Unpacking My Mother's Prison Diary: The Journal, Ep.1

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What happens when you finally open the box you've been dragging for 19 years? That's exactly what I explore in this deeply personal episode as I reveal a family secret I've held close for decades—my mother's prison journal.

When I was just eleven years old, my world changed forever as my mother was sentenced to federal prison for embezzling money from a Birmingham coal company. That day in the courtroom remains crystal clear: the judge's bench, the discussion about shackling, the crushing weight of confusion and fear. Weekend drives to see her at Marianna Federal Prison. The smell of popcorn in the visiting room. The crocheted bears she mailed home. And beneath it all, the suffocating silence of shame I carried, terrified my private Christian school friends would discover my family's dark truth.

For nearly two decades since her passing, I've carried her prison writings from apartment to apartment, city to city—a manila folder filled with loose-leaf pages of her raw, honest reflections. Something recently shifted, compelling me to finally peel back these layers of generational trauma. I'm only three days into transcribing her words and already it's both wrecking and healing me simultaneously. Her humor, faith, and humanity shine through experiences ranging from cafeteria shoes pulled from trash cans to spiritual breakthroughs beside prison bunk beds.

This mini-series isn't about drama or backstory—it's about breaking cycles of silence and shame that perhaps you recognize in your own life. Maybe you're carrying your own version of boxed-up trauma, thinking if you just keep moving, you'll never have to open it. But those unopened chapters wait for us, and I'm discovering they don't always destroy us—sometimes they set us free. Join me page by page, truth by truth, as we explore how family secrets shape us and how confronting them might be our path to healing. If you're holding something heavy, perhaps this is your sign to open it too.