From Guard to Wife: My Journey in the Shadows of the Justice System

- by DeAnna Being a prison wife isn't for the weak — let’s just get that out there right now. We don’t choose this life because it’s easy, glamorous, or something we dreamt of growing up. We choose it because love showed up, and it didn’t come with a convenient timeline or a perfect package. It came real, raw, and wrapped in barbed wire — and we said yes anyway. Because that's what loyalty actually looks like. While the world screams “walk away,” we show up — day after day — holding down the damn fort with nothing but our own strength, a whole lot of love, and maybe a good cry in the bathroom when no one’s watching. We do this through 30-minute calls that cut off mid-sentence. We do it through letters written with hope and pain inked on the same page. Through visits where the touch is limited, but the connection? Untouchable. We wipe our own tears. We build them up when they’re breaking down. We speak life into them when the world around them is trying to kill their spiri...

- by Ryan I remember this day like it was yesterday. We weren’t rushing. We weren’t looking over our shoulders. We weren’t worried about who was calling or what chaos was waiting around the corner. We were just… breathing. This photo was taken before everything started unraveling again—before I let old ghosts pull me back into the fire. Before I made choices that hurt the one person who never stopped believing in me. Before I gave in to pain I hadn’t dealt with yet. But that day, by the water, standing barefoot on the red rock, I was just a man trying to show my wife what peace looked like. Not the fake kind we tell ourselves we’ve earned. The real kind. The kind you find when the noise in your head finally shuts up for a minute and lets your heart speak. I wanted her to feel what I was feeling—calm, centered, almost human again. I didn’t grow up with peace. My peace had to be fought for. It had to be carved out of trauma and silence. So to be able to give her a piece of that, eve...

-  by Ryan Prison doesn’t just strip away your freedom—it strips away your dignity if you let it. But there comes a time when you have to stop letting it break you and start using it to rebuild yourself. I’ve been through enough to know one thing for sure: if you don’t take control of your own life, no one else will. People say they love you, they say they’re here for you, but when it comes down to it, they show you who they really are. That’s when you have to make a choice—let them keep dragging you down with their excuses, or stop tolerating the lies and start setting boundaries that protect you. I reached out to my sister recently, asking her to reach out to my mom for me. She doesn’t have a Securus account, and I can’t reach her directly. Simple request. But instead of support, I got excuses. “I have my own family.” “It’s hard with my husband and kids.” All the reasons why it’s too much for her to take five minutes to help me out. And the same old tired words—“I love you” an...

-by DeAnna When a loved one gets locked up, the first reaction people have is rarely compassion. Oh no, it’s disappointment, judgment, and a whole lot of “We knew it,” “Told you so,” “They’ll never change,” and the ever-condescending, “Was he even worth it?” Trust me, I’ve heard them all. People love to throw their two cents into a life they’ll never understand. But here’s the part that makes me laugh—time goes by, and suddenly the same people who couldn’t be bothered to show up when it mattered start snooping. They stalk my page, my posts, my blogs, pretending to care. Maybe they feel a little guilt. Maybe they’re just nosy. Either way, let me make this crystal clear: you didn’t care then, so don’t you dare pretend to care now. Yes, people in prison are there for a reason. That’s no secret—they messed up. Big. They know it. I know it. Hell, the whole world knows it. But here’s what people seem to forget: being incarcerated doesn’t strip away someone’s humanity. It doesn’t make the...

  Behind Bars Unfiltered isn’t just a brand—it’s a movement. Our mission has always been about more than just creating merchandise. It’s about raising awareness, giving hope, and standing up for the incarcerated and their families. And now, we’re taking that message to TikTok , where our community is growing stronger every day. We’re thrilled to announce that a portion of ALL sales from our merchandise will go directly toward the $180 Giveaway hosted by these amazing advocates: @lovedonescoalition, @Peilaroni, @TheRe-entryProject, and @JoshuaBrowning. Here’s How You Can Be Part of It Shop our merchandise at behindbarsunfiltered.creator-spring.com . Use promo code INMATECOAL for a discount on all products. Follow us on TikTok (@BehindBarsUnfiltered) for updates, behind-the-scenes content, and announcements about new product drops and giveaways. Why TikTok? TikTok has given us a platform to tell real stories, connect with people who understand the fight, and amp...

