Prison doesn’t just incarcerate one person—it changes countless lives. In this heartfelt episode of Prison: The Hidden Sentence, Rebecca shares what it’s like raising her daughter while her husband is incarcerated. She opens up about the loneliness of parenting alone, who she can trust with their story, balancing the challenges her husband faces in prison with the needs of their family, and why she refuses to give up on the man she loves. As she navigates the uncertainty of incarceration and recovery, Rebecca hopes that by sharing her journey, others will feel less alone and more understood. Her story is a powerful reminder that incarceration reaches far beyond prison walls, affecting children, spouses, extended families, workplaces, friendships, and entire communities in ways that are often unseen, yet deeply felt.
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Prison And Parenthood: Raising A Daughter While My Husband Is Incarcerated
Introduction: Stories Of Incarceration
Welcome to the show, where we raise awareness one story at a time. I am the author of Prison: The Hidden Sentence™: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR LOVED ONE IS ARRESTED AND INCARCERATED, which can be purchased on Amazon. I am here with Rebecca, who is going to share a very personal story that most people do not talk about. Rebecca, I appreciate your courage in sharing your story and especially why you will not give up. Let us start from the beginning as I typically do. Let us start with how you and Mike met.
Thank you, Julia. I really appreciate this opportunity. If how I have suffered and struggled can be helpful to any other human and make them feel less alone, then I want to just share all of that, and we will get into Mike and where we are now with him in prison, but I just felt so alone, and it was just so devastating. I remember looking and researching and scouring, and finding online. I found your podcast, and I have your book, and I have all of these other books about prison. I remember when you interviewed people, and other episodes would have prison wives, and I just wanted to not feel alone. Just thank you. Honestly, just thank you, Julia.
It is my pleasure. I mean, in a weird way, it is not a pleasure, but it is very rewarding to be able to have something that helps people because I know what it is like to feel alone, and just knowing that there is somebody else out there that understands that can virtually hold your hand if they are not right there and help uplift you. It is so important. I am so glad that you found the support that you needed at that time.
I am really big on breaking down the stigma of depression, suicide, incarceration, and certain offenses that lead to incarceration. The more stigmatized you feel, and I heard this from someone else, it is like a death in the family, but no one is bringing you a casserole. No one is coming over, and you are just so alone. The wonderful thing about your organization, Julia, I get to, I am fortunate enough to volunteer and host support groups at Prison Families Alliance on their Zoom. I come from a twelve-step recovery, solid recovery background. I was looking for something just like this. I was actually on the phone with a girlfriend maybe a week ago and just talking her down from a really stressful situation.
My pain has a purpose. I can see why I had to go through what I had to go through to be able to reach back and help other folks and pull them forward so they do not commit suicide, so they do not stay in that depression, so they know there is another side of it. That is why. We will talk about Mike, but God bless him. He is so hard-headed. I love him so much, but I am not going to quit on him. I got married to him, and I said until death do us part, and in good and bad and sickness and health. I am like, “You can go out with me. I will be here when you come home. Call me later.”
Finding Connection Through Recovery
How did you guys meet?
It is really funny. I mean, you cannot like, I am going to write a book. We were both in ten-year marriages, and we both got divorced at about the same time. I had been in the AA community, the recovery community, since 2012. He was in his own addiction and drinking and driving and OWIs and felonies, but it is recovery. It is twelve steps.
I just want to say, people that are not in the twelve-step program might not understand what you’re saying, but it’s recovery, right? People go forward, they go back, and things happen. Everybody recovers in their own time, and there are setbacks sometimes. To somebody listening that has not been through it, I think that they might be like, “No, you’re in recovery. You shouldn’t get in trouble. However, until you’re there, just like anything else, you do not understand it.” I really appreciate you sharing that.
Just to clarify, like most of us, we go to AA meetings, and I am trying to be anonymous. I do not represent AA. I am not here to speak about AA, so I am talking about 12 steps. I am talking about recovery groups, trying to be very general purposefully, but folks will go there because they are court-ordered, and then they work the twelve steps, and they get a sponsor, and then they get some recovery, and they go on to lead beautiful, amazing lives. That is typically what happens, but most of us will have a felony or some jail time in our background. That is just very common because when you are in an active addiction, you are doing fun and interesting things.
