I read Kim’s blog a few days ago, and I thought I would just write a small addition. Many will think it is neither here nor there, but comes back to the subject of resilience. I talk about resilience all the time, resilience in leadership, lack of resilience in many of our most traumatised citizens, the surprising level of resilience in so many of our citizens where we would expect there to be little…so I go on about it at length.

The day Kim went to her interview on that rainy day in late December, I phoned her, by chance. It was around 5pm and she was in Glasgow City Centre.

Many of us will have experienced that sort of emotion in bereavement or the catastrophic events that can turn your life upside down. If you are reading this, and are taken back to that time in your own life, then you will know the sort of sobs I am referring to. It took 40 minutes to get what had happened out of her. I wondered how quickly I could drive from Edinburgh to Glasgow in rush hour to take her home, to comfort her, and the answer was too long. Kim doesn’t have the support networks that so many of us have and which wraps around us at these sort of times. It’s a lonely path that she is walking.

She wasn’t any better the next day, full of questions about when she will have repaid her debt; when she is allowed to move on; when is enough, enough? My platitudes about time, resilience and determination and that ‘her time will come’ were weak and no comfort at all – for in truth there are systemic and societal norms that are designed to keep Kim in stasis, doing nothing to really integrate her back into society and letting her participate fully. What a task that is – just imagine the weight of that on your shoulders, realising that to move forward there is a huge amount of things you have to shift at the same time. It’s like Sisyphus and the boulder

My blog isn’t really about all the things that should change or the transformation in society that is required. It’s about resilience, because three days later Kim had re-centred herself, picked herself up and refocused her attention on where she wanted to go.

This is what I want to write about.

The phenomenal levels of resilience that some people have, despite the best efforts of society to grind it down. If I could extract the essence of this from Kim and others, we could achieve anything, for she on her own has epitomised to me what resilience is, what drive looks like, what absolute determination looks like despite all the things designed to keep her where she is. She is back pushing the boulder up that hill, but now she has more people helping her push it. So thank you, all those out there that offered their support, changed their processes off the back of her blog, and promised themselves that they would help change it.

This is how transformation happens

I am writing this because tonight I signed up with a recruitment agency. My interview was going well, until it got to disclosing my convictions. As always, I was open and honest about my past mistakes. It’s the only way I know how to be.

I handed over my most recent disclosure and – by the way – it clearly states that I am not barred from working with any type of person. That means that I pose no risk to the people that I would work with. The information that seems to have the biggest impact on employers, and others in authority, is from when I was 17 years old, more than a decade ago. It is a racial conviction, one that I am deeply ashamed by and of. It happened in 2004 – by the time I went to court and was convicted, it was 2005.

Anyway, back to tonight. I told the woman the circumstances around the conviction – which by no means excuses it – but I was living in homeless accommodation and I had been sofa-surfing since I was 14 years old after my family broke down.

That didn’t seem to be enough for this woman.

I froze, I wanted to get up and say ‘F**K this’. I wanted to say that she didn’t know what I went through, but instead I sat there and let her give me a lecture on risk and how I needed to be risk-assessed. I repeated ‘but I was 17!’ but it was like she didn’t hear me. She started to type up a report for my file that read….

I believe Kim will not be a risk to any service user and deserves an opportunity to turn her life around!

‘Risk’ I thought to myself, ‘how am I a risk? I am a mother and a damn good one at that!’. Sure, I’ve made mistakes, but I’ve learned from them. I have done the work on myself, I’ve spent the last five years healing and recovering from wounds and repairing the damage I’ve caused to others and myself.

I did that sentence 12 years ago, why am I still being punished?

Why do I still have to justify and explain events that take me back to the night of that conviction? Why do I have to revisit the trauma? When am I going to be free from my past?

As soon as I get somewhere in life and try to better my future for me and my wee boy, this conviction haunts me and I’m right back there. She then went on to ask me about my relationship with my parents and why I was homeless, to which I answered that I didn’t have any contact with them now. Did she want the truth? Would it have made a difference? Why do I have to continue to spill my experiences when I’ve worked so hard to turn my life around? I already have, by the way….

Did she want to hear about when I was 14 and my dad had an affair with my mum’s pal who stayed upstairs from our flat? That my dad left and would walk by me going up the stairs to his new family? Did she want to hear that my mum tried to take her own life and I found her and had to resuscitate her? That the reason I became homeless was because I’d go home steaming drunk, so angry that she would do that while I was in the house sleeping, that I’d pick fights with her after she got out the hospital so she kicked me out?

Did she want to know about all the horrible things I witnessed while staying in the Queen’s Park Hotel? The place where the authorities I went to for help put me, but which led me to be even more vulnerable. That I ended up in a violent relationship that nearly left me dead.

Did she want to know that when I found the strength to get out of that relationship, I went on a bender all weekend? That eventually this ended up with me in a restaurant, in a fight, that led me to getting that conviction that has haunted me ever since.

That every time I think I’ve finally been able to prove that I have changed, someone questions me about that conviction and treats me like I am ‘a risk’ when all I want to do is work and help people.

Did she want to know that those experiences were only my teenage years – did I have to go into my childhood as well?

