Still figuring out the best ways to spend your quarantine? Take advice from a “formerly incarcerated woman.”
In a Twitter post on Wednesday, Amanda Knox shared some helpful and useful tips on ways to best get through a quarantine, which included doing lots of sit-ups and even having conversations with your younger self.
“1: How do you think I got deez abs? Sit-ups for days! Best yourself,” she said in the first tweet.
#Quarantips from a formerly incarcerated woman:#Quarantip 1: How do you think I got deez abs? Sit-ups for days! Best yourself. Am I right, @lifeafterten? pic.twitter.com/iJ2SrItIvx
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) March 25, 2020
For her next tip, Knox shared a recipe for her “favorite prison salad.”
“2: Sometimes you don’t have access to fresh ingredients. But if you happen to get lucky and happen upon some fennel, try my favorite prison salad,” she said.
#Quarantip 2: Sometimes you don’t have access to fresh ingredients. But if you happen to get lucky and happen upon some fennel, try my favorite prison salad: pic.twitter.com/mvtuAFuIIn
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) March 25, 2020
Feeling disconnected from people? Maybe a hand-written letter will help bridge the great divide.
“3: When was the last time you hand-wrote a letter? No, email doesn’t count. Somehow, pen on paper makes the message more precious. What would you say if you only had 500 words & it took a week for them to arrive? Who would you write to?” she said in her next tip.
#Quarantip 3: When was the last time you hand-wrote a letter? No, email doesn’t count. Somehow, pen on paper makes the message more precious. What would you say if you only had 500 words & it took a week for them to arrive? Who would you write to? pic.twitter.com/KKTDVoLtPX
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) March 25, 2020
But if that fails to ease the loneliness, Knox recommends people try talking to their younger selves, a tactic she employed while serving time in prison.
“4: Feeling lonely? Uncertain? Afraid? I hear you. Something that really helped me was to have a conversation with my younger self, explain to her what she was going to experience and how she was going to survive it,” she said in her next tip.
#Quarantip 4: Feeling lonely? Uncertain? Afraid? I hear you. Something that really helped me was to have a conversation with my younger self, explain to her what she was going to experience and how she was going to survive it. pic.twitter.com/OrexwRBgaY
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) March 25, 2020
Of course, books are always useful when combatting claustrophobia.
“5: Books are the cure for claustrophobia. Some of my favorites: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Cloud Atlas, all the Harry Potters, The Psychopath Test (esp. the audio version!), War of the Encyclopaedists,” she said in her next tip.
#Quarantip 5: Books are the cure for claustrophobia. Some of my favorites: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Cloud Atlas, all the Harry Potters, The Psychopath Test (esp. the audio version!), War of the Encyclopaedists.https://t.co/FIBCU825jS
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) March 25, 2020
For her last two tips, Knox recommended that people journal and read love poems.
#Quarantip 7: Read love poems to yourself so you remember what it was like to touch people. pic.twitter.com/HMWkvGCRCh
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) March 25, 2020
Knox became an instant household name in 2009 when Italian authorities accused (and later convicted) her and her ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, of murdering her British roommate Meredith Kercher. The conviction was overturned by appeal in 2011 when evidence surfaced indicating Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede was the killer. Guede was ultimately convicted of Kercher’s muder.
In 2014, Knox was found guilty again by Italian authorities in yet another retrial. Despite Rudy Guede’s conviction, Italian prosecutors maintained that Knox and Sollecito played some role in Kercher’s death, arguing that Knox, Sollecito, and Guede murdered Kercher after she refused to become involved in a sex game. Italy’s Supreme Court overturned the acquittals, arguing that the jury did not consider all the evidence and that some discrepancies in their testimonies needed to be answered. In 2015, that conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of Cassation, definitively ruling that Knox and Sollecito were innocent of the charges.
In January 2019, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) later ordered the Italian government to pay Knox 18,400 Euros in compensation for having violated her rights. “Ms. Knox had been particularly vulnerable, being a foreign young woman, 20 at the time, not having been in Italy for very long and not being fluent in Italian,” the court noted.
Knox’s defense attorney, Carlo Dalla Vedova, argued her conviction was “probably the biggest legal mistake” Italy has seen in years.
“It is impossible to compensate Amanda for four years in prison for a mistake, said Carlo. “There will be no amount. We are not looking for compensation of damages. We are doing this on principle.”