The Power of Love
Exploring how healing, repair, and love show up across every area of our lives.
THEME OF THE MONTH-RESTORATION
Restoration is the quiet work of becoming whole again. This February issue of RE/CLAIMED explores how healing unfolds through love, forgiveness, creativity, community, and self-reflection. These stories remind us that restoration is not reserved for a few-it belongs to everyone.
Welcome to RE/CLAIMED Magazine
RE/CLAIMED is a digital magazine and storytelling platform created to honor healing, resilience, and transformation. It serves as a safe, empowering space where individuals from all walks of life can share their experiences, creative expressions, and lived experiences with authenticity and care. Through honest storytelling, reflection, and dialogue, RE/CLAIMED amplifies voices that inspire connection, encourage growth, and remind us that healing is possible, and that our stories have the power to transform not only ourselves, but others as well.
Subscribe for full access
.jpg)
Editor's Note
February invites us into restoration-the quiet, intentional work of putting back together what life has worn down. Restoration is not about returning to who we were before the pain, the loss, or the breaking. It’s about tending to what remains with care, compassion, and truth, and allowing ourselves to be rebuilt with greater wisdom and grace.
The RE/CLAIMED Library is a curated space dedicated to amplifying authors and their work. We invite writers to showcase their books within our digital library, gaining visibility among readers who value storytelling, lived experience, and transformation. Featuring your book in the RE/CLAIMED Library allows you to connect with a growing community, expand your reach, and have your work discovered in a space rooted in purpose, care, and meaningful storytelling.
Subscribe to RE/CLAIMED Magazine for full access to the February issue, including featured stories, interviews, creative work, and subscriber-only content. Your subscription supports independent storytelling rooted in truth, healing and restoration.
ROOTS
Today, I awoke with my spirit resolved by walking in my truth. Awakened to reclaim the identity stripped from me at eighteen with the issuance of a six-digit number, intent on detaching me from my roots. Nineteen years, seven months, and twenty-one hours later, I am awoken and vigilant, but I am not anew.
I now move within an intriguing conscious realm of knowing. Knowing that I could demolish the systematic representation of the disenfranchised simply with the seeds I am sewing. Do you now understand the offense in asking about my past, as if there has now been tutelage on where I am going?
To this, here is my answer...
I am from a lineage of warriors and legionnaires. My father raised me militant enough to fight and be of service, but also be someone revered. My mother's street mentality was the best teacher on maneuvering through life's no's while tenaciously moving without fear. Looking back, I should've listened when she dropped jewels like, "Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.” It's because of my lineage that I carry the torch of manumitting my peers.
I am where I came from.
Let's not forget I am from a city rooted in resilience. And in the face of opposition, we stand in resistance. A city that bleeds more than it reads but thrives more than it dies. If we're talking survival of the fittest, I know where to find them... Baltimore has been churning out diamonds at a steady rate.
I am where I came from.
I am a Diamond from my lineage... Whose decisions are based on love and discernment, but never in pity. I am building a legacy of servitude dripped with antiquity. Reminiscent of a time when our ancestors' ideology was each one, teach one ingrained in empathy.
I am where I came from, and I will forever be carved into every space I go to. I am Janet Lee Johnson!
Get to
Know Janet Johnson
Janet Johnson is currently incarcerated at Maryland’s Correctional Institution for Women. She was sentenced to 25 years to life, with the possibility of parole, after being incarcerated at the age of 18.
Now 37 years old, Janet has worked diligently to become the woman she is today. She graduated from Goucher College with honors and spends her time writing poetry, tutoring fellow incarcerated women, and training to become a peer specialist.
Janet is hoping for release under the Maryland Second Look Act, which took effect in October 2025.
CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE SENTENCED TO LIFE IN PRISON
Authored by: Jakobe Jenkins
Children Should Not Be Sentenced To Life In Prison
Society must no longer remain passive while children are condemned to spend the rest of their natural lives behind bars. This is a senseless practice that defies reason, betrays justice, and deepens racial wounds. It contradicts everything known about adolescent development, undermines the very purpose of rehabilitation, and perpetuates systemic inequities that target the most vulnerable. This is not merely a policy failure; it is a moral crisis. The public cannot simply comprehend or sympathize with these injustices; individuals must embody the conviction that children deserve a chance to grow physically, emotionally, and mentally. Every child deserves the opportunity to heal and to be redeemed. Change cannot be left to hope or delayed by fear—it must be demanded through legislative action, judicial courage, and community resolve. Children should not be sentenced to life in prison because to do so is a failure of compassion, a distortion of fairness, a perpetuation of bias, a rejection of societal values, a surrender to vengeance, and it is the collective responsibility of society to ensure this truth becomes law, not just belief.