- by Ryan Let me paint you a picture—not the kind with bright colors and clean lines. Nah, this one’s smeared with desperation, survival, and a hustle game that never clocks out. This is prison. You think people are in here just doing their time, three hots and a cot, maybe reading books and watching TV all day? That’s the Hollywood version. Let me tell you about the real grind behind these walls. You either hustle… or you go without. Period. Soap? Hustle. Toothpaste? Hustle. A decent meal that doesn’t taste like wet cardboard? Hustle. Boxers that ain’t see-through? Yep… hustle. Everything costs something in here—even if it’s not bought with money. Bartering, trading, wheeling, dealing—this place is its own underground economy. And if you’re not in it, you’re gonna feel it. Hard. And don’t get it twisted: this isn’t just about comfort. It’s about dignity. About trying to hold onto some piece of yourself in a place designed to strip you down to nothing. You’ve got guys mak...

  -by Ryan You ever have one of those moments where everything just... stops? Like the air in the room gets sucked out, the noise goes mute, and all you can hear is the sound of your own heart cracking open? Yeah, that was me—sitting on the prison phone tonight, talking to my wife. And just when I thought the conversation couldn’t get any heavier, she hit me with it. Her voice was soft, but serious—dead honest in only the way she can be. "Baby… no joke… I paused the interrogation video from the night we got arrested—and do you want to know what I saw in your face in that moment? I saw your dad." Boom. Just like that, my world shattered. Because that —right there—is the one man I swore I’d never become. The one reflection I prayed I'd never cast. But when she said it, I knew exactly what she meant. I felt it. Deep. I was high as hell in that video. I don’t even recognize the man she was looking at—paranoid, twitchy, soulless eyes, face tight and vacant. A shell o...

- by DeAnna  Being a prison wife is a job that no one could ever truly understand until they walk a day in your shoes. Every day, I wake up with a heavy heart, searching for my husband in the empty space beside me. I roll over, hoping to feel his warmth, but the bed remains cold. And so begins another restless night of sleep that never truly rests. The constant countdowns, the promises of release dates, they change like the wind. One day, his out date is set—bright and promising, a beacon on the horizon. But then, the prison system, fickle as it is, decides that the out date has changed, once again, without any explanation or reason. It feels like they just adjust it based on their mood for the day. Another setback. Another disappointment. Yet, I have to stay strong, remain hopeful, because what else is there to hold on to? Each morning, I face another day of being his rock, the one he leans on, the one who smiles and says, "Everything will be okay." But inside, the worry ...

- by Ryan You think you know us. “Once a convict, always a convict.” “He’ll never change.” “He made his bed.” You wanna judge me by the worst thing I ever did? Fine. But don’t forget—I’m still here. Still breathing. Still fighting. I spent years in a cycle—prison, relapse, pain, repeat. Truth is, I didn’t even believe in myself for a long time. Because when the world treats you like trash long enough, you start to agree with it. But you know what I believe in now? Redemption. Not the shiny, fake kind. The kind you earn— bloody-knuckled, soul-searching, brick-by-brick . I’m not looking for pity. I’m not writing these blogs for sympathy. Let me be real clear: I know damn well I put myself here. But that’s not the point. I write because I’ve lived it—every cold tier, every fake friend, every brutal memory. I write for the ones who feel like no one gives a damn about their story. I write for the men locked in cells right now wondering if anyone sees them. I write for the families on the ou...

— by Ryan You wanna know what prison’s really like? Not the movie version. Not the watered-down “justice system” fantasy they sell you in court. I’m talking about the real inside. It ain’t about rehabilitation. It’s about survival. You walk into these gates, and you’re immediately forced to choose: Fold or fight. Ain’t no in-between. The gangs? Yeah, they’re real. They run the yards, the dayrooms, the cells. It don’t matter if you came in quiet, kept to yourself. Eventually, someone’s going to test you. And if you don’t stand up? You’re food. Straight up. You’re someone else’s property. I’ve seen men get jumped just for looking too long. For saying the wrong thing. For not saying anything at all. You can catch a beatdown just for where you're from, who you talk to, or how fast you move on the tier. And then there’s the dope. Yeah, it’s in here. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Some of it comes in through visits. But a lot of it? Comes in with staff. That’...

