Stefani Scotch: 0:05

Welcome to the she Lost it podcast. I'm Stefani, and this is a space for you to lose what's been holding you back. Talk about real growth, find courage and step into the life you were meant for. Okay, friend, welcome back.

Stefani Scotch: 0:18

If you were here on the last episode a few weeks ago, you probably already know that I made the decision to open up and unearth my mother's handwritten prison journal and, honestly, I have been on the fence. I didn't know if I could really share this publicly and if I should, and what purpose would it serve and how in the world could I possibly do it justice? Even just reading her words from her first few days inside felt like too much. At times I was paralyzed. How in the world do I share this without breaking? But then I realized I'm not supposed to know all the answers and maybe they'll come along the way. Maybe we'll find them together. So after the last episode dropped, where I said it's time to break through the shame of whatever secret or not so secret story you've carried, I was blown away. God used my words to reach people I didn't even know were silently carrying similar stories and they messaged me and we connected and we started breaking the chains of shame together. So maybe this is why I feel so called to share this, not just my mother's story, not just mine, but the stories of the other women I'm reading about in this journal too, so that maybe you feel safe enough to share yours. Because let me ask you something who is hurting because you're hiding and what secrets are keeping you sick? You may be wondering why in the world would I share something so personal, so raw. But maybe that's the whole point. Maybe I'm going to give a voice to the voiceless, because most people they don't hear stories from the inside, especially not through the eyes of their daughter. This isn't just my mother's story. It's going to be a glimpse into the lives of so many women the world forgets, and you guys. That matters.

Stefani Scotch: 1:55

This has also made me look really hard at the justice system because, let's be honest, we all know it needs reform. I've experienced this firsthand, but now, seeing it through my mother's eyes, dating back to 1993, the same problems they were there then too. So maybe part of this is about exposing what still needs change, not just in policy or process, but in cycles, in silence and in survival and in the things we carry. I'm not here to give you a polished picture of redemption. I'm here to give you the truth about what really happened to her behind barbed wire, under fluorescent lights and between court sentencing. And here's the deal. I want this whole mini-series to feel like we're just sitting across from each other, coffee in hand, listening to it unfold, maybe with tears in our eyes and maybe laughing at how she found her first tennis shoes in the trash can, or how she was not so thrilled about the brown on brown uniform and orthopedic steel toed shoes. My mother, she was a fashion woman. That was not in her color wheel, but her humor about it, that part that was classic mom.

Stefani Scotch: 2:59

And finally, I think this is going to hold up a mirror, because we all have that thing. We've been avoiding the old journal, the secret, the chapter we've been too scared to open. So if something cracks open in you while you listen, let it. Let it make you curious, let it make you brave, because you're not alone. And maybe this real life, literal open book journey from my mother will help shed some light into the places you've kept in the dark, because you can't heal in the dark, you can't heal alone and you can't grow from a place of shame. We don't heal in hiding around here. So with that we're going to get into it, not just for me, but for her and for every woman who's carried a secret, and for every daughter who didn't get the full story, and maybe for you too.

Stefani Scotch: 3:43

So as I opened it, I started typing. I realized this is going to change me. I thought I'd just skim through a few pages, maybe share one or two of her entries. What I didn't expect was the way her words would leap off the page and sit down across from me, like she was still here, like we were having coffee and she was just catching me up. Reading her words now, as a 43-year-old mother myself, feels wildly different than anything I could have processed when this was happening in real time when I was 11. Back then I was scared, confused, just trying to survive. But now, now I really see her. Really see her not just as my mother, but as a woman, a woman who was trying her best in a system that was a foreign land to her. And you guys, she was 45 years old when she went in and I'm 43 now. And the connection I feel reading these words. It really is like she's sitting right next to me telling me her story. I can hear her voice, I can feel her hope, her fear, her grit, her humor, her humanness and her faith. So I'm going to take you inside her world, in her own words.

