I have now been out of prison for one year and six months and I am living a straight and narrow life.
After been with R.A.W for a year and learning to come up with strategies to deal with my anger I am happily reunited with my four children and with the help and support of RAW I am able to show my children a whole different life style and approach of being a mother.
For many years I was using aggressive behaviour and brutal violence on people when I felt they had deserved it. I struggled physically and mentally trying to change and use different strategies to conquer the volcano in me. I would get angered over dumb shit, my temper would go from zero to hero.
That’s where Annah and Bex helped me enormously. I started caring again (emotionally). For a very long time I had no feelings. I thought that anyone that cries is a sook and they’re weak so I never got emotionally attached to anyone. To me, that was saving me from hurt but at the same time it made me cold-hearted and ruthless. The first day I started my new job, that RAW helped me to get, it was the most horrible day and that was based on the old “Me”. I didn’t talk to just anyone and give away personal information to strangers, only to people I trusted. I had no connection what so ever with these strangers, asking me these questions, and that is where Bex and Annah helped me out big time. They told me that’s normal behaviour, that’s what people do when they want to get to know you, and it’s being polite and starting conversation.
Prior to prison I wasn’t under the influence of drugs and alcohol when I was offending so I honestly thought I was straight as. In saying that I was dealing drugs and I thought I didn’t have a problem because I wasn’t smoking or puffing but I did have a problem, I was making illegal money and physically hurting people. Bex and Annah highlighted my triggers. They showed me so much and I am grateful as to have them in my life and they still very much are. I have grown to be a better woman. I financially support my children with a full-time job working for Fulton and Hogan driving trucks, and I love it. It’s not as much money as I was used to making back then but it’s honest and more rewarding. I have met a lot of great people in the new life I am living, and I pour my heart out to RAW.