Kintsugi Heroes
The Light Bulb Moment: From 17 Years Inside to Rebuilding a Life of Purpose
Holly Deane-Johns
Holly Deane-Johns spent 17 years in prison for addiction, then chose to spend her freedom helping others leave.
Kintsugi Studio
Kintsugi Heroes
Holly Deane-Johns
Holly Deane-Johns spent 17 years in prison for addiction, then chose to spend her freedom helping others leave.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
Holly Deane-Johns spent 17 years in prison across three continents. She was arrested at 20 for heroin possession in Western Australia, then at 29 in Bangkok, where she received a 31-year sentence. For a decade she remained addicted, cycling through cells and survival. Then one morning, ten months into her Thai sentence, she woke on a filthy prison floor and saw clearly what her life had become. She made a decision that day to never use drugs again, and has kept it for over a decade. She learned Thai in prison, studied in the education centre once transferred back to Australia, and wrote a book documenting her entire experience from the first day of her arrest.
Today Holly works as a youth and community worker with men leaving prison. Her clients, most facing the same addiction and homelessness she once did, open up to her in ways they rarely do with anyone else. They know she has sat where they are sitting. Her parole officer told her she would not last when she was released in 2012. She proved him wrong. Her husband, her soulmate since age 16, passed away two and a half years ago from cancer. She did not return to using drugs. She did not give up her work.
Holly wants Australians to understand that most people in prison are not bad people. Many turned to drugs to mask trauma. She advocates for her clients, fights for housing and support when the system offers nothing, and works to get her book into every prison and high school in Perth. She believes a small act of kindness costs nothing and means everything to someone in despair.
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