Diedre Rae McDonald: Pick Yourself Up and Try Again

My brother’s motorcycle accident ripped his body apart. The news report called it Man vs. SUV.

Driving 125 mph, being chased by the police without a helmet, there wasn’t much of him left. “The casket has to remain closed. He’s not viewable,” they kept telling me. Through sobs of grief, I begged, “Please just let me see something! A leg, a toe even!” I just wanted to lay my eyes on a piece of him … to make sure he was really in there — or perhaps to help me let go.

I had been out of TDC for five years when Bobby died. The grief from my loss sent me into a downward spiral. Leaving his funeral, I was arrested for a DWI. What followed was a domino effect of arrests and eventually returning to prison on a parole revocation. As I sat at the day room table of the Woodman unit with my head in my hands, sweat pouring down from the summer heat, I didn’t want to believe I was back.

A lot of the Texas inmate population knows me as the writer of Freedom Daily Devotional. When they ask me if I’m “that girl,” I feel a pinch of shame from letting so many people down who looked up to me. Five years ago, I was The Echo’s Unit Reporter at Carole Young Unit for Warden Larson who was now the warden for Woodman. For a week I had been avoiding eye contact in an effort to avoid recognition. But her carefully trained eye spotted me across the chow hall.

Warden Larson’s first words to me was a line from a magazine article of mine that was published during Hurricane Harvey. We wound up talking for about 5 minutes. That day, on my 40th birthday, I learned I still may have something left to offer. An hour later I sit writing furiously, excited about the invitation to be Unit Reporter again and possibly a peer coach for first timers new in the system.

Statistically, the recidivist rate is 7 out of 10 people returning to prison. I’m now one of them. When I first came back all I could think about was what I had lost. My children, the new marketing strategy I was developing for the books I had published on Amazon, the big brick house, new cars, and so on. But when someone walks up to you and remembers you for your success (not your failures), it reminds you that if you did it once, you can do it again. It reminds you that even though you may be hiding in shame, or see yourself as “unviewable,” that doesn’t mean the talents and skills you possess in the person you truly are, are not very much there.

The stigma of recidivism can be shameful when it’s personal – when you’re not just the girl who wrote the books but the girl who wrote the books and returned to prison. To all of you Echo and Freedom readers who I’ve let down:  please forgive me and allow me to share with you my experience, strength and hope. I know I’m not the only one returning, so let me encourage those who feel ashamed and empty.  Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again. Never stop trying no matter how many times you fail.

Life is full of pitfalls and bad judgment calls but it’s never the end of the road unless you crash without a helmet. I’m thankful that my crash landed me in Woodman unit. Unfortunately, my brother is finishing up his parole in heaven’s thug mansion.

Rest in Peace Bobby Knight. It didn’t have to end that way. Thank you Warden Larson for reminding me that when I felt as if I had nothing left, when I felt “unviewable,” there is still a lot left to give.

Deidre Rae McDonald

Crain Unit

PO Box 660400

Dallas, TX 75266