You and Mike met in the twelve-step.
It was really funny because I had been in the program a couple of years, and I love my first sponsor, and I still call her when I need her. I remember going to my home group, Monday nights at the church. I saw Mike, and he has got glasses, and he is smoking a cigarette, and he has got his pea coat on. He is just very angry. He is just so angry. I am like, “Buddy, you need recovery. I am so glad you are here.” I ignored him. I was trying to save my first marriage and trying to just get myself to stay sober and trying to work the 12 steps. He ended up going to the working jail, Huber.
I do not know. Every state is different, but at least in our state, you can go out and work in the community, and you just go back to jail. This is very common for drunk driving offenses. You are on an ankle monitor, and you come back and sleep at the jail. I have taken 12-step meetings to the jails too. Anyway, I digress. Mike, he went to jail. He was doing his own thing. He got divorced. I am doing my own thing. I am getting divorced. We are both working on our programs of recovery. I am just here doing the best I can. I am working at a sober living house part-time.
I am sponsoring women. We still bury people in recovery because they commit suicide instead of going back out to drink or use drugs. It is really horrible stuff, but recovery got me through so much. I gained this relationship with my God of my understanding, a higher power. I was just doing what I was supposed to do, helping other women. I was taking care of my daughter. I was having so much peace. All of a sudden, Mike, I see him again. He is at all my meetings. I am like, “Where did you come from?” We are at these 12-step cookouts and workshops.
After the Wednesday meeting, everyone would go and get tacos. He is reaching out to the newcomers and the boys at the sober living house, and he is like, “It’s because I had been praying.” I am like, “My first marriage, that was a mistake. I have learned so much. I am growing. I am going to work on my side of the street and do God’s will. I would just really like someone who would really like me and my daughter for me, for us. God, could we try again? Please, could we try again? That would be really great.”
I am just doing my thing, and I keep seeing Mike, and I am talking to all these other guys, and I am like, “Go away.” I am talking and going in DMs and doing things, and Mike keeps showing up, and he keeps showing up, and he’s working a good program, and he’s helping all the boys. We are at tacos one night. I hear him shout at the end of the table. We got maybe fifteen people at tacos after the meeting. He is like, “Maybe God does not want me to be in a relationship.” I am like, “I want that one.” Eventually we got together at a big 12-step recovery camping event.
It was really beautiful. I was just like, “Here is my recovery partner, and they believe in God. We are both quoting the Big Book. We are doing the things, and we are committed.” I am like, “We did it. I found it. This is fantastic. I was just so elated.” The thing about any community is people talk. Because I had a daughter, people talked, and they started coming up to me, and they started coming up to my sponsor. Mike, he had an open criminal case, and I had no idea what was going on. It was a sex offense case. People always hear sex offences.
Facing The Stigma Of Sex Offense Charges
They hear registered sex offenders, and they think the worst. They think the absolute worst. My stomach dropped. It was just so mortifying. I am like, “How? I am with this man, and he is just so kind, and he has such faith in God.” I am like, “Dude, tell me what’s going on.” He told me his version of the truth at the time. I have learned that it is 75% of what actually happened is what he told me at the time. When the events occurred leading to that criminal case, I know he was in a horribly dark place. It is a mental illness that I am not familiar with, but I have seen through work in Prison Families Alliance and helping other women and hearing other people come out of prison with sex offenses.
I know there is recovery and there is redemption, and that one dark period in someone’s life does not define you, does not define you as a human being. I stayed. I stayed because I saw a man working a program of recovery and committed to God and his higher power and helping other people. Right now that man is a little bit lost. We are about four years into his ten-year initial confinement. It is hard. I stayed, and I believed him. If I had been in a similar situation, I would probably do the same thing, knowing how criminal cases go, and you cannot tell everyone the 100% truth because they can get subpoenaed and testify against you and all of these legal things.
If how I have suffered and struggled can be helpful to any other human and make them feel less alone, then I want to just share all of that. Share on XI have become quite the pro se paralegal, actually, writing briefs for us. I could understand why he did what he did and not tell me everything. He eventually told me everything before he got sentenced, and he did not have to, and some people do not get that. I am with Mike, and we get pushed out of the twelve-step community because it was horrible. I could see your eyes bulging out, because it is a sex offense and I have a daughter, and they think he is manipulating me. It was really horrible. COVID hit, and everything was locked down, and no one was doing meetings, and really Zoom emerged, and thank God because I am meeting with you over Zoom.
