September 15th 2009

Walking into Tehama Juvenile Hall I was greeted by my friend who has been there for almost 29 years. Funny I expected doom and gloom, that closed in feeling you get when you are trapped and you can't get out but instead, it felt airy and comfortable to me. We were greeted in the class room there by 11 young men and 1 young woman. They were all so wonderful, and the majority of them have suffered way way too much. Finding themselves back in The Hall more than just a couple of times, it became painfully obvious to me that they really didn't want to leave, there exists structure and love and friendship, where as on the outside, they had their choice of drugs, alcohol, gangs, homelessness, no dad, no mom, drug addicted parents and gang members that swayed them right back into trouble, which always leads them back to The Hall.

This may have been one of the most emotional two and a half hours that I have had in a long long time. What I came away with, was such unbelievable sadness for them and a whole ton of anger focused at the outside world.

This tour is correctly titled, Women in Crisis, Compassion and Change through Conversation. We, the women of this country bear these children both male and female, and we need to step up and be responsible for our children's welfare, love and life lessons! We can tell all the men out there not to hit us, because that that is not what real men do, but what constitutes a real mother? We are suppose to be like mother lions, we are suppose to feed, we are suppose to love, we are suppose to protect our young. But after sitting in a room full of beautiful young people who never ever received the nurturing that is their birthright, what in God's name do you expect? If a mother beats her son or allows someone else to, when she feeds herself drugs and doesn't feed her daughter, what magic fairy swoops down and makes it all better, wow you guessed it...ZIP!! More tomorrow need sleep badly!