My point in writing this is that I don’t understand why I am seen a s a risk for something I did when I was a stupid wee girl. I nearly had my education ripped away from me because of that conviction. I fought it and I’ve worked so hard the last four years to make life better for me and my son. I am so tired of having to explain myself, to be sitting feeling that shame and embarrassment. I am not that person anymore. I am just a mother who is simply trying her best to give her son the life she never had. And I am doing a good job. Why can’t I just be that person? When will the stigma and labels ever leave me? When will I finally complete this sentence and be free?

I really don’t know what else I can do.

So, I’m just going to keep doing what I have been doing. I’m going to keep getting better and work a little harder and just hope one day I can go for a job or go into education and not have to explain something I’ve tried to move on from.
You see, it’s not just the conviction, its everything that led up to that conviction I must relive over and over and over. All I want to be is me.

Just see me.

Don’t judge me, don’t force me to spill my life story because you can’t understand that it was 12 years ago.

I’m not a risk to anyone, I’m just me.

I had attended an event called ‘Communicating Justice’ organised by the Scottish Universities Insight Institute. I had shared my story with the audience about when I received a community sentence and the sheriff who I felt had played a part in turning my life around.

I was given a two-year supervision order and the judge had me back in court every few weeks to monitor my progress and assess reports from my social worker. I was originally told by a sheriff that I was facing a custodial sentence – I believe I got lucky on the day of sentencing, because I ended up with a new sheriff who spoke to me. It was the first time I had been in court and a sheriff had ever asked me anything. At the time my life was so chaotic I really didn’t care and I wanted to go to prison, as I thought that was the answer to my problems.

The sheriff told me she was willing to give me a chance to address my underlying issues and sort my life out. After a few months on my order, I eventually gave in to the changes I desperately had to make and I don’t even recognise that person anymore. I got the help and support I needed and I believe that supervision was the first step that saved my life.

At that same event I was introduced to Sheriff Wood, who is one of the sheriffs in the Glasgow Drug Court.

Sherriff Wood told me that the people he sees are given intense support and various workers from many professions are available to help them reduce their drug misuse. The offending behaviour normally take care of itself when the person is supported to recover from addiction.

I was invited to go and sit in the court a couple days later. As I went through security and down to the basement, I was stopped by two guards who asked if I was lost. I told them I was going to the drug court and that I had been invited to sit in by Sheriff Wood. One of the men said ‘I’ll show you where the restaurant is pal, because you won’t be wanting to hang about, waiting with that lot’ pointing to a group of guys waiting to go into the drug court. I was quite taken aback and I replied ‘what, hang about wae they people?’ and I walked over and sat beside them.

As I sat reeling by what the security guard had just said, a man in his early forties sat beside me and started chatting away. He told me that he was feeling nervous, as he didn’t have the best results for Sheriff Wood and that he was struggling because of his homeless situation to keep up his appointments.

I knew what that felt like, so I told him a bit about me and how I turned my life around and soon everyone in the waiting room was sharing their stories.

The court got called and I sat up the back, not sure what to expect, but after listening to the people in the waiting room I was excited to have the opportunity to see how the court ran. It was a strange atmosphere, waiting on Sheriff Wood coming out – you could feel the nerves from people who were waiting to go up.

First up was a graduation! The man was in his forties and had long battled with drug misuse. Sheriff Wood congratulated him, praised his hard work and told him he understood how hard that order was for him, and then the guy spoke about all the support he’d had and thanked everyone who had helped him. Sheriff Wood then came down from the bench and met the man in the middle and they shook hands as Sheriff Wood handed the guy a certificate. The room erupted with clapping and cheering, it was an experience I will never forget. I wanted to get up and give the guy a cuddle, he had tears of joy running down his face. The atmosphere in the room instantly changed and I could hear people saying things like ‘I hope that’s me next year’ and ‘aw I canny wait till I’m there’.

The next few people up were people who were doing well on their orders. They were congratulated and told to keep up the good work – I watched in awe as Sheriff Wood took his time with each person and was even joking with them. A young guy’s girlfriend had just had a baby and Sheriff Wood shared a personal story with him about becoming a granddad. The guy and Sheriff Wood agreed that his commitment to change will mean the baby will have a good outcome in life.

I was blown away with the compassion Sheriff Wood had and the way the men and woman engaged with him. But at the same time Sheriff Wood was no pushover. He knew if someone was at it – there was no fooling him. I think the court works so well because it’s up to the person to be open and transparent about their recovery and they must make the first steps to do so. They must accept the changes they have to make – the team around them, and Sheriff Wood, are there to make sure that the support is in place for them to do so.

The thing that really struck me the most was the respect the people had for Sheriff Wood. Most of them didn’t want to let him down because of the relationship he had built with them. People on DTTOs knew how hard their journey was going to be, but they became dedicated to change because they were given the chance to.

I’m not taking away the fact that people need to be punished, because laws are there for a reason. But what if there were more sheriffs like Sheriff Wood and more drug courts and more resources to help people?

Changing your life around and walking away from a life that you have always known is a sentence in itself. Committing to change takes real strength and Sheriff Wood gets that. He wants the people that walk into his court to have better lives and he believes they will. That’s the first step in change – having someone that believes in you when you don’t believe in yourself.