I am in the medical field. I meet with my patients over Zoom. I get to work at home, and when my daughter has snow days, I do not have to do anything. She is just at home, and I meet my patients and recovery meetings over Zoom. I am just so grateful, and then PFA, all the recovery, all the support group meetings over Zoom. We got kicked out of recovery basically. We went through everything and pushing out the trial. Really, from a strategic point, again, I have become this. I play a lawyer on TV, but well done with exercising your right with defense arguments.
There were things that the lawyer said. They are human. You have to hold them accountable. As a whole, pretty good strategy, I think, as a layperson, not actually a lawyer. I do not know if that matters at all. He ends up taking this plea. He is facing 40 years in prison. We are talking with the lawyer, and in our county, 50% of people with this charge get house arrest or get Huber. They get the working jail. The other majority of the people that do get prison time, it is like one to two years. We are thinking pretty minimally. He accepts the plea from the DA in the county, and the only caveat is that the DA gets to argue for the length of incarceration at sentencing.
We do not have an agreement on how long the sentence will be. Of course, he wanted eighteen years, something like that. Of course, Mike, we want him home so he can be working, making money, trying to support his wife and his kids from his first marriage, which he did a great job with, at least financially supporting them. He was not able to have contact with them during that period. It was really horrible for him. We get to sentencing, and the judge throws the book at him and gives Mike ten years initial confinement. I am rounding.
It is like ten years, two months, and then like about eight years on extended supervision. I forget all of the nuances of extended supervision, if it’s like parole, but he has to check in with someone when he gets out in the community. If anything happens, he can get sent back to prison for the remainder of that. It is still an eighteen-year sentence. It is just ten years initial confinement, eight years in the community potentially. We are at the courthouse that day, and I think he is coming home. I think he is getting house arrest. We have the victim’s mother advocating to keep him in the community, that sending him to prison is not going to solve anything. I am there.
I have got my mother-in-law, Mike’s mother. She says something. We submitted letters. God, I just remember when they took them in handcuffs and how devastating it is. As I said, we are just about four years into this ten-year initial confinement. I have gone through this whole trajectory of depression and suicide and hopelessness, and I am on the other side of that. I still remember how devastating it was, but I do not cry at the drop of the hat and go back into that. I have really blunted my emotions a lot, for better or worse. I am not crying every day. “That’s a win.”
Managing Life As A Prison Wife And Solo Parenting
It is. Are you guys married at this point?
We had been married about a year and a half when the sentencing occurred. It felt like a lifetime. We packed 5, 10 years’ worth of experiences going through this whole thing together in that short amount of time we had been together. We are about five and a half years married right now. It just feels like I have been to hell and back with this guy, like we have been married for twenty years. I listen to comedians, and they talk about old marriages like you might as well just give up now. No, none of us are getting out of here alive. That is where we are right now.
I remember, at sentencing, I came home. My mother-in-law and my brother-in-law were there too, Mike’s brother. They spent some time with me, and then they dropped me back off at the house. I just came into the house, and it just was so quiet. I was just all alone. I can still remember just collapsing on the floor as soon as I entered the house and just screaming, just being so devastated at it all. Just angry at God, really. I had a failed first marriage. I had done all this work to get sober. I went back to school, got another degree. I was cleaning up my side of the street, trying to make a life for me and my daughter.
I met this amazing man. We got pushed out of the recovery community, and then he was taken from me. The charge, and we like to talk about the person and not the crime, but I want to talk about at least the stigma of being married to a sex offender and staying with them. It is like, I am terrified he is going to get raped or stabbed in prison. He is terrified he is going to get raped or stabbed in prison. He was so suicidal that first year, and I am crying every day calling his sponsor. I am like, “You have to go and talk to him. I do not know if he is going to make it.”
