Happy Thanksgiving

Readers,

Here in the USA, we are celebrating a holiday called Thanksgiving today. For those of you who celebrate, may it be everything you need from it.

I'd like to take a brief moment to share my thankfulness here, as I cannot gather around the dining room table with my loved ones. Still, in this little nugget hiding behind a piece of calcified shielding, there are warm places, filled with caring. :)

In no specific order (and an incomplete list, for I may not have clearance to mention people by name), I'm thankful for...

The denizens of my last home!

All of the people I lived with in that house in Oregon encouraged me to peek out from my turtle shell, so to speak, looking beyond the scared visage and mindset that I carried.
It is in that house that I truly began to live my absolute best life, going through a serious transmigration from the individual I was -- positively frightened of simply existing while black -- to a new individual, harnessing the deeper power of transformation of myself, far below the earlier transformations seemingly at surface level.
Surely, I had been working on self-improvement prior to this, but I would not have tried for higher education again without the guidance of those who lived there with me.
Now that I know what I am missing, I can sit here in my chilly cell on a Thanksgiving morning with salient lamentations of a broken system, a better understanding of the scope of damage done behind the concertina wire.

Melissa! (My editor/publisher, and dear friend)

Folks, this lady charged forth into the catastrophe my life became at the strike of a gavel and a stroke of a pen, helping to keep things from being blown to kingdom come. She has continuously helped to organize my abilities to stay in contact with many of the people who have been there for me the last quarter century, and gives me this voice behind the fences.

My last employer before this situation.

I came in to that job, ready to move upward. Unlike my previous career experiences, I was actually afforded the opportunity to move up, not once, but twice. To make my feelings for this company stronger, the second promotion was figuratively handed to me with everything an enby could ask for.
Getting called in to the project manager's office when you thought you were doing well in your role can scare you pretty fiercely -- I was thinking, "Oh no... what am I not doing? What if this is the dreaded promotion to customer? The pandemic did impact our line of business, and I haven't been back very long; she's gonna send me home forever..."
The boss tells me, "I need a new trainer for the call center. I want you to be that trainer."
I was afforded the opportunity to grow and thrive, and for that, I'm eternally thankful.

Prison itself.

Wait, no, hear me out before you think I've thrown a shoe.
Before prison, I was blissfully unaware of the state of prisons in my home country. I allowed media to paint this picture of people in little cells, wearing orange jumpsuits, smoking cigarettes and working out on the weight stacks.
To come here and experience something far worse opened my eyes to the industrialized suffering at the hands of fellow countrymen, watching humans treated with less dignity than even a stray dog.
Seeing from personal experience the exploitative actions of companies like ViaPath, Keefe, Securus, enabled by state Departments of Corrections across the nation has shown me an underbelly of strife and suffering like none I have experienced before.
It gives me a potential new target to focus on once I gain my freedom: finding ways to help these men and women behind the wires, whether it's learning the law, organizing groups of people to conduct prison visits for those who do not receive them, or a resource to help people who are leaving these confines for the first time after years of incarceration, or helping people get access to books.
This encourages me to reach out to agencies and groups focused on Justice Impacted Individuals and their families, to see what we can do to walk back some of the most violently negative changes that came across the board when I was a child, to stop failing a people who deserve a chance to show they can grow.

Helping these people, we people, this allows me more chances to improve not only myself and the circumstances I live in, but also the circumstances and outcomes for a valid part of our society that are being snowed under, forgotten in pain.

I'm thankful for being shown this suffering, because now that I know of it, I want to ease it for others.

Whatever you are thankful for, go with generosity.

I wrap this as we sit here this morning, knowing we are likely receiving our lunch and dinner meal at the same time today to allow the food services to shut down early, with this on my heart:

Generosity is a missing factor, not just in prison, but in the free world. Let's all take a little time to share our kindness with someone we might not have spoken to before, instead of just walking past again. You might find out that even your simple "hello" is what that person needed in their life.

May all beings be at peace.

With metta on this day of thanks,

Jayel