When I began this piece, the entire state of Michigan was covered in a grey, smoky haze. The sun was red in the midday sky. Sure, we blamed Canada, but it doesn’t help that we have been living in a political dumpster fire here for decades.

For the past seven years, we have had women firmly seated in the most coveted, hardest-fought, tippy-top political thrones in our state. Our current Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, and the Director of the Department of Corrections are all female.

You would think we would have something to boast about but, alas, we do not.

For much of my time as a lifelong voter in Michigan, criminal justice and prison policy were not my top concern. “Bad” people and the condition of our twenty-five prison complexes were small matters compared to the sexier ones—you know—taxes, education, healthcare, abortion, and the damn roads. *If you don’t live here, you’ve no idea how much we bitch about the roads.

While I assure you I do have strong convictions about each of the aforementioned topics, I will immediately drop them to align with Dostoevsky now:

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

In 2020, I became the mother of a man imprisoned by the State of Michigan, and was thereby forcibly shoved belly to belly and nose to nose with a big State Bully intent on breaking my family—no holds barred.

Though he was sentenced at 22-years-old for non-violent crimes and transferred in as a first-time offender, the ‘treatment’ he received was akin to medieval barbarism. Our female Director of the Department of Corrections, Heidi Washington, could have cared less.

Five years later, he has returned home with PTSD and no functional rehabilitation nor skill improvement (unless you count fighting, bartering, and general MacGyver survival skills). We are now working full-time every day to see him healed and more functional in the world as a result of his time in MDOC—and many days it is not going well.

When I dare to swerve into this discussion with friends, they ask me what I think can or should be done to “change the system” in order that it become more and better focused on tangible, meaningful rehabilitation. They ask me not only as a justice-impacted woman, but because I am also a mental health professional. The answer is not that deep. It does not require experience nor degrees—

“VOTE ACCORDINGLY,” I always say.

“But how do we know who to vote for?” they plead.

Fair question.

For that, I set out to create a decision tree.

In May, I put my ear to the ground and started listening for murmurs of what our Gubernatorial candidates were saying about criminal justice and prison matters here in Michigan.

Beyond the sound bytes, I became more interested in their records, their social media posts, and their personal experience with the carceral system. At some point in the listening, I thought of you and decided to take on the role of an amateur investigative journalist with my zoom lens pointed solely at positions on prison and parole policy. After seven long years of flaccid leadership, I say cue the t-shirt cannons and dance floor.

It is time to vote, and vote accordingly.

The Michigan Primaries will be held tomorrow, August 4th. If there is anything you can do to help my family and the other 50k people like us, please vote.

One Candidate Cared

To gather source information, I sent out a formal, standardized questionnaire to each of the (then) registered candidates. I also contacted their press and campaign contacts with follow-ups, where available. I asked each of them the same questions, as follows:

1. What do you believe is the primary purpose of incarceration?

2. Do you support prison reforms, and if so, what changes would you propose?

3. Do you support good-time credits for incarcerated individuals who complete educational, vocational, or rehabilitative programming?

4. What is your position on Michigan’s Truth-in-Sentencing laws? Would you support maintaining, modifying, or repealing them?

5. Do you support the expansion of family visitation opportunities and communication access for the incarcerated people in Michigan?

6. How would you address the current concerns about healthcare and mental healthcare access inside MDOC facilities?

7. Do you support independent oversight and/or increased transparency within the Michigan Department of Corrections?

8. What is your approach to reducing recidivism?

9. Do you support expanding parole considerations for elderly, medically fragile, or terminally ill prisoners?

10. If elected governor, what would be your highest priority related to Michigan’s prison system within your first term?

    ---

Since I began my investigation, three candidates have dropped out of the race including— Republicans Mike Cox and Aric Nesbitt, and Democrat Mike Duggan. That was a lot of work I did not need to do and I offer mad respect to journalists who have to cut entire weeks of work on the fly.

That leaves us with four “hopefuls.”

On the Republican side, we have the current House Rep John James and businessman Perry Johnson. On the Democratic side, we have to choose from our current Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Genesee County Sherriff Chris Swanson.

In full transparency, only one of these campaigns responded directly to me.

And, while you might think I would never consider a sheriff as a viable candidate to run my state— you know, given that their business is locking people up and mine is shedding light on how defunct and dysfunctional the criminal justice system is—life is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

I had planned to offer you a full non-partisan matrix of personal voting records, public statements, and career experience for each candidate. I will no longer be doing that—time is short and we don’t need to belabor this thing. We vote tomorrow.

Let me spare us all the time and energy and cut to the chase:

I am fully endorsing Chris Swanson for Governor of Michigan.

And here’s why:

Firstly, he responded directly to me—the identified mother of a prisoner. I have chatted with a member of his staff via email, and he was kind and met my deadline with generous and expanded answers to every one of my questions.

Secondly, he isn’t just throwing out talking points.

As Genesee County Sheriff (since 2020), Chris Swanson started and maintains the ground-breaking I.G.N.I.T.E program at one of the most notorious jails in our state.

I.G.N.I.T.E stands for Inmate Growth Naturally and Intentionally Through Education. It’s core mission is “to break cycles of generational incarceration and reduce repeat offenses (recidivism) through structured learning.”

This program has been studied and cited by such institutions as The University of Michigan (Go Blue!), Harvard, and Brown University. I.G.N.I.T.E is so effective that it has been expanded to the National Sheriff’s Association offerings which can be found HERE on their website.

This initiative is changing lives, it is impacting people like my son, and it is altering the discussion around the purpose and effectiveness of incarceration.

Lastly, Chris is one of us. Not an elite, and not part of the establishment.

He is my age, a GenXer, raised in a working-class Michigan town and seemingly still Salt of the Earth today. Check out his Instagram page, check out his campaign page, watch him on YouTube. He is giving BMX bike jumps in 1987 vibes and he reminds me of my brother in that way. Interestingly, none of the other candidates feel as close to home as a County Sheriff.

I will only say this of the other candidates: Not one has any experience nor records related to managing anything having to do with incarceration. As the MDOC budgets alone account for 15% of our tax allocations (roughly 2.2 million dollars of our hard-earned money), this should be noted.

And Jocelyn Benson— don’t get me started.

She is part of the good old girl’s club here whose husband worked (recently resigned under pressure) for the billion-dollar company responsible for getting the contract to build a massive AI data center in Saline, Michigan. She was also part of the debacles in Michigan during Covid, which some of us will never forget (and that’s all I have to say about that). Last month, she was spotted on Mackinaw Island carrying a $35,000 Hermes handbag about which her campaign lied—saying she purchased it on the island. She, very simply, did not. Not a good look, gurl.

John James seems a nice enough man (and I graduated with one of his relatives whom I adore) but with his recent Trump endorsement, I am less than enthusiastic about his stances on prison policy than I had been at the start. Notably: he is the only person of color and the only veteran running in this race which gives him unique perspectives I can respect.

Perry Johnson is all about business, and well, prison makes good dollars and cents. I have seen nothing in print or elsewhere which suggests he has ever given any thought or energy to prison matters, let alone harbor an iota of concern for change.

And there you have it. My last minute, down-to-the-wire-because-I-have-been-on-vacation endorsement for Governor. Sorry in advance for any typos.

Please, whatever you do—VOTE in the primaries. If you have a viewpoint on this election, I would love to here your take in the comments! If you are brave, tell us who you are voting for…

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By the time you read this, I will have crossed the Mighty Mac and service on my phone will have gone spotty until, moving further north, will have completely dropped off into oblivion—back to the sensibilities of 1800s, old mining towns, and (gasp!) no Starbucks nor Walgreens nor Big Box stores for hundreds of miles.

I am somewhere walking along vast shorelines, towering forests, eating thimbleberries and picking wild blueberries, gathering heavy pockets full of rocks and watching out for bears.

This is the farthest thing from prison one could imagine.

Except, it's not.

The U.P. is also home to six of Michigan's twenty-five prisons, two of them the MAX of maximum security. I will have passed more MDOC signs and transfer vans than I care to count this week—billboards featuring attractive female models posing as nurses advertising “competitive” employment within the department of corrections. Bumper stickers and flags will remind me I'm in the Land of Lock Up, of thin grey lines, of an America seemingly proud of its punishment machines.

I have many memories of standing outside on this vacation trying to get a signal to accept a pre-paid call from my son—me, in the free-est place I know, envisioning him trapped in roughly 70 square feet for 22 hours a day.

I somehow mastered the art of the quick cry during these years, learning to grieve in open spaces and keep going in spite of the gnawing stomach and pressing heartache.

Speaking of which, I was part of a spoken word slam event last weekend where ten fabulous women offered unique 4-minute chats on something they related to Freedom or Fear. We got to choose what we spoke on, and I bet you can guess what I might have picked.

I'll leave you with the recording, for your viewing ‘pleasure.’ I'd tell you to enjoy, but that's a stretch—it's hard to enjoy claustrophobia. Oh, and sorry about the reflection on my glasses. How annoying.

Please leave me a comment if you watch it. I'd really love to know what you think. See you in a few weeks! 🖤

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Before his first parole hearing two years ago, my son asked me if he could list my home as his ‘post-release’ address.

At that time, he was twenty-six years old and hadn’t lived with me since his high school graduation in 2016. He’d left then because he wanted freedom from his mom’s rules. He’d land under prison rules a couple of years later.

I felt a lot of things in the moment he asked to come back home, but if I’m honest, I mostly felt needed.

Since 1998, I have been employed and on-call as his first responder. Though his need of me has changed over time, the reflex to go get the peroxide and Band-Aid hasn’t.

I said yes to him coming to live with me, because of course I did.

In the days that followed his parole approval, I only told a few people. There were no celebratory hugs, no tears of joy, no jumping up and down.

“Aren’t you excited?” they asked.

“I’ll be excited when I watch him walk out.” I said on repeat. It became my PR statement.

My nervous system has been stuck in overdrive for years, and I could not risk any more cattle-prods to the heart. He had lost a chance at parole twice before this, and each time had left me in bed for a week. In the run-up to his release, there was never a guarantee that he would walk out of prison. There are too many variables, too many chances for him to screw it up—to have someone else screw it up (hi, cellmate who is using drugs daily).

*God bless the mothers still waiting. I am holding your hand tightly.

After a month of having him home, the celebration is still quietly unfolding—and slower than I expected.

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While we have long labeled that minority of people our Patriots and Revolutionaries, it should be noted that in 1775 they were called traitors, insurrectionists, and criminals.

Agreeing to sign the Declaration of Independence was a veritable death sentence—and the majority of other colonists said a sheepish “no thank you.” Fifty-five percent of our 18th century forbearers declared loyalty to the British Crown or chose to remain “neutral.”

And they had their reasons.

Some of our people were religious pacifists, desiring to avoid war at all costs (Hi, Quakers). Some were content to pay taxes to their beloved homeland—God save the King and all of that (Hi, New Yorkers). Some didn’t want to lose the businesses and the friend networks they had worked so hard to build (Hey there, corporate America).

Others among us just didn’t have the balls to throw tea overboard the corporate ships.

(Some things will never change)

I know we fancy ourselves to be standing on the right side of history all of the time, but mathematically, that's just not possible. The majority of our colonial families were not expressly in favor of our (now) tightly held American ideals of freedom.

Even some native tribes preferred Britain to the Patriot desire for Westward Expansion (hi, Cherokees and Shawnee)2, and some tribes thought the American Revolutionaries would protect their interests against enemy tribes.3

Honestly, we've always been a hot mess.

And what has changed?

I dare say that many of us still have no idea what we would be willing to die for if military forces marched down our neighborhood street this afternoon and demanded a stance at gunpoint.

If neutrality had prevailed, we would live in a world without a Constitution and Bill of Rights. If we go far enough down that road, there is no Ellis Island. No you and no me. Likely, no jazz music, no blues, no grunge.

A world without America has no modern baseball, no Superman ice cream, no Hidden Valley Ranch. No Colt revolver. No covered wagons. No Morse code. No Model-T by Ford Motor Company. No A-bomb. No Apple iPhone. No mass incarceration nor for-profit prisons.

My, my— that escalated quickly.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, some pretty smart people with more foresight and communal wisdom than we seem to possess wrote a profound document and then they did something—they actively put their necks on the line for concepts that they believed in. They could have stayed home and said nothing (or just kept bitching about it with friends online).