It was just, and of course, leading up to sentencing, I had been laid off work. Obviously, he had to stop working because he was not sure if he would be able to work a month later or not. It was like my whole world collapsed, like a bad country song. My husband went to prison, I was laid off, and I am at the food pantry. I was chronically unemployed for about a year until I started my own business, and with my LLC used my credentials in the medical field to be able to get contracts to see patients and bring in some income because there just were not any jobs.
Now it is all on me to support my husband, to support my child. I remember Mike was at the sorting prison or the reception prison. They go to sentencing, and then he was ripped away. He gets put in the county jail, and you have to stay there for a length of time. Thankfully, he was only there for like maybe a month or so. The details are a little fuzzy. There is all that crying and trauma at that time. He gets sent to the sorting prison where they assess your status. He got assessed as medium risk, so there is like max, medium, low. There might be work camps.
That is how it works in our state. He goes to a medium, and I remember whenever they get transferred to the prison, the correctional officers do not tell you because they think, like, you are going to plan a prison break. I do not know what HBO movie they think this is. It is not. I drive the hour and a half out to the sorting prison, and he is not there, and I cannot see him, and they will not tell me anything. Of course, not me because it is a sex offense and he was already in the barracks.
Thank God he is not in the barracks now because I still have this memory when he was in the sorting prison, and maybe a hundred guys were in this big open room with the double bunk beds. It was like this Lord of the Flies situation. They gather around him in a circle, and they are screaming names, “I am going to kill you.” They are all horrible. I could not imagine living like that. The correction officers are just in the bubble, like doing nothing. Thank God.
I always tell the story when I am at meetings at PFA to give folks hope. He stood up for himself, and he did not take any swings, but he stood the fuck up for himself, and he would not take shit. He has continued that mentality of like, you know what? We are all in here. We have all done some s***. He has continued that mentality of like, “We’re all in here. We’ve all done some s***.” He still gets harassed and stalked at the current prison. He is like, “You want to hit me? You want to go to the hole? I will take a vacation in the hole. Let us go.”
He is just not afraid. That is where I see the extortion and what else is it, but the people threatening your life, and then the wife on the outside and you have to pay and put money on someone’s books, or they are going to beat the crap out of me, or they are going to shift me or whatever. Thankfully, he was smart enough that we never had to deal with that because he just would not take any s***. He is known as the resident asshole, and I do not think that’s a bad thing, all things considered. I come to the prison now, and they know me. I do not mind that. I do not mind that reputation.
They know us. My story in this stream of consciousness that I am telling. I go to the sorting prison. They will not tell me where he is. All they tell me is that I cannot see him. I drove for an hour and a half because he has been transferred to his new home. I do not know if he is actually in the medical unit or what, if he has been stabbed or what, because I know what’s been going on. It has been horrible for him.
I am genuinely terrified. I should, and so I leave, and I am listening to a recovery meeting, driving home, because that was one of the ways I would get recovery meetings in. I just hopped on, and I was just so angry at God. I am like, “I did all the things. I did all the twelve steps. I was sponsoring women, first failed marriage, a second, really God-centered guy. Now he is ripped from me, and I am all alone.” I was just so angry with God for so long.
There is recovery and there is redemption, and that one dark period in someone's life does not define you. Share on XDealing With Community Stigma And Social Isolation
I can understand the anger. It was like we talked about the different stages of grief, and that’s one of them. It’s not only that, but what about dealing with people around you because he was convicted of a sexual crime. How did you talk to anybody? Did people know? Did you tell them, or did they find out? How did you address that? That’s really challenging. That’s where the stigma really comes in. How do you talk to people?
You have to remember, because at the time, COVID had occurred. Everything got shut down. I got isolated from the recovery community. I had maybe two friends who were like my sponsor, and one of my girlfriends. They were really the only folks that stuck by me through everything. Whatever they believed about Mike, they loved me. Usually I will not let that fly. If you are going to be disrespectful to my husband, then f*** you. I do not want anything to do with you. They were always respectful to Mike. They were always kind and loving.
Ironically, my girlfriend, now her son, ended up having a sex offense and going to prison. It happens more easily than you would think. How is God using me? Here we go. I have known my girlfriend. We grew up in the rooms of recovery for years. I got to be of service to her, and I am trying to start an in-person support group at my local church. Just because there are so many people, it is so devastating, and you are so alone. How can I use this hurt? It is my theme to help other people.
