This week’s Justice Note is a personal reflection on aging, incarceration, and the complicated meaning of moving forward.
ACCEPTANCE
I’ve been drifting away from my White-Collar Support Group. Not sure why that is. Maybe it’s a recent birthday, getting so close to the end now that a year from now is more a hope than an expectation. So I can’t relate anymore to talk of futures, recoveries, and rebuildings. Which makes me a poor colleague for those who can be hopeful and realistically plan for years to come.
At my stage, what remains are the lost careers, fractured relationships, financial struggles, and the embarrassment of explaining who we are now and what happened to who we used to be. Their tales of moving forward represent an optimism I no longer possess.
Maybe I’m in what is called the last stage of grief. Incarceration is a form of grief. The loss—your own lost life—forever in the background. I still can’t ignore the past. I keep retracing the tipping points and longing for the best of that time. Before the fall, before the feds, and before the trauma that followed.
A different kind of acceptance.
Justice Notes is an ongoing series examining incarceration, rehabilitation, storytelling, institutional power, and the lives that exist behind prison walls.
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