...to make the best of a bad situation, and put to work everything I’ve learned along the way...
...to practice the nuance and compassion and empathy that was denied me by those eager to vilify and punish.
So I’ve been building bridges, talking to victims and vilified men and women, advocating for criminal justice reform.
But the thing I’m most proud of is Labyrinths, the podcast I created with my novelist husband @manunderbridge. I’m grateful for the opportunity to do this work and meet other survivors along the way.
And nothing gives me greater satisfaction than to know that I’ve reached someone.
It helps me shrug the hate off. To remember that it doesn’t define me.
I define me.
Season 2 of Labyrinths premieres today with episode 1 of a 5-part miniseries on infertility. In today’s episode, I bare my soul about my recent miscarriage.
I hope you’ll listen. And if you like the podcast, please consider supporting us! We’re independent and ad-free. If we had one supporter for every hundred cruel messages that come in, that would more than balance out the hate.
Yesterday, the Court of Appeals in Florence upheld my conviction for slander after I gave some emotional testimony. I came to Italy to show I wasn't afraid, to look the judge and jury in the eyes, and to hear the verdict from their own lips.
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I'd like to share with you what I told the court in Italian before they sentenced me to 3 years in prison, punishing me yet again, for the harmful actions of others, punishing me for how the police victimized me. Here is my statement (originally delivered in Italian).
"A lot of people think that the worst night of my life was on December 4th, 2009, when I was convicted of a murder I didn’t commit and sentenced to 26 years in prison. But it wasn’t. The worst night of my life was on November 5, 2007.
After four days of questioning at the police station, I spoke with my mom on the phone. I told her I was fine, that I was helping the police, but her mom instincts were telling her something was off. She bought the first plane ticket to Italy that she could.
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The cops had tapped my phone, so they knew she was coming to my aid. Soon, I wouldn't be alone and vulnerable, soon I might even have a lawyer. That was the night they decided to break me.
My mom landed in Rome while I was being interrogated overnight, slapped, yelled at, and gaslit. My phone was on the table, ringing. I desperately wanted to answer it. They wouldn't let me.
She found out from the news the next day: her daughter had been arrested for murder.
I'd been avoiding my friend Jens Söring for months. Whenever his emails arrived, I’d open a reply window and stare with dread at the blinking cursor. I no longer knew what to say to him, this man who'd spent 33 years in prison for a double homicide he swore he didn’t commit. /🧵
Jens had been convicted of murder in 1990. I had been convicted of murder nearly 20 years later. But the parallels between our cases were striking.
While studying abroad in Italy in 2007, I had been accused of killing my roommate Meredith Kercher with the help of a man I’d been dating for just a week.
One of the most unexpected blessings of having spent time in prison, and being at the center of a such a public scandal, is that so many people have reached out to me to share their own stories. And I've learned there are so many ways to feel trapped in your own life...
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Some people are trapped by poverty, some by chronic illness, some by abusive family or romantic partners, some by the expectations of their community, some by their very own vision of who they are supposed to be, a vision handed down from their parents, or of their own making.
And of course, there are so many ways to be falsely accused or perceived, and a lot of people reach out to me to share stories about that. Being falsely perceived is so destabilizing because it disrupts our narrative sense of self.
TNG Season 5, Episode 24, "The Next Phase." It has everything: mindbending sci-fi plot, political intrigue, character growth, and an unmatched bromance between @levarburton and @BrentSpiner. Allow me to explain...
A mishap from a Romulan science vessel causes Ensign Ro and Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge to become out of phase with the Enterprise. (Don't ask me how that works.) They become essentially like ghosts. No one can see or hear them. They think they might be dead.
They can walk through walls and solid objects (but not the floor...ehhh, don't worry about that!)
Remeber this poster? It hangs in Fox Mulder's office. Now I love Fox Mulder, and the X-Files, but this is a problem. Our beliefs should be divorced from our desires. Otherwise, we end up burning witches. And yet, I find myself wanting to believe in aliens...
The universe is so large that statistically, intelligent life is very likely out there somewhere. Perhaps a lot of it! But if so, where is everybody? This is, of course, the Fermi Paradox. waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-…
There are many proposed solutions, but the one proffered by the X-Files is that they're already here, they've been here, and the evidence has just been covered up (Damn Smoking Man!) Recent Navy videos and goverment statements have reignited the "UFOs are Here!" belief.