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

There’s a special kind of ignorance that comes slithering out when people find out I was a correctional officer who married an inmate. It’s like watching a toddler discover electricity—messy, confused, and one wrong move away from getting shocked into reality. And honestly? At this point in my life, I’m done whispering. I’m done being polite. I’m done acting like everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt. Some of y’all need a full Beth Dutton baptism —head shoved straight into the cold river of truth, held there long enough to reset whatever nonsense is floating around in your skull. So let’s get a few things straight. 1. “Cool officer”? Baby, I wasn’t cool. I was RESPECTED. There’s a difference. These Facebook warriors love to come in hot with their little “Never be the cool officer!” speeches. Sweetheart… I wasn’t “cool.” I wasn’t your soft, goofy, I-want-inmates-to-like-me officer. I was the officer you didn’t play with . I was the officer who could walk into a dorm with 15...

 I Gave Her My World” — By Ryan People look at me and they see an inmate. A number. A criminal. A man locked in a cell, doing time for shit I did long before I ever knew real love existed. But there’s another part of me — the part the world don’t see, the part the system couldn’t rehabilitate even if they tried, the part that was raised by the streets, cut by pain, shaped by survival. The gangster in me. The one who learned loyalty before language. Respect before education. Silence before safety. And she— my wife— she didn’t just get the husband. She got that man too. I brought her into my world when I never planned to bring anyone in. She came into my life wearing a uniform. Clean. Strong. Straight-edged. Everything the streets taught me to stay away from. But she talked to me with eyes that didn’t judge me, and a kindness I didn’t trust at first, and a spirit I didn’t expect to connect with mine. And before I knew it, she wasn’t standing on the outsi...

  The Reckless Ache of Loving a Gangster From the Outside There are days where I don’t recognize myself anymore. Days like today — where something inside me shifts, snaps, shakes loose — and I feel this reckless urge to stop being the woman I’ve been my whole damn life. Responsible. Put together. Rule-following. Strong. Dependable. The one who keeps the world spinning even while mine is falling apart. But today? Today I wanted to break out of the version of me that never gets to unravel. I wanted to be wild. Unpredictable. Unhinged. Out of control. Not because I’ve changed — but because loving a gangster in prison changes you in ways you never signed up for. And the truth? Some days the ache of missing him gets so heavy, it feels like it’s going to crack me open from the inside out. Loving him brought me into a world I never thought I’d touch. I wasn’t raised in the streets. I wasn’t raised around chaos, gangs, survival mode, or that whole different heartbeat ...

  ~ by Ryan People hear the word gangster and their mind jumps straight to movies, bullets, headlines, or whatever stereotype makes them feel safest about judging someone else’s life. But let me tell you the truth — being a gangster ain’t about crime. It’s about code. A code most people will never understand because they’ve never had to live by it. For some of us, “gangster” didn’t mean we were out looking for trouble — it meant we were raised in it. It meant we had to grow up faster than we should’ve. It meant loyalty was the only currency that couldn’t be stolen. It meant your word was your backbone when everything around you was breaking. And for men like me? It shaped how we love. Not soft. Not halfway. Not “as long as it’s easy.” But all in , even when life hits harder than any fist ever could. See, the world romanticizes the wrong parts. They talk about the danger, the darkness, the grit — but they ignore the heart. They ignore what makes a man who’s surv...

  The Five Blessings Carrying Me Through This Season Thanksgiving hits different when you’ve lived through storms that could’ve drowned you. It hits different when life hasn’t been easy, when the world has tested you, when you’ve prayed harder than you’ve slept, and when the year hasn’t exactly wrapped itself in a pretty bow. But even in the middle of chaos, heartbreak, and the kind of battles most people never see… there are blessings. Real ones. Quiet ones. The kind that show up when everything else looks impossible. So this morning, I sat down and wrote out the top five things I’m thankful for. Not the surface-level stuff. Not the cliché answers people post online. These are the things that keep me breathing, fighting, believing, and moving forward. 1. My Husband — My Warrior, My Why, My Heart People see a prison number. I see the man God gave me. The man who has fought through trauma, demons, addiction, and pain that would crush most people. The man who still chooses ...

  A blog by a woman who loves a man fighting demons he never asked for. There’s a certain kind of heartbreak you can’t understand unless you’ve loved an addict. And let me tell you— it’s nothing like the movies. There’s no inspirational soundtrack, no tidy ending, no scripted redemption arc where everything suddenly “clicks.” It’s messy. It’s raw. And sometimes it feels like your heart is bleeding out in slow motion. Recently, the man I love—the one I’ve stood by through hell and back—opened up to me about slipping again. Again. Not even a full week. And as much as it hurts to say it… I’m not surprised anymore. And THAT is its own kind of pain. Relapse isn’t betrayal. But God, it still feels like loss. I’m grateful he told me. Because honesty from an addict is a gift wrapped in barbed wire— it matters, it means something, but damn does it sting. When he says, “I fucked up again,” there’s a piece of me that sighs in relief and another piece that shat...

~by Ryan I used to think I had a cravings problem. Nah. What I really had was an I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-to-do-with-all-this-pain problem. Nobody taught me how to hold heavy feelings. Nobody showed me how to sit with hurt without disappearing inside it. I learned early that when life gets loud, you either numb it, fight it, or destroy yourself trying to outrun it. And I’ve done all three. So when the weight started piling up? I reached for whatever shut the world up the fastest. The meth. The fentanyl. The black. The shots. The bottles. Hell—anything I could put between me and the storm inside my chest. People see that from the outside and call it reckless. They call it self-destructive. They call it stupid. But inside? It was strategy. You ever hurt so bad you’d rather disappear than feel one more inch of it? Yeah. That was me. Every damn day. My mind worked like this: “If I can’t fix this right now, at least I don’t have to FEEL it right now.” It wasn’t weakne...

  ~ by Ryan There’s a point in every man’s life where he stops blaming the world for the chaos he’s carrying… and starts asking himself what he’s going to do about it. I hit that point somewhere between a cold concrete floor and a long night staring at the ceiling, thinking about the woman who chose me when she didn’t have to. Thinking about the life I almost burned down. Thinking about the home I want to walk back into — not as the man I was, but as the man she deserves. Prison changes people, but not always the way folks assume. It doesn’t “fix” you. It doesn’t “reform” you. It forces you to face parts of yourself you spent years running from — the fear, the anger, the trauma, the guilt, the pain you masked with bad decisions and worse coping skills. In here, everything you avoid eventually comes knocking. And last night, mine kicked the damn door in. But instead of falling apart this time, I listened. I let myself feel the weight of everything: the mistakes, the ...

  A Beth-Dutton-Level Drag of Arizona’s Department of Corrections There’s a special place in the Hall of Bullshit for the Arizona Department of Corrections. And trust me, I’ve seen enough from the inside, the outside, and every crooked corner in between to say that with my whole chest. If AZDOC were a person, Beth Dutton would’ve slapped them clean across the face by now… twice… and then lit a cigarette while daring them to speak again. So let’s break this down—no sugar, no politeness, no “maybe they didn’t know.” Because they know. Oh, they know exactly what they’re doing. AZDOC Loves the Word “Accountability”… They Just Don’t Believe It Applies to Them Every press release, every website update, every time the Director pops his head up like a prairie dog pretending he runs the place—you hear the same tired line: “We care about safety, rehabilitation, and accountability.” Yeah? Well, so do unicorns, and at least those seem more realistic. AZDOC has mastered one thi...