The nice thing was that there was such a break and isolation, and Mike and I had gotten married during the pandemic. We were really only connected with the recovery community. Even now, four years later, when I take my daughter to dance class, they all know I am married, but it is socially acceptable for the mom to be taking the daughter to dance class, or to take them to events. It is mommy-daughter weekend, and we are traveling for this event.
That is very socially acceptable. When things happen, if there is a tornado and there is damage in the yard or something like, “Mike, he is just out of town. God damn it. He is just always out of town when I need him. I love him. God bless him.” I have not had to say any more than that. I do not have very many close friends like I used to, but I have got like 2 or 3 that I could really count on. That is really all I need.
It is quality, not quantity.
It is.
That’s really important. Let us talk about, so he’s incarcerated now, and you found out some things. He’s not in a really good place. We were talking a little earlier. However, you said that you will not give up, that you know that Mike is in there, the Mike that you fell in love with. Let us talk about that a little bit. That’s going to help a lot of people. A lot of times they don’t have the energy or the understanding to be there for their loved one during those hard times.
As you said, married for better or worse. I talked about this a little bit ago, but he is suffering because his world is so small. He has got on the unit, maybe a hundred guys. The COs and people are messing with him. It is just him and his cellie.
That’s what you were talking about, like when he was in the, said that in the sorting facility, which made me think of Harry Potter. I just, in my mind, I was laughing when you were saying that when he’s in the fish tank. Now that he’s been in there for four years, there have been some changes. It’s still not easy.
The Reality Of Prison Survival And Mental Health
It is not as bad, but he still gets harassed. He gets stalked. He gets called names. It’s still pervasive. Now it is not like the stories I have heard in other really hardcore prisons where the sex offenders need to be segregated. I still wish he was. I do not know why you have all of these folks where the person that has got capital murder on his record is saying, “I am going to kill you, the sex offender,” as though he is worse than the other guy.
I do not know why you would not just separate them. All of that has been so horrible for Mike. His world is so small, but dealing with that constant stress and anger and pressure on him. Me, I am out here alone trying to take care of my daughter. All the bills are on me. I have got to work. Thank God Mike taught me how to change the oil. I am fixing toilets. I am fixing plumbing. Me and YouTube and AI, we are best friends, troubleshooting everything because we just do not have money for repairs. I have to figure it all out. I am in this horrible, deep depression like this past fall. I thought I would not make it.
I really came to this breaking point of being suicidal and not wanting to be here anymore, this deep hopelessness. When you have two people that are just hurting, they are just hurting, and they are suffering, and they are just hopeless, and they cannot support each other. They just cannot. Now I am a few months on the other side, and I want to live again, and I am on really good antidepressants. I have been in therapy for like three years. I have had a good therapist through all of this, but I have not had good medication until like the past six months. Mike, when was the last time you called your sponsor?
He stopped going to the recovery group because he is a sex offender, and people were like cutting him off, and he was not able to talk. He is just isolating. He is just so angry. When we talk, it is just so sad. It just breaks my heart because we just had a phone call. We were blowing up at each other just yesterday. It just comes from both of us being hurt. I will get these cycles where we reconnect, and it is me and him against the world, and we are on the same team. I can see why God put us together. I can see what I am if he would just open himself up and listen, like, buddy, come over here.
You need some compassion. He has helped me grow, and he has pushed me out of my comfort zone, and I have grown, and now I can stand up for myself. I never thought I could file briefs and do taxes and repair the car and all these things. He is like, “Go do it now, because there is no one else to do it. I am not home.” I am so grateful for that. I know why God put us together. That man of God that I fell in love with, it’s almost like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is not a great analogy, but like twins. “There is my husband today. There is my kind and loving husband. I see him. There he is.”
It is like this breath of fresh air. I see my best friend, and I see the man of God that I fell in love with. The next day, I just like, I do not know what happened. I do not know what happened. He is just this 180, completely turned. Now he is just so angry. I am not going to quit on him until he comes home and we can actually get some counseling on this. For me, I would rather just like, “Dude, you want to do your time alone, that’s fine. I will be here taking care of the house until you come home. I will do my thing. There are worse things I could be doing to spend my time. I am not at the club. I just really want to go hiking. I want to go lay on the beach and then go hike the Grand Canyon, like for real.
