Community Spring Storyteller Spotlight: Shelly Seymour
Through our storytelling workshops we invite justice-impacted community members to join us on the final Tuesday and Wednesday of each month to work on various writing projects. We’re building a strong community of writers and thinkers. Today, we would like to share this short piece from one of our storytellers, Shelly Seymour.
Shelly Seymour is an authentic person filled with love and excited to do her part in making the world a better place. She wrote this piece during one of our storytelling workshops, where she expressed the powerful feelings and emotions of incarceration. She wants everyone to experience life vividly and honestly with open hearts to change for the better.
Being incarcerated changes you mentally. The strength that you have to possess to stay above the hype, the depression, the loneliness, the bitterness, the pain. It’s thick as the hate you get and feel from the guards and individuals around you. Everyone doesn’t make it out with the same mind or spirit they went in with. You have to have a real determination for change and success no matter what it looks like or feels like, because the pain of the reality can have you deep in a hole with no windows.
Come share your writing process, meet other impacted writers, and join us as we work to end the cycle of poverty and mass incarceration at Community Spring. We meet on the last Tuesday and Wednesday of each month from 9:30am-11:30am. Participants will either receive a $25 Wal-Mart gift card or community service hours (if applicable) for each day of participation.