I felt like he could only be that calm because healing had begun in his life.

Albert wanted me to tell Marie that he and Mary felt no anger toward her. They had come to love Marie as their daughter and they knew that Kevin could be difficult to live with. They knew that he had abused her.

Back in the classroom, Marie had a very big smile when I told her Albert had said to say "hi" to her!

A week later, smiling even more, she came to me with a thick envelope. Inside it were poems and writings about healing and about forgiveness. Most importantly, Marie had a letter from Albert and Mary telling her that they forgave her and continued to love her.

Since this experience, Marie has been released. She stayed out of Pine Grove for four months before she came back again. She told me that it was Albert and Mary's forgiveness that helped her stay out for as long as she did.

Marie also told me she often thought about Mary and Albert when she was with her children. She remembered how they would look after their children and she tried to copy their example.

When she first came to jail, Marie said she could not look at herself in the mirror. She felt too much hate for herself. Now, I think that because Mary and Albert forgave her, she can begin to forgive herself.

Mary still has much anger within her because of the things that have happened to her. But because of loving people like Albert and Mary, she has begun to heal and start to change.

I believe this story shows how our lives are woven together like a spider web. We are all connected to each other by experiences we have shared or people we have known. Even women very different from each other have something in common.

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I first wrote this story as part of a journal I kept last year during an action research project sponsored by the Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women (CCLOW) and funded by the National Literacy Secretariat. With eleven other adult literacy, basic education, and academic upgrading programs from across Canada, Pine Grove decided to do a woman-positive activity. The women in my class used their experience to develop resource booklets for women in crisis.