This story is the serendipitous outcome of a simple act of kindness my wife and daughter joined together to help a woman in prison who was feeling very lost and lonely. Our daughter got hooked on pain medications as the result of a back injury which evolved into a serious drug problem that she battled for years before she ended up in prison. Far from a hardened criminal, just someone who made some bad choices which landed her in prison. Once in prison and off the drugs, she returned to her old self and began to notice the needs of the other women in her prison yard. So many were so lonely with no-one on the outside for letters, visits or other support. In addition to regular visits from us, her mother routinely sent beautiful hand-made cards with messages of encouragement. Some of the “other girls” on the yard loved the cards and were sort of jealous since they didn’t even get basic letters, so our daughter found one woman whose mother has passed away while she was in prison and had no-one in her life. This made our daughter so sad that she asked her mother if she would consider writing to her new friend to cheer her up. A beautiful card was in the mail the next day and when our daughter’s friend received the card she came running excitedly to tell our daughter about the beautiful card from her mother. She openly wept as she asked our daughter, “why would your mom do this for a complete stranger and a prison inmate, no less?” The simple answer was, that in spite of the mistakes she had made, she had a good heart and she needed someone who cared about her. The cards and letters continued back and forth until she was going to be released, which raised major anxieties about where she was going to go, how she would get there and a long list of other needs she had no idea what to do about. Our daughter told her the answer was simple, her parents would help her arrange for transition housing, pick her up when she was released and get her there as well as take her to Goodwill to help her get a change of clothing as well as a variety of other logistics that needed to be handled. None of this was an extraordinary effort on our part, just a simple gesture of kindness to someone in need, but for her, it was unlike anything that anyone had done for her at any time in her life. We have worked with her on a regular basis and she has become one of the family and the whole thing has given her a good start and has been a richly rewarding experience for us that started with a small gesture of kindness by simply writing to someone whose time in prison had left her desperately lonely. She had also been deeply humbled which revealed a good heart with a strong desire to make a fresh start in her life and not look back. To do that, she needed someone who cared about her enough to help her on that crucial journey. From there, our journey began as we have reached out to others. Thus far it has been women from the Piestewa Unit at Perryville Prison in Goodyear, AZ but the stories have been similar. We’ve opened our hearts to women whose humility and a sincere desire to change have left them ready to make a new life, but putting old habits and friends behind them makes that difficult without someone to take them by the hand as they look forward to a better direction.