  - by DeAnna I met my husband, Ryan, when I was working as a Correctional Officer in the prison where he was incarcerated. He was an addict—trying, but not succeeding, to stay clean in a system that seemed more invested in keeping people locked in their struggles than in helping them find a way out. The prison system, as crooked as a witch's finger, wasn’t doing him any favors. I had no idea what addiction really looked like. At the time, I didn’t recognize the signs of when he was using. He was "somewhat clean," or at least that’s what I thought. It wasn’t until he came home and relapsed that I truly began to see addiction in its rawest form. When Ryan came home, I thought we would start fresh, build the life we always dreamed of. But addiction is like a storm that never really clears. I saw it all—the street life, the highs, the lows, the withdrawals, and the relapses. I watched him battle demons I couldn’t even comprehend. I watched the man I loved go through hell,...

-  by Ryan You wanna know how I get up every morning? How I keep breathing in a place where so many men just... give up? Her. My wife. My reason. My home, even when I’ve got no walls around me. Before her, I didn’t care if I woke up or not. Some nights I prayed I wouldn’t. Laying there in that dark-ass cell, wondering if anyone out there would notice if I stopped breathing. But now? Now it’s different. Now I’ve got a woman who sees me. Really sees me. Not as a number, not as a criminal. But as a man who’s still worthy of love—even when I don’t feel it for myself. She’s the one who fights for me when I feel like folding. She walks through hell with me barefoot and still holds my hand like I’m not covered in scars. She is the reason I haven’t become just another ghost in here. But it’s not just her. It’s the hope she planted in me. The kind of hope you can’t buy off commissary. The kind that survives lockdowns, write-ups, lies, and abandonment. Hope that whisper...

by Ryan I didn’t grow up. I survived. There’s a big difference. My parents? They were both addicts. Chaos was my childhood. At 13 years old, my dad didn’t warn me about drugs. He didn’t try to stop me from falling into that world. No, he introduced me to it— by injecting me with meth himself. You want to talk about betrayal? Imagine the one man who’s supposed to protect you, be your example, your safe place—turning you into a mirror of his own destruction. I was just a kid. A kid who should’ve been riding bikes and playing video games, not learning how to hit a vein. Right before that, my parents split. And as sick as it sounds, I stayed with my dad. Because I knew if I didn’t, he’d die. I couldn’t walk away from him the way my mom walked away from me. I walked in on him OD’d more times than I can count. In the bathroom. On the floor. Needle still in his neck. Cold. Blue. Barely hanging on. And I was the one who had to pick him up. Keep him breathing. Clean the blood. Clean the mess. ...

-by Ryan They want me to stay down. They want me to be forgotten. But here I am. Fighting every day to prove that I am not what they say I am. I am not just a criminal. I am a person who has been broken, but I refuse to stay that way. This is not just a story of someone behind bars. This is a story of a man who’s been pushed to the edge and has finally decided he will never fall back into that darkness again. I’ve been to the depths, seen the worst of humanity—my own, and others. But I have a message for anyone who's ever felt like they're at the bottom: You are not your worst moment. You are not your past. You are so much more than the mistakes that have defined you. Every single day in here is a reminder of the world outside that tries to erase us. And you know what? I refuse to be erased. I will not be silenced. Not now, not ever. Do you know what it feels like to be invisible? To have your cries for help ignored? To be discarded as if your life doesn’t matter? I’m do...

  - by Ryan Prison doesn’t just change a man’s habits. It changes his soul. It changes how he trusts, how he loves, how he breathes. At 17, I thought prison was just another fight to win. But after years inside, after everything I’ve lived through—especially these last few days—I’ve learned that it’s not just about surviving the bars. It’s about surviving the weight that never leaves. I just found out my grandma passed. The people who should’ve told me? My family. My blood. They left me hanging. Again. My mom reached out for the first time in a year and a half. "Regardless of what you think, I still love you," she said. But this came after telling my wife she wanted nothing to do with me. This came after years of being used as a pawn, stuck in the middle of their war, with no one caring how it tore me apart. And that… that does something to a man. That kind of pain cuts deeper than any shank. It’s trauma. It’s something no one can prepare you for. Growing up, I learned ...

 -by Ryan There’s this moment that hits you somewhere between your first year down and your third—when the letters stop, the phone list gets smaller, and the visits dry up. You don’t really understand loneliness until you get locked up and realize the silence on the outside is louder than the chaos in here. That’s when you learn who’s really riding with you. That’s when you figure out who loves you for you … and who only loved what you could do for them on the outside. They say “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” What they don’t say is that the time doesn’t just mean the years—it means the people who disappear with them. Family. Friends. People who said they’d ride for life. Gone. Just like that. At first, you make excuses for them. “They’re busy.” “They probably didn’t know where to write.” “They’ll come around.” I ain’t here to guilt-trip nobody. People got lives. I get that. But don’t get it twisted— you feel it. But after a year and a half of s...

