We’re opening 2026 with a conversation every mother needs to hear—even if she hopes she never will.

In this episode, I sit down with Black Sheep Mom, a registered psychologist and the voice behind a powerful Substack blog, to talk about what happens when your child goes down a dark path—and the world decides they were destined to fail.

As both a mental health professional and a mother of an incarcerated son, Black Sheep Mom offers rare insight into the shame, grief, and emotional isolation mothers carry when their child is criminalized—often after years of being overlooked, mislabeled, and set up for failure as early as high school.

We talk about:

• The quiet shame mothers are taught to carry

• Processing guilt when you “did everything right”

• How systems fail kids long before prison does

• Why judgment hurts more than the sentence

• And how to survive emotionally when motherhood doesn’t look the way you imagined

This episode isn’t about crime—it’s about humanity, resilience, and the truth no one warns mothers about.

Because you never think it will be you… until it is.

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Follow Jae's husband Nicholas Ely on Facebook "⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠More Than An Inmate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠" or the Facebook group "⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠End Felony Murder Rule in Nebraska⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠"

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