A Mother’s Journey Of Grief, Incarceration, Love, And Forgiveness With Lorri Britt

 

Kids don’t have to be bad, have bad parents, or live in bad homes to suffer mental health breakdowns, addiction, or incarceration. Everything can change instantly. If it has happened to your family, you know the feeling of losing control and the emotional chaos that comes with it. Lorri Britt, the author of My Heart Behind Bars, said that she felt shame, guilt, and loneliness when her two boys went to prison. She felt judged and ostracized. In this episode, she shares the raw reactions she experienced before, during, and after her kids’ incarceration. Listeners with similar heartbreak will find help and comfort in this conversation, knowing they are not alone. Tune in to this inspiring episode of a mother’s journey through grief, love, and forgiveness.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

A Mother’s Journey Of Grief, Incarceration, Love, And Forgiveness With Lorri Britt

I’m here with Lorri Britt who lives in Canada and is married with six children, some by birth and others that joined her family. Having two children in the criminal justice system has affected her life. She wants to help others that are experiencing shame attached to their grief. She loves painting and writing and has found healthy outlets such as archery, golf, and cooking. She said that making food and giving it to others fills her heart to nurture others. She spent most of her working life working for the government and never experienced anyone going to prison before. Lorri, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

It’s a pleasure. We spoke a bit before this and I always like to start at the beginning. Can we talk about how you found out your sons were incarcerated and how you handle it?

It was about 2:00 AM and I got a phone call from my girlfriend. She told me that my son had called her son crying and asked for them to come and help him. When they got there, he was not on the side of the road waiting, but in the back of a police car. They wouldn’t let her talk to him or anything. They came to my house to let me know that my son had been arrested. We had no idea why or what for or anything like that. I already knew because you know your kids if their behavior is funny. It was my son’s birthday and he hadn’t shown up like he was supposed to. I wasn’t overly shocked that something bad had happened, but I didn’t expect it to be as dramatic and as much as it was. I phoned the RCMP as soon as she got to my house and they wouldn’t give me any information.

For people in the United States, tell us what the RCMP stands for.

It’s the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I had phoned them because they had my son from what my girlfriend said, but they told me that they couldn’t give me that information because we have privacy laws here. They don’t have to tell you if they have somebody or anything if they don’t want to due to privacy. I waited a little bit and thought, “How am I going to figure this out?” I remember one time I had to call before and so I used the system to my advantage. What I did was I called back and told them that I wanted to report a missing person because I hadn’t seen my son in 24 hours. Therefore, I could report that.

At that point in time is when they had to tell me that they had him in custody. They still wouldn’t tell me why they had him or what he had done, but that was about as much as they would tell me, and a serious crime investigator would get back to me once they knew what was happening. At about 7:00 AM or 8:00 AM the same day, I got a phone call from the serious crime investigator. I was excited and thought they were going to tell me all about what was happening, that I could talk to my son, and that life was going to be great. I had this great delusional belief of how it looks from watching way too many TV shows, but I was crushed.

They didn’t talk to me about my son, Drake, at all. What they wanted to know was where my boy Christopher was because he was the second accused. All they would tell me is that it was a serious crime, that somebody was injured, and how it fared depended on how that person survived. It was a whirlwind of a mess.

I described it as a bad storm and a wrecking ball destroying your house. There’s debris everywhere and you’re sitting there because they tell you to sit and wait. it’s pouring rain. It’s a mess. You’re drenched and it’s disgusting. You are sitting in this demolished home waiting for somebody to come to help you. It was horrible. I can’t even explain the chaos and pain that I felt. It’s not just one but two boys. It was devastating.

What happened next?

After they called me and asked about Christopher, it infuriated me because they could tell me nothing about Drake. They weren’t even going to tell me that they had him and that he was in custody, but they are phoning me and wanting information about another one of my children. I thought, “How can this be?” You’re getting afraid. What do you want to say? If I say anything, am I incriminating them? Am I getting them in trouble? I don’t know how the system works. I didn’t even know if I was doing the right thing.

