How consistency, sincerity, and the Life Learning Program helped Michael discover his worth.
Before change came, Michael describes himself in simple terms: “selfish, real selfish.” Sitting in a small county jail cell, he wasn’t looking for transformation. In fact, when volunteers first began showing up, he tried to push them away.
“I used to turn the TV up,” he remembers. “I used to ask crazy questions…just to try to throw ’em off.”
Michael didn’t expect anyone to stay. But they did.
He says what stood out wasn’t a speech or a lesson—it was “the sincerity.” The men kept coming back. They didn’t argue. They didn’t react to his attempts to distract them. They didn’t give up.
“They just didn’t give up.”
That consistency changed something in him. More than anything, Michael says, they “didn’t…look at me like the person that I thought I was.” In a place where shame can define you, being seen differently can begin to reshape identity.
It was in that same jail cell that Michael says everything shifted. “I ended up getting saved in that cell in oh four,” he shares. He describes it as a moment when God revealed to him who he truly was—and that “somebody died so I could live.”
“The only thing I could really do was cry.”
For Michael, that response wasn’t small. He explains how difficult it is for men—especially in prison—to show emotion or admit vulnerability. “Prison is not a place at all to where you ask for help,” he says. It’s not a place where you tell another man you’re hurting.
In the environment he grew up in, he was taught not to show emotion. “You don’t show emotions, you don’t cry…as a man, you don’t do that.” Love itself, he says, is “a hard word”—one that was difficult to grasp because he “didn’t know what love was” growing up.
Today, as part of the Life Learning Program at Westville, Michael sees something different around him. He describes “a lot of genuine men” who are “looking for the right way to live” and “looking to fix their self.” The culture he once knew—where vulnerability was weakness—is being replaced by something stronger: accountability, humility, and unconditional love.
“That’s what we need as men…to be Christlike…he loved unconditionally.”
Michael says the Life Learning Program provides something rare inside prison walls: space. Space to speak honestly. Space to feel. Space to grow.
“This place gives you a place that you can do that.”
His story is a reminder that transformation often begins with presence. With volunteers who don’t give up. With a program that makes room for men to confront their past and build a different future.
Watch Michael’s Story
You can hear Michael share his story in his own words here: https://youtu.be/TpuPHfilSPY
