My first day out was surreal. Just walking out the gate, I felt the weight slip from my shoulders. I told Mum with a smile, “I’m a free man, for today.”

My heart stopped the moment I heard his voice, the panic already rising before he even said a word. “They’re deporting me,” he whispered.

So this Mother’s Day, please know we’re still here, and still holding you in mind. Always. You are always in our thoughts and in our hearts.

I wonder whether Richard’s new-found “freedom” will be just another word or, perhaps, a new-found sentence.

The biggest thing that caught me off guard when I got out to the sentenced jails was how comfortable people were just doing four or five years like it was nothing.

The handling of Aboriginal art and the ignorance around cultural significance by prisons in Victoria is appalling. This was my experience. It happened to me more than once, and no one was ever held accountable.

I don’t want to be on Centrelink – I want to work. I will cook, clean, waitress, pick up rubbish – anything. But I cannot because of a Police Check and Working with Children’s Check.

Walking out of prison without keeping up with digital advancements is like emerging from a cave clutching a Nintendo 64 while everyone else is coding in quantum and you’re still trying to pay with Monopoly money in a now cashless society.

My loved ones go about their lives, their stories unfolding; while mine is caught in an endless, irrelevant loop. I’m a ghost, haunting their lives as they deal with issues and overcome hardships, with no ability to help them.

Save the dramas, forget the muster, and if one or two people are missing, they’ll be out, charged, denied bail, and back in before the next count anyway.