All I wanted to do was talk to Drake and then make sure Christopher was safe. I’m worried about what was going to happen to him. He was safer at the moment but I struggled. That day I felt the world fall beneath my feet. I was in some deep dark hole in a matter of seconds and I canceled everything. I went to my hometown and visited my family. That was a Friday night. By Saturday, they phoned me again. They still had not found Christopher. He was on the run. They wanted me to talk to Drake. I was like, “Finally.” The reason they wanted me to talk to Drake was because he was so distraught that they could not get any information out of him. He was sobbing and crying. It was awful.

They let me talk to him so that they could calm him down enough to get information out of him. The whole weekend consisted of that stuff. The serious crime investigator called. We got Drake a lawyer. We still hadn’t found Christopher, and then you have court. It doesn’t feel like much probably happened when I’m speaking about it, but emotionally, your heart has just exploded. Trying to even get up to function to believe that this is your reality is insane.

A lot of families could relate to that. When was court after that weekend?

They go from Monday. They picked him up on Friday. They kept Drake in the city cells until Monday. We went into court Monday morning. I had this great delusion that I was going to hug my son, talk to him, make sure things were great, and that he was okay. It didn’t work like that. They shuffle him in handcuffed and he’s behind plexiglass. It’s terrible. He was crying and sobbing. He was newly 21. I’m sure he was trying to wrap his head around his own behavior, let alone see your family sitting there for you. They don’t sentence him right away, but they tell him what he’s getting charged with. They then take him away and wait for the charge. Any time that he did while waiting for sentencing would go towards his time served. It was super yucky.

You went to court the first time. You had your family there and had some support, but we all know how it affects us and our hearts just dropped. I can relate to that and others can too. Luckily, you did have an attorney. Was the other young man there at that time? When did he come in?

Christopher didn’t get picked up until about a week or so after Drake. It was completely different. Christopher had problems before and had been in the system before. He was a little bit more prepared. He knew what he was going into and what was going on. I didn’t even get to go to Christopher’s appearance the first time because it happened so fast. They didn’t even tell me they picked up Christopher.

How I found out that Christopher had gotten picked up was when I was on the phone with Drake, there was a lot of chaos going around in the background. Drake was a little bit distracted and I was a little bit irritated because it was a twenty-minute wait for them to go through the whole cycle to accept a collect call from the prison. You then finally get on the phone and you get this. I’m like, “Talk to me. I can’t see you. I’m still your mom. I want to hear.”

There was so much and I finally said, “What is going on? Why is it so crazy there?” You could hear Drake was like, “New inmates are coming,” and then he paused. I could hear his excitement. He said nothing but I could feel that something had shifted for him, and then he yelled out, “Brother.” I then knew that Christopher was there. That’s how I found out Chris got picked up. I didn’t even get to support him.

It looks like Christopher had been in trouble before.

Yes, Christopher had been in trouble a few times. When Christopher got in trouble and ended up in the system, we were still a family, but it was a different circumstance and wasn’t quite as serious as what was happening now. Because it was so little and the severity of what they were doing wasn’t the same, I didn’t even think about that, relating that Christopher had been in trouble before.

Do you consider him your son too?

100%. Christopher has been in our life for an extremely long time. When Chris and Drake both got in trouble, people used to always say to me or even prior, “Are you going to let Drake hang out with Chris?” I used to say, “Why shouldn’t I let Chris hang out with Drake?” They were peas in a pot. Whether they were with each other or not, they would find somebody. Likes hang with likes. No doubt Christopher and Drake have a brother bond and have similarities that nobody can destroy. They get to make their own choices in those kinds of things, but Chris is one of my boys.

Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it. Drake and Chris see each other and you know that they’re both there. What happened next?

