Legacy Development is a term that I recently coined to reference my life's mission, all of the different goals I have, organizations I will start, companies I will own, laws I will change, etc. All of these things are intertwined, connected & focused on one dream/goal: To facilitate meaningful & drastic positive change in the lives of those affected by the justice system of the U.S., primarily those involving addiction. There are a lot of means by which I'd like to accomplish this goal. I have idea after idea about changing laws, providing opportunities, education, employment, voting, raising awareness, correcting & preventing abuses against this group of citizens...the list goes on & on.
The reason that I settled on the term Legacy Development is because I found myself in conversation often searching for a term to describe what I was doing. I used terms such as; my life's mission, my project, my career, my passion; nothing fit quite right. From the beginning the ending to my 'elevator pitch' about this effort has been, 'There will likely be very little accomplished during my lifetime, but my hope is that I can put in enough work that the cause will be carried on long after I'm gone & it is how I will be remembered'. This work I am doing will be the legacy that I leave behind, this is my life's passion. So when I was writing the other day - not here but in one of the MANY other places I write LOL - it dawned on me that everything that I do for this cause is developing my legacy. :)
Back to the beginning, how this all got started & how I realized my 'soul's purpose'. It all started with my education of the justice system, I suppose. I'm not referencing formal education of any kind, just the more involved I got the more experience I had & this increased my understanding of how 'the system' functioned.
I watched myself, teenage friends & most recently my husbands brother go through many court cases, probation, incarceration, juvenile detention, treatment programs, therapy, etc. From the time I was a teenager until the Spring of this year I steadily just acquired more & more information, developing opinions about 'justice' as I went.
In the Spring, while I was incarcerated, I was your average inmate, hated 'the system' & felt incredibly wronged in many ways. This is NOT to say that I don't believe in crime/punishment or in the justice system. I very much deserved to be in jail, it was all the 'little things' I experienced or saw along the way that gave brought me to the realization of how broken things are & ignited my passion/motivated me to work to create change.
What started this fire was not only my own experience but the experiences relayed to me by nearly EVERYONE around me. All of the people I met were full of horror stories, had experienced so many awful injustices, often undergone inhumane treatment/punishments but most of all everyone I came in contact with had the spirit of life crushed out of them, they felt & remain feeling completely powerless & helpless. They believe that they can have no impact on their circumstances, no control over their lives (this is NOT just on the 'inside' but on the 'outside' as well). I can't tell you the number of times I'd be infuriated about something & provide options for a resolution & the other party (the victim) would just shrug their shoulders or argue with me that they could never achieve success or a different outcome - it broke my heart worse than any skinny child on an infomercial has!
As time went on & my knowledge & experience increased so did my frustration towards the broken system & the pain I felt for the victims of it. Before I was released I had resolved that I would do everything I could to make whatever changes possible to decrease the number of victims of the system, to minimize the abuse, to correct the injustices & prevent future injustices from occurring. Since my release the ideas have just continued to flow. The 'idea fairy' visits me regularly with inspiration about yet another task to add to the list, or another way to help.
The very first idea that came about was publishing my life. I am an avid writer anyway, for mostly purely selfish & therapeutic reasons. I have long since dreamed that my journals would one day have an impact or value to someone else, other than myself & it just dawned on me one day; why would I have to be dead for that to happen? So my journey towards my legacy development begins here, by making the public aware of my story. Hopefully that helps an individual, makes a government official think twice about a new law, motivates a guard to modify his/her behavior, causes a voter to think of a group of their community they may not have considered their vote having an effect on, etc. I hope that my story just has a snowball effect & opens the doorway to all of my other goals & dreams in creating my legacy.
So that's the beginning, that's the birth of how this blog came to be, of how I realized my passion in life. It seems super long to me, hopefully I didn't bore any of you to tears. I really feel like I left so much out too! LOL One of my favorite fun phrases about myself, especially lately, is 'I'm full of words'. :)
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