After I was convicted of murder and sentenced to 26 years in prison, when the earth dropped out from beneath me and global shame rained down on top of me, I had my first ever epiphany.

I didn’t know what an epiphany should feel like, but it was. . . cold. Like a clear breeze blowing in and brushing the back of your neck, making your hair stand up. I knew something deep down that I hadn’t known before, and I spent the next several months peering into that epiphany, trying to consider all of its implications, like watching the ripples spreading out from a drop in a pool of water. …

The epiphany itself didn’t feel good or bad. It just was. If there was a feeling, it was the feeling of clarity: my life was sad. I was in prison for a crime I hadn’t committed. I would be locked away for the best years of my life. I would never fall in love, have children, pursue a career. My world would be so small, trapped within concrete walls and surrounded by traumatized people, many of whom were a danger to themselves and others. This life would inevitably take me further and further down a path that would alienate me from everyone I loved, who, despite their best efforts to be there for me, were on their own paths moving in different directions.

But—and this was the critical thing, the thing I hadn’t been able to see until that moment—no matter how small, cruel, sad, and unfair this life was, it was my life. Mine to make meaning out of, mine to live to the best of my ability. There was no more waiting. There was only now.

[Be sure to read it all. Amanda Knox was not the first victim of a tabloidized media and absurd prosecutorial fantasies — the McMartin Preschool trials come to mind here — but she may have been one of the most absurd targets of it. The way she found meaning in these tribulations is inspiring. — Ed]