Mistakes I made as a youth. At age 15, I had my first beer and started smoking cigarettes. I started cutting classes to hang out with my friends and be accepted. They smoked and drank alcohol in the school bathrooms, and to fit in, so did I. I began bickering with teachers and my parents could not understand why I was disrespectful to them and other adults. Eventually, the same year I began drinking and smoking is the same year I was sent to a juvenile home for stealing a car.

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Mistakes I made as an adult. Adulthood was marked by the continuation of drinking and the initiation of drug use and partying. During that time, I was also raising my two children. I loved my children, but drug use caused me to fall short of becoming the best mother I could be. I surrounded myself with people who enabled my drug use and drinking instead of spending time with my children. In the process, I caused my children, family, friends, and myself much grief and pain that was amplified when I committed armed robbery and was later convicted and sent to jail.

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The consequences. The price I paid for my actions was more than I could bear. I received a 20-year sentence for my crimes. But because of God, I only served seven; seven long years separated from my children and my family.

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The lessons I learned. Getting acclimated to my life in prison was no easy task, but with the grace of God, I started attending Bible study and business classes each week. During the long seven years, I noticed that incarcerated women who served three to five years would find themselves back in prison after only two short years of freedom. I could not understand it. I would cry and ask God to release me from prison, and I promised Him that if He graced me with freedom,  I would never return to prison.

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The vision. God answered my prayers. For good behavior, I was sent to a halfway house to finish serving my time while enjoying the privileges of visits from my children and family. While in the halfway house, I learned new skills, enjoyed being away from the structure of the prison system, and attended Bible study, thanking God for the opportunity to live outside of the prison cell. One day, on the second floor of the halfway house, God revealed a vision to me as I stared out of the window. I saw a beautiful house that previously incarcerated women could call home, where I gave them the tools to stay out of prison. I have prayed to God for a long time for that vision to come to fruition, and now that it has, I recognize the vision as the day Enabling Women for Change was born.