Were they perfect? No.

Are the documents perfect? Also, no.

But the people who created the United States did some incredibly difficult soul-searching and conversating and, well, fighting against what they would no longer tolerate from those who held power.

Observation and reason (Deism) was the religion of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and a host of other framers—but they errored massively in assuming that all future American generations would subscribe to reason.

If you have ever stopped long enough to listen to your contemporaries in a public place (or watched Reels or read a Twitter feed), you already know that we are much more prone to flailing about in emotional outbursts, knee-jerk intuition, or bad social habits during our twenty-first century conversations.

Reason has gone out the window here.

This week I sat in a café listening to a group of college-aged folk discuss matters of modern importance at the table next to me.

It took them 15 minutes to get through a rant about someone posting a “bad" picture of one of them on social media. As the topic moved onto internet gossip about a certain emaciated celebrity—complete with speculation about her sexuality, I felt my age. I sighed, audibly, turned up the white noise in my headphones, and pivoted my chair toward the window.

Alexander Hamilton was 21 years old at the signing of the Declaration. James Madison was 25. Thomas Jefferson was 33. So yeah—I give our colonial men and women all the honor a cynic can muster because wow, we're not exactly raising a generation of constitutional architects anymore.

For the record, I love my country.

I love enterprising spirits and sharing history with the rebel souls who refused to cue up and get in line to kiss Royal ass. And I believe that we still have a rallying spirit here. We still rail against tyranny with everything in us—even if we disagree about who the tyrants are. We still march and yell and refuse to go along with things that harm others, specifically, the “others” we care about.

And that’s about the best America has to offer.

But, friends—

No one should mistake patriotism for blindness.

When my oldest son went to prison, it fundamentally changed how I viewed my beautiful homeland.

It drove me to actually read the Bill of Rights as a citizen, not a homework assignment. I started hearing the Pledge of Allegiance differently—stopping silent at the “with liberty and justice for all" part.

Seeing my son in leg chains (for addiction) forced me to place the ideals of our founders under a proverbial microscope, to try and apply them through a new lens. I became suspicious of American history lessons and cautious about the un-tested opinions of my friends.

It altered how I vote, how I shop, how I view addiction. It definitely changed how I engage with mental health care systems and rendered me unwilling to call the police for anything less than a life or death emergency.

This season has propelled me to stop watching traditional news programming and late-night shows. I stopped liking certain loud-mouth celebrities, I stopped laughing at mindless comedians. I called my financial advisor and stopped investing my retirement the way I always had.

You see—my visits to see my son in prison forced me into rooms where Senators and House Reps sat listening to live testimony about his daily life. I learned how bureaucracy and union interests actually function in this country. I heard people in positions of power blatantly lie—under oath—with my own ears—about issues I knew intimately. If we were lucky, there were fifteen people at any given hearing.

The halls of public discourse are largely empty.

Yes, as a result of my son's lost freedoms—I wrote letters, made phone calls, launched FOIA requests. After years of observing first-hand, I have become an active, reason-loving American citizen.

My conclusion?

What we are doing with our prisons is not reasonable, my friends.

Awkward Side Note:

Did you know that American prison employees work feverishly to get an actively dying inmate off their property in order that he/she die shackled to a gurney in an ambulance or hospital? This is largely in order that the death is not recorded as in an “in-custody” death?

I could write sixteen pages about some of the hidden (and very American) abuses my family has personally experienced through my son’s incarceration journey.

In fact, I have, and you can find them in my archive.

I dare say that prior to experiencing our own life-changing-justice-related event, most of us still mirror the majority of colonial-thinking from 1775:

Status quo is good enough. Let’s not rock the boat. All politicians are corrupt—it’s all going to hell in a hand-basket, anyway. I’m moving to Great Britain. To Spain. To France.

If we aren’t busy escaping, we are too busy sitting in coffee shops talking about snaps on Instagram and speculating about a celebrity’s sexuality while reveling in the freedom and wealth required to buy a $7 coffee.

Either way, we are largely too preoccupied to engage in active political discourse in person at our Capitol and local Representatives’ offices—or even a local town hall meeting.

We are still waiting for someone else to dump the tea into the harbor. And while I would prefer to stick to telling my stories and writing a great book for publishing, it's past time to ask others to help disrupt the status quo. I often wonder what would happen if us moms of prisoners from every state banded together to write out our grievances and pen a Declaration.

I wonder what that war might look like—

“We, The Mothers and Daughters of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the Common Defense, promote the General Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Prosperity, do ordain and establish this Updated Constitution for the United States of America.”

Perhaps the next revolution looks like Xena, Joan of Arc, Wonder Woman, Sarah Connor, and the Dora Milaje riding in on horseback. That is a Crossing of the Delaware that I would, without hesitation, jump into. And no, I'm not being cute.

I will die on these hills now.

It's no longer enough to type and talk about the horrible conditions of our government-run, tax-hoarding, violent and oppressive system of confinement. We have to fight it.

This month, I am working behind the scenes on a justice-minded Voter's Guide for Michiganders in advance of the upcoming elections here. If you have an absentee ballot, and can wait a few weeks—I urge you to consider this forth-coming information before casting your vote.

I already sent poignant questionnaires to every official gubernatorial candidate (including some who have recently dropped out). I plan to shift through and order each one's criminal justice, prison policy, and law enforcement experience including their voting records as objectively as possible, and offer that in a forthcoming newsletter to Black Sheep Mom readers.

Transparency: I do not yet know who I'm voting for, but I will by the time I hit publish—and I'll openly endorse a candidate at that time. Stay tuned!

*Perhaps you are willing to join the battle and create (or know of) a justice-minded voter’s guide for your state midterms. If so, let me know and I’ll link it with mine!

Anyway, Happy rebel-rousing, my brothers and sisters. I wish you a weekend full of thoughtful discourse (and, of course, some watermelon and noodle salad). 🇺🇸

Who's coming with me?

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Ask me why.

Or don’t.

I’ll tell you either way.

As far back as I can recall, talking about my dad was a gamble. Some adult in my orbit was likely to sigh or glance over with pity or make a comment about his choices and his loss and what a shame.

I don't remember ever saying the word “daddy,” and buying a Father’s Day card was not a thing we did. Hallmark didn’t offer a version of “I love you, anyway” or “Thanks for the genetics, pops.” I used to fantasize about creating a line of accurate greeting cards for us children of the unavailable, but honestly, who would spend their hard-earned money on them?

Anyway, it’s too late for us.

My dad has been dead for 16 years. All we have now are tattoos, and the stories that go with them.

My mom has told me a few things about my early years with him—dancing to Stevie Wonder, the little me riding shotgun in his old red Dodge truck. I have been told that I once drank a full bottle of Visine while unsupervised in that truck, which landed me under observation in a hospital. It was his Visine, of course.

“You were his little buddy,” mom told me after he died, on the way to his funeral.

When I was three years old, she packed my brother and me and the entire house while he was at work—and left him to his vices. For the record, I do not blame her for doing so. She had suffered enough.

She didn’t tell him where we had gone for a long time, and when she finally did, he got up one Sunday morning and drove hours to get to our little rented house near Lake Michigan. Upon arrival he found it unoccupied, so he broke in and stole back a painting1 which my mom had relocated to the rental—and then he, in the words of Paul Simon, turned around and headed home again. My parents would fight (and hate each other) over that painting for years. It's even listed in their divorce decree.

Him not staying to see us that day is one of my earliest memories.

My dad fought harder and risked more for that painting than he ever did for me or my brother. We grew up with the understanding that he didn’t want to retrieve us—not at all, and for whatever reasons seemed reason enough to him.

When we were young, we did visit him a few times—always in the summer and always at his dad’s rustic cabin on a small lake in Northern Michigan where his whole family gathered to play.

After that, there was a decade without any visits because of an overdue child support balance. Well, that, and the fact that my mom would call the police if he came within a mile of our next home, the one she had bought as a divorced woman—the home from which we would walk to and from our small elementary school on the edge of a white pine forest.

My dad never came to my elementary school.

At the family cabin, the old painted metal chairs were always in an unbroken circle.

While us kids would throw sticks in the fire and get high on burnt marshmallows and melting chocolate, my dad and uncle would offer the buzzing crowd songs from their youth, including an acoustic version of Blackbird by the Beatles. My dad was famous for his vocal overlay of the bird sounds at the end of that song—so impacting his version, it was played at his funeral.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night.

Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

We all wept when the bird ended the song, and he laid there silent and still.

There had always been a version of my dad that I loved. The potential dad. The one who was mine to secretly claim and stow away safely from the hurt of my mom, the disapproval of my grandparents, the pity of my teachers. He remained, for years, the guy who might show up one day, and in that small space—he was magical and strong, and he, in his absence, explained everything that was unexplained in me.

My dad could filet a fish in three swift cuts with an heirloom knife. I would tiptoe to the boathouse to watch him clean the day's haul, and every time I opened that screened door he would point the knife down at my bare feet and, cigarette between his lips, warn me to watch out for stray fish hooks on the cement floor—once set, those hooks are difficult and painful to get out.

Ask him how he knew.

Or don’t.

I’ll tell you either way.

I watched one time as he worked tirelessly to wriggle a hook from the gills of a small fish out in the little metal boat. He was sweating and swearing, his bronze back glistening in the sun. There were buckets and nets. In the white top cooler, there were beer cans for him and Pepsi for me and my brother.

I remember feeling sad for the fish trapped in crescent shapes inside those buckets, even if everyone cheered when I pulled one in. I wondered what he might do if I tipped them overboard, back to their home, but I didn't dare. No one else seemed sad, so I learned to act like I wasn’t either—like the whole trapped fish thing was just part of life.

He had asked me to find the needle-nose pliers in the tacklebox to help him out, and I was proud I knew what needle-nose pliers were. I hurried my best and handed them to him but after many more minutes of trying, the fish was still not free.

“God damn it,” he said—

We were not allowed to drink Pepsi at home, and we were definitely not allowed to say God damn it. We were not allowed to say any swear words in front of our mom, lest we wanted Tabasco sauce on our tongues.

One time my brother, no more than eight years old, called me a bastard in frustration over some thing we were fighting about. He was quickly whisked into the kitchen by his upper arm where he was forced to stand in front of the refrigerator with that red sauce coating the center of his extended tongue, his head tilted toward the sky. I felt guilty.

“Do you even know what a bastard is?” My mom demanded to know. She looked in my direction. No, I shook my head, but I knew it was bad.

After she explained, I pointed out the irony of the Tabasco sauce since we were actually real-life bastards.

“That’s enough out of you.” She said.

Taking the Lord’s name in vain might not be fatal if you are trying to save one of his precious creature’s lives, say a fish on a hook—maybe it's a prayer, I think. God damn the hurting of this innocent living thing. God damn all of the hurt on Earth.

And so it went.

Most of my childhood was spent trying to excuse my dad for not keeping any of the Lord’s commandments. He didn’t go to church, I knew that, but it didn’t stop me from wanting to save him, from asking God to save him. When the pastor asked us to close our eyes and raise our hands if we had a prayer request, mine was always something about my dad. Maybe God could help him stop smoking cigarettes or drinking so much.

I once wrote him a letter to tell him that I was praying for him and I was bold enough in it to ask him to quit smoking because, I added, it was bad for him and I did not want him to die. Even then I knew that if he lived long enough, I would become an adult and then I could meet him on my own terms where my mom wouldn’t be hurt by my desire to know him better. I enclosed a picture I had drawn of us playing together in a colorful Crayola world.

He died at 56 anyway.

Me and God were never able to make him do anything.

The fall after the beach bonfires and the God damn it fish, I went back to school and bragged about my dad. I made up stories about how he was a famous musician and about how he could barefoot water ski. In fairness, those weren’t complete lies. He could barefoot water ski—I just never saw it—and his band had won Battle of the Bands in Detroit in like 1970.

In my late teens, the smell of beer on a man’s breath was oddly attractive, and a waft of cigarette smoke connected me to something I wanted—something wild in me.

Many times, I had watched my dad’s ash grow grey and long on unattended cigarettes. I had admired the Marlboro moving up and down in his lips while he fileted the fish. He would smoke while playing bongos or steering the boat, squinting one eye all cool like James Dean or Paul Newman. The click of that lighter, his head-cocked just so—the first, long drag.

