Hurry up & wait: What Perryville teaches you about patience

The cycle starts long before you ever set foot inside Perryville. You get your charges. You wait for a court date. Then another. Then another. Continuances drag on for months or sometimes years and you're stuck in limbo, not knowing when your case will finally resolve.

Then sentencing comes. You're transported to Perryville. You stare out the window during the ride, wondering when you'll hear your loved ones' voices again. You arrive exhausted and anxious, ready for answers. Instead, you sit in intake for hours while they process your paperwork. Then Lumley unit for more processing. More waiting.

Finally, you get one pencil, one piece of paper, and one envelope. You write to your family. Your letter goes into the mail system. Snail mail. Days pass. Maybe a week. Eventually, your family hears from you. They write back. You wait for their response. But if you've been moved to your permanent unit in the meantime, your mail gets rerouted. It takes even longer.

Your family applies for visitation. You think you'll see them soon. Three months pass before they're even approved. Then they can only visit on weekends.

You have a legal matter. You need answers. You submit a request to see a COIII who handles case paperwork. You wait days, sometimes weeks, just to be called. When you finally see them, they don't give you answers right then and there. Everything takes time. Months go by before you get reclassified. Months before you can phase up through the system.

Nobody tells you this is how it works. You're expecting movement and answers. Instead, you're caught in an endless cycle where nothing moves on your timeline. Your family is waiting on the outside. You're waiting on the inside. The system is waiting on its own time, and nobody's in a hurry but you.

This is what prison teaches you about patience. Not the peaceful kind. The kind born from powerlessness

But here's what the system doesn't realize: all that waiting taught me something unshakeable. I learned patience, real patience, the kind forged in powerlessness and survival. I learned to wait without losing myself. I learned to keep moving forward even when nothing else is moving.

When I got out, I carried that with me. I am the most patient person I know. I don't panic when things take time. I don't fall apart when answers don't come fast. I don't give up when progress feels impossible. Nothing can take that from me.

There are no obstacles I can't move through because I've already moved through the hardest one. I have the patience to do anything flawlessly. That's not something prison gave me. It’s something I built inside those walls and brought home with me.

Hurry up and wait taught me how to wait like a woman who knows she's unstoppable.