Telling Our Stories From Within

I recently watched the Oprah series on the number of women imprisoned in the United States. This particular group of women in maximum-security prison wrote the play, What I Want My Words To Do To You. This writing project was being lead by playwright, Eva Ensler, known for the play, Vagina Monologues.

I believed it was an ingenious idea and immediately thought of the young ladies at the Atlanta Metro Juvenile Detention Center. More importantly, I saw how this could be a great opportunity to release, heal, redefine, and visualize the new life they wanted for themselves.

We were working collectively on writing a story whose target audience is girls' ages 12 to 17 years old. The goal in mind was to create a text for pre-teens and teens to learn from the choices made by these young ladies who had been detained. The instruction given was to write in third person to develop a character. I hoping they would be courageous enough to tell their stories with the guise of another name. Some used an alias and others used their real names.

Their words were not crafty as their attention turned inward to discuss their prospective of how things came to happen. Their words spoke of pimps blamed for missing mommies and love not defined properly again as affection sought on the street. They told of felt ups leading to intentional yet unsuccessful miscarriages where all involved were irresponsible, doubting God, and the miracles they have heard of. To hear 14 year olds speak of their lack of addiction for education while fathers' get high to the point of death. Cause he too felt like he couldn't talk to anybody and his option was the great escape of life not applied was heart breaking.

For some to write their truths caused contractions of pain that gave birth to the reality of neglect. One challenged oxygen to reach her lungs and mind as she constantly questioned why after reliving her past sitting before us in her seat. Others were clear about buying into the trap of money, sex, and drugs knowing in this moment where they went wrong.

The beauty outside the constructive outlet of their feelings was the moment they received the mission and purpose to make a difference. The excitement in their eyes about writing a text that would be valuable to someone else other than themselves was sincere. I believe it was Eva or maybe Oprah who stated that the act of their crime is not who they are. Furthermore, these young ladies are just like us all. Trying to learn from our stories from within.