Never give up hope

                        
Yolanda could easily blame her problems on her difficult childhood. She grew up in the same part of the deep south as my father-in-law (now deceased), so it is an area I came to appreciate for a special kind of beauty. Although the back roads of southern Alabama still reveal few luxuries, rampant poverty, and difficult living, I came to love the okra and black eyed peas, the homemade biscuits and sausage gravy, the Spanish moss and hard sandy yards and driveways, the ridiculously sweet southern iced tea.
Yolanda is one of the women featured briefly in Long Road Back: Ex-Offenders' Struggle for Acceptance, and I was particularly inspired by her story because she seems to have learned a lot. She is an encouragement and inspiration not only for anyone getting out of prison but for any young person still struggling to find his or her direction.
Yolanda's parents separated when she was three and she grew up witnessing her mother receive the bad end of many an argument with her boyfriend. Finally her mother left the boyfriend and reunited with Yolanda's father. But as storybook as that sounds, her father had since become a conservative Christian, and Yolanda was expected to conform to his new conservatism, the manner of dress (no slacks or shorts) and thinking.
Yolanda had become accustomed to fending for herself and doing her own thing as her mother had her own concerns dealing with the abusive boyfriend. So Yolanda rebelled as a teen when thrust back into such a conservative environment. She started trying to do everything to fit in with her peers: smoke marijuana, hang out with the popular kids, have sex to be popular—but nothing seemed to help her popularity.
She now realizes she was on a search that lasted a number of years: trying a two-year college and then a state university, but never really focusing. She skipped school, hung out, smoked weed, went from here to there, a regular rolling stone. Always hustling, as she said. Then she and a roommate got some younger kids involved in a crime and were snitched on. She was sent to prison for six years and spent the first two years being angry: at the snitchers, at getting caught, at the judge who put her away that long. And, of course, she became estranged from her conservative/preacher father.
At the two-year point of her prison term, she got to thinking about her younger brother who always looked up to her. So she started looking at opportunities for what she could study while she was in prison since she was stuck there. She took up graphic communications and learned how to do graphic arts, a very marketable skill. She also took a class in corrective thinking, through which, she said, "I got my dad back. I had anger for my dad for like 20 years, extra energy I'm just holding for nothing. In that class, a lot of my thinking changed. I let out a lot that I was holding in. And I ended up writing my father, telling him I love him. Sometimes it feels good to just call him and say, Dad, I love you."
Since her release from prison several yeas ago, Yolanda has been taking her spiritual journey seriously, as well as reconnecting with family and holding down a decent job. The Atlanta Enterprise Center, featured in the documentary, was instrumental in helping Yolanda with the tools she needed to make phone calls, put in job applications via the Internet, follow up with e-mails, provide free bus tokens for interviews and the like. She was able to learn new computer software. She learned that it is OK to tell a potential employer, "Yes, I was in prison, but I'm out now and determined to hold a job."
She noted, "When people see us [ex-offenders] they say, you're an ex-felon, you're trying to get a job. Their first reaction shouldn't be 'oh.'" [said as end-of-sentence, end-of conversation.] "It should be 'Oh!' Because you haven't given up. You're still trying. If I come for a job, I'm not giving up, I'm still trying."
Yolanda added, "The same roommate, that kept telling me to pray, taught me don't quit. And you just can't quit because you're never going to get anywhere if you quit."
Yolanda has dreams of starting her own graphic arts business, and helping friends achieve their dreams. She wishes to start a program assisting ex-felons in re-entering society. "I have a thousand dreams," Yolanda said, in concluding her interview.
Yolanda's lessons apply to all of us: Pray. Don't quit. Train for a marketable skill. Dream.
For a free pamphlet for persons anticipating release from a correctional institution, write for the title, How to create a re-entry plan. Send to melodied@ThirdWayMedia.org or Another Way, Box 22, Harrisonburg, VA 22802. (Include the name of your paper in your response.)
You can also visit Another Way on the Web at www.thirdway.com.
Melodie Davis is the author of seven books and has written Another Way since 1987. She and her husband have three adult daughters.


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