I don’t remember a time when my life was my own. As a child I was told what was acceptable, what was not and what to think, but not how to think. Now as an adult I’m in a similar situation surrounded by rules and boundaries imposed — to help me? So why is it that I feel helpless? So many of us incarcerated feel as though our choices are being minimized and that our freedoms being eliminated only reinforces the behaviors that caused us to land in these circumstances in the first place. We are all trying to find ourselves, our purpose in a place and in a world that wants to tell us who we are and what we can do or can’t do. I remember now that my life is mine.
— Roqel C.