Painstaking gardener

　　My freedom was taken away when I was accused of a crime that I didn't commit. I was uh locked up by a sentence to death. I couldn't leave. I couldn't be with my loved ones. I had two young children. My son was nine. My daughter was ten months old and all that was taken away and I hadn't done anything. My husband, unfortunately he was executed again for something we didn't do. He didn't just die when they put him in the electric chair and he caught fire because the electric chair malfunctioned. And at that point when our our daughter, who had been ten months old, was then about fifteen, when she heard how terrible the execution was, she tried to take her own life.

　　And I was helpless to part and I wished for that freedom to be there. I thought that if I could just be there, I could make a difference. It was in that very place when I felt the most hopeless that I realized that I still had a choice, that I didn't have to see it the way they saw it, that I was locked up prisoner waiting for them to take my life. In fact, while I still was living and breathing, I still was in charge of my life. I might not be in charge of my circumstances, but my life still belong to me, and I could still choose what I wanted to do with it and how I would live in. There's a freedom that only you can give to yourself. And that's the most important freedom of all. And so I decided that it was instead of seeing myself as a prisoner in a victim waiting for my life to be taken, I decided that it was um, an opportunity for me to do my spiritual work. I know the dishes to wash. I had no laundry to do. I had nobody to take care of. I didn't have to work. Uh, I was sentenced to death by uh, in the electric chair. So I got free electricity until so that and and so I turn my cell into a sanctuary. And I began to do yoga and meditation and prayer.

　　They chose to believe in hope rather than hopelessness. That's what they wanted me to believe. And so I actually found a freedom that I never knew before. While I was sentenced to that, while they had supposedly taken my freedom away and then finally, one day my sentence was changed from death to life, and things improved. And so finally, with the help of lawyers who work for free and friends who always believed in my innocence, I was released, but freedom wasn't, it wasn't what I thought it was gonna be. See, freedom, that kind of freedom isn't free. Who's gonna feed me? And where would I sleep? I had no money. I had this little cardboard box of stuff. That was all I owned in the world. And I was a forty five year old woman. Oh, no one was going to hire, but it forced me to go back to that the to the lessons that I learned while I was sentenced to death. And that was that there's this kernel of freedom, this essence of freedom that you that only you can give yourself. And once you find that, then nobody can take it away from you. I determined that again, I wasn't going to be a victim and live in misery and anger and fear. And those were not the legacies that I wanted to leave to my children.

　　Freedom is a gift that you give yourself, and you can free yourself from your past and from your circumstances. Not that you can change them, but you can change. How are you within those circumstances? And the main thing that I taught them is that no one can take away the freedom to love one another. I just like to leave you with um, another little song. IT's the song that if you open up your heart and let your lITtle light shine out of your heart, no one can extinguish that this little light of mine. I'm gonna let it shine this little light of mine. I'm gonna let it shine this little light of mine. I'm gonna let it shine let it shine let it shine and let it shine.