How Starbucks Saved My Life / Michael Gates Gill
RATINGS
Overall: 5 / 5 stars
Text Level: Medium
Entertainment: High
Self-Help: High
Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Autobiography, Inspirational, Business
Page Count: 267
Is this book right for my inmate and me?
Explanation
Review By: Blackbird (Inmate)
It is never too late to start over to find your happiness.
What do we do when we are forced to start over? Is our happiness tied to the money we earn and the things we buy? Starting over from scratch is a scary thought for most adults. Having all our work and choices thrown away might seem like an insurmountable challenge for some to come back from. In this true-life story by Michael Gates Gill, we learn what the author chose to do when his life fell apart in this way.
Life in prison is all about building ourselves up and starting over again. For many of us behind bars, we have lost everything we have worked for in the process. Jobs, money, homes, and families have been lost to our legal situations. This is especially distressing for inmates that are older in life. It becomes so easy to want to give up when you are sitting in jail and thinking of having to start all over from the bottom. In jail, we are at our lowest points in life, and the climb back to success might seem impossible.
Michael Gates Gill knew only success for most of his life. Growing up in a wealthy, well-connected family in New York City, for Gates Gill, doors in life easily opened to his convenience. He attended Ivy League colleges and was hired with little effort on his part by one of the top marketing firms in the country. Through his years of work, he continued to climb the corporate ladder, with no worries of the financial success he had experienced in life to this point to ever end. Then, one day, he found himself out of work with no money, a young child, and a stack of over-due bills. The only place he could find work was an average Starbucks store. Through that cup of coffee, he learned about himself and life in ways that changed him forever.
What if life doesn’t have to end with incarceration? Even if our sentences are long, the chance for a fresh start begin with every moment of the day. Our dreams might have to change from our original plans, but new dreams are always available to us if we work for them. In the restart of life, we have a chance to show our worth to ourselves. With each start, we are gifted with knowledge and wisdom from our past mistakes. Like Gates Gill, we can be happier in life than we ever thought, if we push through the fear of the unknown of beginning again. As we start with self-reflection, we have the chance to gain more each time towards our new dreams.