my life. I chose to live as a positive person with an optimistic outlook on life. Instead of talking about my problems, I chose to talk about positive things. I found that constantly talking about my problems never seemed to solve them. Focusing on problems is focusing on the negative. When you are living in the negative you can’t live a positive life and will miss out on the peace that comes from being optimistic. Negativity breeds negativity. Positivity breeds passion, love and peace. Sometimes it is easier to be negative. If