What we have here is a holding prison, so they got to stay in the holding prison. Christopher is very adaptable. He knows how to behave. He’s a, “Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am.” He will do as he is told. He will follow the structure but do what he wants. He lets people believe that he is hearing and listening. Drake is not the same. Drake is defiant. He beats to his own drum. He’s not as accommodating. I do believe that Drake had a harder time adapting and Christopher could adapt. Christopher had skills and knowledge that Drake didn’t. Christopher helped him to survive within the system, which I’m 100% grateful for.

Christopher has better behaviors. He knew what to do and how to behave, and also got a lesser sentence, so he went to a less secure prison. For a while, I had them at one prison and I could see them both, and then Chris went to a less secure. Drake went there for a very brief time but because of his behaviors and temperament, he didn’t last there very long. He went to a harder prison. It was quite a journey trying to balance myself between prisons in different towns.

To see Drake, I had to take a ferry and an hour drive. It was a 3-hour drive for a 30-minute visit. I had my husband one time say, “This is a lot of work for a visit.” My theory was, “I would do it for you,” and he’s like, “What would I go to prison for?” I’m like, “I don’t know anything. Drinking and driving. You just didn’t get caught.” It was hard.

Not that he’s done it but anybody could have a drink and drive.

I didn’t mean him, but when you go for dinner, you can have one beer and drive home. If you get pulled over, with the liquor limits or the alcohol limits here, you could get your car taken away at that point in time.

Don’t drink and drive. When you would go to visit and you hadn’t done that, what was that like?

On the first visit I ever had, Christopher wasn’t picked up yet. I had gone to Wilkinson Prison, which is in Victoria. It looks like this old dungy castle. People think, “I’m going to go to the castle and I’m going to see the queen and it’s going to be beautiful.” I can tell you, if prisons look anything like that, which is what it reminded me of, it was disgusting and horrible. It had nothing but dread over it. It’s cold and it stinks. You walk in and it’s like the life inside of you gets closed off.

You see these people and nobody makes eye contact because everybody’s got a bit of shame and guilt attached to why they’re there. Nobody talks about why they’re there. There’s no communication. It’s tense. The guards of course are super aggressive and shut down. It’s like walking into a hospital and having that sickly smell, but way more negative. It’s a horrible experience.

During my first experience, I wanted to cry a lot. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t know what to do, where I was supposed to go, how I was supposed to behave, and what I could do or not do. It was trying. You got to strip down all your stuff, take off your shoes, take off your belts, go through scans, and then they lock you in a little room, which I did not anticipate. I didn’t realize that once you’re in this room they lock the doors and you’re there. It was the worst feeling. I thought, “I can’t escape. I can’t leave. I can’t do anything. I’m stuck with all this stuff and I’m stuck in this room with people I don’t know.”

I’m emotional beyond belief, but I don’t want to cry because I don’t want my son to see me crying because it will break his heart. In that second, I thought, “I’m only doing this for half an hour tops. My boy is doing this for years.” It gives you a little taste of possibly what it must feel like to be incarcerated but not. It was tough. I’m not going to lie. Your first visit is hard.

You would think visits after that get easier, but they don’t. It’s like running into a brick wall. Your body is completely crushed. Your heart is broken. You’re bleeding and yet you get up and run back into that wall time and time again until they’ve done their sentence. The guard told me very few parents or people go visit their children in prison. That is probably why. It’s tough.

Very few parents or people visit their children in prison, giving kids a tough time in serving their sentence. Share on X

I know it’s difficult to visit. We do know that it does help our loved one that’s incarcerated. Even though it’s difficult, you know that you’re helping them when you do it. How else do you communicate with them?

I did a lot. I was probably one of the weird people. At one point in time, I had my son in one prison, Fraser, my ex-husband and his brother in a different one in Regina, and then my other boy, Christopher at Brannen Lake. I would make crossword puzzles and make up the crossword. I would do all sorts. One was music because it would appeal to everybody. I would photocopy them so I will have three. I would do my questions on a different page and photocopy them. I then do my answer key. I would have to give the answer key in a separate envelope in the mail so that the guards knew that I wasn’t trying to plan an escape. It had to get authorized so that I could make them and send them. I would do things like that.

