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It's pretty interesting that the day I decided to write about mental health, two men asked me if I would join them in doing the same for an upcoming event. They, like me, recognized that there was a big problem brewing in prison. This hit home all the more when I sat in the chow hall, looking at the men around me. You would assume that criminals were everywhere, yes, but that's not the case. The men around me meow like cats when you talk to them. Others carry on a conversatio

My day always began in prayer as I crawled off my top bunk. The cramped quarters were my shared domain alongside Red, my celly. We rarely talked in the morning, maybe because we're mentally preparing ourselves for the daily grind of mass incarceration--or my breath stinks and he hadn't informed me yet. Yeah, humor, that was a necessary tool when you're watching an elder who spent 40 years in a cell. Do not misinterpret that I'm laughing at him; more like I'm making him laugh.

Prison sucks! That is a fact that 100% of the incarcerated populace in America would agree with. This became apparently true when I sat in on an interactive journal program where we had intakes participating in a small classroom at Nottoway Correction Center in Virginia. They opened up about their lives, and I just cringed. Our job as peer mentors is to motivate the men, assisting them in becoming more than their worst. Well, I had a notion on how to proceed, but that was das