Until today, I have been unable to understand my weird, life-long obsession with Ernest Hemingway—why I have always navigated toward his gritty, staccato prose—why I have paid too many times to tour his archived home in Key West. My dad and Hemingway might as well have been brothers, and well, that ruins them both a bit for me now.

If they had let my dad leave the hospital after his surgery, I’ve no doubt he would have unloaded a shotgun shell into his chin too, rather than live with a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. He didn’t make it home, in spite of his snarky comments about wanting to do so. He died in the ICU—after I signed the paperwork to pull the plug, but not before I crawled up into the hospital bed next to him. It was there that I made the only memory I have of snuggling with my dad. He was unconscious by then, so I’m not sure if he heard me whisper,

“You can go, dad, it’s okay.”

Blackbird, fly.

I kept pushing the morphine button for him, and I tried to let him go—knowing full well that I had never really had him anyway.

Ask my children how they know.

Or don’t.

They can probably tell you.

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It has been an amazing ride because this community continues to be full of the helpers Mr. Rogers’s mom told us to look for—there are so many good and gracious and kind people in the world and I think most of them are on Substack. Forget Facebook. Lose Instagram. Substack is where its at.

But, unfortunately, even Substack has a village of sad little trolls. And not the singing, sparkly Justin Timberlake kind.

Exhibit A:

TLDR; This lady woke up on Wednesday and chose to be petty and by petty, I mean downright rude to me—a person she's never met.

As they say in the south, Bless Your Heart.

This woman took time out of her one, precious life to accuse me of being selfish, unhelpful, and “suburban.” She then admitted that my post prompted her to Google if there are ‘black people on Substack’ and she went on to surmise that I have used my son’s incarceration as click-bait—my only motivation, according to her, is to become a rich and famous author. How dare I exploit other people for personal gain.

The odd part is that she is responding to a post I wrote about the plight of a man inside of a Michigan prison, about whom I had received a phone call that day. I do not know him from Adam, and I was simply asking for people to be aware of a gross mistreatment by MDOC.

My usual response to this type of comment is perspective-taking, a deep sigh, empathy skill, and a calm click of the block button—thank you, now go away please.

Normally, I do not feel it necessary to defend my life nor my posts. Women have had to explain themselves and their choices for far too long to jerks not walking in their shoes, and I’m not playing those games anymore.

So, why am I giving this even more air time today?

Because she bothered me.

Like really, really bothered me.

Maybe it was plummeting estrogen or the heat this week or the general amount of shit on my plate right now or maybe it is because…

She’s white.

She’s liberal.

She’s a business owner.

She lives in one of the highest rent districts in our country where median home prices exceed $900,000.

And she had subscribed to my newsletter of her own volition.

Before I could reply to her nonsense, good people came to my defense. Many readers messaged me to tell me what they thought of her comment and where she could shove it. I thanked them, messaged her how she could help the man in my post and asked her to unfollow me, made sure she saw my message, blocked her, and tried to move along.

But I can't.

For clarity, I am white.

I am also middle class (whatever that means these days).

I happen to have a nice remodeled kitchen and I grind my own coffee, but she got everything else wrong. I don't work on an Apple computer. I'm not in the suburbs, and most egregious of all—I don't own a Best Mom Ever mug.

Here's the deal, I haven’t exactly hidden my demographics in my writing but to the best of my conscious ability, I don’t lead with them either. This blog centers on my personal experience of the American “justice” system, most notably how my family has lived through my son’s prison time. I would like to leave it at that, but some other women would prefer to flatten me into a one-dimensional caricature on a page. So let's go.

Perhaps it is time for me to discuss more difficult things.

Demographics

I speak out precisely because I am white and middle class.

In my experience, most white middle class folk with a child sentenced to prison time hide in shame and don’t say anything, don’t advocate, don’t show their faces nor allow the world to see their ugly reality. Relatives of ours told people that my son was just on a long ‘vacation’ in another state.

For several years, I myself, Miss Black Sheep Mom, didn’t say a word to most people. We are taught to hush up. We only whisper about it with close friends at book club. We quietly half-raise our hands for prayers at church when others have their eyes closed. I've had family tsk-tsk (and distance themselves) from this blog.

For valid reasons, many moms I know have chosen not to get into this arena and expose the truth about their own black sheep inside the penitentiary. And that’s their business—I don’t fault them at all. The truth is that we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

A white woman in a justice-impacted discussion sits squarely in the frontline of fire from all sides. Either you are fragile and don't really know the struggle or you are using people to sell “an agenda.” There seems to be no middle ground for us.

But this is the middle ground.

I refuse to let Other be Other.

My pain is part of the collective pain in this country, and I don’t need permission to share what I share. I fully own my family’s poor choices, addictions, cycles of abuse, and generational dysfunction. I'm out here willing to link arms with anyone (of any race and gender and persuasion) who has been impacted by prison life and needs to feel less alone in the world. I'm choosing to stand up and tell the truth—a truth you would not hear if I stayed safe in my kitchen over a steaming mug.

If you don’t want to read about it, that's okay with me, because frankly I'm not sure most people are ready to go deep here—

My ACES score is 8.

I was raised by my grandparents for several years.

My biological father skipped on child support, and I didn’t see him for eight years of my upbringing.

I was sexually abused by my stepdad.

My mom went to jail and to trial and we had supervised visitations.

I remember using food stamps to get groceries in an era when that was rare and mocked. We lived in subsidized housing for all of my high school years and my jeans had the designer tags cut out of them by the secondhand stores we had to shop in.

I was put on jury trial myself as a teenager for negligent homicide. I was then put in an adult mental hospital later that year.

I became an unwed mother at 20.

I went to college on a Pell grant and then to grad school in my 30’s on scholarships that I wrote for until 3am while raising three kids and working two part-time jobs.

I was a single, working mom for some of those years.

Nearly everyone I have ever loved has been addicted to something.

I worked for years in community mental health and the public school system where scabies, lice, bed bugs, psychosis, and people peeing their pants was a daily reality in my office.

And yeah, my white son went to prison for playing with guns and drugs.

So you better bet that I sit on my ass in my remodeled kitchen with a mug of freshly brewed coffee and thank God every day that I can—because I damn well know what it is like to NOT have safety and NOT have money and NOT have a voice when bad stuff is happening to me and those I love.

And then, I get up with the energy I have left and fight injustice wherever I find it out here. Next week, I'll be in our Capitol on Tuesday to speak with legislators. I am still writing letters to people inside. Though my son is home, I am still taking collect phone calls from the incarcerated.

I’d like to know if my comment-happy friend is doing the same.

PROVE IT

I don't need to prove to anyone that I grew up with close black friends (in their homes and in their churches), that I was the girl other parents didn't want their kids around, and I don't need to tell you that I speak with people from diverse cultures every week.

But I will tell you all of that—because the black people I know don't do this shit. It's always the white lady running her mouth (or typing furiously online) about what other people should be doing with their time and their resources. It’s always the white lady convinced she is helping the ‘less-fortunate’ (with whom she has never broken bread) by pounding on her keyboard in fits of self-righteousness.

Enough.

Our life experiences are not up for debate nor should they be cherry-picked and stomped on by people who woke up to mainline CNN and stay miserable today.

The world changers are giving thumbs up and sparkle emojis. They are in the comments with a simple thank you for sharing or how can we help?

Heroes, all of you.

Life givers, difference makers, honest and brave people just walking other people home.

Thank you so much for being here. 🖤

Irony

After I cooled off a bit about this whole thing, the irony hit me while talking with my son.

This type of backhanded comment toward another person would not fly in prison. She would have immediately been punched in the throat, and as nonviolent as I try to be—well, I’ll just leave it there.

There is still a world where saying stupid shit gets your eye blackened or lip split. Or gets you killed. People in prison learn real quick how to keep their comments to themselves. They also learn to defend their own positions when it is called for.

And today, I felt it was called for.

So—to my fellow white women who behave this way, stop it. You and I do not corner the market on outrage. You and I (as damn clever as we are) do not know everyone's backstory. You and I have no idea what other people—including other white women—have been through and if you don't like something you read here, keep scrolling. Unfollow. Unsubscribe. Better yet, unplug from your damn screens and take a walk in the real world.

In related news, I am cooking up some merch ideas for Black Sheep Mom loyalists and I think a Best Mom Ever mug might be a nice addition. *Let me know if you'd be interested in winning one.

Leave a comment

For those in our Misfit Lit Book Club, the next Live Zoom meeting will take place next Wednesday, June 17th at 1pm EST. Message me if you're wanting to join and I’ll send you the link! We've been reading Bone Valley by Gilbert King and WOW WOW WOW. No matter where you are in this one, please feel free to join the discussion.

And hop over to the Misfit Lit section on the blog for more book club info and a reading schedule!

Otherwise, things are going really well here. Thank you to everyone for your kind messages and comments on Substack about (and for) my son. Stay tuned for news from parole-land!

I have started and stopped and walked away from my computer, wordless, several times over the past few days. Right now, my thoughts are not flowing out of me as I wish they would—as I know they can.

If I had to diagnose it, I would say that I am spiraling. Even with the gift of words that I possess, I do not know how to explain what is happening in my life—nor can I describe what is taking shape in my heart and my head right now.

I only know that we will never be the same.

Backstory

In December, I learned that I had been betrayed in the worst of ways—for nearly a decade. While I am not ready to discuss these matters openly in a public blog, I share it to illustrate that there are about 25 tabs open in my brain on any given day related to the last ten years of my life: what my gut knew and when, what my heart avoided and why, what I wish I had done and what I will do differently now. This thing alone might have been enough to make me crawl into bed and not ever write again.

And then—

In March, on the morning of my 49th birthday, I got a call from my daughter. She was sitting on the side of the road where Find My iPhone had led her to her boyfriend of three years. He was lying dead in a ditch from a roll-over accident. She had arrived before the police and paramedics, and I would race to get dressed and drive to her, and him, before the medical examiner was on scene. I sat there and watched my baby girl pick grass out of his hair, wanting to fix him, to stay with him—wanting to go with him wherever he had gone.

We buried him on what would have been his 30th birthday, the son-in-law I would not get. For weeks, I would lay down for sleep only to see his lifeless body on the ground. I could only bring my daughter smoothies and comfort food which she could not, would not eat. I would clean her house or take her dogs outside and sit in silence with her on their couch. We moved her out of his house on Mother’s Day.

Somewhere in this blurry timeframe, my oldest son called from prison to tell me that he was finally being paroled—after two years of waiting for this decision to come down. We hurried construction on a new bedroom in our basement and then hosted a parole officer for an in-home inspection. I gathered clothing and bedding, shoes and other necessities. I navigated the phone calls and shifting timelines, began counting the days and battening the hatches for a new voyage.

May dawned, and with it the end of the elementary school year. I continued taking my youngest child to piano and swim class and baseball like nothing else was happening in our lives. I attended field trips and Field Day and a live wax museum and read bedtime stories and made sure to hug him extra while overseeing the teeth brushing and putting Skin Repair on new sunburns and spring bug bites. I hosted a birthday party for him and packed lunches and put the too-small winter clothing away to be donated some time in the next three years.

I also tried to keep my protein intake at lioness levels while following through with all of the treatment protocols from Mayo Clinic— at which I had spent 10 days in early May undergoing a battery of brutal but necessary medical tests for chronic post-viral illness.

Female fertility drops off sharply after age 35, and I now know that there is a damn good reason for that. I collapse into bed every night, thankful but overwhelmed. Satisfied but bewildered. Amazed, but beyond exhausted.

And then—

Two weeks ago, I got another phone call on a random Tuesday morning. This time it was my middle son with his own life news. He is making big changes (which I do not have permission to share). Nevertheless, the Earth shifted again on its axis, and I nearly floated into space. I stood in my kitchen, untethered in the weightlessness and the unknown impact of that moment. Of all of these moments put together.

Being a mother is like nothing else a human can experience—and while I still don’t have the words, I’m gonna try to catch you up on the news we've all been waiting for here at Black Sheep Mom.

One Day At A Time

Before I opened my eyes in that dark hotel room, I thought of him inside of his cell. For years, I have started my mornings this way.

