The second book/story that is quickly becoming the engine compelling my train to pick up speed and not stop till I get to that final station I have longed for all my life, Is Michael Santos 500 some pages book “Earning Freedom: Conquering a 45 Year Prison Term” I have been exposed to a lot of powerful readings all through my 66 years of my life.
Having two Masters’ Degrees (one in Public Admiration from California State University and one in Pastoral Studies from Loyola University in New Orleans), but none such as the one that Michael Santos has written. It is one of the most stoic, admirable, motivating, heartbreaking, and heartwarming factual stories I have ever read. It was a work that was meant to find its way to my hands, either by God or by some other spiritual force. I credit it for changing my entire outlook on my circumstance, my mood, and my depressive state and for propelling me forward when all steam had been extinguished from my engine.
Its a “MUST READ” for any inmate (male or female) serving time, for any family member of an inmate serving time, any friend of an inmate serving time, any Attorney, Judge, Policy Maker, Prison Official, and certainly any Prison Guard (who might want to be called a Correctional Officer instead) who all make up what would be deemed as one of the most dysfunctional bureaucratic systems in America today. And I’m not referring to just the prison system. Santos points out all the flaws, injustices, billions of dollars of waste, human disparities, etc., that shape our prison system today. +
He does all of this while taking full responsibility for his own life, a 20-year-old kid sentenced to 45 years, required to serve 25 years of that sentence who embarked on his own journey of self-discovery, weathering EVERYTHING, good and bad that life threw at him.
He has become a living example to me and has inspired me to work through my own metamorphisms (even at 66 years of age) as well…
