A New Dream for A New Year

However you came into 2022, I hope it bodes well for the rest of your year and mine. I've had a slow and quiet holiday season, which means a lot of reflection and a LOT of rest. I needed it. So many of us do. And we all deserve it. I hope you're allowing yourself as much rest as you possibly can these days. There's so much work and responsibility to being human, we should honor it by acknowledging the need for a break. Or at least, that's what I tell myself.

This week, I'd love it if you read this article from The Cut featuring the stories of fifteen people who were incarcerated and died on Rikers Island in New York City. All humans deserve a story. We honor them, and our own humanity, by acknowledging that too. I've also included more of the conversation I had late last year with my dad. I didn't include it at the time because I didn't think I had the space to spare, but turns out, it includes some pretty great sentiments to consider as we breach the barrier of time once again.

Talk soon,

Ashley

Ashley:

I think I wrote this book for you.

Dad:

Well, you might not believe it, but I would write mine for you too. If you ever wanted me to.

Ashley:

I believe that.

Dad:

I told my best friend, the one I told you I did time with, I said, "Man, I want my kids to know me. So, I'm going to have to start remembering whatever I can remember and write it down. Then they'll hear it from my mouth and not from somebody else's. This is what I wrote. This is what I was thinking. This is how I was feeling. This is how I saw it. I need to write this down." That's what made me start writing.

Ashley:

I think I wanted you to know me, and to see me, and to, sort of, get a chance to get a peek at what you missed.

Dad:

I missed a lot.

Ashley:

I know and that sucks. You sent me letters all the time and I would want to send you letters back but I couldn't figure out how to start. And it just ... it would become such a fraught thing because then, if I told mom “I want to write my dad”, I would be questioned. "Why do you want to write? What's going on?" And then, it would just be too much, and so I just, didn't do it. I feel like, when I was working on this book, I just kept feeling like it was all the letters I wanted to write to you.

Dad:

Well, I can tell you this, Ashley. I knew that I would always tell the guys around me in there, I said, "Man, my daughter must know I love her." I said, "I wasn't there for her but the one thing that I know, in the bottom of my heart, is that they love me." And that was enough for me to keep trying to do right, to keep trying to take care of myself, get up out of that bunk, and go do what I had to do to start believing in myself again, cause I had lost faith in myself.

Ashley:

You did?

Dad:

I lost my confidence. I started, just ... I guess I was always mean. I didn't party, and I didn't want to listen to nobody about nothing. Right, good, trying to demand. Just leave me alone. I don't want to hear it, man. I said I ain't concerned about that stuff but I knew that was a lie.

Ashley:

Yeah.

Dad:

I didn't fight it at first. But I would think of you two and just said nah man, keep going, get this degree, do this, get this trade. Remember that thing you wanted to draw? Go in there and draw it bro, and there's some guys that need your help, over in the library. They don't know basic literacy. Go help them. That's where my head was at. I had lost my confidence in myself. I had to get it back. I never really had faith in myself. I had to get some faith in myself.

Ashley:

Why didn’t you have faith in yourself?

Dad:

All my life, I believed in someone else or something else. I had never believed in me. When I started believing in myself, believe it or not, I started doing better. When I started believing in myself, I started doing better. Life is not a bundle of roses. There's no progress without a start. You're going to have to go through some things, sometimes, to get where you need to be.

You've got to go through that dark force. You've got to get past whatever's in there and that's the way life is, for us human beings. We wake up every day, then we've got to stop and thank God that we're alive. Don't focus on what you don't know. Don't put too much energy into that. Take what you do know and do something with it.