In the early evening on a stormy Mardi Gras day in New Orleans, Deidre pauses to think about a question no one has ever asked her.
“What would I say to my younger self? Hmmm, that’s a good question.”
Deidre grew up in the small South Louisiana town of Opelousas, a country girl, a daddy’s girl who spent her days walking down gravel roads surrounded by chickens and cows she helped milk. Her teen years were a cacophony of trauma – filled with depression and suicide attempts. After graduating high school, she eventually married. She says that marriage was a mistake, and it eventually led to domestic violence and a first and worst offense that landed her in prison as a pregnant woman for life plus 10 years. In November 2023, she was released on parole, after serving 25 and a half years.
“What would I say to my younger self,” she repeats. “Well, I love music, and I can sing. There’s a song that Kierra Sheard made, and it talks about what you’re going to do when your back is against the wall and the chorus is ‘Hang on,’ and that’s what I would say to my younger self, I would tell her to hang on. I’m living my best life now. People don’t know me because of my past. My family and people in my life see in me something that I never saw in myself. I have had an opportunity to grow up emotionally and spiritually and make amends with myself and my family.”
While incarcerated, Deidre was the jailhouse lawyer that other inmates at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women turned to for legal advice. Law was a subject that always interested her. When she was growing up, she excelled in any subject related to history or law and she used those skills to help other incarcerated women.
“They used to say, ‘Deidre could sue an ant,’” she said. “And that’s where I learned that I have a voice.”
While incarcerated, Deidre also earned a bachelor’s degree from the New Orleans Baptist Seminary because of a pact she made with her son, now 25, who failed fifth grade twice. She promised to remain in school until he graduated high school. To fulfill her end of the deal, she received a Blackstone Paralegal Certificate and a Wolf Creek Business Growth Institute Certificate. And even though her son graduated from high school, Deidre continues to learn. She is pursuing a degree in social work from Newcomb College at Tulane University.
“I went into prison with a high school education, I left with degrees and a career and more knowledge,” she says. “When you have a quality education, it makes you look at the world you were birthed in a little bit different.”
Since January 2024, Deidre has been working as a paralegal for the Promise of Justice Initiative (PJI), a New Orleans-based nonprofit that fights for those affected by the criminal legal system. Diedre and is an integral part of the team, her supervisor says.
“Deidre bridges the worlds of prison and ‘the outside’ with what so few people understand,” says Samantha Kennedy, Executive Director at PJI. “Prisons suck up brilliant, talented, loving people who have a tremendous amount to give. Inside prisons, people hone skills and experience that are rarely used in the outside world. If they should get freedom, they are blocked from using their gifts to gain meaningful work. Deidre shows us every day who we are, both good and bad. She shows us what we lose and what we could gain if we had a different society. Every day at PJI, Deidre draws on her experience, knowledge, and skill to create more freedom and dignity for others.”
Deidre secured the job at PJI prior to her release and credits Parole Project for taking her on as a client and helping her navigate the world she returned to after two-and-a-half decades behind bars.
“Prison does not prepare you for society,” she says. “Parole Project was like a white horse, a knight in shining armor. That was my second chance, honestly, being around people who wanted you to succeed, who helped me with housing and technology, and put me through all those classes. I had a mental health team, and I learned social cues, like how to take compliments and look people in the eye when I talk to them.”
Today she speaks coast to coast on behalf of incarcerated women and is a fellow in Parole Project’s Impacted Leaders Initiative. When she is not working or giving back to her community, she spends time with her dogs, a six-year-old Shih Tzu named Blessing and a three-year-old rescue German Shepherd, named Nightmare.
Her life feels balanced and healthy and now she defines success by the peace she creates.
“Success is being able to go to bed at night and enter into a deep rest and wake up the next morning and keep going,” she says. “It’s going to bed at night and not carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. It’s believing in yourself and knowing that you must hang on.”
