🇺🇸 Each day this Memorial Week, we’re sharing the words of a living veteran. Someone who served their country and is now incarcerated, waiting to be seen, heard, and remembered. These are real voices from our waiting list. Real people. Still here. Still hoping.

We hear it often:
“He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would end up in prison.”

But what does that even mean?

This Army veteran, Alex, is a writer, educator, lifelong learner, and lover of books, pugs, cinnamon, and Golden State basketball. He helps fellow incarcerated people learn to read and do math. He quotes Hermione Granger and Joel Osteen, adores coffee and books, believes wit and humor are essential, and is “not really getting the hype behind Russian literature. Or Twilight.”

From prison, he writes this:

To treat a person inhumanely is one of the most awful acts there is. To do so is violence; you reduce a person to a thing.

FACT: Incarcerated veterans are twice as likely as other prisoners to experience PTSD, and they’re often punished instead of supported, treated like liabilities instead of human beings with stories, skills, and scars. Access to trauma-informed care and therapy inside prison remains rare, and often, nonexistent.

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Alex is doing everything he can to grow, give back, and stay human in a place built to erase him.

I am not cruel. I am not arbitrary. And I am rarely unfair.
I am never afraid to apologize and am quick to laugh, even at myself. In fact, often at myself.
I am looking for friendships that are qualitative, not quantitative.

📬 Want to do something about it?

The veteran who shared these words is on our waiting list and could really use a friend.
If you’d like to get connected, or even just send a note of encouragement, contact us and mention his name. We’ll take care of the rest.