David Snider

(2022)

Owning our Story

Several years ago I was asked if I'd be willing to share my story with High School students as part of a program called "Choices". I was honored and felt blessed to receive this opportunity. Throughout all of my years of incarceration and addiction, I had always hoped for a chance to finally give back, and now here it was. When I began to reflect back on the things I would say, I realized how much time I had spent trying to forget my past. I was now faced with not only re-living but now sharing the very choices and mistakes I'd made that had caused so much shame and guilt in my life. Even worse, my story would reveal the pain and suffering that I had inflicted on those that I would be "professing" to love so much. I felt like a hypocrite, like I hadn't earned the right to share such intimate details of a past which I had yet to be forgiven. Despite these feelings, I committed and vowed to be completely transparent and honest no matter what the outcome would be.

I'm on my thirteenth year in Federal prison, and I've seen some things, but I can't remember anything as terrifying as that group of sophomore kids sitting in front of me when I was about to speak for the first time. I thought they were going to tear me apart. I am happy to say that I did survive, and even better, I was pleasantly surprised at how genuinely curious and inquisitive the students were. They continued to ask great questions all the way to the end of class. Ironically, it seemed like the worst parts of my story had the biggest impact on them.

After we left, the students were given an assignment to write something they learned, something that surprised them, and a new question. Some students did just that, others wrote affirmations, and a few said they can now help, or at least better understand someone close to them who is struggling with addiction. All letters were very kind, but it was the testimony of one student that would create a paradigm shift that would forever change my life. She wrote these words ...

"Someone very close to me was/is an addict. He is in total denial so he never talks about it. I never understood addiction, never knew how bad it actually was. He used to come home so mad even just saying hello to him was enough to make him violent. He left when I was 11, old enough to understand something was wrong, but not know how to deal with it. Listening to you explain how you couldn't stop, or get away from it really broke my heart. Knowing that this thing takes control of you and there's no easy way to get out of it really opened my eyes to see that he starting using because of stress, but it totally took control of him and changed his view on life. As of right now I don't even know if he is ok, or how he's doing. I didn't even know he did drugs until about 2 months after he left. I found a note saying having a kid was not how he wanted to live his life, that "I" ruined everything for him. By now I'm sure you know that I'm talking about my Dad. None of my friends know, none of my family. I haven't spoken to him in a long time. My sisters know him as the Dad that was happy one minute, and then sad. They have no idea what my life was and is like. Every day I have lived with the burden of thinking it was my fault. That changed when you came yesterday, explaining your stories of how hard it is to stop. That you kept going back. Thank you."

Victor Frankl teaches us that the last of our human freedoms, the one that that cannot be taken from us, is the ability to decide within ourselves how something is going to affect us. Between what happens to us, and our response to it, is the freedom or power to choose our response.

Every time I read this student’s testimony, it breaks my heart. What a powerful lesson for all of us. For several years of her young life, she lived with thinking everything was her fault. Then one day she was able to see things through a different lens, and with courage, and strong independent will, she chose to release herself from the burden she had been carrying and move forward with her life.

By allowing our past to dictate our present, and therefor determine our future, we continue to not only hurt ourselves but even worse, we re-victimize those we care so much about. Our potential is held back by a diminished self-esteem and lack of confidence. This limits our ability to confidently strive to grow and become the best versions of ourselves. The versions of ourselves that we can and should become.

Habit 2 of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People reads, Begin with the End in Mind. This means to begin today with the image, picture, or paradigm of the end of your life as your frame of reference, or the criteria by which everything else is examined. It's knowing where we are now so that the steps we take are always in the right direction. We can never fully live this habit and see a clear picture of our future if part of us continues to live in the past.

Moving forward with our lives means taking ownership for a part of our story that has already been written and should no longer define us. Owning my story makes it just that, my story, my past, a part of my life that is over but continues to give me strength to do better every day. It allows me to have victory over self, to more thoroughly fulfill the many roles I play in my life and to live by new set of values and principles which I stay accountable to thanks to my mission statement. Llving by the words I created allows me to give more fully of myself to those I love while hopefully contributing to the lives of others along the way. My mission statement is a work in progress, but in short it says: "Live a life of value and purpose. Seek to reveal and instill value and purpose in the lives of others, because they are worth it. Be kind and compassionate to those I encounter; loving them unconditionally because I may never fully know the struggles others face in their lives".

At the very beginning of habit 2, we are brought to our own funeral. Four people from different parts of our lives will be speaking our eulogy. We are told to close our eyes and think deeply about what we would want each of them to say about us, about the roles we've played, our character, and about the life we lived. How would you want to be remembered?

Here at FMC Rochester, whether as companions, hospice volunteers, orderlies, or just friends, we've seen many of those around us in their final days. It seems that our feelings about the people we've become and the lives we've lived are often reflected in our death. I've seen the peace, contentment, and sometimes even joy from those who have made amends for the lives they've lived. I've also witnessed the prolonged pain and anguish from those still suffering from an unresolved past. I've heard their cries and prayers for forgiveness to family members long estranged. Guilt and shame harbored for so many years of their lives finally coming to the surface at the very end.

More important than how you want others to remember you is how do you want to be able to reflect back over your own life in your final days? We alone have the freedom to choose how we are going to respond to any given situation in our lives. Whether it's a minor situation from today, or the long prison sentences we serve. No one can take that freedom away from us. Our stories up to right now have already been written. The stigma from our pasts should no longer define us. Stop looking backwards, we're not going that way. Rather, we are moving forward with our lives. Deciding to be more than merely characters in our own stories. When we are ready, we get to become the authors of our lives. The rest of the book is ours to write.

-D. Snider