We wrote a lot and I visit. They phone all the time. There are lots of things. Chris taught Drake how to write. One of the things that Drake got to gain as a skill while he was incarcerated was legit writing. Not printing but using his penmanship in writing which was fantastic. We wrote lots. We encouraged them and got to talk a lot about emotions. I wrote them rap songs and send them cards. I tried to make it as normalized as I could for them. The biggest thing was I had to let them know that I loved them no matter what.

As I said, visiting and communication are so important. Maybe we’ll have your rap later. We’ll see.

I probably have the song somewhere around here. I kept every letter. I’m sure that I probably have. I even have some of the crossword puzzles that I made for them. I remember people used to be like, “You made crosswords?” It’s challenging to try to get all your words to go together, but at least I knew they were doing something and it kept them occupied, and maybe more connected to humanity or something.

That’s so important. I need to go back because you had Drake and Chris, but then there was somebody else that you visited.

I didn’t visit them. That was my ex-husband. He and his brother ended up being incarcerated in Regina at the same time Drake was in prison. I only got to talk to my ex-husband about Drake probably a little bit when it first happened and about a couple of weeks later that he and his brother ended up in prison. That was it. I would talk to him on the phone, but not often. He would call and chat. I sent him letters and stuff like that, but he didn’t get to be a supportive dad in that aspect of it.

One of the things that you said when we were talking is that people judge you. You are a government worker taking care of six kids, Suzy Homemaker, and taking care of everybody. Now, you have two kids that are incarcerated along with this ex-husband. Did you face a lot of judgment from people?

100%. Some people did it face-on and some people did it very unknowingly. My town isn’t very big and it was very big news. It was on the TV, radio, and newspaper. I would be at work sometimes and there would be somebody on the radio about what was happening. They would be like, “Can you imagine that parent? I wonder what that one is like. I wonder how that house was raised in.” They didn’t know that they were judging me. I remember sitting there sometimes thinking, “That’s me. The mom.” They had this image of what they thought I was as a mom.

There were people that would say things like, “Maybe it’s the best place for them.” I don’t know a soul that feels that the best place for their child is in prison. I don’t care what age your child is. No parent wants their child to be in prison. If anybody ever had to go to prison to visit their child, they would probably never say those words again. It’s easy for us to say things that we don’t understand. Maybe I might have myself back in time, but this made me acutely aware of the things I say.

 

When somebody has lost a child, I don’t say, “Maybe they’re in a better place.” I’m not saying that heaven isn’t great, but no parent wants to believe their child is in a better place when they’re gone. They want their child with them. It opened up my mind in an avenue of what I say when people are in pain because it’s more painful.

The best place for my children is with me, safe, secure, growing, and being the best humans that they can possibly be. They made some pretty bad choices, but I would hate to believe that it is going to define them for the rest of their lives. They’ve done so many good things and have so many great qualities, and this one thing is going to be what is attached to them for the rest of their lives. I find that shameful.

We always say that it’s not who they are but it’s what they did. Who hasn’t done something if they were judged for it? They could be in the same place. Tell us a little bit about your family and your home life because you are a good mom. You love your children and instilled good qualities in them. When somebody hears that you have two children that are incarcerated, what was the home life like?

When people hear that I had two boys incarcerated, they’re very set back to begin with because I talk about it. I know a lot of people don’t like it when I talk about it, but I refuse for us to walk around with our heads hung in shame. I love my boys immensely. I’m not going to not stop talking about them. I use it as a gift to share, help, and praise.

I’m not going to say our home life is perfect. I come from a family of mental health, addiction, and dysfunction like the majority of us. I did my best. One of my saving graces is when the boys went to prison, I knew in my heart of hearts that I loved them to the best of my ability. Nobody could love those guys more than I did. I gave them tools and talked to them. I share as much as I could with them. I had a very open home where you could talk about things that were uncomfortable.

