Yesterday was a big day. It was a different day, a hard day, a heart bursting happy day, a day that shook me. Yesterday was a day that I am very thankful for.
Something exists here in Miami that I am honored, and dang proud, to be able to share with you. This something is called the Children of Inmates program through an organization that I’ve become involved with here called Hope for Miami. Every three months they organize visitations to various correctional facilities for children in the Miami-Dade area who have an incarcerated parent.
These visits are significant because they look very different from normal visitations. During these visits they are able to spend 3 ½ hours with their parent, as opposed to the normal designated hour. They have toys and games, activities and crafts, and a literacy activity that they are able to participate in together. They get the chance to share a meal together. They are able to show affection much more freely than in a normal visitation. They are able to experience real time together as a parent and a child should.
It was one of the most joyful sights I have ever witnessed to be able to see the reunion of these families during this time. I watched child after child light up, beaming with happiness, as they ran towards their dad, and I watched father after father light up, beaming with happiness, as they ran towards their child.
Something that I find important to share is how effortless it was to forget where we were. This wasn’t a room full of inmates. I was in a room with kind, loving, wonderful fathers who were so evidently invested in and madly in love with their children. I was having conversations with intelligent, funny, caring men who were nothing but grateful to spend this time with their families.
I was given such a great deal of hope during this day. I already knew the stereotypes that go along with individuals who are in prison—I fight to break them every time I share about my own wonderful, loving, and inspirational dad—but to have that reaffirmed over and over with every family that I spent time with…it gives me so much hope that this world really can make the choice to see people for who they are. We can make the choice to throw stereotypes out where they belong and to give people a chance to be people, rather than choosing to see them in a way that limits their wholeness. It gives me hope that programs like this exist to give these children, these fathers, these families the chance to spend such important time together and to be reminders that so much love and care can exist even through such difficult stages of life.
I am just…full. This is such a good thing to exist in this city. Hope for Miami thinks it, these families think it, I think it, and I know my dad would think it. I am just…full.
Radishes & Rutabagas 