My name is Loreal, and for most of my life, I believed pain was inherited — something passed down like eye color or last names. 

In my family, love was complicated. My grandmother didn’t know how to show it to my mother, and my mother didn’t know how to show it to me. Feelings were “too sensitive.” Tears were weakness. And when things hurt, you kept it to yourself. That silence shaped all of us. 

By 21, I was a soon-to-be mother and living with a man who hurt me physically and emotionally. I hid everything from my own mom because I didn’t think she could really hear me, and because somewhere along the way, I stopped believing I was worth being protected. 

When I came to prison, the shame felt heavier than the sentence. Thirty years with fifteen to serve. Someone told me, “Nobody survives that. I’d kill myself if I had that kind of time.” For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. And then something in me snapped awake. No. I’m going home, I told myself. 
I will make it home. 

So, I spent the next 13 years fighting for a future I couldn’t yet see. 

I studied every day. I took college classes one or two at a time because that was all I could afford. I wrote out calendars and marked how old my daughter would be when I got out. I stayed out of trouble. I stayed focused. I stayed moving. Because everything in me needed to believe that I could break the cycle my family had lived in for generations. 

Coming home, however, wasn’t the happy ending I expected. 

My teenage daughter said things I will never forget — things no mother wants to hear. “Why did you even come back? Nobody asked you to.” She was hurt, confused, and angry. And honestly, so was I. 

My mother was proud of me, but she was also embarrassed. I didn’t know until after my release that she had told people I’d been “in the military” all those years. When I learned the truth, it broke something open in both of us. She cried for the years we lost. I cried for the conversations we never had. And little by little, we started over. 

I don’t know how to explain what it feels like to rebuild a family while you’re still rebuilding yourself. I only know that without the Televerde Foundation, I might not have made it. 

PATHS saved me in ways I didn’t know I needed. They taught me how to communicate, co-parent, and take criticism without breaking. They taught me how to protect my peace and to be a woman my daughter could someday be proud of. They prepared me for the world I was walking into, not the one I left behind. 

And when everything at home felt like it was falling apart, those lessons kept me from giving up on myself. 

Today, I work as a Televerde sales development representative for SAP. I bought my first home. My daughter is a junior in high school. I’m still learning how to be her mother, and she’s still learning how to trust that I’m not going anywhere. 

The cycle I was born into — the silence, shame, and distance – it all ends with me. 

And that’s because of people like you. 

Your support doesn’t fix small problems. It heals families and rewrites stories. It pulls women like me out of generational pain and into a future we didn’t know was possible. 

Thank you for giving my daughter and me a chance to begin again. 

Right now, PATHS in Indiana and Arizona could lose funding. If my story touched you, please help protect this program for the women still inside. They deserve their chance too.

DONATE NOW TO HELP US PROTECT HER SECOND CHANCE.

P.S. As a small thank-you, every $25 you donate (or monthly gift) enters you in a drawing for a 7-night stay for four at the Mayan Palace in your choice of Riviera Maya, Nuevo Vallarta, or Puerto Peñasco.

With gratitude,

Loreal

Sales Development Representative, Televerde