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There are little reminders all around me of the time I lost from my children’s lives when I went to prison. Some of them are fleeting – a song on the radio, a birthday I spent away, a school milestone I missed. But one reminder stares me in the face every time I visit my dad’s house, where my daughter lived while I was inside.
Scrawled in her six-year-old handwriting, in the shaky pencil strokes of a child just learning to write words, is a message to me. It reads: I want to go home, Kitty – Kitty being the name she called me. Every time I see that little message in lead pencil, I feel the familiar pangs of guilt, as if someone has taken that pencil and driven its sharpened end straight through my heart.
My daughter was six years old when I went to prison. She was too young to understand the full scope of what was happening, but she understood that I was gone. She was separated from her brothers. One went to a boarding school in the city, the other moved into a boarding house for university students. My daughter was sent to live with my dad in the country. Everything about her life changed in an instant.
She had to adjust not only to life without me but also to life without her brothers. She had to grow up faster than any child should. In prison, I tried to hold on to our connection in whatever ways I could. We had phone calls – short, monitored, always too expensive. I wrote to her every single day. I wanted her to hear my voice, to know I was thinking about her. But nothing, nothing, prepares you for the physical ache of separation.
Motherhood in prison is a kind of grief that never quite leaves you. It’s a loss that lingers in every missed moment, in every bedtime story you don’t get to read, in every scraped knee you don’t get to kiss better. The world tells you that you deserve this pain, that being locked up means being locked away from everything and everyone you love. But what about our children? What did they do to deserve this separation?
There are little reminders all around me of the time I lost from my children’s lives when I went to prison. Some of them are fleeting – a song on the radio, a birthday I spent away, a school milestone I missed. But one reminder stares me in the face every time I visit my dad’s house, where my daughter lived while I was inside.
Scrawled in her six-year-old handwriting, in the shaky pencil strokes of a child just learning to write words, is a message to me. It reads: I want to go home, Kitty – Kitty being the name she called me. Every time I see that little message in lead pencil, I feel the familiar pangs of guilt, as if someone has taken that pencil and driven its sharpened end straight through my heart.
My daughter was six years old when I went to prison. She was too young to understand the full scope of what was happening, but she understood that I was gone. She was separated from her brothers. One went to a boarding school in the city, the other moved into a boarding house for university students. My daughter was sent to live with my dad in the country. Everything about her life changed in an instant.
She had to adjust not only to life without me but also to life without her brothers. She had to grow up faster than any child should. In prison, I tried to hold on to our connection in whatever ways I could. We had phone calls – short, monitored, always too expensive. I wrote to her every single day. I wanted her to hear my voice, to know I was thinking about her. But nothing, nothing, prepares you for the physical ache of separation.
Motherhood in prison is a kind of grief that never quite leaves you. It’s a loss that lingers in every missed moment, in every bedtime story you don’t get to read, in every scraped knee you don’t get to kiss better. The world tells you that you deserve this pain, that being locked up means being locked away from everything and everyone you love. But what about our children? What did they do to deserve this separation?
In prison, I met other mothers who carried the same unbearable weight. Some had newborns taken from them within days of giving birth. Others had children in foster care, their visits regulated by a system that barely acknowledged their bonds. Some had teenagers who grew distant, who stopped writing, stopped calling, because it was easier to shut out the pain than to hold onto the connection.
The system does not make it easy for incarcerated mothers to stay in touch with their children. Phone calls cost money – more than most of us made in prison wages. Visits were infrequent and, for many, impossible due to the distance. Letters were monitored. Even photographs, those small fragments of a life outside, had restrictions. And when we did see our children, it was always in an environment that reminded them they were visiting their mother in prison – cold visiting rooms, uniformed officers, a place where hugs were cut short or disallowed and the time always ran out way too soon.
I spent years longing for the mundane, everyday acts of motherhood that I once took for granted. Braiding my daughter’s hair in the morning. Packing lunch boxes. Walking them to school. Arguing over bedtime. These are the things that ground a mother-child relationship.
And when you are finally released, you don’t simply step back into the life you had before. Time moves on without you. Your children have grown, shaped by their own experiences of separation, of abandonment, of having to navigate the world without you. The guilt is suffocating. No matter how much you try to repair the broken pieces, there is no undoing the time lost. You are left to parent through the cracks, hoping love can fill the spaces that absence left behind.
People like to talk about crime and punishment, about rehabilitation, about justice. But they rarely talk about the collateral damage – our children. They don’t talk about the trauma of a child standing in a prison visitor line. They don’t talk about the bedtime tears, the birthdays spent apart, the school forms signed by someone else. They don’t talk about the mothers who come out of prison carrying not just the stigma of incarceration but the heartbreak of lost years.
For me, that little pencil message at my dad’s house will always be a reminder of what prison took from me – not just time but moments of love and connection that I can never get back. Motherhood in prison is a sentence that extends far beyond the walls of a cell. It is a wound that never fully heals. But, despite it all, we keep loving our children, keep fighting for them and keep holding onto the hope that love, in the end, will be enough to bring us home to each other.
In prison, I met other mothers who carried the same unbearable weight. Some had newborns taken from them within days of giving birth. Others had children in foster care, their visits regulated by a system that barely acknowledged their bonds. Some had teenagers who grew distant, who stopped writing, stopped calling, because it was easier to shut out the pain than to hold onto the connection.
The system does not make it easy for incarcerated mothers to stay in touch with their children. Phone calls cost money – more than most of us made in prison wages. Visits were infrequent and, for many, impossible due to the distance. Letters were monitored. Even photographs, those small fragments of a life outside, had restrictions. And when we did see our children, it was always in an environment that reminded them they were visiting their mother in prison – cold visiting rooms, uniformed officers, a place where hugs were cut short or disallowed and the time always ran out way too soon.
I spent years longing for the mundane, everyday acts of motherhood that I once took for granted. Braiding my daughter’s hair in the morning. Packing lunch boxes. Walking them to school. Arguing over bedtime. These are the things that ground a mother-child relationship.
And when you are finally released, you don’t simply step back into the life you had before. Time moves on without you. Your children have grown, shaped by their own experiences of separation, of abandonment, of having to navigate the world without you. The guilt is suffocating. No matter how much you try to repair the broken pieces, there is no undoing the time lost. You are left to parent through the cracks, hoping love can fill the spaces that absence left behind.
People like to talk about crime and punishment, about rehabilitation, about justice. But they rarely talk about the collateral damage – our children. They don’t talk about the trauma of a child standing in a prison visitor line. They don’t talk about the bedtime tears, the birthdays spent apart, the school forms signed by someone else. They don’t talk about the mothers who come out of prison carrying not just the stigma of incarceration but the heartbreak of lost years.
For me, that little pencil message at my dad’s house will always be a reminder of what prison took from me – not just time but moments of love and connection that I can never get back. Motherhood in prison is a sentence that extends far beyond the walls of a cell. It is a wound that never fully heals. But, despite it all, we keep loving our children, keep fighting for them and keep holding onto the hope that love, in the end, will be enough to bring us home to each other.
Elections never bring anything good for people engaged in the system.
The thought of spending any time in close contact with Jonny sets my heart racing – and not in a good way.
Each court attendance made me feel sick to my stomach with nervousness as rich strangers decided my husband’s fate – and our future.
Education is not regarded as the most significant risk factor for reoffending but there is an undeniable link between a lack of education and crime.
Help us get About Time off the ground. All donations are tax deductible and will be vital in providing an essential resource for people in prison and their loved ones.
Help us get About Time off the ground. All donations are tax deductible and will be vital in providing an essential resource for people in prison and their loved ones.
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