Letter from a mother

We received this letter in February. The writer asked that we share it, with her name removed and her son's name removed. We share it exactly as she wrote it, with only minor edits for length.

"Dear Reaching Beyond Bars,"

I'm writing to you on a Tuesday morning, with a cup of the tea you sent me and the small amber bottle of the roller blend on the kitchen table. My son called me last night from the facility. He told me he had received his kit on the same day I received mine. He said he had used the lavender mist before he went to sleep. He said it was the first thing in eight years that made his cell feel like something other than his cell.

I want you to understand what that sentence did to me. I have been my son's mother for thirty-one years. I have been the mother of an incarcerated son for eight. In all that time, no one has sent us anything together. No one has thought of us as belonging to the same family. The state writes to him. The state writes to me. We have not been in the same envelope since the day he was sentenced.

Your kit changed that. Not because of the products — though the products are beautiful, and I want you to know I have used the roller every single day. It changed that because for one week, my son and I were doing the same thing at the same time. He was smelling lavender. I was smelling lavender. He was drinking tea before bed. I was drinking tea before bed. We were, for the first time in eight years, in the same room.

I don't know how to thank you for that. I don't think there's a way to thank someone for letting you be a family again, even for one week, even across that much concrete. But I wanted you to know what you did. I wanted you to know that it reached us. Both of us. At the same time.

"With everything I have, A mother in the Central Valley"

We share this letter not as marketing, and not as proof. We share it because it explains what we mean when we say our programs serve families, not individuals. The kits go to two addresses for a reason. The reason is in this letter.

If you would like to help us send the next pair of kits — one inside, one home — every gift goes directly to the next family. Thank you for being part of this work.