Couldn't Keep It to Myself

Couldn't Keep It to Myself: Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution (Testimonies from our Imprisoned Sisters)

This book is about salvation. Not in the traditional sense, because these stories are not religious in nature, but they are spiritual and they are real. The life events these women describe may be beyond our full comprehension, but there is something universally familiar about the helplessness they describe. The despair that stalks us, causing us to rush headlong from one wrong choice into another, or piling one disappointment on top of another, until recognizing and resolving to do something different becomes the point of salvation for everyone, whether it occurs in a church meeting, or behind prison walls. The major differences between these women and the rest of us are matters of resources-- both material and spiritual. When I recognized my life was spinning out of control, and I realized I had to do something different, I had someone to call on to help me turn things around. And I could pray. But these women and girls had no one to turn to, and no spiritual training to fall back on.

With prison populations soaring, perhaps this should be required reading for anyone working with abused women, with addicted or at risk girls, single moms, and all parents of young girls. And let us all pray for an empathetic justice system that finds and helps abused children and girls before they are left with no hope and no way out.