Confession #22: Braless Encounters with Law Enforcement
This is complete exposure
Author’s Note: Over the next few months, I will be releasing a series of posts about our ongoing parole realities. These essays will be behind a paywall to ensure we know who is reading them (hi, MDOC!). If you would like to personally support my writing (and my son’s journey), please upgrade your subscription today for full access to all articles. *Most of my other content is, and will remain, free of charge.
Also, while you're here:
This Saturday, July 11 at 2pm (EST). Join Jodi Sh. Doff, Kelly Thompson TNWWY, and yours truly for Conversations with Caregivers live on Zoom. We’ll be talking about caregiving—when addiction is part of the story. This event is FREE. Register HERE.
Next Saturday, July 18 at 5pm (EST): The Wham, Bam, Thank You Slam is happening again! The ultimate linker of women, Nan Tepper has done it again—this month’s theme is Freedom or Fear? What a perfect topic for me to offer a spoken word or two on. Join me, Lisa St. Lou, Rosana Francescato, ProfessorMeredith, and many more for a laugh-out-loud-cry-together kind of Zoom. Buy your tickets HERE.
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 this past spring, 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. This 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.