Ask the Doctor-
Ask the Doctor is a weekly advice column written by, renown Streetologist D.Jay bka- Demond A. Jackson. He considers himself a hoodlosopher who’s received his degree’s from the school of ‘Hard Knocks.’ Mr. Jackson is the founder of the MENSTOP- re-entry program at U.S.P Atwater. D.Jay has been parachuting in and out of the penal system since a teen. Therefore his mentor and counseling skill amongst ex-felon are paramount compared to most. His philosophy is “experience is some times the best teacher” and “Each one.. must teach one.” Therefore if the problem involves a ex-felon be it romance, emotional, family and ect. He has some advice that will lead one to the solution.
Dr.Jay,
I’ve been out for now for six month after a serving a 18 year sentence. I’m currently sharing a home with my girlfriend who held me down for the majority of my bid. My girlfriend is the primary bread winner in the house, caring for me and her two daughters. I’m currently working a part-time job at a warehouse, but the money I’m making after taxes is barely enough to cover our mortgage. My girl is a beautiful women who isn’t complaining, yet I feel she deserves more from me as her man. I’m starting to feel less than a man and I’m contemplating getting back in the game. So I can do thing for her and take her to places that her other friend husband and men do for them.
Signed S.Dot , Caught between a rock and a hard place.
Dear S.Dot,
One of the biggest problems, I see amongst men who have been incarcerated for a extensive amount of time is… their ability to lose sight of where they came from quicker than it took them to leave their past circumstance. You just spent 18 years under the “primary care” of the penal system. A system where most of the people who run it don’t care two cent about you and or what your going through. Yet you never had any hang ups about who was paying for the light bill, water bill and putting a roof over your head. But when the woman you love (and obviously this women loves you.) is doing it, you experiencing a emotional complex about your manhood. How quickly we forget about the place you just left. Where the most money you made at your institutional job was $50-to-$60 dollars and how contributing that hard earned money to anything that would make your girlfriend smile, would fill you with immeasurable amounts of joy. (Remember that!) It took you 18 years to know and experience what it feels like when one believes he is less than a man functioning as a law abiding citizen. Men around the world go through this everyday simply because it what some men must face as productive hard working citizens.
Because they know by way of your past experience that getting in the game could cost them the rest of their live’s be it in the grave or in the penitentiary. Therefore my advice to you is: Stop allowing your momentary emotional struggles i.e. ‘Ego’ to cause you to make a decision that will potentially hurt the woman you love and devalue all that you has been through and should know. Those two little girls deserve to have a man in their immediate life who will show them the meaning of what a man is when face with adversity and you can be that man. Simply put, no one should sacrifice 18 years of their life in search of freedom and six months later even contemplate placing it in jeopardy.
” Freedom is not a liberty that every being will experience. Yet struggle by one means or another is promised to all living things…”
That being so, the man who faces his struggles with intelligence, poise, and strength is far ‘more a man’ than one who doesn’t. Your in my prayers S.Dot and I know that you can and will persevere.
Much love and Respect, Dr.Jay
I'm the son of an African American queen, born and raised in Los Angeles California, where I was groomed in its infectious gang culture. For the past decade and half, the federal Bureau of Prison has been a institution of self-education, self-evaluation and the reason I now possess knowledge of self. That being so, I now strive to expose the solution to the problems that our plaguing our communities, America's youth and this country as a whole. There's a saying: "There's nothing new up under the sun." Simply put, if there's one thing in this universe existence, that has seen all thing that mankind has done or not done, it is the sun. That means the moral dissension that taking place currently is nothing new. Historian have written about times where the moral fabric of a nation was so tattered where the only solution for change was war a destruction. This country was built and establish to be the nation it is today. By the disenfranchised, those who were being oppressed by the Queen and her fellow Aristocrats. Therefore if this country is to change once again for the better. It will begin and must begin with the actions and the voice of the disenfranchised i.e, America's minorities, poor and it's third class citizen the American Ex-felon. That being said I'm committed to "WRITING MY WRONGS..." and sewing seed of knowledge and truth that will blossom into peace, prosperity and positive change
Writing Contact:
DEMOND JACKSON #05934-088
FCI Victorville Medium II
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
PO BOX 3850
ADELANTO, CA 92301