I do not want to be involved with humans anymore.” I will just wait until you come home, and we can deal with it then. I just do not want him to realize, like, have this wake-up moment, and I do not know if it will be six months from now. I do not know if it will be a year from now. I do not know when it will be when he actually, like, works the 12 steps that he was given the foundation to work like “Dude, go do your work. I have done like three inventories on you and the confession with my sponsor. I have done my job.”
I do not want to miss that. I know we should not like to keep people for their potential, but it’s not potential. It’s like, I saw that, and why would God put us together through all of the suffering if there was not a reason to pull each other out of it and do better? I am like, “Mike, if you would get out of yourself, you could help so many people, because you are not the only sex offender in there. They are all suffering.
Healing yourself helps heal others. Share on XI’m out here helping the women with the husbands that are charged with sex offenses, and they are all alone. I’m trying my damnedest to help them. Can you go inside and go help and reach your hand out? Go down the cell block. Come on.” He is just so broken inside. He just cannot right now. We are four years in. It’s a ten-year sentence. Maybe he does 75%, maybe he does 85%. It is not going to be that much longer. I do not have to wait that much longer.
Advice For Families And Finding Hope
I love your, your belief, right? That someday I have heard lots of stories. I know you have too, that people do come around that people like the man that you saw, the man that you fell in love with, that is going through things right now, that you still see that, and that he will be there. I believe that too. As we wrap up our talk, and I just appreciate you sharing so much, is there any words of advice, words of wisdom, or just something you want to share with the families out there?
One, for people that do have a loved one with what we call an SO, a sex offense, and two, for the people that are listening that are like, “This is crazy that this is happening to him in prison and that you’re having to do everything.” It’s just like, if you haven’t been through it, you don’t understand. If you could address those two, one for the families and two for the people that are just scratching their head right now because they don’t understand.
For the second group of folks, I used to live pretty high and mighty too. You would just be surprised how prevalent it is. Just folks that are incarcerated, a family member, a friend of a friend, a friend of a family member who is incarcerated. As I said, my girlfriend and her son got charged with a sex offense. You would really be surprised how prevalent it is. Also, just how dark and sad the human capacity is, and hearing Mike’s bottom and like what led him to make those mistakes, my heart just breaks for him. I do not think it’s the same thing. We are all capable of murder.
We are all capable, given the right set of conditions and circumstances, but by the grace of God, go me. I do not judge people anymore. I do not know what hell they are going through, that they have been through, that they are surviving, that they are trying to get through. I just want to be kind and loving to other human beings because I have no idea what they are going through. With the families, with a loved one, with a sex offense charge, thank God for support groups like PFA. There are advocacy groups, and there are books, and people talking about this, not to normalize it, but to make it so you feel less alone.
I’m actually not that unique. What you’re going through, you might not be that unique, and just to come on a Zoom meeting, I have been on the Zoom meetings just like crying in the background, and the facilitator is talking like, “I am not alone. Thank God.” Just reach out, and then God, if you are suicidal, please call someone. Please, please just go try some medication. Check yourself into rehab. I promise you, if you can just even six months out, your whole outlook can be completely different. As I said, I was on the phone with a friend a week or so ago and talked her down from a situation, and she is worried because her husband is coming home a little bit.
I said, a lot can change in six months, and a lot can stay the same in six months. Can we get through tonight, and then we will worry about the next six months instead of future tripping. Just connecting with another human being and then being honest and getting on some good medication. I tried everything, everything on my own and with my husband, and I was not able to pull out of that suicidal ideation until I got an antidepressant.
I am so glad you’re here, Rebecca. The world’s a better place because of you, all the help and support that you’re doing for others. Healing yourself helps heal others. Again, like we always say, there is always hope. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing. I know that this is not a topic a lot of people talk about. I really appreciate you doing that. Thank you.
Thank you for having me, Julia. I appreciate it.
Important Links
- Prison: The Hidden Sentence™: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR LOVED ONE IS ARRESTED AND INCARCERATED
- Prison Families Alliance
- Prison: The Hidden Sentence
- Prison Families Alliance Calendar
- Connecting 4 Justice International
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