Stefani Scotch: 4:51

I'm going to walk you through her first 12 pages of this 99-page journal inside the Mariana Women's Federal Prison Camp in 1993. And what's really wild is, as I'm reading these journal pages that are handwritten in her perfect cursive, dated entry by entry, you guys, they line up with the exact same dates on the calendar today June and July of 2025 and June and July of 1993. 32 years later to the day 1993, 32 years later to the day, and I do not believe in coincidences. So when she starts her journal, the first thing she wrote about was her entry. Okay, she didn't call it booking, she didn't call it intake, she called it entry, like she'd been dropped into something foreign and permanent. So she writes you're all the same.

Stefani Scotch: 5:44

When you walk through that door all the way down to the strip search, I feel so alone and my body has been placed somewhere, but my mind is in shock, maybe the body too. I feel like I'm no one, okay. So I remember her describing that strip search years later. Okay, even then it didn't make sense to me, like I'm at a loss for words. I was 11. And think was, and I still think. Why in the world would anyone want to do that to my mother? She wasn't a monster, she was my mother. Maybe that's where my inner rescuer was born a little bit more. I was trying to take her pain away before I ever even knew what codependency meant.

Stefani Scotch: 6:23

But in the middle of that shock, what was really cool was seeing how women showed up, as women do, strangers who knew exactly how it felt to walk in wearing nothing but fear and shame. And, you guys, they came and they gave her something she didn't have yet and it was belonging. And she talks about those big sisters that had been there for 10 plus years, that surrounded her with care and compassion. So they became part of her family. And they showed up. They shared what little they have. They gave her shampoo, soap, lotion, makeup and some little flip-flops. You guys, she had nothing. She couldn't buy toiletries. She couldn't even afford phone time to call me because her money hadn't posted yet, and so in order to make phone calls, you have to have money posted on your account. So this meant two weeks of silence, and that silence haunted her. I was her world, just like any other child is to a mother right.

Stefani Scotch: 7:15

But even in that silence she chose to move forward, her survival mode, it kicked in and her dignity found a way to stand up, even in those ugly shoes. So she talks about the brown on brown uniforms with her orthopedic steel-toed shoes. And you guys, my mother was a fashion queen Orthopedic shoes, brown on brown. That was a personal hell for her, but she laughed because that's what women do when they're surviving the unimaginable Crack jokes. So we don't break. And the other thing that stood out to me was how excited she was about getting to work. So she took a typing test and you guys, that woman could type faster than anyone I have ever seen in my life. So she took a typing test and she writes that the job pays $38 a month and she couldn't wait to get started. You guys, she was hustling on day one, but then, at night, came the quiet.

Stefani Scotch: 8:03

And this line is the one that cracked me wide open. She says it's hard to explain how I feel. I feel alone, but God is with me and he is my strength. Okay, feel alone, but God is with me and he is my strength. Okay, that was the freight train moment for me, because I have felt that aloneness. I have felt that pain during my divorce, when I was cut off from my son, when the court system failed me too. That wasn't logic, that was grief, and that kind of pain buries deep into your bones. So what do we do with pain like that? We keep going and we get really resourceful and we reach for any ounce of control, and in my mother's case that meant finding hope in a trash. Can you guys? She put a board under her mattress because she thought it would help. She says it didn't, it was only worse. But I did find an old pair of tennis shoes in the trash. Can, yes, now I can work out that pair of tennis shoes in the trash? Can, yes, now I can work out. That was so her Making do staying busy, grabbing hold of anything that felt like progress. That mattress may as well have been concrete, but give a woman a pair of sneakers and she will find her strength again, and she did.

Stefani Scotch: 9:06

But the other thing that really stuck out to me in these first few pages is the injustice of the justice system. She talks about how this was an all-women's prison camp, so all the inmates were women but all the officers and supervisors were men. And she says it's funny, isn't it? It's real funny how all the supervisors and officers are men in an all-women's prison. And she talked about how they would come in at any hour of the night and you, as long as you were, you know, in your area, in your bunk area, I mean, that they could check in on you. It didn't matter if you were in the shower or you know, not clothed, or in the bathroom, or they could just walk in and see what you were doing. So she talks about there was a lot of ego and power play in that justice system, so that felt like something that really stood out to me.

