One Day at A Time

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like (air) a phoenix, I will rise. ~ Maya Angelou

It's a fascinating observation- human nature. The fact that we possess both good and evil thoughts and impulses, and we have the ability to choose how we will channel them... it's something we may not take the time to think through in our busy lives. But here, all we have is time.

Waking up with negativity in the air, it's easier to feed off of that vibration. The real work is to persevere through the thick icky fog, and create your own lightness. Freedom in a place of confinement comes from within. There is so much potential at this camp to serve God and serve my own growth by serving other women in their dark times. Helping each other to overcome obstacles that have held us back in our lives. I start going on, down this path in my mind, and I hear a loud cartoon screech pumping the brakes in my head. Wait a minute.. hold up, Pollyanna. You're fooling yourself.

Let's face it- you put 260 to 300 women together from different walks of life- mostly drug dealers muling across the border (thus, I can hardly understand the language being spoken around me most days. Anna used to tell me to consider myself lucky that I didn't understand what they were saying. a few harsher crimes like manslaughter (which only come from Native American reservations or Washington DC, which are sovereigns considered federal for prosecution purposes), and white collar like fraud. money laundering, PPP loan and unemployment fraud, Real Estate, Insurance, and credit card abuse, and the tossed in doctor who over prescribed or double charged Medicaid. Tax evasion usually means something else the feds couldn't prove without a reasonable doubt.

I've said before that it seems like the ultimate derogatory stereotype of every culture resides here. The worst to me is entitled white privilege. But that doesn't mean that the other end of the spectrum is tolerable, by any means. All in all, it's not about that anyway. it's the people who just plain choose ignorance and choose to be disrespectful or hateful instead of choosing kindness and empathy whom I will never understand.

So, I quit trying.

It's time I took off my rose colored glasses. A majority of the women in here don't want to change. Sad but true. The ones who do make their way to the education building. I am starting a new business class on Wednesday, and it's full with a 20 person waitlist, so hopefully they are coming for the right reasons. I won't stop being available to lead classes; but, I will keep my focus on my own best interest moving forward.

One day at a time, the clocks continues to tick. I can hear it.