Shaka Senghor

And then there's the other social context.

I'm moving to a lot of spaces where oftentimes

Because of the space that I'm in, nobody would even assume that I spent 20 years in prison.

And so to hear people talk candidly about someone who's committed a crime and that they should be locked away forever, they should be given a death penalty.

Like those moments of like, wow, like this is what that person would think if I was, you know, at that low stage of my life.

Right.

They might have thought that about you.

You might have thought that.

Exactly.

Right.

And so how I've combated that is that I have been able to recognize that.

that my 19-year-old self was a kid who had experienced more trauma than is almost humanly possible for people to even understand.

And that kid deserved to be, one, held accountable, which I was, I served that time.

but also to really be, to recognize that that was a traumatic reaction to a life full of trauma and that there is empathy and compassion that those things can both be true.

That I can be accountable

but that I can also recognize that there was something that drove that behavior that no longer exists in me today.

Um, and so it's just a constant going back and reminding myself.

And as I say, that scale slides back and forth.

Uh, where it's at today is a zero.

I feel no shame in, in, in who I'm at, but tomorrow something else could arise.