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The monthly meeting for Peer Mentors at Nottoway Correctional Center ended with us being offered a speaking engagement for Reentry. Our cognitive counselor informed 15 peer mentors that we should share our stories with the men who were heading home in a year. I sat in the gymnasium, at two wooden tables with my guys, silently contemplating what I would say. When I became a Peer Mentor, I discovered a startling truth: the majority of the incarcerated men had returned to prison

Life always reminded me how precious it was as I sat in the dayroom at a stainless-steel table, surrounded by so many broken souls. The reality of my thinking came as I pondered why Jermaine, my cousin, lost his fight with cancer...and now Janelle, his twin sister, battled with it also. My mother headed to Baltimore to spend time with Janelle. She always did that: showed up for our family. I called her, jovial, not understanding the weight she bared. Prison took my thoughts f

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