I didn’t want them to go on and get advice from somebody else. I would rather have honest conversations with them. I don’t know how to answer that because I don’t believe that home life had much to do with why they ended up going to prison. I believe that they had their own life and journey. I don’t believe that they knew the ripple effect of what their behaviors were going to be, but do any of us? When you do something and it goes bad, do you think, “How is that going to affect so-and-so?” when you’re doing it? No, but when it’s done is when it hits.

This is their life lesson and their journey, and I want to love them through it. Had I not loved them to the best of my ability? I had another government job prior to the one that I was at when they got in trouble. It was a $25-an-hour job, which was good back then. I quit that job to go to a $9-an-hour job so that I could be land-based. I used to work on a ferry. I would be in the middle of the drink and I would get these phone calls about the boys misbehaving, and then it’s a 2-hour or 4-hour boat ride depending on where I am to get to them. It was getting more challenging for a parent. For me, it was better to quit and be a better parent than to have the dollars, and that’s just the root. That helped me. When all of this happened, I was devastated but grateful for my choices.

I was in a meeting where we did talk about the ripple effects. I’m glad that you brought it up because a lot of people don’t realize how it affects people around them. We’re also talking about how people who are incarcerated come from good families, families that have issues, and all types of families. You can’t look at a family and say, “He or she came from a bad family.” I like the way that you brought it up. You did say a few words that I wanted you to tell us what they mean. You said, “In the drink,” is that water?

Yes, drink is water.

I want to be clear that she wasn’t working and drinking. She was on a ferry in the water.

I don’t know if that’s ferry slang or if it’s slang that’s old, but in the drink means in the water.

I wanted to clarify that. Right now, where are the two men? They were in their twenties.

They were 21 when they got arrested and now, they’re both 30.

It has been a journey.

It has been a long one. After their time was served, Christopher got out and did very well until Drake got out. He partied a bit, but he was a little bit more open and honest about his journey. He and I spent a lot of time together. He integrated back into society with no problem. His time was quite short. When Drake got out, he was out for a while. Drake met a girl and got a job.

Chris went back into drugs and alcohol. Chris was on the streets for six years. He just got picked up not very long ago and is back in the system. He’s doing okay. He is talking about going for treatment and getting better, but all I can do is love him through it. I book my visits and write my letters. I stay in touch and let him know he is loved. The most important thing for me with Christopher is that he knows that I love him no matter what.

He has so much shame attached to his own behavior that I end up protecting him a little bit. I saw him on the streets one time. I was so excited because I hadn’t seen him for a few years. I looked for him, but they’re hard to find. I yelled, “Chris,” and I was so excited. He didn’t want to look at me and talk to me. I was like, “Give me a hug.” He was like, “I’m so dirty.” I was like, “I don’t care. Hug me anyway.” I wanted to throw him in my car and take him home with me, but he was so caught in his addiction that it wasn’t going to matter what I wanted to do. He was still going to do what he wanted to do.

Unfortunately, I lost Chris for quite a while. Chris is still getting back on track. Hopefully, he can come home one day and in our hearts, stay with us, and be around. Drake met a girl, had some babies, went to school, and went into treatment. He had some struggles but is a great dad. He advocates for autism because his son is a little bit on the spectrum. He was the barber in the jail. With that, he found a passion for cutting hair. When he got out, he went to a barber school and does a great job.

Drake is doing very well. He keeps on trying to educate himself. I believe that it has a lot to do with their behaviors. Drake will very much be accountable for his behavior and he will own it. Christopher is still caught in that everything is happening to him, not for him. He hasn’t been able to accept his own actions in his journey yet. Does that make any sense?

It does. That’s going to help a lot of people because addiction is rampant everywhere. When you have a loved one who has an addiction, there’s only so much you can do. You can love and guide them, but as you said, it’s their journey. It’s so hard to let go and let them live their lives and still love them. I have so much admiration for you to be able to keep supporting them and not judging them.

