Chapter 67 — Getting Back Up | Jailbirds In Flight

The shamans say that becoming a medicine man begins by falling into the power of the demons. The one who pulls themself out of the dark place becomes the medicine man; the one who stays becomes the sick person. Even the worst things you fall into are part of an initiation, because you are in something that belongs to you. In the days that followed, everything in me wanted to stay down. Don’t get back up and you can’t get hit again. Stay in the corner. Take the loss. In that corner was survival. Every last pattern—escape, avoid, hide, quit, justify. This was beyond my capacity. I was a raw nerve. Whatever makes your hair stand on end was alive across my whole body.

It felt like walking over scorpions, naked, being tased in front of people jeering—just to cross the dorm to the restroom. I cut back my water to the bare minimum. They say pain makes you a narcissist: Get a toothache and try to think about anything—or anyone—else. Your first confrontation in prison is like a toothache in your survival instinct. Everything becomes a siren of self-consciousness. Your ears ring. Those people laughing in the corner? They’re laughing at you. The person who used to make eye contact and won’t anymore? Now an enemy. The whispering that runs rampant in prison? It’s all about you. Someone being called to the office? Must be a complaint against you. And then, being in prison, there is no escape.

The cute spiritual line about prison being the ultimate place for transformation, where you finally wake up because there’s really no hope of escape suddenly wasn’t cute anymore. I was walking around wrapped in an electric fence, with no way out. The dreams I had of a different kind of incarceration, meditation classes and real training for the women I still believed had the power to change the world—now felt like just dreams. What the women had shown me, the love that still makes itself available in the worst circumstances, that these are the women who, every day, shoulder that load and are able to make the best of it—if this meant anything, then it had to mean something even now.

Somewhere under the noise, a small voice kept repeating: Get up. So I did. I gave the whole book to Royal. And when we spoke after, I felt that shared lift that’s possible between women. She has a depth of love most people never get to. Under the layers, she has what the world needs. She has everything but the mirror that says, You are that. I’ve been some version of her—needing someone to reflect my own knowing back to me. Shame is the cloak women of power learn to wear until they start believing it’s their skin. I often think of the story of the prodigal daughter. The son spends his inheritance; the daughter never claims hers. She begs for scraps of approval she doesn’t need.

Her story of redemption is to come home and finally enjoy what’s hers. I had the jewel and didn’t know. Royal wears the crown and doesn’t know. We hold mirrors up for each other so we can finally see ourselves truly. A friend once told me that maybe I’d been cancelled because people needed to see me go down and get back up, so they’d know I wasn’t born made of steel. To see that it is possible for you to get back up. In the aftermath of my cancellation, relationships weren’t “as good as before.” They were better. We find out who we are when the bomb goes off. Those are the moments when intention can’t be faked. The same was happening here, now. “I know you for real,” Miriam confirmed. “Nobody gets back up after a hit like that unless they got power behind them.

And nobody got that power unless they’re for real.” My walks with her had sparked an idea in me. Nevaeh joined her. “Just remember—people who fuck with you, they fuck with you. They got you.” In here, that’s love. I wasn’t all the way back. But I was walking again.