...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.
Father’s Day is coming up. What should I get Matt Damon?
I joke, but I do have complicated feelings about the fact that Hollywood continues to generate millions of dollars, usually without my consent or input, off the “Inspired by Amanda Knox” genre. I guess that makes me a job creator?
It’s not just this Stillwater film, but most recently, the Flight Attendant, & the Fox show Proven Innocent with Kelsey Grammer that was literally pitched as “What if Amanda Knox became a lawyer to fight for the innocent?”
The poetry world is currently in an uproar over the Feb issue of @poetrymagazine, “The Practice of Freedom,” which is devoted to the work of currently & formerly incarcerated people, their families, & those adjacent to the carceral state. Why is everyone so mad?
The editors of @poetrymagazine chose to include a poem by Kirk Nesset, who was recently released after serving 6 years in prison for possession & distribution of child pornography.
Nesset was in possession of over half a million images of child porn, including images of infant-rape. He stored & shared these images online. There's no evidence he himself produced any child porn or directly molested or raped any children.
People often assume that the worst my moment of my life was that first guilty verdict, where I collapsed in the courtroom. Or that nothing could be worse than those years trapped in a cell. They’re wrong. The worst moment of my life was my interrogation. A thread:
I was 20, I was 3000 miles from home, my friend had just been killed, the killer was on the loose, and I spoke Italian maybe as well as a ten-year-old. I was confused and afraid.
In that state, a group of seasoned adults questioned me without an attorney for 53 hours over 5 days in a language I could barely speak. And they lied to me repeatedly. They told me I was a witness, that I was helping them. A lie.