Freedom: A State of Mind

“I don’t feel I got particularly much of anything going to jail but I learned a lot.” Such are the words of Lynn R. Hartz who chronicles her experiences
in Alderson Federal Women’s Prison in her book “Club Fed: Living Inside A Women’s Prison”.

Writing is an important part of Hartz’s life. In her Charleston, West Virginia, home the former psychotherapist makes her daily bread as a freelance
writer with one novel, four works of nonfiction and numerous shorter works to her credit. During Hartz’s time in prison writing became incredibly
important because it was something to fill in the day for her and many other inmates. “As I wrote some of them would read what I was doing,” she recalls.
“And some of them helped create characters and story lines for the stuff I was working on. We had a really good time doing some creative thinking and people
liked doing that with me.”

Falsely accused and convicted of mail fraud and charged with obstruction of justice, Hartz found herself in an emotional turmoil. A contributing factor
to this was her anger with God for incarcerating her. But the experience changed Hartz’s outlook completely. “When the Spanish girls came looking
for `the woman that knows things`– that’s when I realised I had been sent.” Hartz’s life-long commitment to helping others was affirmed in prison.
She came to believe she was sent by God so she could see the system in action and attempt to change it.

As in all of us there are still a few things she figures she should have learned in prison. “One of the things I ought to have learned is to take care of
me first.”

Self reflection aside, the situation was pretty bad and Hartz did her best to make it tolerable. She coped with her eighteen months inside by looking at
it as a “holiday “.

There proved to be many other ways to have fun in prison such as performing psychic readings and looking after mangy dogs who wandered in off the street.

In her book Hartz devotes a good many pages to discussing the prison system, how it works and the people who find themselves in it and the effects on those
people. “With some of these women a big chunk of their life was missing when they were somewhere between fifteen and eighteen and they end up going to
prison. They get all this new information. They get self esteem built, they find out who they are and it changes their lives entirely. It’ss a shame
they have to live with a prison record.”

Hartz’ss reflections on freedom also included in “Club fed…” make interesting reading. In her book she writes that she found freedom long before she
left the prison. She says, “Freedom has nothing to do with the place. Freedom is a state of mind. You can choose to be happy whereever you are or you can
choose to be miserable.”