Today—just focus on today.

Of course, I also woke with a pounding in my temples and a tension in my neck that felt like I had been dragging a rope tied around a cinderblock all night. Because I had. I have been holding an entire cinderblock prison cell up in my mind since the start of Covid.

In planning for his release, I didn’t anticipate the headache nor that I would burn my tongue on crappy hotel-lobby coffee and spend the morning feeling that burnt patch against my teeth with regret.

I had always pictured him emerging from the prison gates under the glaring rays of the sun but when I pulled back the hotel curtains, rain spit at me against the glass. It was grey and cold and windy outside. And of course it was—no part of this ride was ever going to be sunshine.

It finally hit me in the shower—they’re gonna have to let him go today.

Read more

This was such a meaningful conversation about the state of American prison through the eyes of our family. What great questions about addiction, punishment, money, prison visits, recovery, and more—Jump in for a listen!

A huge thank you to for her heart, her wit, her brain, and her guts! Talk to you again soon, my friend.

Get more from Bridget Young in the Substack app

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The horror of modern life is unending.

I even had to make room in my own oversized stainless steel refrigerator by throwing out perfectly good leftovers.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

What really sent me sailing over the edge was unpacking two pints of fresh blueberries. For three straight weeks, I had endured the discovery of mushy berries from the same store. For whatever reason (stress or hormones or any other facet of being female in the world—the doing all of the grocery stuff) in that moment, on that morning I genuinely felt that I could not take another inconvenience. Not even a minor one.

And wouldn’t you know it—the berries were mushy again. I snapped to indignation and victimhood:

“I am so tired of shitty blueberries.” I said out loud.

I paused to lock my elbows dramatically, bracing against the edge of the countertop, against my rising irrationality. The incompetence—the laziness—the waste of time and money this was. I started to concoct mean-spirited assumptions about in-store shoppers. I called them names.

And then I looked up. The high windows over my kitchen shown a bright blue expanse of sky. The sun had just started to peek out from behind gray clouds. A moment of clarity struck—

My son has not seen a blueberry in five years.

As I type, he is sitting on his prison bunk eating a soggy “meat” patty and some cold peas sloshing around in gray pea-water.

People ask me what I would change about the prison system—“How would you make it better?” they challenge me. I do keep a long and detailed list in the event that I am ever gifted a magic-wand, but firstly, as a mom (and a health psychologist), there is no other immediate request than this: Change the way we feed our incarcerated citizens.

(Are you there, RFK Jr.? It’s me, Bridget.)

And while this is partially about that whole ‘we are what we eat’ thing—it's much bigger. American prison food is hazardous to us.

To our collective health.

As in, yours and mine, and that of people we love and want to keep safe.

Prison kitchens are a humanitarian crisis, a public healthcare concern, and a public safety issue rolled into one. And it doesn't have to be this way.

Trials

I have taken some time to read the randomized, placebo-controlled studies wherein groups of incarcerated men were given a few basic nutritional supplements (omegas and multi-vitamins). What researchers found in 2002 should have informed national prison food policy ever since:

Violent incidents involving the incarcerated individuals who received said nutritional supplementation dropped by 37% during the experimental trial. That was a whopping 30% drop from the violence still occurring in the placebo group. *Nothing else in the study nor the prison had been altered.

Afterward, the lead scientist on this project made a shocking claim:

“Having a bad diet is now a better predictor of future violence than past violent behavior. Likewise, a diagnosis of psychopathy, generally perceived as being a better predictor than a criminal past, is still miles behind what you can predict just from looking at what a person eats.”

And these findings have since been replicated though mostly in Britain, Australia, and the Netherlands because American scientists can’t be bothered with it. Obviously, there’s no money in that kind of research.

But think about it—if we could guarantee a near 40% drop in a population’s propensity toward violence, why would the public not opt for funding this option? Ninety-five percent of our incarcerated citizens are coming back to a neighborhood near you and me, and they are returning hungry on too many levels.

And OG Moms know.

What our kids eat undoubtedly impacts behavior, not just in the short term. We want our loved ones to be able to listen and learn, to make rapid connections to consequence, to have stable blood sugar and therefore be less impulsive and irritable, for them to be charitable and kind—not scavenging, hoarding, defensive and emaciated wolves.

My incarcerated son has not eaten fresh fruit—has not even seen a blueberry (mushy or otherwise) in five years. The closest he comes to them is in the visiting room where I could buy him a $3.50 Nutri-Grain Cereal Bar from the vending machine.

And I won’t buy those chemically-gelled bars of glycerin, dextrose, sugar, and corn-fiber. That goo does not contain a single berry. Kellogg’s goes on selling their corporate lies to moms like me at a 600% mark-up—and it is still the best nutrition we can get inside.

My son has been medically underweight for three of the past five years. He was put on a soft foods diet by medical staff to increase his caloric intake, which in actuality is just two extra Uncrustables per day. You, taxpayers, are paying the J. M. Smucker Company a salary to keep my son just above starvation.

“Well, prison isn’t meant to be the country club!”

No it isn’t, but correct me if I am wrong—prison isn't meant to make our citizens more violent nor more unpredictable. If we are in the business of creating rabid dogs rather than offering rehabilitation, we should discuss it. Openly. Often.

Please do not like nor share another news reel about the dangers of “another” repeat "offender" unless you are also willing to talk about the failure of the system which turned him back onto the streets.

Prison—as it exists in this country—is systematically manufacturing communities of starving, desperate, feral human beings. Two million people in the Land of Plenty have to barter, beg, rob, and do favors for unsavory people in order to (partially) fill their bellies with non-food, pre-packaged, nutrient-void slop.

Some of our neediest, most vulnerable (mentally and physically ill) citizens reside in our prisons—and we have the nerve to assume they will “get better” with time served in these places of depravity. Decades of evidence proves that this mindset is the real insanity. Same song, second verse, a little bit louder and a whole lot worse.

Think about the last time you missed a meal or even an afternoon coffee, and then tell me in the comments how you show up in meetings, in long lines, or in the face of increased gas prices when hangry—Then imagine yourself being on the edge of actual hunger every day for five, ten, twenty-five years with high levels of violence and loneliness and degradation in your home.

Rehabilitation, by definition, requires that the providers of said rehabilitation address the functional deficits of the individual undergoing transformation. The deal that we taxpayers have made with the State is that they take custody of those in need of reorientation, and we pay them to provide conditions that will encourage optimal growth and change. They are reneging on our deal, and have been for decades. Prison kitchens (and those running them) are complicit in our crime rates.

I wish I could send my son my mushy blueberries this week.

I wish I could pack him a homecooked meal.

I wish he was not having his mental and physical health destroyed in the process of serving his debt to society—because we will all pay for it when he comes home. He’ll be on state aid, with taxpayer-funded health benefits. Sorrynotsorry about the costs we have incurred to make him more functional on the other side.

That should be happening now.

So What Do We Do?

One of the great parts of the Substack community is that I have linked arms with men and women from all over the country who have been justice-impacted in one form or another.

Last year, I ‘met’ Chandler Dugal here—a formerly incarcerated man who is now hard at work in Maine as not only the author of The Daily Prisoner but also as Director of Operations for the National Prison Debate League, a Senior Paralegal, and an aspiring law student.

We have chatted about prison food on several occasions, and I would love for you to hear his take on what is different in Maine prisons now. I am passing the rest of this piece over to him to share what is possible—and his story should give us hope.

From Chandler:

As Bridget has written, and as I’m sure you all probably intuitively knew, prison food f*****g sucks. Well, most prison food sucks.

Let me explain.

I was transferred from a Virginia Department of Corrections facility to Maine DOC custody on March 17, 2021—St. Patrick’s Day. I was jolted awake at 4:00am by the screeching, grinding sound of the metal door to my cell sliding open. The CO told me to pack my things and bring my small sack of personal belongings with me. Soon I was sitting in a holding cell in the medical wing of the facility, holding a paper take-out box full of oatmeal, runny and overly sweetened to mask the stale flavor of the grains which clearly weren’t absorbing as much liquid as they were supposed to. It was basically the same breakfast I’d had every day for the past fifty days.

I ended my day with a different meal, sitting in COVID quarantine at Maine Correctional Center.

That night there was beef stew for dinner. As I opened the lid of the plastic tray, alone in my cell, at first glance the meal didn’t look all that dissimilar from the “goulash” (i.e., slop) I had gotten used to being fed over the past nine months.

Then I looked closer. The onions looked healthy, not desiccated. The carrots were a deep orange, freshly cut rather than produced from a can. It was made with real beef. Good, hearty stew beef, not ground. It was the first time I’d eaten meat in nearly a year that wasn’t low-grade deli slices or amalgamated with soy. It came with a roll and brownie, both baked in-house.

I assumed this holiday meal would prove to be an exception rather than the rule.

The next night we had chicken alfredo over linguini with a side of steamed broccoli. There was more chicken on that one tray than I had eaten in the past month or more. I don’t think I’d had broccoli since I’d left home. I was genuinely stuffed, and satiated, for the first time since I had been inside.

Over the coming days I realized that every single meal contained at least one fresh fruit or vegetable. As I would soon learn, the latter was almost always grown right at the facility. In the county jail in Virginia we had fresh vegetables once a month, in the form of a side salad on “pizza day.” I don’t remember getting fresh produce once during my two months in a Virginia prison. I remember a lot of rice and beans, bread, and that damned oatmeal.

Another realization struck me on my third day in Maine—

The COs are eating this food too. When I was in general population and eating in the chow hall, I watched officers getting meal trays through the serving slot (a narrow slot in the wall so that the server couldn’t see who they were feeding) just like the residents. Same food, same portions; everyone acting like it was normal. I never saw that in Virginia. Those guys wouldn’t have been caught dead eating our food—except maybe on pizza day, but that’s kind of understandable.

A few days into my time in Maine, I started sleeping better. I started feeling better. This food wasn’t hyper-processed, overloaded with sodium, and made by the lowest bidder. It was real food.

Memorial Day brought an honest-to-God cookout tray. Cheeseburger, hotdog, pasta salad, potato salad, lemonade. On Independence Day we were fed steak and ice cream (not the little cups of vanilla you’d get in elementary school either, but Moose Tracks, which is the best flavor and I will die on that hill). The meat was a little tough to cut without a real knife, but I suppose the lack of real cutlery was understandable. I didn’t hear anyone complaining.

On a random Friday that summer, we had salmon. I don’t even really like fish, but you can be damn sure I ate that salmon.

How did Maine DOC manage to do all of this?

They just decided to.

Surely it costs a fortune though, right?

Maine DOC saves money feeding the people under its charge this way.

Where do all the ingredients come from?

We grow it ourselves.

Savings from growing (rather than buying) produce are put back into improving the quality of items that can’t be made in-house, such as proteins and dairy products. MDOC facility kitchens buy many of these products from local farmers (helping the local economy) rather than, say, buying powdered eggs from a massive conglomerate headquartered halfway across the country.

When the agricultural program grows more produce than the residents can eat (which happened every year without fail while I was in custody) the excess is donated to local food pantries.

So just to be clear: we can give prisoners better food, save money, and help feed the hungry in the wider community.

Don’t believe me? See for yourself:

That’s nice and all, but what about punishment?

The punishment was that I didn’t get to decide what time I could wake up, eat, use the toilet, shower, and sleep for three years. The punishment was not being able to see my family, save for one or two hours a week, and being strip-searched after every visit. The punishment was that I missed birthdays, holidays, and my childhood dog dying. And I had it way, way easier than most.

Look, I get it. There’s a part of the human psyche that wants bad things to happen to “bad people.” There’s a straightforward sense of justice to that. But here’s the kicker. It makes people do more bad things when you treat them (and feed them) like animals. And they act better when you treat them (and feed them) like human beings. So, we can either focus on punishing people, and expect that to rehabilitate them despite all evidence to the contrary, or we can start doing things differently.

Maine serves as the example.

Maine’s prison system used to be every bit as Shawshank-y as Stephen King wrote about. And not just back in the day, but as recently as the mid-2010s. I know, because I lived with guys who had been there for decades. The COs weren’t shy to talk about the good/bad (depending on the moral compass of the particular CO) old days, either. Oh, and there’s a documentary about that, too.

