- My freedom was taken away
when I was accused of a crime that I didn't commit.
I was locked up.
I was sentenced to death.
I couldn't leave.
I couldn't be with my loved ones.
I had two young children.
My son was nine, my daughter was 10 months old,
and all of that was taken away.
And I hadn't done anything.
My husband unfortunately, he was executed,
again, for something we didn't do.
He didn't just die when they put him in the electric chair.
He caught fire, because the electric chair malfunctioned,
and at that point when our daughter,
who had been 10 months old, was then about 15,
when she heard how terrible the execution was,
she tried to take her own life,
and I was helpless to help her
and I wished for that freedom,
to be there.
I thought that if I could just be there
I could make a difference.
It was in that very place, when I felt the most hopeless,
that I realized that I still had a choice,
that I didn't have to see it the way they saw it.
That I was locked up, prisoner,
waiting for them to take my life.
In fact, while I still was living and breathing,
I still was in charge of my life.
I might not be in charge of my circumstances,
but my life still belonged to me,
and I could still choose what I wanted to do with it,
and how I would live it.
There's a freedom that only you can give to yourself,
and that's the most important freedom of all.
And so I decided that it was,
instead of seeing myself as a prisoner and a victim,
waiting for my life to be taken,
I decided that it was an opportunity
for me to do my spiritual work.
I had no dishes to wash, I had no laundry to do,
I had nobody to take care of, I didn't have to work.
I was sentenced to death in the electric chair,
so I got free electricity until then.
(laughter)
And so I turned my cell into a sanctuary,
and I began to do yoga and meditation and prayer.
I chose to believe in hope, rather than hopelessness.
That's what they wanted me to believe.
And so I actually found a freedom that I never knew before,
while I was sentenced to death,
while they had supposedly taken my freedom away.
And then finally, one day,
my sentence was changed from death to life
and things improved, and so finally,
with the help of lawyers who worked for free,
and friends who always believed in my innocence,
I was released.
But freedom wasn't,
it wasn't what I thought it was gonna be.
See freedom, that kind of freedom, isn't free.
Who was going to feed me, and where would I sleep?
I had no money.
I had this little cardboard box of stuff
that was all I owned in the world,
and I was a 45 year old woman who no one was going to hire.
But it forced me to go back to that,
to the lessons that I learned
while I was sentenced to death.
And that was that there's this kernel of freedom,
this essence of freedom, that only you can give yourself.
And once you find that,
then nobody can take it away from you.
I determined that again, I wasn't going to be a victim,
and live in misery, and anger, and fear,
and those were not the legacies that I wanted
to leave to my children.
Freedom is a gift that you give yourself,
and you can free yourself from your past,
and from your circumstances,
not that you can change them, but you can change
how you behave within those circumstances.
And the main thing that I taught them is that
no one can take away the freedom to love one another.
I'd just like to leave you with another little song.
It's the song that if you open up your heart,
and let your little light shine out of your heart,
no one can extinguish that.
♪ This little light of mine ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ This little light of mine ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ This little light of mine ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine ♪
(profound music)