Yesterday I sent out the book orders for the women on death row for March. $645. Ouch.
This isn't always easy for me guys. I have 7 children in the house and that alone takes a lot of time and money. What I do for these gals is a labor of love. While I do receive donations every now and again, for the most part I provide these services out of pocket.
When I realized how much the Amazon bill was going to be this month I started to feel sick. We are building an addition to our home, have a Easter trip planned tomorrow and as I said, 7 kids. While I love what I do in the prison system and feel a definite sense of pride for what it accomplishes, I don't want to take away from my family to do it.
I tweeted about the issue and decided to wait until later in the evening to make the payment. We colored Easter eggs, made some Shrinky Dinks and grilled some chicken legs. A spring storm ran through and I lost Internet connection for an hour or so. Throughout all the family fun, my mind kept returning to the nearly $700 book order I have to fulfill. Maybe I could do half this week and half next? Or split it up throughout the month of April? Except I knew some of these women were counting on the books for research and classwork. Urgh. What to do, what to do.
After dinner I checked my email to find an Easter miracle, to be sure. One of our Twitter followers donated a large amount for the womens books. I could hardly believe it. I checked the balance over and over from different devices just to make sure I was seeing it right. Wow. WOW! All the books, everything I was asked for in March, was able to be ordered.
I wanted to publically thank him on the blog but he refused. He is afraid of what people will think of his support of women behind bars. Isnt this a bitter sweet victory? People care. They want to help. There are people who know deep in their hearts that the way we treat incarcerated women - guilty or innocent- is inhumane, unconstitutional and horribly hypocritical to say the very, very least. All this is true and yet these good people are afraid to say where their hearts lay. They are afraid of being chastised for caring about another human-being.
That makes me incredibly sad.
This isn't always easy for me guys. I have 7 children in the house and that alone takes a lot of time and money. What I do for these gals is a labor of love. While I do receive donations every now and again, for the most part I provide these services out of pocket.
When I realized how much the Amazon bill was going to be this month I started to feel sick. We are building an addition to our home, have a Easter trip planned tomorrow and as I said, 7 kids. While I love what I do in the prison system and feel a definite sense of pride for what it accomplishes, I don't want to take away from my family to do it.
After dinner I checked my email to find an Easter miracle, to be sure. One of our Twitter followers donated a large amount for the womens books. I could hardly believe it. I checked the balance over and over from different devices just to make sure I was seeing it right. Wow. WOW! All the books, everything I was asked for in March, was able to be ordered.
I wanted to publically thank him on the blog but he refused. He is afraid of what people will think of his support of women behind bars. Isnt this a bitter sweet victory? People care. They want to help. There are people who know deep in their hearts that the way we treat incarcerated women - guilty or innocent- is inhumane, unconstitutional and horribly hypocritical to say the very, very least. All this is true and yet these good people are afraid to say where their hearts lay. They are afraid of being chastised for caring about another human-being.
That makes me incredibly sad.
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