"As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.." - Ghandi
As you walk through this chapter in your family’s story, you will experience a lot of pain, and you will see so many things that will break your heart. Living though a prison experience will give you insight into brokenness, and into the power of hope and faith that few other experiences achieve. Every day you are facing the challenges of the injustices you see, the destruction of lives you witness, and the power of the system over your life.
There will be an urgency of bringing change that you will recognize. You will say, “That was so wrong.
Somebody needs to do something or say something.” And you will say it often because inside of the prison system, we see and hear a lot that needs to be changed. But not everybody sees what you saw. Not everyone knows the injustice, or the injuries being inflicted. Those who see it may be thinking the same thing, but nothing ever changes until someone DOES something. And it starts with recognizing that you must change so you can change the world. As Ghandi said, “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him…. We need not wait to see what others do.”
No matter what others in your life are doing, you cannot stay the same.
You must work on being the best you, the most courageous you, and the most proactive you that is possible. This means going through the process of self-improvement. As you make that brave journey, you will see that the world will respond to you in a different way, and that you will have the ability to bring transformation that will impact the lives of others, read more.
You are on a mission to overcome the challenges of having a husband in prison. It is a HUGE mission. Even though we may see how so many others need to change, the only way to make sure we make it, is to work on ourselves, read more. It is such a rude awakening to find ourselves in this place. We look around and see so many others who deserve this so much more than we do. Yet, here we are. We are the ones who are having to live our lives with this mark – “family of a prisoner.” Like secondhand smoke, sometimes the family is impacted even more so than the person who is inside the walls.
If we want something different, we must become someone different.
The truth is—we are the sum of both our experiences and our actions. We cannot change our experiences, but we can change our actions. We can change ourselves, and our world. Not just for us, but for our children and for our husbands. If we want things to be better, we must be the one to make them better. It is a hard truth, but a simple one. We cannot wait for someone to fix it for us. We must become the change we want to see in the world.
When you change, you help others do the same. You also open opportunities for those coming behind you. If someone sees the change in your life, it will cause them to be challenged to see others as being capable of change as well. Even that simple act and slight shift in an attitude can create a huge difference in the world around us.
Although you are walking through a really hard time right now, please don’t ignore the wonderful opportunity you have to change your world. For more about Cathy’s journey, click here.
I am rooting for you!– Cathy