On my fourth prison sentence, I thought I would spend the rest of my life in prison or end up dead.
I had mixed with the wrong crowd all my life, going from petty theft of mobile phones and selling cannabis when I was 13 to robbery and grievous bodily harm a few years later. My first prison sentence was at 16, and I was in and out of the system for the next six years. I didn’t think much more was possible for my life. I was on a path of destruction and felt I didn’t have anything to live for.
Before the workshops I didn’t think I could talk to other people. I kept my feelings bottled up. The workshops helped me realise that if I opened up, people would listen and understand. It helped me to understand other people better too. It also helped me to see I was living for today and I wasn’t living for tomorrow, I wasn’t thinking about the future. I started to think about what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I didn’t want to keep coming back to prison. I realised there was so much more to life, that there is always a solution to any problem, and that the impossible is possible.
I had lost belief in myself but the Hero’s Journey™ opened my eyes to all the other possibilities and avenues that I could take to achieve what I wanted in life.
The life coaches saw the spark in me that I hadn’t seen in myself for a long time, and it gave me hope that it wasn’t too late to change.
When you feel like no one is listening to you and no one cares you start to resent the world, but the Spark Inside coaches made me feel heard and understood and helped me see the world in a different light.
I would love to see this course delivered to every young person in prison who has lost hope or direction so they can regain their focus and their belief in themselves.
Now I’ve left prison for the last time and I’m not going back. I know I can make it.
