More than 2.7 million children in the U.S. have an incarcerated parent.

I am one of those children and my name is Ava. My dad is in prison, he has been for over a decade. I was four when he was first arrested and now I am 20 years old. I first started this website when I was 15 and living in a small town in the desert. I enjoy spending my time by reading, painting and drawing, playing video games, and being with friends. My favorite fruit are peaches and my favorite drink is diet coke with fresh lime or an iced white mocha. My favorite book is probably To The Light House by Virginia Woolf or Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Although now in college I have a lot less free time for reading, I am reading more historical novels and am currently reading Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin. I am a member of the Columbia Debate Society doing parliamentary debate and I love it.  I love almost all music, minus country unless we are talking about Johnny Cash and his contemporaries. One thing I love to do is learn languages. I took Spanish in high school and continue to improve it every opportunity I am given. Independently studied a little bit of Japanese as well as French and took a trimester of Chinese before I moved to a different high school. The reason why I love learning languages, along with many others, is because it allows you to communicate with all kinds of people and immerse yourself in the beauty of all the unique and beautiful cultures out in the world. My family is very outdoorsy so we go hiking and camping quite a bit along with rock climbing. Ironically, I am a little afraid of heights. Nevertheless, I am a member of the Columbia Rock Climbing Club and go climbing at the gym in Harlem several times a week with my peers. 

My father’s incarceration, as I am sure is the same for many others, has had a major influence on me and how I live my life. Growing up, I noticed how few resources were available for kids and teens with incarcerated parents. I wanted something where I could simply talk, be heard, and be around others who had a similar experience. I knew no one else who had a parent in jail and refused to speak about it because, like many others, I felt shame. If I could communicate one thing to those who read this, it would be the simple truth that it is not your fault, it never was. Nonetheless, kids with parents in prison carry around this shame that they are somehow responsible for the acts their parents committed. With therapy being expensive and out of grasp for many, school counselors feeling detached, and talking with family members feeling uncomfortable or painful, many kids go around carrying that pain within themselves. The inner turmoil that somehow you could have done something, anything to make it easier or feeling guilty. For those who feel the same, for those who are still struggling or newly thrown into this world, I wanted to create this forum. 

We should not have to continue going about our lives with an invisible weight on our backs begging, pleading for someone to talk to and sympathize with. I want you to speak and be heard. There are so many new things that come with an incarceration which can seem scary or suddenly complicated. How do I tell my friends where they went? How do I handle Mother’s Day or Father’s Day? How do visits work? How do collect calls work? How does losing a breadwinner affect day-to-day life? I am no expert and simply speak from experience but I believe with the collaborative effort of those who post to the forum we can learn together.