 

Thank you. It’s not always easy. The one thing I learned 100% was when the boys went to prison, I tell my two biological children, “I love them infinitely.” Anybody I love dearly, I usually say, “I love you infinitely.” It’s something I learned when I was four and ran with it. Christopher didn’t want that. He wanted something significant himself. Whenever I see Christopher, I say, “I love you much.”

I’ve always said that I love my kids unconditionally. Even when I saw Christopher on the streets dirty, disgusting, and smelly, and I wanted hugs and he didn’t want to give me one, when I left, I still let him know that I love him much, “I don’t judge. I love you and I’m always here.” I got challenged with the unconditional love part of being a parent. When you have children that behave poorly and they end up in a system, in the paper, or making great waves of destruction behind them, you get to look at loving unconditionally.

If you were to ask me a little while ago, I would have said that the prison did nothing and there was nothing good about the boys going to prison. It was horrible. It still is horrible. However, I have been able to grow and look at things that I have gained and learn from the boys being in prison. One thing I can say solidly is I truly love my children unconditionally. Without a doubt, I know that I love my boys unconditionally. It’s a gift. I’m blessed that they taught me so many things and challenged me in so many ways, and that I was able to expand my heart to be a better mom to them in the process of it all.

It might be difficult for some parents to relate to that going through it. I hope that hearing your words will help them so that they can have that unconditional love for their loved ones. It could be their children, spouse, friend, or anybody, and still love them unconditionally because it’s their journey. Could you tell us what you’re doing now to help others, and then a little bit about the book that you wrote?

I do a lot of things to help others, sometimes not even consciously. I believe that I talk about things that are super uncomfortable and I make people uncomfortable. I sometimes feel like I’m Medusa. I have all those snakes on my head and everybody’s looking and pointing at you and whispers a little bit, but they’re afraid to make eye contact because if they do, you might turn them to stone.

I talk about the uncomfortable things. I talk about the boys, the journey, and all that stuff. The thing that makes people the most uncomfortable is I talk about the lack of support for me. The lack of showing up that people did. The lack of empathy, compassion, and understanding that I was grieving instead of being focused on the crime of the boys, and forgetting to look at how my day-to-day life had been destroyed.

These boys were a part of my life for 21 years every day. Even though they behaved poorly and challenged me at times, they were a very active part of my everyday life. There was not a day that didn’t go by that I didn’t talk to my kids. To have that ripped from your day-to-day life is painful. It’s not a death but it sure feels like one. The amount of pain and heartache you carry is crazy. It was not acceptable. I wasn’t supposed to be grieving and have any pain. I was just supposed to accept that my boys had behaved poorly, got incarcerated, end of story, and carry on, but I couldn’t.

A prison sentence is not a death, but it sure feels like one. The amount of pain and heartache you carry when someone is ripped from your daily life is crazy. Share on X

I knew nobody that had gone through this. I got counseling and did things. I tried to grow and expand. It was when somebody told me that I was grieving that I was like, “That makes sense.” What I’m doing is making sure that I share the word and I talk about things so that people know that they’re not alone. That loneliness when you’re in that much grief is horrible. I’m not talking about just incarceration. You have shame attached if you got suicide, drug overdose, drinking and driving, sex changes, and all sorts of things that parents get isolated from because their child is doing something, and then they’re stuck feeling alone in shame with no support. I don’t want people to feel like that.

I am trying to be out there and advocate for people, share more, talk more, and build a support system. There are a couple of people with the book that have reached out because they had children that went to prison and they had nobody to talk to. Like myself, they felt like they had no one. That’s what I’m trying to do.

We have a peer support group called Prison Families Alliance that is online and everybody is welcome. That’s at PrisonFamiliesAlliance.org. I hope you join us there and let others know how we can support each other there. When did you write your book? How did that come about?

