You Are Not Alone!
Created by Luke Hundley
Anyone who needs to know, you are not alone.
Experience has taught me that life burns with an intensity of heartbreaking beauty and overwhelming pain that mere words can only whisper of. The most courageous act we humans ever commit is being born and seeing it through. I believe the questions, the confusion, the struggle of the journey is hard for everyone. It required a dark and difficult path for me to understand, we are all together feeling scared and alone.
The foundation years of my life were filled with chaos: addiction, abuse, neglect, poverty, and all the accompanying scars. So many years were spent feeling alone, I ran out of tears. I gave up on hope. I buried myself in territorial and compulsive behaviors. I raged against God and everything beneath His stars. I was determined to destroy every grace God gave me. I have deliberately rebelled against all authority. I have relinquished over a decade of life to incarceration, pursuing a lifestyle of self-destructive rage and addiction.
I am the father of three amazing children, who have had to encounter almost their entire lives without me. I am the husband of an absolute angel, who has suffered me and years of my selfish stupidity. I have lost loved ones while incarcerated. I have taken an innocent man's life. I have stolen from my own family. I have assaulted anyone who stood in my way. I have abused everyone who has ever loved me. This was the life I made for myself.
I tell you this because I want you to know, you are not alone. You are not alone in the ache. You are not alone in the trauma. You are not alone in the shame. You are not alone in the loneliness. There is hope for us.
Returning to prison for the fourth time, I realized that if I did not change my behaviors, this circus is what I would be remembered by. Chiseled on my tombstone by those that knew me best: "Here lies a good heart wasted on a selfish life." Not the ink I want stitched into the heart and mind of my wife, my children, my species, my God.
So I prayed.
"God, I don't want to be here. I am tired. I hate prison. I hate myself. I hate the past. I hate all the trauma and regret lurking there. I hate feeling like the failure sobriety reminds me I am. I don't understand your process, but I don't trust mine anymore. I give my life to you. Please God, help me."
Deep in self-reflection, I searched. I can be here and now, maybe even design and hope for a better tomorrow. But what about yesterday? What am I going to do with all these bleeding memories? Humbled by desperation, I discovered 'The Art of Soulmaking.' The insights therein awoke my soul to purpose, to gratitude. Not just an intellectual understanding, but a comprehensive resonance.
We are all in this together.
For many years my wife, whose own story of tribulation and resilience is heroic, has patiently and compassionately loved me. When I read about adversity being a battle-trained horse, about spiritual alchemy, about the becoming of a Shaman, the amplitude of her life and her love became clear to me.
When those that have walked in darkness and found the light decide to remember those of us still lost in the darkness and help us by sharing themselves, the love of God becomes knowable. It becomes real. To know we are not alone may be the greatest gift we can give each other.
The passage about the goal being incarnation, not ascension, illustrated the value of having experienced adversity to me. Ascension, leaving the world and everybody in its shadow behind in darkness so I can go live alone in the light is to miss the point. It's not about me, it's about us.
Love and grace from others introducing me to hope, to belonging, to purpose, teaches me the significance of being a vessel of experience and inspiration that incarnates down from the realm of God into the hearts and minds of all those beautiful and broken children still wandering around in the belief that they are alone, that they are forgotten, that they are unloved and unlovable, that adversity and trauma and regret means they failed.
As others like The Unconditional Freedom Project extend insight and hope to me, I am invited to extend that love to others. To keep it, I have to give it away.
When I remember living there, that feeling, the suffocation of suffering, I am compelled to help others escape that place. If I can share my experience and inspire even one soul to believe that they are not alone, I will have lived a worthwhile life.
I see them and I feel them and I remember, they are me.
We are not evil, we are afflicted.
So if I possess the articulation to convey any message through the darkness from me to you, I want you to know, you are not alone. You and I may never meet, but I know you, and you know me, and I know this, because we both know the depths of the human condition.
Whenever you are cast into doubt, remember the experience of drifting into your favorite songs. That sense of being understood. Music is the proof that none of us are alone.
Hodaya,
Luke Hundley
Luke has been out of prison for one year as of September 2024. He was born in Kalispell, Montana in the 1980s. In the middle of a challenging childhood, Luke discovered something steady: art. He began doodling as a child and realized quickly that he had natural ability. Making things became a refuge.
In Luke’s own words:
My mother struggled with alcoholism and depression. When I was 12, she shot herself with my .22 cal pistol a few days before Christmas. She survived the gunshot wound to the lungs; however, the mother I knew was gone. She was never the same after that. Neither was I.
I searched for control or escape. I found it in painkillers. I became addicted to OxyContin. One Friday evening, like a thousand others, I drove my girlfriend and her two children to rent movies. While driving there, someone stepped out in front of my car. After the car came to a stop, I immediately called 911, then ran to his aid. The details of what I experienced next, and the scar it has left on my soul, is better left unsaid for now. He did not survive. I was charged with negligent homicide and sentenced to prison.
Throughout all of this, I did a lot of deep reflection and the objective truth is, I am deeply enmeshed into my periphery and everything in it. I realized how every decision I made created waves and ripples that plug into eternity, and that I was responsible for said waves and ripples. It took blood on the surface to get me to see the wounds that lie deep underneath.
All of this clarity emphasized what drugs had taken from me—everything. The magnitude of self-deception was embarrassing. So I wanted to make it really clear to myself, and any other that has been down that road, not to forget what rampant drug addiction costs—it costs everything, even life itself.
I know the almost overwhelmingly beautiful experience of getting to truly connect with others on deeper levels through the sharing of music, poetry, art, and just our journeys. To be a part of that, especially after what hurt I’ve done, is a gift and an honor. I am grateful for the opportunity. I hope we get more opportunities to share.
This past September 2024 was one year home. I intend to keep at it, as I feel a calling to it. The honor is mine.
“It has been such an honor and a privilege to get to be a part of the art of soul making. It’s given some meaning and some purpose to some of my struggle and my story. Getting to share my art with the world has also been really such an honor. It’s been like gaining a new family, a new circle of people to connect and create with. Such an honor, such an honor. Thank you so much.”