This is Not My Home | The Lady Lifers | TEDxMuncyStatePrison (12 min)

This clip totally breaks my heart.  These women --- one of whom was a 14 year old girl when incarcerated --- are known as numbers and property of the corrections department - their eyes are holding back tears or wear blank stares.  I am certain that more likely than not they came into prison after suffering massive childhood trauma.  I couldn't stop my tears watching them.  I cried not just for their plight but also for ALL OF US and our callous ways of treating those we did not protect when they were kids.  I wish (and have my whole life) that others had the same kind of empathy I do.  I see no justice or value in holding children in jail for years into adulthood and for life; I see no civil-ness in breaking already broken people with numbers not names.  Can we ever  be civilized when we fail to recognize and respond to the trauma suffered by children.  If my dad had broken me just a little more-- perhaps not letting go one of the times he was strangling my brother --and with the episode after episode of his beating my brother in front of me or the years of daily threats he presented to me and my siblings lives if he had not quite abused me enough for me to realize that I did not want to be locked up for the rest of my life in a system such as the system these Lady Lifers find themselves in, I may have been there on stage singing along with them.  If you had suffered their trauma, you might be on stage singing there too.