“We are no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday.” ― Samuel Beckett

My personal misfortune occurred on Valentine’s Day five years ago, when 11 federal agents awakened me at 6 a.m. by pounding on my door. I was half-asleep, in ratty pyjamas with morning-frenzy hair as I learned that my life-as-I-knew-it was officially over. There was no going back. They had come to arrest my 25-year-old son, Louie.

As a 66-year-old professional white woman, I had the extreme luxury of never having learned how to deal with cops, so I didn’t know that I could have refused to cooperate without a lawyer present. Instead, with minimal threats and heavy intimidation (and being quite outnumbered), I too easily gave up my son’s whereabouts, hundreds of miles from me. Within hours, I had secured a private attorney for him, and by day’s end, he was in custody.

Louie isn’t married, and I am a single mother, so there was no question that I alone would shoulder the burden of the financial, emotional and legal responsibilities for his care. I had no idea what lay ahead of me. This was his first run-in with law enforcement, so I was naive about the extent and costs of the tasks.

It turns out to be both time-consuming and expensive to have an incarcerated son. The first six months were a steep and twisting learning curve for me, and I am still mastering the skills to be a staunch advocate. I also still struggle to accept how little influence I can have within the legal and criminal justice system. But this is not the most difficult aspect — the hardest part is my broken heart.

Having a son in prison is the worst thing that has ever happened to me, and it is a long experience, not a single-incident trauma. It goes on for years, with shifts, of course, along the way, but none of those shifts involve increased freedoms or happiness for Louie or me.

The incarceration has commandeered a good portion of my free time and cost me a high percentage of my life savings so far, and I’m not nearly done. Unless we win our last-gasp appeal, we will be in the government’s custody for another four and a half years. And then there’s parole and supervised release — no picnic either, as I have been repeatedly warned.

The initial shock wears off, but the chronic pain does not subside over time, although mine has healed to the point of only being a moderate emotional limp now, and it is rarely noticed by others. This invisibility is a relief for my work as a psychotherapist, as I don’t want my clients to be distracted from their self-focus to notice it or worry about me. Friends and family are a different matter.

This calamity has expanded my understanding of the impact of race, class and privilege on Americans, especially within the criminal justice system. My merely basic knowledge of the real causes and impact of mass incarceration was a luxury that only someone in my privileged experience could afford. Now that I know — and now that I live in this world of court procedures and prison regulations — my political perspective has shifted further left. This exposure to the criminal justice system has also alienated me from much of my family and most of my white friends. Their privileged ignorance expresses itself as insensitive questions, biased assumptions or, worse, never asking after Louie anymore, as though he is dead.

Simple curious questions from colleagues or strangers who have limited or no exposure to prison life can also step into dangerous emotional territory. I can’t blame them for not knowing this is a minefield, but it is. It starts off simply by them asking, “Do you have children?”

“Yes, I have one son,” I respond casually, but my body tenses up. I know what’s coming.

“How old is he?” they ask, and I realise with some relief I have made it through one more question without trouble.

“He’s 32 now,” I answer.

“Oh, and where is he now?”

Here it comes. I take a breath. “Actually, he’s in prison,” I announce matter of factly, and all the oxygen is sucked out of the room with their inevitable gasp and covering their mouth with both hands.

And then it is now my responsibility to assuage their discomfort. Or worse, they blurt out their spontaneous follow-up question, “What did he do?”

The curiosity is understandable — completely so. But leading with those four little words shows little understanding of the injustices built into the system, assuming, first off, that he is guilty. And even that is of very little importance now. Louie is in prison, and he lives among the other men, guilty or innocent, all within the harsh and arcane rules of the prison.

The “guilty” and........

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