“I Don’t Want You to Worry About Me”: A Letter No Mother Should Ever Have to Write

The night before her sentencing, Ashley didn’t sleep. She lay awake on the sofa in a SWOP Behind Bars advocate’s living room, clutching a worn spiral notebook and a pen that kept smudging. She was quiet—too quiet for someone who usually talks with her hands and laughs from her belly—but we understood. The next day, she was going to court, and she knew she probably wasn’t coming home.

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She, a mother to a young daughter, had been arrested in a sting a few months earlier—one of those undercover “operations” that are supposed to stop trafficking but mostly just criminalize people trying to survive. Ashley had asked for a diversion program, but they told her she didn’t qualify. Why? Because her charges were too serious. Or not serious enough. Or maybe she just didn’t fit the mold of what they think a “real victim” looks like.

So instead, she was out on bond. Waiting. Trying to parent, plan, and piece together some kind of peace while knowing her freedom had an expiration date.

That night, Ashley asked if we could do her a favor.

“If they take me in tomorrow,” she said, “will you send this to my daughter?”

We told her yes, of course. That we’d mail it the next day if she didn’t walk out of that courtroom.

She handed us a letter—carefully folded and addressed in purple marker. Inside were words no child should ever have to receive.

“I don’t want you to worry about me, baby. Mommy is going to be okay. You be good at school and help Grandma like you always do. I’ll be thinking about you every day. I love you bigger than the sky.”

The letter didn’t mention jail. It didn’t explain why she might disappear for a while. It was full of soft reassurances—because Ashley was still trying to protect her child from a world that had refused to protect either of them.

But in between those reassurances, there was something else.

Apologies.Over and over again.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much.”“I’m sorry you have to be so brave.”“I’m sorry for all the ways I couldn’t fix things.”

Apologies for the chaos. Apologies for the system. Apologies for poverty, for trauma, for the nights she cried in the bathroom so her daughter wouldn’t hear.Apologies for things that were never her fault.Apologies that should’ve come from somewhere else—like a courtroom, or a mayor’s office, or a Department of Corrections press release.

But that’s what criminalized survivors do.They carry the shame of systems that failed them.They absorb the blame. They try to explain the unexplainable to the people they love.

Ashley’s only “crime” was surviving. Years earlier, she had been trafficked. Then criminalized. Then released. And like so many others, when resources ran out and opportunities closed, she turned back to the only means of survival she knew. The system didn’t offer support. It offered a cell.

And when she asked for help—real help, in the form of a diversion program—they slammed the door in her face.

She was taken from court the next morning. Cuffed, processed, gone. Just like she knew she would be.

We mailed the letter that afternoon.

This is not an isolated story. This is what happens to criminalized survivors—especially Black women, especially sex workers, especially mothers. Diversion programs often come with moral gatekeeping, impossible eligibility criteria, and zero understanding of what survival actually looks like.

SWOP Behind Bars was created for moments like this. We are not here to "rescue" people. We are here to stand with them, to believe them, to offer a safe place to sleep the night before sentencing, and to mail the letters they should never have to write. We provide reentry support, commissary aid, court advocacy, and most of all—unwavering presence. Because we know how often the system fails to show up for them.

Ashley is more than her charges. She’s a mother, a survivor, a woman who deserved compassion, not incarceration. Her daughter deserved a hug goodbye, not a letter full of unnecessary apologies and unspoken heartbreak.

If you believe women like Ashley deserve freedom, healing, and a fighting chance—not chains and silence—join us.

Donate. Organize. Show up.

Because no child should have to say goodbye to their mother like this. And no mother should have to apologize for surviving.