Owning My Past Without Excuses by Mark Edgington

At 17 years old I made a terrible mistake. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and because of that, I spent my twenties behind bars. Formative years most people spend building careers, relationships, and families. I spent mine learning how to live with myself.

Prison has a way of stripping a person down to the studs. There’s nowhere to hide from who you are. And what I found in that place was not a sense of victim-hood, but a persistent urge to become someone better.

I didn’t walk out of prison a finished man. I walked out humbled. I walked out determined to live a life that might, in some small way, counterbalance the pain I had been a part of.

Since then, I’ve tried to build instead of destroy. I’ve tried to give instead of take. Whether through service, volunteering, mentoring at-risk youth, or simply showing up for people, I’ve poured my energy into being useful.

I never set out to run for office to erase my past. In fact, I ran because of it. Because I believe people who’ve seen the system from the inside; the justice system, the prison system, the social and moral consequences of bad choices, have something real to offer.

Owning my past doesn’t mean excusing it. It means living with it. Building from it. And refusing to let it be the only thing that defines me.

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Mark Edgington

This article also appears on https://medium.com/@edgington.teams