Learn to Love, Seek Truth, and Help Others

Kenneth | Graduated September 2021

My life has been a long winding road. I have learned many hard lessons due to my own poor choices.

Guilt, sorrow, and shame came with my substance abuse and it ruled my life far too long. I grew tired of carrying those dark emotions but I often wondered if I was too far gone. You can see from my photo published along with this article that I became a street dweller. It took a piece of my humanity. This is a brief story about how I stepped out of the darkness. I crawled out of the gutter and was restored in all ways. It was God who did for me what I could not do for myself. I’ve always believed and worshiped a higher power, it’s just that I worshiped drugs, the streets, and the world. Something had to change.

In the last scene before getting arrested, my mother was dying from stage four colon cancer.

I made the choice of returning to homelessness and criminal behavior. In October of 2013 my mom passed away and I started realizing my circumstances. I was merely existing in a personal world of darkness, alone and tired of suffering. I ended up in jail looking at losing my freedom for the rest of my life. It was my third F3 assault and I was facing prosecution as a repeat offender. In a moment of desperation, I turned to the very thing I was running from all my life. The light. For the first time in my life, I stood in the light and saw myself as I was. I didn’t like what I saw. I vowed to change everything that brought me to prison and that would potentially send me back to prison. This meant the change had to include spiritual health, mental health, physical health, and emotional health. When I made my vow to myself and God, it meant I had the opportunity to rethink the things I used to survive in the criminal world.

“My spirit slowly started healing and my behavior changed. I started finding things that worked for me and discarded the rest. My life improved by seeking the truth. When I started to work on my emotional, mental, and spiritual health, my body began to heal as well.”

When I hit the yard, I started to take advantage of all the things that were available to me.

I realized I had to work with the system instead of against it. I knew D.O.C. did not have an abundance of resources but I used what was there. It was a start at least. I began to advocate for myself and found treatment for my mental health condition. I spent my spare time programming in things such as The Alternatives to Violence Project, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Bible studies. If there was a program on the yard, I was there. I earned my G.E.D. and took college courses because I knew that was key for when I got out.

I remember a time when I was walking across the yard with my folder and a guy stopped me. He asked me where I was going and he even suggested the possibility that I was a snitch. That was the opposition and God Bless him because the old me would have made sure he never spoke my name again. I had developed an awareness that violence wasn’t the answer and that I would no longer let other people still living in their sickness drag me down.

Above all it was my belief in God that kicked off the healing of my spirit.

I slowly started to learn to love again. I opened my heart and mind and started studying anything that had to do with scripture. I read the Quran. I read the Bhagavad-Gita. I read the Bible. I even read the Book of Mormon. My spirit slowly started healing and my behavior changed. I started finding things that worked for me and discarded the rest. My life improved by seeking the truth. When I started to work on my emotional, mental, and spiritual health, my body began to heal as well.

Today I have the distinct honor of serving God because it was Him who has been with me even when I thought he wasn’t. He saved me and now I want to play a part in His work in others. One of the ways I do that is by choosing to work at New Freedom as a Safety Associate. Seeing the light in others as they step out of the darkness is why I do what I do and I would encourage anyone to start the process of change now. It starts inside.