Latest / The Good People Project: Kindness, Service & Community / Second Chances & Steady Hands: Mentoring the Return Home | The Good People Project
Transcript
- I watched a man in a suit that didn’t quite fit stand outside a glass door, watching his own reflection instead of the people inside. He wasn’t looking for a job; he was looking for permission to exist in that space again. Let’s get real about what it costs to care. We talk a lot about reentry, but we rarely talk about the sheer physical exhaustion of trying to walk through a world that still sees you as a statistic. I met Marcus last month. Marcus had served twelve years. Twelve years of learning how to breathe in small spaces, how to keep your head down, how to survive. And then, one day, the gates opened. But the world outside hadn’t paused. It had moved on without him. The technology changed. The hiring practices changed. The social fabric changed. But Marcus? Marcus was still holding onto the same version of himself that existed before the bars closed. He stood outside that office building because he had an interview scheduled. Not just any interview—a position at a logistics company that had agreed to look past the background check, if only for ten minutes. I was there with him, not as a mentor in the traditional sense, but as a witness. Because mentoring someone who has been incarcerated isn’t about giving them advice they haven’t heard a thousand times. It’s about sitting with them in the trembling silence before they knock on the door. It’s about helping them remember their name when the system has spent decades stripping it away. There is a myth that if you’re good enough, hardworking enough, smart enough, the doors will open. For many of us, that’s true. For Marcus, and thousands like him, the door was locked, and the key was buried under layers of bureaucratic indifference. I’ve seen so many well-meaning programs try to fix this by offering resume workshops or mock interviews. And those things matter. They do. But they miss the heart of the issue. The issue isn’t that Marcus doesn’t know how to write a cover letter. The issue is that he has internalized the belief that he is broken. That he is a liability. That he is a problem to be managed rather than a person to be invested in. When I sit with Marcus, we don’t start with resumes. We start with memory. We talk about who he was before the cell. We talk about the skills he honed in there—the discipline, the patience, the ability to de-escalate conflict, the resilience that most of us will never need to summon. These are not deficits. These are strengths. But society has been trained to see them as threats. Our job, as the 'good people' showing up, is to help him translate those strengths into a language the modern workplace understands. To help him say, 'I can handle pressure,' instead of letting the silence speak for him. This is where the quiet work of showing up becomes everything. It’s easy to send a text. It’s easy to drop off a box of clothes. It’s hard to sit in a coffee shop for three hours while someone else shakes while they practice saying their own name out loud. It’s hard to listen to the stories of regret, of loss, of anger, without trying to fix it immediately. Marcus told me once that the hardest part wasn’t the prison. It was the freedom. In prison, the rules were clear. Wake up. Eat. Work. Sleep. No decisions. No consequences for mistakes that mattered. Out here? Every step feels like walking on thin ice. One wrong move, one missed detail, and the whole structure collapses. So we build the ice into concrete. We show up. Again. And again. Not because we have all the answers, but because we refuse to let him carry the weight alone. There’s a tenderness in this kind of service. It’s not grand. It’s not viral. It’s just two human beings sitting at a table, breathing the same air, acknowledging that both of us are trying our best. And sometimes, that’s enough to keep someone from falling apart. Where does this land in your spirit? When you hear about men like Marcus, standing outside glass doors, afraid to enter? Do you feel pity? Anger? Guilt? Let’s not rush past those feelings. Let’s sit with them. Pity is dangerous because it creates distance. Anger is useful, but it burns hot and fast. Guilt is paralyzing. But empathy? Empathy is steady. Empathy says, 'I see you. I am here. You are not invisible.' I think back to that episode we did about community gardens, 'Blooming from the Dust.' Remember how we talked about how soil needs time to heal after it’s been compacted or poisoned? It doesn’t bloom overnight. You have to aerate it. You have to add nutrients. You have to wait. Mentoring formerly incarcerated individuals is exactly like that. You cannot rush the growth. You cannot force the bloom. You can only provide the conditions for life to return. And that requires a patience that feels almost unnatural in our instant-gratification culture. It requires trusting that the seed is still alive, even when the ground looks dead. Now, let’s be fiercely honest for a moment. None of this happens in a vacuum. Marcus is fighting against laws that bar employers from hiring people with records, even years later. He’s fighting against housing restrictions that make it nearly impossible to find a place to live. He’s fighting against a stigma that follows him like a shadow. We cannot mentor our way out of systemic injustice. We need policy change. We need legislative action. We need corporations to take responsibility for their role in mass incarceration. But while we fight those battles, we cannot abandon the individuals caught in the crossfire. That’s why personal connection matters so much. A policy might change tomorrow, but until it does, Marcus needs a reference. He needs someone to vouch for his character. He needs someone to tell the hiring manager, 'Yes, he made mistakes. Yes, he paid his debt. But he is also loyal, skilled, and hungry to contribute.' That human testimony can be the difference between rejection and opportunity. It’s a small thing, really. Just a phone call. Just a few words. But it carries the weight of dignity. Here’s the secret that no one tells you about this kind of work: it heals you too. When you sit with someone who has been broken by the system, you begin to see your own cracks differently. You realize that your struggles, however different, are connected by the same thread of humanity. Marcus taught me more about resilience than any book ever could. He showed me that strength isn’t about never falling. It’s about getting up every single time, even when you don’t know where you’re going. And in that exchange, the transaction disappears. There is no donor and recipient. There is just community. Just people helping people navigate the messy, beautiful, painful journey of being alive. I leave these meetings feeling lighter, not heavier. Because I’m reminded that goodness still exists. That love still works. That even in the darkest places, light finds a way. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s necessary. Take a deep breath today. Notice the air in your lungs. Notice the ground beneath your feet. You are here. You are seen. And you are part of something bigger than yourself. I’m Felicia McQuaid. Thank you for listening. Thank you for caring. Until next time, keep showing up.