Let Your Light Shine: “My freedom was taken away when I was accused of a crime I didn’t commit. I was locked up. I was sentenced to death. I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t be with my loved ones. I had two young children. My son was nine. 1/15 #Justice4Australia

My daughter was ten months old. And all of that was taken away from me. 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 he caught fire because the 2/15

electric chair malfunctioned. And at that point, when our daughter had been ten months old, she was then 15 when she heard how terrible the execution was. She tried to take her own life. And I was helpless to help her. And I wished for that freedom to be there. 3/15

I thought if I could just be there I could make a difference. It was in that very place when I felt the most hopeless, I realised that I still had a choice, that I didn’t have to see it the way they saw it; that I was locked up, a prisoner, waiting for them to take my life. 4/15

In fact, while I was still living and breathing, I still was in charge of my life. I might not be in charge of my circumstances, but my life still belonged to me, and I could still choose what I wanted to do with it, and how I would live it. 5/15

There is a freedom only you can give to yourself, and that’s the most important freedom of all. And so I decided, it was, instead of seeing myself as a prisoner and a victim, waiting for my life to be taken, I decided it was an opportunity for me to do my spiritual work. 6/15

I had no dishes to wash. I had no laundry to do. I had nobody to take care of. I didn’t have to work. I was sentenced to death in the electric chair, so I got free electricity until that day. I turned my cell into a sanctuary. I began to do yoga, and meditation, and prayer. 7/15

I chose to believe in hope rather than hopelessness; that’s what they wanted me to believe. And so I actually found freedom that I never knew before, while I was sentenced to death, while they had supposedly taken my freedom away. 8/15

And then finally one day, my sentence was changed from death to life. Things improved, and so finally, with the help of lawyers, who worked for free, and friends, who always believed in my innocence, I was released.
But freedom. It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. 9/15

See, freedom, that kind of freedom isn’t free. Who was going to 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 45 year old woman,
whom no one was going to hire. 10/15

But it forced me to go back to the lessons I learned while I was sentenced to death. And that was that there is this kernel of freedom, this essence of freedom, that only you can give yourself, and once you find that, then nobody can take it away from you. 11/15

I determined that, again, I wasn’t going to be a victim and live in misery and anger and fear; those were not the legacies 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. 12/15

Not that you can change them, but you can change how you behave within those circumstances. And the main thing that I taught them was that no one can take away the freedom to love one another. I’d just like to leave you with another little song. 13/15

It’s a 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 going to let it shine. This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine. 14/15

This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.”

Source: “Let Your Light Shine”. Sunny Jacobs. Goalcast. (2018). 15/15 #Justice4Australia