An Investment in Hope:

For nearly two decades, I supported my dad until he came home four years ago. Some months, it was $50 on his books, $100 for phone calls, others it was a few hundred dollars to send him care packages–especially for clothing to survive New York winters–and every month what I sent him limited my ability to make ends meet at home. Many of those years were heavy with really tough choices as I was trying to build my own life. When my daughter was 2, we were at the grocery and the only thing I could afford was diapers because I was going to send the rest of my money to my dad. But like any toddler, she grabbed a snack off the shelf—something small that she wanted but wasn't a necessity. I stood there knowing the bitter truth: I couldn't afford the diapers, the snack, and sending my dad money.

Supporting my dad meant too many choices of either/or – like being able to travel from Rochester, New York to Georgia for my twin's brother's boot camp graduation so he had at least one family member there to celebrate his accomplishment. That month, I couldn't put money on the phone. I couldn't send my dad a care package. I couldn't add to his commissary. With that decision I felt shame, not shame that my dad put on me, but shame the system left me holding, a silent burden of impossible choices to be able to show up for the people I love.

This burden, this cycle of sacrifice, isn't just mine. It's the reality of millions of families, especially children of incarcerated parents whose on-ramp to adulthood is slowed by a system that upends family budgets and disrupts generational wealth. Despite the struggles, I'd make the same choices again—every dollar I sent, every phone conversation I paid for, gave him hope in a place designed to strip it away, and it gave me the chance to know him not just as a father, but as a human being worth waiting for.