It’s different now. And it’s no small coincidence that big changes in behavior immediately followed big changes in how people were being fed. As stated in the Seeds for Change documentary above, in 2016 Maine DOC started a pilot program for organic gardening at Mountain View Correctional Center. Keep that year in mind as you read the following, straight from a panel presentation delivered by MDOC Commissioner Liberty at a major international corrections conference:

“Over a seven-year period 2017-2024, MDOC accomplished a significant reduction in the following categories:

Assaults Resident on Resident: 77 Percent Reduction

Assaults on Staff: 88 Percent Reduction

Resident Self Injurious Behavior: 98 Percent Reduction

Suicidal Behavior: 65 Percent Reduction

Restrictive housing: 84 Percent Reduction (Over ten year period)

(Less than 1% of Residents now in Restrictive Housing)”

Every Maine DOC facility now has an organic gardening program.

Sure, there’s more to all that success than just food. Normalization, massive reduction in the use of solitary confinement, expanded access to work and educational programming, evidence-based practices and revamped staff training all play a role.

The food, in this humble felon’s opinion, undergirds all of that.

Try building a positive, rehabilitative environment wherein everyone gets pissed off three times a day because they’re eating garbage. Now try doing it at a place where everyone is genuinely excited for their next meal, and the men and women who grew, prepared, and cooked it all sit down together to eat it—with the guards.

Maine’s gardening and fresh-food program doesn’t need to be an outlier. Most of our nation’s incarcerated population is housed in rural facilities. The land is there, waiting to be used. The people are there to make use of it, starving to put some meaning in each day. It’s low-hanging fruit (and vegetables). We can make Maine’s program the nationwide standard, and reap the benefits of what we sow.

How do we do it?

Well…

What if we just decided to?

A huge thank you to Chandler for his struggle and his work! Please subscribe to him below.

It feels like I should have something profound to say this week but I don't.

Whether I am just tired or living in a new stage of acceptance—the second Sunday in May is just the second Sunday in May. I will be skipping past the Mothers Day posts kindly exposing how “hard" this weekend can be. It is no longer consolation that other women are suffering—and it is certainly not a revelation.

Motherhood is nothing but the Olympics of holding on and letting go.

Prior to being the mother of an inmate, I assumed that the bad guys were locked up for a good reason, and that we were all safer as a result. I never asked what was happening in our prisons and frankly, I never cared. That is called passive indifference, and I no longer have the luxury.

Especially on family-centric holidays.

This past week, I heard a mom speak about her son’s suicide inside a local county jail. He had been in a solitary cell for 30 days and all family contact had been denied. After banging on his windowless door for an hour— pleading for help— he hung himself. His mom only knows of his last hours because his fellow inmates wrote to her after his death.

I heard another mom speak about her young daughter who was left alone in a cell, enduring a horrific series of seizures over a 72-hour period. Instead of medical care, she was given solitary confinement—where she died.

I know a mom who called the cops on her teenage son during a mental health crisis in their home, which resulted in him being arrested, charged, and put in an adult prison where he spent five formative years, mostly in an isolation cell.

Happy Mother's Day.

Because all prisoners have moms—Moms who are not allowed to visit, moms who can’t afford to visit, moms who are too far away to visit, moms who can no longer stand to visit, and moms who secretly visit without their friends or family knowing.

I am in the Not Allowed to visit category again this year (more on that here), but it is just one of the many barriers between us.

My son's facility just denied him my snail mail this week—marking it a violation of Prisoner Mail Policy QQ. #22: “Voluminous.” It was a paper print-out of my latest blog post which totaled 13 single-sided pages. Policy states anything beyond 12 pages “poses a threat to security, good order, and discipline.”

They also refused my son several of the books that I sent him last month because they did not have the proper receipt. Though I sent a receipt via email to the warden’s office, it was not the “Invoice Copy” which is, as of recent changes, the required documentation. This receipt, should you ever need it, is buried three layers deep in your Amazon account, accessible on your laptop only. Look for the one labeled packing receipt.

And no—they will not return those books. The mail room employees must have one hell of a library somewhere. I will have to reorder those books, re-paying for the exact same ones.

When you say, Do the Crime—Do The Time, you have no idea what we are saying. Mom, if she hangs in there, does the time too.

I gave birth to my son when I was 20-years-old.

I did not have a college education, I was unmarried, and I lived four hours away from my own family. Determined to do my best, I rushed head-long into being a mom—marrying his dad and inhabiting his dad’s world. We added two more kids before I turned 25. We built a home. I got my first degree. My husband worked from dawn until dusk, and I spent those years moonlighting as a martyr.

Being a stay-at-home mom was the hardest job I have ever done, until I became a prison mom.

Whenever anyone asks, “What would you tell your younger self?” I always think of that naïve and neurotic girl trying to do it all, trying to be all. I want to pull her aside to show her our wrinkles and greys.

What would I say to her? How about, “Slow the fuck down.”

I treated that whole season like a marathon, running breathlessly toward the balloon arch and medal ceremony at the end. For those just tuning in—there is no end and there certainly is no medal.

There are 80,000 moms in a U.S. prison right now. There are 1.25 million kids this weekend with a parent inside razor wire. There are two million American people locked in a cell the size of your half bathroom—and almost 30,000 more will get arrested today.

Never in my younger years did I think my Mother’s Day reflections would include thoughts about prisons and punishment and system failures, but here we are. I introduced myself to a room full of strangers this week as the Black Sheep Mom—and they immediately understood the moniker. I am not, by any measure, alone in this perspective.

When 50% of Americans have had an immediate family member in some type of locked cell, it is an epidemic. Half of our flock are black sheep.

So, no, there will be no brunch at the prison this weekend. There is no hug from my oldest child awaiting me. There is, however, a phone bank in the yard.

My son will wait in a long line this Sunday—no matter the weather—to make a call home. Before I hear his voice, I will be warned that it is a call from a Correctional Facility. I will be offered the option to report this prisoner for extortion or victimization, and I will be given the choice to block the number. I will be thanked for spending my money with GTL on my Mother’s Day and eventually, I will be told that I have one minute to say what's left to say. Then, I'll be hung up on.

And I will be more thankful for these difficult moments than you could ever imagine.

UPDATE:

This Sunday will, Lord willing, be the last Mother's Day that I will have to take a call or visit my oldest child inside prison walls.

He has been granted parole.

Though this is not breaking news for our paid subscribers, I want to thank ALL of the readers who have supported us through these difficult years.

Truth: I am struggling with the enormity of this new chapter, but we are hopeful and grateful and ready as we'll ever be. We have waited so long for this news.

Your subscription to Black Sheep Mom has and will continue to help us with transitions, and the blog will continue to center on carceral themes, the parole processes, and stories of other inmates and their families. My son wants to be a part of telling the truth, post-incarceration. We will NEVER not be working in this space.

My book is also in the works, and I will be releasing some of it sporadically as we move toward publishing.

The Ask: My son will be coming home with no worldly possessions—other than the books we've sent him in prison. From toiletries to bedding to clothing to a phone to a vehicle, he will have to build again from scratch.

If you would like to offer a one-time donation to secure basic necessities for him, we would be so thankful. You can gift any amount through this LINK. Conversely, if you can consider bumping your subscription up to paid during this transition time, I will make sure that every dollar goes toward furnishing his room and meeting his other basic needs. Even $8 a month buys toothpaste, soap, and shampoo!

Mostly, just thank you for being our supporters. You've made all the difference to us. Stay tuned for more reality as it comes. 🖤

The note below is a JPay message from my first Mother’s Day as a prison mom (during Covid lockdowns). What a heartbreak and a blessing to be able to look back, knowing how far we have come.

I married two of them.

A pair of well-worn Red Wing work boots turns me on. I like a guy who can rope and ride and mend the fence with his rough, meaty hands. Frequently, my throwback playlist will offer me “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone,” and I will sing at the top of my lungs, nostalgically:

Where is my John Wayne? Where is my prairie song? Where is my happy ending? Where have all the cowboys gone?

But for all of this damsel in distress dalliance, I have to admit that I have my limits. I cannot stand the site of a guy in a lifted, customized truck.

Instant turn-off.

Without ever seeing his bank account, I know that he spent more on after-market modifications than he invested into a 401k last year. I know (that I know that I know) he is the dude dm’ing every woman in his feed all week long with bullshit like “Morning, beautiful,” just hoping to get some lame, sloppy piece by Saturday night. This is the married guy who thinks the truck-snapback-beer trifecta earns him a weekend hall-pass when his wife takes the kids to her mom's.

Gross.

Not all pick-up owners are him, but every time I see this guy I am compelled to offer him condolences.

Sorry about your tiny penis, bro.

Which brings me to prison guards.

*Yes, I know there are decent and kind and empathetic corrections employees. Yes, I know it is a difficult job. Yes, I also know what I am about to say does not apply to all of them. But, dude—

Never in my life have I seen smaller dicks in one group—at lobby desks, ducking in and out of the visitation room, in their sprawling frat party walking across the parking lot at shift change. We see their penises repeatedly because they have to get them out and measure them in front of us, all of the time.

If I get nervous when visiting, I use the old speech class trick: Imagine them naked. Imagine them naked in their black socks with nothing but that stupid taser on their hip.

Sorry about your tiny penis, bro.

But really, I’m not.

Because they have used their unfortunate shortcomings as justification for treating other people (including my own son) very badly. They took the disillusionment from their high-school locker room to the academy where other small penises taught them how to make it look bigger. Now, they get up every day and tuck it into a costume that allows them to play alpha in a world of men (and women) who only let them think that they have control.

Because trust me, they do not.

In my many years of visiting prisons all over our state, I have watched my fair share of 350+ pound, wheezing, gimpy guards struggle past. These poor souls can barely make it across the room without stopping to catch their breath to open the next door.

I always look at my son in those moments, a silent acknowledgment between us. They wouldn’t stand a chance against him nor the other 99.9% of the men inside without their weapons.

And they know it.

Honestly, I could take them if I had to. All one-hundred-twenty-five pounds of the crackling middle aged, white woman I am. I guarantee I lift heavier than some of these guys—and I've been sick for 4 years.

When it takes nine of them in riot gear to subdue a single, unarmed man who has already been cornered in a cell, when they have to kick inmates in the face and wield pepper-spray like Ax Body Spray on local bar night in 2008—it tells all that we need to know.

“Stop fighting!” they wheeze repeatedly while crushing an incapacitated, motionless prisoner on the ground. No one is fighting you, bro, that is just what an elevated heart rate feels like.

Am I being harsh?

Absolutely not.

These ‘men’ have done things to my son that you wouldn’t imagine if we didn't tell you. Yet, some of these stories are not yet mine to tell, and they may never be. I asked my son if he had examples of poor treatment to share for this piece. He thought about it for a day and then called me back to say, emphatically, no. He warned me about sharing too much.

His former cellmate was suddenly transferred to a psychiatric hospital and pumped full of Haldol after he told the public about his own mistreatment, subsequent to filing a lawsuit against the D.O.C. for injuries received at the hands of a notoriously reckless CO (since cited for breaking another inmate’s back last year).

Someday, though, we envision offering a blog series about the things that have remained unspoken here. Stories that include both the kindnesses and the horrors my son has known in prison under his guardians.

Because someone needs to bear witness.

They openly mock helpless, disabled, and elderly inmates. They laugh at them aloud. As Emmett Tatter told us recently, these guards tell grieving men that they don’t deserve their visiting mothers. They get on the intercom and joke about the psych med-line: “Come get your therrrrrapy!” one shouts over the loudspeaker, with a laugh, every morning in my son’s facility. What kind of person gets off on the pain of others? Who clocks in every day to make a suffering individual’s day harder? Who kicks a man when he is already down?

We deserve to know because we pay their salaries.

These ‘men’ make up lies and charge the people in their “care” with bogus infractions in order to lessen their own workload. They relocate warring individuals into the same cell for sport. They don’t answer calls for help—letting our sons and daughters suffer and die alone in pain. They smuggle drugs into our prisons, and they have sex with rape inmates.

No, I’m not being too harsh.

Last week, I watched through the window as my dog dug up a mole and began to bat it about the yard, flipping it into the air—playing at killing it. I ran onto the deck and shouted at her to stop. She looked up, but she didn’t stop. I had to run toward her to get her to back off and leave that helpless thing alone.