It came about because I had so much to say that I kept saying it, so I wrote it. I wrote it because my boys have been painted with a pretty broad brush and I have been painted with somewhat of the same brush. It’s important for people to understand the journey. Parenting isn’t easy. If you add mental health, addiction, shame, and dysfunction, it’s harder. If you’re unwilling to look at yourself and grow and find things to be better or advance in, it keeps happening.

Parenting isn't easy. If you add mental health, addiction, shame, and dysfunction, it's harder. If you're unwilling to look at yourself and grow and find things to be better, they will keep happening. Share on X

I wanted people to understand, be better, learn a journey, expand their hearts, be kind, have more empathy, and not be so narrow-minded maybe. I don’t mean that in a negative aspect because you don’t know how somebody is feeling if you’ve never experienced the feeling. It’s hard to have empathy for somebody who lost a parent if you’ve never lost a parent.

I get that a lot of people don’t have empathy for what I went through. There are people that do because they’ve been through it but they are ashamed and embarrassed that they don’t talk about it. That’s why I wrote the book. I want it out there. I want people to be able to express and be, and reach out if they need. I don’t want anybody to feel that alone. I wrote the book to support everybody and anybody that has felt as messed up as I did.

That’s why I wrote Prison: The Hidden Sentence book. I get it because we didn’t have the support we needed when we were going through it. Writing that book is going to help so many people. What’s the name of the book?

The name of the book is My Heart Behind Bars. It got launched on the 26th of January. It’s now accessible on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. There’s an international site that you can go to for all the Kindles and all that stuff. It’s available in Canada.

Any last words for families going through this? You’ve shared so much and given us a lot of information throughout this interview. Are there any last words for anybody that has somebody that’s entering the prison system?

Be kind to yourself. One of the things that I learned very later on was to be gentle with myself. People were harsh and I was harsh. It wasn’t until later that I realized that I needed to be kinder to myself because there was so much unkindness out there that I had to be better to myself. I had to find avenues to educate myself, deal with my pain, and release the anger, anxiety, loneliness, and stress that I was feeling.

If you have somebody that is entering the system, you will probably want to get some counseling. Find something that is far more and better for you than drinking. I went through a little phase when all I want to do is numb myself. You don’t want to feel, but you have to feel, lean in, and share your gross and disgusting story so that your heart can grow and heal.

 

At the end of it all, as gross as it is, you’ve become such a beautiful human that you get to display what you wanted from others. You get to be that person that nobody could be for you. Maybe that’s my experience. It’s probably everybody’s, but I do know that after the journey I’ve been through, I’m far less judgmental. I’m far more compassionate. My heart is far more expanded than it was before. I try to show up for people even if I don’t understand. I try to be more honest with myself about what I’m going through, what is the trigger, or what am I reacting to. You have to take care of yourself when you have people going into the system.

I couldn’t have said it any better myself. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

 

Important Links

• Lorri Britt
• Amazon.com – My Heart Behind Bars
• Barnes & Noble – My Heart Behind Bars
• https://www.Facebook.com/lorri.t.britt
• https://www.Instagram.com/lorribritt/
• https://Twitter.com/drabkab
• https://PrisonFamiliesAlliance.org
• https://PrisonTheHiddenSentence.com
• Contact@PrisonTheHiddenSentence.com

 

About Lorri Britt

Lorri Britt comes from a family filled with mental health challenges and addictions passed down from generation to generation. So, when two of her children—one by birth and one she took in—began to struggle, she wasn’t in unfamiliar territory. But when they were incarcerated, Lorri wasn’t prepared for the emotional tailspin of grief, shame, anger, and loneliness in which she found herself.

Now she’s emerged with a heart for helping others navigate the chaos of similar circumstances, making sense of it as they heal. She shares her story in her book: “My Heart Behind Bars”.

Lorri was born and raised on Vancouver Island. She’s married with two biological children, but many others call her Mama B. A straight shooter with a big heart, Lorri has many interests, including various physical and creative pursuits. From archery, axe throwing, and golf to painting, reading, and writing, many of her hobbies have served as coping mechanisms during difficult days.

 

• Here’s How »

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