Have You Ever Been Inside a Prison?

A couple months ago I got a text message from my friend Sam Harris. It was a simple yes or no question: “Have you ever been inside a prison?”

I hadn’t. And the fact that I hadn’t felt significant. I’d been writing and talking about the prison system for months. About returning citizens. About reentry. About the fear-based policies that warehouse people instead of healing them. But I’d never actually been inside.

Sam was inviting me to Lawrenceville Correctional Center in Virginia. To speak with a group of incarcerated men about love and fear. About what it means to lead with love instead of being controlled by fear.

The honest truth is I was scared. Not of the men. Not of the facility. Of myself. Of not being enough. Of being the wrong person to walk into that space. A white guy from Maine with an MBA and a Substack, talking to men who have lived through things I can’t begin to understand.

But I also knew that fear was exactly the thing I’ve been writing about. The thing that keeps us from crossing thresholds. The thing that tells us we’re not qualified to show up.

So I said yes. And in my next post, I’ll share what happened when I walked through those doors.

This piece is short because the experience deserves its own space. But the question Sam asked me is worth sitting with: have you ever been inside a prison? And if not, why not?

Read the full piece on Substack

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org