I know that this post is just me standing on the deck of the prisons of this country screaming—we see how some of you treat defenseless, vulnerable beings and we also see the ones among you who do nothing to stop it. Dogs.

Dick-less, the whole lot of you!

When I get to leave the prison where my son resides for the last time, I will thank those who have been kind—and there are a few. And then, in my head, I will slip into full crash-out mode. With everything in me, I will be saying all of the things that I have held in for five years through the hot, stinging eyes of an exhausted but fighting mama wolf—

Don’t think I don’t see your insecurity and depravity, the protected little life you live out behind your bunker walls, where you cower behind a union and a public façade of “honor.” You’re the guy who has to come to a prison to feel any sense of power in your life. You’re the guy who has the chance to make a real difference every day and instead chooses middle school. You’re the guy who will still have to be here, petty and small and ineffective, when we drive away. Good luck, bruh.

Oh and—sorry about your tiny penis.

But really, I’m not.

For all of my blathering about the injustices of prison life, I am also sensitive to the fact that heinous crime occurs and when it does—beautiful, innocent people are brutally victimized, their lives forever altered. I stand with those who have experienced despicable human acts, unspeakable trauma, and life-altering crime.

Several years ago, I was riveted by a podcast about the murder of an 18-year-old women in Florida. I listen to the nine-part series to and from work everyday—obsessively. No stranger to injustice, I was extra, extra appalled by Florida's indifference to finding the truth about her murder. I became a frequent commenter about it on social media platforms, I shared the story every chance I got, and I followed the case closely until in 2024, the man convicted of her murder was let out of prison.

Because he didn’t do it.

I was beyond thrilled to see that the majority vote in both our polls and in personal messages to me made Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida by Gilbert King our 2026 second quarter Misfit Lit Book Club pick.

This book tells the full story of the Leo Schofield case in Polk County, Florida. He was arrested, charged, and imprisoned in 1987 for the murder of his young wife. It would take 36 years behind bars before the true killer was named—and Leo was set free on parole.

If you haven't listened to the podcast feel free to dive in, but this book is an even deeper look into how wrongful convictions happen—a double victimization by our justice system. It is no longer enough to say that the authorities “get it wrong.” In this and so many other cases like it, the investigators and prosecutors manufacture injustice, they cling to unethical behavior, and viciously tamper with witnesses and evidence. And they steal innocent people’s lives in the process.

This book is also about prison life and visiting prison. It is about a family waiting, achingly, for someone to come from incarceration. It is about next level redemption and forgiveness. Ultimately, this book is about what we make out of indescribable heartbreak and loss.

And dear writers,

This book is also about the process one author went through to research and then expose these gross injustices while trying to make a living writing other things. He was out of his depth—he admits that—but he did it anyway, and he helped change the course of judicial history. We get to follow him into the prison and into numerous heated interviews, where raw humanity is exposed on both sides of this story. *If you choose the audio version, you’ll hear the actual interviews.

Heads up: this is a comprehensive book full of details about several crimes, including but not limited to, Michelle Schofield’s murder. Though it is not true crime per se, it is crime descriptive. Sensitive readers should take care.

Unfortunately: This is a new book, so it is only available in hardcover. Please—don’t let that deter you. Check out free sources if you cannot afford to buy this one outright. My library had three copies and if you have Spotify premium or Hoopla, the audio book is free. As noted, it features recordings from the original podcast “Bone Valley,” which you can find here.

Reading Guide for Bone Valley

As always, I have broken this down into do-able chunks that will take us through July. Read at your own pace or follow the schedule below. No one is counting your pages and you can join our discussions if you are not on pace.

Week 1 (Apr 21–27): Chapters 1–2 (30 pages)

Week 2 (Apr 28–May 4): Chapters 3–4 (30 pages)

Week 3 (May 5–11): Chapters 5–7 (45 pages)

Week 4 (May 12–18): Chapters 8–10 (45 pages)

[Meeting to chat?? TBD]

Week 5 (May 19–25): Chapters 11–12 (35 pages)

Week 6 (May 26–June 1): Chapters 13–14 (35 pages)

Week 7 (June 2–8): Chapters 15–17 (45 pages)

Week 8 (June 9–15): Chapters 18–20 (45 pages)

[Discussion #2: TBD]

Week 9 (June 16–22): Chapters 21–22 (35 pages)

Week 10 (June 23–29): Chapters 23–24 (35 pages)

Week 11 (June 30–July 6): Chapters 25–26 (40 pages)

Week 12 (July 7–Mid-July): Chapters 27–End (40 pages)

[Wrap Up Zoom Call, Date TBD]

We will meet a few times this summer on Zoom (I’ll send out links at a later date) to chat about this incredible story. I promise, you will never be the same after reading this. Are you joining us? Please R.S.V.P. in the comments, or message me anytime if you will be reading along!

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Also, please be inspired to invite true crime friends—the more the merrier.

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I say hello only to prompt her, that annoying computer lady with her sing-song list of warnings. I have made a fun habit out of preempting her nonsense by singing along—

“This is a pre-paid call from…If you feel you are being victimized or extorted by this prisoner…Thank you for using GTL…”

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If Jesus were brought to trial and condemned today, we would not frame pictures of a figure hanging on a wooden cross. No, we would have to iconize an empty white garment draped over a metal gurney.

His death was a state-sanctioned, politically-endorsed execution.

But nothing to see here—the rainbow eggs and jelly beans are back!

It is time to pull our white shoes from the closet and dig out the pastels. Those of us who believe or kinda believe or try to believe or used to believe but still do the family obligation thing will shimmy into our Sunday best, gather together, and hug all of the peoples inside the steeples. We will join in song and celebration—the tech team and floral swags, on point.

We have dutifully ordered more basket filler and yard toys from Amazon (an evil incarnate) but, hallelujah, the loan came through just in time to make a down-payment on the Easter ham after the St. Patrick corned beef put us in the hole last month.

It’s all watercolors and bluer skies, birth and renewal and the hope of things to come—what a beautiful season to celebrate a human execution. Because, like it or not, Easter is fundamentally about crime-and-punishment.

Before we get to the third day, we have to walk through the first day and witness Jesus’s death as it was intended—an example of how power elites deter social uprisings and regime change by the poor, dirty, rebel outsiders.

And that is all well and good if you take comfort in the redemptive possibilities offered by Jesus’s life and his progressive message, but the chocolate crosses in the grocery store check-out are a bit over the top. Someone, somewhere in a corporate meeting actually pitched the idea of making a candy mold of a human torture device.

And then they marketed it.

Since my son went to prison, I have refused to wear a cross.

You can call me too sensitive or ridiculous or even sacrilege, but until you are in my shoes maybe don't. God may very well have allowed the political torture of his own son, and you may find solace in the symbolism, but if that God knows my heart (and any God worth worshiping would) he sees why I can no longer stomach—let alone promote—governmentally sanctioned blood lust by adorning myself, in all things, a silver cross.1

There were no Catholics at the death of Jesus.

There were no Evangelical Christians there either.

Shockingly, no one at the murder of Jesus was wearing a cross at all. Not even his closest friends and family—which was, in reality, a whole bunch of moms and aunties.2

For me, Easter is about a middle-aged woman watching her son be dragged before the courts. It is a seasonal spotlight, if not for all of its nostalgia, on what man has historically done to other men in the name of ‘justice.’

I find it rather confusing to look around in the Year of Our Lord 2026 and see that it is the Christians in the crowd still chanting for the Death Penalty. God Bless Texas and the whole Bible Belt still wants to fund harsher prisons and DeSantis down in Florida with his “swift justice”— what a God-fearing man they say.

What Would Jesus Do?

Well, there are clues.

A first-century doctor named Luke interviewed eyewitnesses to Jesus’s final hours. He reported verbatim what people heard Jesus saying to the filthy, lying, thieving criminal next to him: “I’ll see you later at my house.”3

Then there was that one time the religious leaders dragged some poor woman accused of adultery to the center of town and literally threw her in front of Jesus—asking him to endorse the death penalty on her for a “crime” that would have involved not just her but a [conspicuously absent] male counterpart.

Jesus responded, and I quote, “If you’ve never done anything wrong, go ahead.”4

Awkwardly, everyone just left.

Jesus also told a whole bunch of tattle-tale, lawyering zealots to “Stop worrying about other people’s failures and deal with your own.”5

His enduring message was flat out—judge less harshly, forgive more, have mercy on other people. He flipped tables over abuses of power. And wait for it—he died to offer redemption.

The Bible fails to mention chocolate bunnies, but it does feature a few text threads about goats. Specifically, it talks about sacrificial goats and frankly, I think Russel Stover has missed an incredible merchandising opportunity here.

In Jesus’s time, during the annual purification ceremony of Yom Kippur, it was Hebrew tradition for an official to strap the “sins” of the community to a poor, unsuspecting goat which was then led out of town and abandoned to die a horrible demon-death in the wilderness somewhere far, far away from the people who had strapped all of their crap to its back.

They called Jesus the Sacrificial Lamb as a result of that heinous tradition—Behold him who takes away the sins of the world, and all of that.6

What kind of barbarians would do such a thing?

Well…

It’s us.

The idea that society must symbolically transfer human wrongdoing onto another—animal or person—as an act of atonement is now American. We are still very much scapegoating. We have even monetized it and convinced good people that it is patriotic.

Every day, we bundle up all of the sins that we, the chosen few, have deemed abominable: addiction, sexual deviancy, shoot—add poverty and mental illness in there too, and then we cast the animals out. Go be somewhere else. Don’t get any of that on the rest of us. Die alone, and we'll call it justice.

We should just own it, friends—we are Old Testament folks, not a nation of “Jesus followers” because if you believe that Jesus was capable to take away the sins of the world that means that you have to believe anyone can be redeemed and restored in real-time. Not “prayed for” and then injected with poison for their sins.

If you put on pastels and celebrate Easter, then you have to serve redemption for breakfast, lunch, and dinner the rest of the year too. Celebrating Easter means that we are responsible to come up with systems that search for redeemable qualities in people and offer them what Jesus offered—another chance to live and live with renewal and abundance and all of that weird Jesus Saves! stuff. Call me crazy, but a Christian nation should be doing Christ-like things.

I've no other way to say it—mass incarceration and capitol punishment violate the principals and examples and teachings of Christ's life, and our current criminal justice system renders his death useless.

It would take me weeks to unravel the arguments for and against the death penalty here and, frankly, I am not going to do that. You already believe what you believe about killing people for killing people based on what you have seen and heard and done (and what Insta accounts you follow) in this life. Your ideas about judicial homicide, are yours, and mine are mine.

This blog is not my attempt to convince anyone of anything.

But society deemed it necessary to cast my son into isolation to be hungry, beat-down, and shamed for his sins of addiction—with a whole bunch of their shit strapped to his back. Forgive me if I tend to see our country and all of its gross contradiction in full-color now.

I cannot stand talk of grace and redemption, when the people speaking those words vote for harsher judgement and steeper punishment for drug addicts.

Where is the mercy of the cross here, friends?

When I hear the stories of the men and women who have woken up to find themselves in prison this morning—including those on death row—I take note of their filthy childhoods, the squalor and poverty they have endured. I hear about unspeakable abuses upon them as children, where mental illness and disease and ‘undesirable’ genetic traits altered their understanding of the world. I hear of cycles of addiction and isolation and the abject failure of the adults who were supposed to care for them—foster systems, school systems, juvie systems.

I also know from personal experience that one moment, one bad decision can alter your life permanently. As a result, I could never be the first to throw a stone or flip a switch.

As the great writer and attorney Clarence Darrow once wrote, “I’ll believe in the death penalty when they start executing rich people.” And to his point, I think it's time that they just release the full Epstein list already.

Happy Easter, America!

Links to a few good books on the reality of American death penalty:

Crossing the River Styx (The Memoir of a Death Row Chaplain) by Russell Allen Ford

Last Words of the Executed by Robert K. Elder

Here is the recording of today’s Zoom Call where we discussed Tolstoy’s Resurrection—a mammoth piece of literary humanity. A huge thank you to those who joined in, and a big welcome to those of you watching now!

TLDR; Tolstoy is a master. Read this book.