There’s a phrase I heard today, from a Troll on my TikTok page, that has me sitting back in my chair like—wait, what? “Prison Pass.” Apparently, some women out here throw this around like it’s some kind of hall pass for cheating: “My man’s locked up, so I get a prison pass.” “Girls have their needs.” Let me say this clear enough for the ones in the back: FUCK THAT. If you are with a man doing time and you claim to love him—ride for him, wait on those phone calls, send those packages—then be loyal to your man while he’s down. Or let him go. These men already have the weight of the world on their shoulders in there. They’re surviving conditions half the world wouldn’t last a week in. The last thing they need is to lay their head down at night and wonder if the woman they love is out here using some made-up bullshit excuse like “prison pass” to step out. Now, I’m not pretending to be some saint. I did my own dirt in my past. Folks will tell my story however they want. Some of y’a...

-by Ryan There’s a lot about my life I can own up to. Mistakes, bad decisions, running with the wrong crowd. But there’s one thing I’ll never let slide: Letting my wife carry weight that doesn’t belong to her. We got arrested together. Yeah, I said it. Because of me . Because I relapsed. Because I wasn’t thinking straight. Because I had drugs in the car that she didn’t even know were there. She wasn’t about that life. She’s not an addict. Before me? Her record was squeaky clean—zero priors, not even a damn traffic ticket on her name. But that didn’t matter to the cops. All they saw was a former correctional officer now married to a man like me. “Cop gone rogue.” That’s what they called her. That’s what they’re still trying to paint her as. But it’s not true. She wasn’t part of it. She wasn’t dirty. She wasn’t using. She was loyal—to a fault, maybe—but never dirty. And the system don’t care about the truth. They care about a good headline. A better conviction rate. So yeah...

  -by Ryan When people hear the word “inmate,” they think they know me already. They think we  are all the same—violent, heartless, lost causes. Let me set the record straight real quick: "We’re All Violent."                                                                                                              The news loves showing riots and fights. What they don’t show is the real majority: Men teaching GED classes. Writing music. Drawing, reading, learning, just trying to stay human in a place that tries to strip that from you. "We Don’t Care About Family." I hear it all the time— “If you loved your family, you wouldn’t have ended up in there.” That’s straight-up bullshit. I’ve seen grown men cry i...

  If I could sit my 17-year-old self down before that first bus ride to the max yard in Missouri, I’d tell him a few things I didn’t know back then—things that would’ve saved me a lot of pain and maybe even saved my life. Here’s what prison really teaches you, too late: Respect Isn’t Given. It’s Earned, Every Day. In here, nobody cares who you were on the street. Your past don’t mean shit. It’s about how you carry yourself.Say less. Watch more. Mind your business. Speak only when it matters. The loudest dude in the room? Nine times out of ten, he’s the weakest one. It’s Not About Being the Toughest—It’s About Being the Smartest. When I was young, I thought I had to fight everyone. Had to prove I wasn’t scared. All that got me was time in the hole and a couple of scars.The real OGs aren’t running their mouth. They’re running their mind. Playing chess while everybody else is playing checkers. Snitches Get More Than Stitches—They Get History. That whole “snitches get stitches” saying ...

  by Ryan People love to say things like: “She’ll move on.” “It’s not real love.” “He’s just using her.” “She’s wasting her life.” Let me be clear: They don’t know a damn thing about prison relationships. They don’t know what it’s like to hold onto love through walls,   wire,  and years. They don’t know what it’s like to fall asleep wondering if she’s okay and wake up praying she hasn’t given up on you yet. They don’t know what it takes for a woman to stay committed to a man society already threw away. And they sure as hell don’t know what it’s like to love someone you can’t touch, can’t hold, can’t protect— but still fight for every single day. My relationship isn't built on physical closeness. It’s built on trust. On pain. On redemption. On showing up for each other through letters, through phone calls, through the worst days of our lives. And let me say this loud and clear: She didn’t wait on me. She stood up for me. When I couldn’t speak, she spoke. When I couldn’t be...