Stefani Scotch: 9:54

The other thing that I was blown away by was the stories of the other women in there, the stories of the women that were one-time offenders, that had never been in trouble ever before, never made mistakes with, you know, with the legal system just regular women caretakers, moms, daughters, the legal system, just regular women caretakers, moms, daughters, grandmothers, aunts and how they made a mistake but were ripped away from their families in such a manner that just didn't seem fair. Sure, they made mistakes and, yes, they need to be held accountable for it. But there just seems to be a better way than ripping them away from their families. And this one really stood out to me. It was a little old lady named Opal. So I'm going to read this word for word from mom's journal in her own words so she describes Opal as a little old lady and she says that she didn't have any teeth and she was the sweetest little lady.

Stefani Scotch: 10:47

But she ended up there in the prison camp with mom for bank robbery, bank robbery, okay. So as I'm reading this, I'm like what Bank robbery? I know, she says. I know. I couldn't believe it either. She's never done anything against the law. If she got a parking ticket, it was paid within 30 minutes of the time she got it.

Stefani Scotch: 11:08

She said K, I was on medication for pain. She said she was probably taking 10 tablets a day instead of one or two. It threw her into a deep depression and she was slowly losing herself. So one night her little girl came home from church crying. She asked her what was wrong and her daughter said that the preacher's daughter told the other children not to play with her because she was poor. So Opal on this medication, depressed, addicted to these pills for pain that her doctor had just prescribed, without any regard in my opinion. Opal was so hurt for her daughter. To this day she didn't know how her thoughts could have gone this far.

Stefani Scotch: 11:47

But she read a story about this lady who robbed a bank by using a videotape and taping it up to look like a bomb and putting it in a box. Y'all this is real. She took a TV and taping it up to look like a bomb and putting it in a box. Y'all this is real. She took a TV remote. She made it to look like a hand detonator. Her husband and children knew nothing about what she was going through. She rented a van. She parked it away from the house.

Stefani Scotch: 12:06

Early the next morning, about 4 am, she left in her car. She got in the van and she rode around for four hours trying to decide what bank to hit. After deciding, she pulled in the drive-in window, handed her the box, the teller, the box with the note held the TV controller in her hand and she got around $2,800. And she drove off About five blocks up the road. The police stopped her. She got out of the car, there were guns all around her and then Opal had a heart attack. So mom describes that Opal started crying while she was telling her this story.

Stefani Scotch: 12:37

She said the police went to her house, told her husband she was in the hospital. Her husband didn't even know she had left. The police said that she had been arrested and her husband could not believe it. So the police showed him her driver's license and her husband said what in the world did she do? And they said she got arrested for bank robbery. So her husband came to the police station. Opal was so ashamed she couldn't even look at him. He kept saying Opal, turn around, it's okay, I love you. You're sick but I'm going to take care of you and we're going to get you help.

Stefani Scotch: 13:03

After three months in county jail, with a public defender representing her, he convinced her to plead, promising only four to five months. Letters were written to the judge by doctors, various people in the community, but the judge didn't read them. He didn't care. Three men who were sentenced in front of her for attempted murder and rape got various months with just probation. Opal got 54 months and no probation. She was a first-time offender with children proven that she was messed up on prescribed medication.

Stefani Scotch: 13:33

So this story just really opened my eyes to you know why people do what they do and the justice system being broken in so many ways, even back then. So when I was going through and reading about other women's stories, it really made me think, okay. So maybe this miniseries is going to be more about them too, like what happened to the women in this journal. What happened to their kids? Did they rise above it or did they become another statistic? Did they develop resilience or were they born with it? And then that made me think about you as you're listening to this.

Stefani Scotch: 14:10

What about you? Are you hiding something that needs light? Are you carrying something that was never yours? This is going to be your invitation to share this episode, to talk about what you've never said out loud and to stop hiding and to let the healing begin, because, like I said earlier, we don't heal in hiding around here. And this story, you guys, it's just getting started. There is so much to share and so much to get into, and I really can't wait to just peel back the layers and watch this unfold together. So I'll meet you back here for the next episode, for the next chapter, because we are not done yet, we're just getting started and remember thank you for being here, thank you for listening, thank you for holding me through this and standing in the gap with me. And remember, if no one has told you today, I love you and I believe in you. See you next time.