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We will meet again on Weds, April 22nd at 1pm (EST) to launch Q2’s Misfit Lit Book Club pick (take poll below). The link for that meeting is [HERE], but I’ll send it out beforehand too!

The Summary of today’s call:

Tolstoy wrote Resurrection as a moral indictment of the criminal justice and prison systems of his time (1890s). More than a century later, the unsettling questions he lobs over the fence still remain unanswered.

Firstly, let us consider his title—

Why do you think Tolstoy named this novel ‘Resurrection’?

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I promise that it was mere coincidence that we have ended this novel just days before Good Friday and Easter—the pinnacle of the Christian Church calendar. For the record, Tolstoy had developed life-changing internal conflicts with the Big C church, and he was openly wrestling with the orthodoxy. He found himself, as is clear in this book, far more invested in his own self-inquiry and moral action rather than institutional rigmarole.

Tolstoy chose to end this book with a reading of Christian texts. Why? Was it helpful to you in driving his points about morality home? Or nah…

When a “system” causes harm, who is responsible?

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Every system is made up of the human parts which make it function. Courts are manned by human beings, laws are written and re-written by human minds, juries are made up of twelve homo sapiens and their human opinions.

If a “court” then gets something wrong, who should be held responsible? Not the judge (who has immunity), nor the lawmakers (who have immunity), nor the juries (who have immunity and anonymity). Essentially, in our model, no one will ever be responsible for taking someone’s life from them wrongly or pronouncing false/harsh/misguided penalties.

In the book, we read about Katyusha being sentenced to hard labor in Siberia over a clerical mistake. A brief misunderstanding in sentencing guidelines results in her being sent away for brutal punishment—and this still happens every day in this country. Who is responsible for wrongful convictions or for abuses in prisons? Could it be us, the taxpayers, who pay to keep it going?

What was the most impactful social encounter of this novel for you?

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We have so many options from which to choose—

1. The rich people eating so grossly, concerning themselves with frivolity, indulging only their senses.

2. The jury.

3. The poor kid who breaks the law out of necessity.

4. Encounters at the prisons.

5. The brother-in-law scene.

6. The visit to the peasants.

7. The exiles who are dropping like flies on the march to Siberia.

8. The visits to officials for help.

9. Insert your own ______________.

Personal Reflection

For me— it was the discussions about prison conditions with “good people” who were “just doing their job.”

A large chunk of this book witnesses Nekhlyudov (a respected person in society) petition authorities, political acquaintances, and corrections staff for reasonable interventions, visitation, and policy clarifications—and he is met with roadblock after roadblock at every turn.

This part of the book is not fiction!!

It often feels like no one really cares when it is your incarcerated loved one who needs someone to intervene with human care. My son went three years without dental intervention, in spite of pain, in spite of him asking for help through proper channels, and in spite of me petitioning from the outside on his behalf through both legal and medical channels.

Over and over again, my concerns fell on deaf ears at the prison level. When I visited the Capitol and met with elected officials about my concerns, they referred back to the hapless D.O.C. for answers. The heads of our D.O.C. will not reply to any requests and the pencil pushers and PR people below them are indifferent, aloof, and rude—on their best day.

IMO, Tolstoy accurately characterizes each of the law men, overseers, officials, and prison employees I have known. They (and their families) will tell you that they are “good” and “just” people doing society a favor by upholding policies. After all, they’re “just doing their job.”

But rules books are not moral, in and of themselves.

Laughing at an inmate in pain is not justice. My son literally had an corrections officer point at him from the control panel of his pod and laugh like a kindergartener would—he said it was a na-na-na-boo-boo moment, a grown man in uniform pointing and laughing. My son was then cuffed up and sent to the hole for telling him to “grow the fuck up.”

So, yeah, coming to work and choosing to treat people less than you does not make you society’s best—I don’t care what badge nor experience you hold. Looking away when someone needs help isn't honorable. In case it needs saying, beating handcuffed and isolated people is low-life behavior—and is far too common for me not to mention in the wake of this book.

Tolstoy knew it in 1899, and ain't shit changed.

Resurrection suggests that the biggest problem isn’t bad laws or prison conditions, but rather the moral indifference of ordinary people.

Other considerations we touched on:

1. Jury deliberation: Even good people on a jury can be instructed wrongly. What moral responsibilities do we have as citizens to be informed jurists? What moral responsibility does the court have to correct errors/delays in sentencing (in real-time, not years later)?

2. Bureaucratic Indifference: People are being paid to look away. When and how do we hold our elected officials accountable for high recidivism rates, death rates, drug smuggling by prison officials?

3. Continued Social Biases: Why did the Oscars snub The Alabama Solution? Why do we still support the death penalty when it has not deterred crime?

4. Prison Failure: “Prison cannot guarantee our safety, because those people don’t stay inside forever. They let them out. It works the other way round: these institutions drag men down to the lowest levels of depravity and vice, and this increases the danger.” Part II, Chapter 34, 1899

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Russian Tea Cakes Recipe

And now, for the fun part.

I have had this recipe for over twenty years, thanks to my incredible chef-friend Karina. It is a worthy throwback this week—to simpler times in my life, to imperfect messes in the kitchen, and chats over [coffee] tea. Here is the OG recipe card:

Ingredients

• 2 cups butter, softened

• 1 cup powdered sugar (plus more for dusting)

• 2 teaspoons vanilla

• ½ teaspoon salt

• ½ teaspoon almond extract

• 4½ cups flour

• 1½ cups nuts (pecans, if you have them)

Instructions

1. Cream together the butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla until smooth and light.

2. Gradually mix in the flour, salt, almond extract, and nuts. The dough will thicken—let it.

3. Form into a ball, cover, and chill in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

4. Roll into 1-inch balls and place on a cookie sheet.

5. Bake at 400°F for 8–10 minutes, until just lightly golden.

6. While still warm, dust generously with powdered sugar.

Mostly, enjoy with a friend who lets you be you.

*Gluten free? Dairy Free? → Try [this beautiful recipe] instead.

Our Next Book—

If you haven’t noticed, we read differently here.

The Misfit Lit Book Club is an option for people who want to dig a little, question some things. This is a small group of readers who endeavor to change the world.

Our next book will not be Russian Lit but I promise it will be impacting, nonetheless. If you're interested, you’re welcome to check it out next round. Please take a second to vote for what you would like to read next time (touch the answer you want to vote).

The reveal is coming!

If you think you might want to join in next quarter, reply ‘book club’ or email me to be included in future book club updates.

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And yeah, that tracks.

It’s spring here in the north where we are all a bit grey and bloated. I have also recently endured another nasty viral outbreak in the wake of stress and travel, and this time, it has manifested itself as open sores on my face. I am not only an anonymous manatee, I look like one who got chewed up by a boat prop. All fleshy and bobbing about in life— a sea cow, a water potato, an aquatic marshmallow with scabs.

Thanks, Google, for pointing it out.

In related news, I am turning forty-nine next week. I had geared up to ignore this birthday, to file it away as insignificant—forty-nine is an odd number with no milestone effect, no real purpose other than to mark the last of a decade. The end of something. “It’s just another day,” I'll say with a coy flick of the wrist.

But you’re here for honesty, so—forty-nine is actually a big deal to me. I made it through another brutal year of my kid’s incarceration and weathered a bunch more crap that I still haven’t processed well enough to share with you. The dealer dealt some real garbage for the last round, but I am still playing the hell out of my hand.

If for no other reason, I am here to celebrate that.

When I was a kid, I used to spend my entire recess on the swings next to a dark-haired girl named Nikki. Every day through first (or was it second?) grade, we would pump our legs up to the sky and sing The Gambler by Kenny Rogers—in its entirety—as loud as we could.

“Every gambler knows that the secret to survivin’ is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep.”

At forty-nine, I am so much better at knowing what to throw away than I have ever been. That is, I think, precisely what our forties are for—dropping the expectations. Letting go of the nonsense. Jumping off of the magical-thinking train that hauls us through our thirties.

Case in point:

No one is taking you to Ireland for your birthday, Bridget.

Take your damn self.

I am definitely not offering claims on the year ahead. I’m either gonna do it, or I’m not. It’s either gonna happen or it won’t.

Parole, better health, writing my tell-all book.

I now accept that life rarely goes the way I want—and certainty never in the preferred time frame. Just yesterday, I was twenty-five and this week, I’m forty-nine—with a totally different set of eyes, a different heart, different beliefs, and damn it, different skin.

I would like to take a moment to apologize for my former proclamations about graceful aging—It turns out that I will be spending just a few minutes of my “one wild and precious life” lamenting my youthful skin and formerly supple joints. It turns out, I lament—a lot. The truth is, you can be grateful and still mourn.

Sure, there was a brief season of acceptance when the first grays popped up but I see now that that was just curiosity—the flaming afterburners of youth, the thrill of climbing to new altitudes.

I spent my early forties eating up Instagram shares, conjuring the energies of the matured muses like Helen Mirin and Meryl Streep. It never dawned on me that they both have professional hair, makeup, and wardrobe staff to help out with gravity.

The hard truth is that passing a mirror at forty-nine leaves me genuinely gobsmacked. Someone please tell this gets easier because I am not accepting my face slowly disappearing with any grace whatsoever. It was much easier to “accept” myself when my skin was starting to sag. It is a completely different scenario now that it has sagged.

Past tense. Done deal.

And yes, I know there are levels to this, dear sixty and seventy and eighty-year-old friends. I know that you find my musings at this mile marker a bit silly. I know that I will experience more and more astonishment on this journey, if I’m blessed more decades, but nevertheless—my creases tour has begun in earnest. Even my knees have developed frown lines. My neck-skin started giving ‘tortoise’ this year. You don’t come back from reptile neck without surgery and, thanks but no, I’m not chancing death from anesthesia because I don’t like my décolletage in family pictures.

Anyway, I finally understand at my core why Diane Keaton wore turtlenecks in July and why Nora Ephron resonated so well. Year forty-eight was the year that I started considering filters. Then I deleted Facebook. Then I stopped posting on Instagram. I figure, if I have to use a filter on my face (which makes it not actually my face) the picture isn’t that important. That's not thriving. That's screaming help me!—I’m desperate to be someone else. And btw, the ‘90s trends on socials are killing me right now.

What were you like in the 90s, mom?

Forty-nine years ago this week, my mom named me after a first-generation Irish immigrant—a true Bridget if ever there was.

A 1910 census places that Bridget as head of household after she was widowed at twenty-six when her husband drowned in Lake Superior. She was left with five children under the age of eight in the wilds of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

To survive, and keep her kids alive, she sold hardware goods door to door on foot, in a region of the country that averages eighteen FEET of snow per year. She walked those streets in heavy, wool dresses and flimsy leather lace-up boots. She never remarried. She never held a drivers license. And shockingly, she never posted a selfie.

She just lived her damn life.

I have a picture of her standing out in front of her home, the one she owned free and clear as a single woman before World War II. Tough as nails, sweet as pie, with her shock white hair and deep wrinkles. She lived independently until her kids insisted that she move to Detroit with them during the auto-boom, where she eventually died on her eighty-ninth birthday.

Our name, Bridget, means strong. Bridget—the prop-scarred manatee, the ancient turtle with sagging skin, the woman without a filter. Let’s do this, forty-nine…

"Aging is not for the weak. One day you wake up and realize that your youth is gone, but along with it, so go insecurity, haste, and the need to please. You learn to walk more slowly, but with greater certainty. You say goodbye without fear, and you cherish those who stay. Aging means letting go, it means accepting, it means discovering that beauty was never in our skin— but in the story we carry inside us." —Meryl Streep

Coming up this month on Black Sheep Mom—

We will meet LIVE next Friday, March 27th at 1pm (EST) to discuss Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy.

Here is the LINK for the Zoom Call. (Passcode, if needed, is c6uW9A)

This will be the final meeting for this book, and all are welcome to join. I'm bringing Russian Tea Cakes (recipe share pending)—feel free to come with food and beverage or whatever makes you comfy.

We will meet again in mid-April when our next book (and reading schedule) will be announced. Reminder: we read one book per quarter. Please give me an idea where we're heading below.

Lastly…

We're still looking toward a favorable parole outcome. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers this month. If you want to keep the coffee flowing, we could definitely use a few more pots.

