Here we are December 2025 and my 31st year of incarceration. Had you asked me when I began my sentence how I’d feel come the year 2025, I might have passed out. Just the thought I could still be incarcerated 31 years later might have sent me seeking a high ledge.

Yet, here I am. You want to know something? I feel optimism and gratitude in this moment. I am grateful because time sanded away all the rough edges of my ignorance and immaturity, leaving a man with direction, understanding, and purpose. My time on the inside has opened my eyes.

I know many of you know this about me having followed my journey for years. I am grateful to all of you, knowing that my life is worthy of interest and inquiry. Because of you I thrive and find meaning and purpose.

To the many new readers who have discovered me, thank you for taking time out of your lives to follow mine and those of other writers here.

2025 has been an amazing year. The universe reflects back upon us that which we send out into it, and I want to share a little with you that has come back to me.

In May and for the third time in as many years, I spoke in front of hundreds of people at Harmony’s annual Sunflower Arts and Music Festival held at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. The festival brings together three prisons — two men’s, one women’s — for a day long event  celebrating our shared humanity and common bond. On YouTube visit the channel: HarmonyProjectOnline. There you will find the incarcerated men and women of Harmony, along with the amazing people of Harmony and supporters (free world and within Ohio Corrections). You will also see me in several videos!

The Harmony Project visits my prison once a week and for an hour we sing and share in community. For that hour I literally forget that I am in prison. Harmony’s volunteers are heaven sent and although Harmony is nondenominational I can’t help but think of these words from the Bible:

   “Be sure to welcome strangers, for in so doing you may have welcomed Angels unaware.”

If there are Angels among us, I know who some of them are.

This summer I was accepted into Kindway Embark’s highly coveted and respected faith based reentry program (Google: Kindway Embark of Columbus, Ohio). We meet twice a week for fellowship and discipleship. Kindway Embark’s volunteers are amazing, caring human beings that I am grateful are a key part of my life. I look forward to coming back into Ohio’s prisons with Kindway Embark someday as a volunteer. I want to spread the same hope to Ohio’s incarcerated men and women that I receive when these volunteers are here. If you are with Kindway Embark thank you from the bottom of my heart.

My voice continues to thrive and as a writer 2025 was a good year. I saw my work in numerous publications most notable Prison Journalism Project; Inside; Exchange; and publications at Columbia and Cornell universities.

My personal mission to draw awareness to incarceration borne PTSD (ibPTSD) continues to gain traction with new contacts in academia and nonprofits; and I discovered and joined an amazing writers group consisting of some of the most accomplished incarcerated writers in the country. It’s no secret I live to write and write to live.

I have only begun. Upon release I shall go from incarcerated writer to founder and editor of my own organization dedicated to magnifying the journalism, writings, and lives of America’s marginalized incarcerated people. Nobody knows the hidden truths of incarceration — and can shed light on them, for we have lived it first hand — better than current and formerly incarcerated people.

Most importantly an organization founded and staffed by formerly incarcerated people know the Unknowables that free world editors can only dream of knowing. Everyone else is on the outside of the birdcage looking in.

When I read the works of history’s most notable incarcerated people, such as Oscar Wilde or Nelson Mandela to name a couple, I feel a shared bond and understanding for our experience transcends distance and time. I truly know and that is why every incarcerated writer has ever put pen to paper.

I am happy to announce the publication of my newest book, “Reflections From Behind the Wall” (ISBN 979-8262373062). It is now available on Amazon. It contains hundreds of selected essays and posts from May 01, 2021 thru September 2025 written by myself and men and women incarcerated across the country. My first book, “Behind the Wall: A Prisoner’s Journal” (ISBN 9798514441983) is also available on Amazon, first published in 2021. Both books are priced very low so readers may be able to afford more than one copy. Please share them with others and thank you in advance for your support. I am grateful.

I guess you can say I’m feeling empowered. My time on the inside has challenged me to be the best version of self I can be. I begin each day with my head held high and each night I rest knowing that I have lived.

There’s meaning and purpose in all that we do, but only if we choose to allow it to be. No one can take that from us.

Christopher

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Christopher Monihan is a writer, journalist, and Stillwater award recipient. He is incarcerated in Ohio.