Sister Helen Prejean's Twitter account is a gift to sad hearts

2025-04-27 18:47:57admin

Caring people in 2018 spend a lot of time alternating between rage and total dissociation. Personally, there's nothing I love more than watching my soul stand outside my broken little body while it reads Twitter.

It's ... unhealthy. And as much as I love shoveling buckets of milk sauce down my gullet or drowning my sorrows in mid-90s nostalgia, sometimes you've got to actually respond to the untreated pain in your heart.

To heal my soul trauma, I head to the Twitter account of the nation's leading "Death Penalty Nun," Sister Helen Prejean.

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It's an unconventional pick, to be sure. You've likely heard of Prejean from her famous book, Dead Man Walking, which captured her experiences with two men on Death Row. Dead Man Walking was turned into an award-winning movie in 1995, featuring progressive heavyweights Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. Prejean is now considered one of the country's most prominent and powerful anti-death penalty activists.

I understand why it's not everyone's "soothing cup of tea" to hear about people on death row whose executions go violently awry. Prejean sticks to her material. Of the executions Prejean tweets about, many do end up going forward. She never minimizes the gravity of the injustice.

Still, when she's not counseling the afflicted on death row, Prejean has made time in her schedule to comfort the sad (and far more privileged) humans of Twitter. Her account exemplifies human kindness.

Recently, for example, Prejean asked her followers to list things they do to maintain hope in hard times. Prejean now responds daily, "tweet by tweet," sharing their strategies and providing her own audio response on her blog.

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Earlier this week, Prejean responded to one man who uses poetry to stay sane. She read one of his favorites, a fiercely hopeful Langston Hughes classic, out loud.

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I wish I was snarky or cynical enough to say it didn't help, but it did. A lot.

I'm feeling more upbeat! Do you want to know why?

It's because I took action. I took action alongside others. I went to the Families Belong Together rally in Billings, Montana, went there with friends and joined the throng. pic.twitter.com/TVnGrGr5Yk
— Sister Helen Prejean (@helenprejean) July 2, 2018

If empowering Langston Hughes poems aren't your thing, there's other great stuff too. I've been laughing for over a year about the Sister's chronic mix-ups with zombies from The Walking Dead.

From August 2017:

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March 2018:

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I'm holding onto that comedic gem for as long as I can.

It takes an incredible amount of spiritual strength to look America straight in the eye, see all the spectacular cruelty it visits upon its most vulnerable citizens, and still stand up straight.

Look at how much hope this one person has! She doesn't even appear to be faking it.

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She even rocks a very sporty "I'll listen" tee.

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To all my sad friends on Twitter, I encourage you to spend a little less time reading every crushing headline on Twitter and a little *more* time organizing for 2018. Soothe yourself with pasta, friends, and Prejean's Twitter account. It's not a cure-all, but kindness is in short supply nowadays. Better hold onto it wherever you can find it.

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