Buy My Son A Coffee

If you have landed here, you have, no doubt, traveled some distance in life. You have come from places others can hardly imagine. Black Sheep Mom doesn’t just appear in any feed, it arrives to the passionate souls.

We are so lucky to have you here.

My name is Bridget, and I have a son in prison.

When you have an incarcerated child and you dare to mention it, the looks are humbling. A record scratches somewhere and the music stops. People try to be gentle, but nonverbals betray them. Feet shuffle, hands fidget, eye contact gets weird.

In that moment, a question hangs between us: What did he do?

The question itself is common, and maybe justified, but I often make it about me. I carry a heavy sense that I, his mom, somehow contributed to a bad-ness in the world.

What kind of parent were you?

Have you no shame?

Well, there are three versions of every story: yours, mine, and the truth.

There are nearly two million people incarcerated in the United States, and every one of them was born to a mother. Until we are in it, we can remain blissfully unaware that 50% of Americans have a relative living inside of an American jail or prison.

And in spite of these facts— the stigma is enough to keep a suffering, perplexed mom silent. I have, in fact, been quiet for a long time. Not because I am ashamed of my son, but because I have been keenly aware that the outing of these truths could be a liability to my professional reputation and/or make other people uncomfortable. You see, I’m not just a prison mom.

I am a licensed psychologist. I have three other children. I have a spouse and seemingly shiny life that you would never know is linked to prison matters.

But I am over all of that.

Black Sheep Mom isn’t just a personal tale — it’s a call to understand how incarceration affects all American people. It is a reckoning.

My posts include real-time stories from prison visits and calls, emotional honesty, policy insights, and links to facts and figures which impact not only our family, but yours.

Because what my son and two million other inmates are exposed to, exposes you.

Americans collectively spend over $2 billion a year as taxpayers only to see over two-thirds of our prisoners re-arrested within three years of release. Over 95% of State prisoners are slated to come back to the community at some point in the future, and a full 46% of them will be reincarcerated within five years.1

All of us are getting completely ripped off.

Please Know

I am not here to push an agenda.

I am Team Us.

Black Sheep Mom is not a platform to convince you of anything, but to open a discussion because frankly all of the red people, the blue people, those who have stars or those who have none upon thars— everyone is welcome here.

Please jump into the discussions within these most popular posts:

Behind the Wall

Your presence here matters more than your subscription tier.

Most of my posts are open to the public, some are not. Sometimes the information that I have to share is personal. Given that my son is housed in a maximum security prison at Level Four, it is not safe to allow the general public, the D.O.C., and casual trolls access to these posts. Details about our lives are reserved for our community, for those who are invested in the discussion and change for the better in this world.

Paid subscriptions 100% fund my son’s commissary, book purchases, phone calls, and JPay messages. Our paid subscribers are life to us. You are sustaining a real man in a real prison in real-time, and there are no words that will ever convey our gratitude.

I send out an email newsletter every other Friday. On alternate weeks, I throw in extra content, chats, throwbacks, and other insights for paid subscribers.

Lastly, if you like a challenge, join our Misfit Lit Book Club! We read one justice-adjacent book per quarter and meet on Zoom to chat periodically. I would love to see you there.

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🖤 Love, Bridget

For the next minute only, do NOT think about a white bear.

Okay, go.

⏳️

You’re thinking about a white bear, aren’t you?

Don’t Think About It

The above psychology experiment, pioneered by the late Daniel Wegner, proves that our attempts to suppress thoughts often make them more persistent.

This is called the ironic process theory.

Trying not to think of something can paradoxically increase its presence in our minds—resulting in either better observation and understanding or increasing our anxiety, obsession, and self-control failures.

It depends on what you are “not” thinking about.

In my case, the state of life inside American prison is something that I have implored myself not to dwell on. Not because I don’t care (clearly I do), but because I have to function every day.

I flew to Texas last week, and as always, I left home with a bag of mixed thoughts. Even after years of doing this, flying to another state makes me feel like I have left my son at an abusive daycare—as if me being right outside the door would protect him anyway.

Leaving home just increases the odds that white bears will appear. White bears will come up in conversation with Uber drivers. I will pass white bears on my way to a hotel. And the damn heartless news cycle will show me dozens more.

Case in Point

“Everyone knows you can get more drugs in prison than you can outside,” said Michigan's House Rep Pothusky in a statement before a February 24th hearing on the condition of Michigan prisons.

“Do we know where they are coming from?” asked another Representative.

“I can tell you that they are not being parachuted over the walls,” testified a former MDOC employee.

Several former employees, as well as the man who independently oversees Michigan’s prison conditions, shared personal knowledge that drugs are—by and large—coming in through State employees. Covid proved that, they said.

More specifically, Corrections Investigative Officers were openly called out as known smugglers of contraband. State Investigators work for internal affairs—they are the prison system’s internal police. They exist to investigate misconduct, corruption, crimes inside facilities, and [sometimes, maybe kinda sorta] staff wrongdoing. They organize the K-9 drug searches, for goodness sake.

Just so we’re clear—

The people who are paid to ensure that the prisons are safe are the ones slipping illegal drugs into strategically placed mop buckets in said facilities.

That was the sworn testimony last week.

I watched that hearing on a flight after a friend from Michigan texted me the link. White bear, white bear, white bear. During much of it, I was shaking my head so violently that the man in the seat next to me must have thought I had a seizure disorder.

I met his eyes twice to assure him that I was okay.

But I was not okay.

As the committee sat through the testimony about prison conditions and drug smuggling, I was hearing LIVE on YouTube what my son has told me privately for years. I pictured him on his bunk. I pictured his junkie cellmate pacing the floor beside him.

And then I put my phone away and begged myself not to think about the white bear for a little while.

You Do the Hokey-Pokey

We all know that there are drugs inside our prisons, and that the problem is worse than it has ever been, but—

Do we know about the assembly line of fatal overdoses?

Do we realize that there are entire units standing like statues in fentanyl folds—right in front of the guards—and no one is doing anything?

*Watch The Alabama Solution to see it with your own eyes.

And while the DOC still wants us to believe that visitors and families are the main source of contraband, study after independent study has revealed that staff violations make up the bulk of contraband-related incidents every year.1234

As a family member, I can scarcely get a piece of lint past the guards when I check in.

I am not allowed to wear hoodies or jackets to the prison. My pockets are turned inside out. I take off my socks and hand them over. My shoes go through scanners. I walk through metal detectors, barefoot, and then get fully patted down (around the bra line and then a nice inner thigh to ankle rub). I open my mouth, lift my tongue, shake out my ponytail, and turn myself around.

Clap, clap, clap.

That’s what it’s all about.

Even if a family member could get one small piece of K2 paper past the hokey-pokey at the entrance, how we pass it to our loved one while under constant video and staff surveillance in our visit is beyond me.

I have to throw away all food wrappers before delivering food to my son from the prison vending machine. I am not allowed to bring him water in a cup. In fact, I have to stand at the drinking fountain and drink my own cup of water—no cups are allowed between us. I sit across from him at a low, see-through acrylic table for each visit and I am allowed only two moments of contact—one hello hug and one at goodbye—both closely watched by multiple staff personnel on either side of us.

When our visits are over, he is taken out and strip searched—the kind that requires a bend and cough. Every. Single. Time. Even if we had achieved the impossible to this point, there is no paper nor contraband making it beyond that point without guard approval.

Trust me, as a witness to this whole thing. It is far easier for an officer to be shady. And they have motive.

One single drug-soaked piece of paper can fetch upwards of $35,000 inside a correctional facility. These employees are making $50,000 a year to put their lives in danger every day inside a toxic and corrupt work culture where no one is watching them watching. This isn’t rocket science.

Google “drugs smuggled by corrections officers in [your state]” just for fun—

I found that a New York prison guard had 49 drug-laced pages on him and another day in the same month, another CO had an entire comic book of drug sprayed paper en route to his network of dealers inside.5

It isn’t the families fueling the drug epidemic in our prisons.

White Bears

As if on cue, on the day following the hearing that I had watched on the plane, there surfaced a news article about a man named Casey Wagner—an Arsenal Sargent at (yup) a Michigan prison.

The report detailed his arrest on February 20th. Another huge white bear sighting. Sgt. Wagner had been busted with over 196 guns, dozens of homemade explosive devices, and a whole bunch of stolen prison munitions, pepper spray, and riot gear.

Weapons and gear that, I will remind you, Michigan taxpayers bought.

As usual, I went down the side trails with my little red basket because my son lives in those twisted forests—and what a treasure trove of more bear droppings I stepped upon. Sargent Wagner was also found in possession of one ounce of methamphetamine as well as packaged, saleable marijuana—enough to be worth thousands of dollars inside.

This is a man who had been stationed at the front gates of an American prison for years, positioned perfectly to allow the free-flow of contraband. The DOC statement about his arrest is a cut-and-paste which assures us that the department is aware of this one bad actor. Except he’s not.

Here are just a few recent news stories from Michigan. Separate MDOC employees. Separate MDOC prisons. Separate dates. *Follow the links to read the articles.

Prison guard charged for trying to get drugs into UP prison

• The estimated value of the seized items was approximately $443,000 per Michigan State Police.

• 15 sheets of suspected K2 paper, 50 A12 suboxone strips, 514 N8 suboxone strips, 74 grams of marijuana wax and 62 grams of methamphetamine were seized.

MDOC officer sentenced for smuggling drugs into prison

• Employed by MDOC since 2000.

• He pled guilty to nine felonies: three counts of delivering narcotics or cocaine, plus two counts of manufacturing or delivering a controlled substance and one count of maintaining a drug house.

Michigan Corrections Officer sentenced for smuggling drugs inside prison

• He was caught smuggling 151 strips of Buprenorphine.

• His charges carried a possible 12 years in prison—he got 90 days.

Whistle-blower alleges corruption at Michigan Department of Corrections

• This source has named over 50 MDOC employees involved in drug smuggling activities including current and former prison guards, nurses, and “non-custody” staff responsible for inmate support.

Former Michigan Corrections Officer Charged with Drug Distribution

• This officer had “54.8 grams of methamphetamine, 309 suboxone strips, 10.2 grams of heroin, five syringes of what was assumed to be liquid THC, a plastic bottle filled with marijuana wax, six Oxycodone pills and 5.86 grams of cocaine on prison grounds.”

• He faced up to 90 years in prison. He got three (which is seven years less than my son got for some methamphetamine dust in a baggie).

Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Against Lakeland Correctional Facility

• A Michigan mom sued MDOC after learning about a [known] drug smuggling operation that killed her son.

• This case involved a female MDOC corrections officer, her inmate lover, and them smuggling drug-laden basketballs into the prison yard.

• One man died and two were hospitalized (in one week) but no official action was taken.

And it’s not just in Michigan.

It’s everywhere.

There are so many white bears in the corrections world that even if you don’t want to picture them, you have no choice now.

Update: Parole

Please visit the chat for more about where we are this month. Prayers, please!

Update: Your Support

Black Sheep Mom is now one year old and subscription renewal season is upon us! If you signed up to support us last year, you're probably getting a notice to renew.

Your support has continued to allow my son basic necessities in prison, and you've given me the inspiration to keep writing. You’ve no idea how many times the words “you have a new subscriber” has brought me to tears. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.

Maybe you are able to become a Founding Member or maybe you can make the bump up to a yearly subscriber this time, but if a paid subscription is not possible for you right now, there are still so many other ways to share the love—your likes, comments, shares, and restacks bring more readers and support our way too. Please consider sharing my emails when you can!

Share Black Sheep Mom

As always, you can buy my son a one-time coffee HERE too. For reference: A four-ounce bag of coffee is about $10 and that lasts him five or six days.

Update: Misfit Lit Book Club

We are now more than halfway through Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy. You can find all of the book club updates in a separate tab on my home page. Click below:

Misfit Lit Book Club

Please plan to join us on Zoom on Friday, March 27th at 1pm (EST) through this LINK where we will discuss Resurrection in its totality and explore what we have taken away from this very underrated work. I will be there LIVE with tea and cake because this Zoom will be the week of my birthday and anyway, who needs an excuse for tea and cake?! Please bring your lovely self and all the treats you desire.

**Even if you have not read the book or are just a few pages in, you are welcome to join us! Always.