This month I offically recieved confirmation from the prison officails that my surgery would be moving forward, the news was the most postive news that I had recieved within the last several years, since being confined to male prisons where I have been violated and abused.

Just three years ago, I became a headline in the News and through media outlets for a relationship with a female prisoner that led to a pregnancy, the news was all the fuel that hateful anti-transgender groups needed to justfiy harming transgender prisoners. The New Jersey Department of Corrections almost instantly moved to remove me from the state and quickly changed its policy making it much more difficult for transgender women to earn safety within the prison system.

For months I contemplated some of the darkest thoughts and was in and out of the hospital for self-harm. No one was able to know what I was going through because in my head I held all the my emotions in and only cried myself to sleep.

When the News first landed Fox News and other conservative media outlets mocked and joked about the entire unfortuante situation. It was another reason why the transgender community did not deserve equality, through many of the conserative media outlets, my website and most of my social media profiles were slammed with hate-mail and several people attempted to crash my website. I sruvived…We survived!

I spent months reading through the comments and hate-mail, searching within myself, to find not just hope and courage but to also, find the strength to admit that I made perhaps the biggest mistake in my life. A mistake that undoubtedly had a negative impact on the transgender community, nation-wide.

I became in love with another incarcerated person who like me had suffered abused within the prison system; who like me was a survivor of the foster care system. What seemed like a normal human relationship, quickly became some type subject regarding my sexuality and questions regarding me being transgender. The fact that I had the ability to love another woman, left many wondering if I was transgender. In the eyes of the opressor, I must fit into their box or else I dont exist, well I would rather not exist than to live in anyones damn box!

While the questioning of my gender identity was occuring, while the prison system was moving to move me out of the state, I was wondering what would happen to my daughter, I was wondering how would I be able to fight for my daughter when I was being attacked by the entire NJ prison system. I was working with others to ensure that my daughter had a loving home freee of abuse and harm. In September of 2022 this world was blessed by the birth of Justyce, my daughter who I pledged to love and protect. Nothing else mattered to me not the hate mail, not the directors and exective staff who intentionally placed me in harms way and made attempts to ensure that I never saw my daughter.

I became focused on being something that I never had in my life: A loving parent. My goal and mission was to my daughter, it was to ensure that none of the drama surrounding my situation and her birth never led to her being harmed or hated. While I was trying to learn how to be a parent, the NJDOC was amending its policy regarding the housing of transgender women, making it impossible for many transgender women to ever get real safety within a facility congruent with their gender identity.

Things became worst, when I got a letter from the Ombudperson explaining how NJDOC’s director stated that I could not particpate in primary care-taker visits (3 hour child-parent visits) due to me not having a DNA test for my daughter’s birth. This decision was not just an attack on my rights to be in my daughters life it was another attack on being a parent and being transgender.

The system expects me to hide my identity, and for a time I was embarssed and only knew of the hate that occures within the system. This all changed when I begun to practice Islam, becoming a muslim. However my faith is not dependant on my adherenace to someone else’s views of islam or even to certain teachings that affirm hate. Instead being Muslim is about love and seing positivity everywhere, I cover myself, when I feel safe to do so, yet the administration at my facility, has quickly used my own religion to isolate me, excluding me from even particpaing in ramdam something that I have done for the last several years. Again this is often what happens when polictics controll what people do.

Thanks for allowing me to share my story!

I quickly watched as the same staff who supported me, ignored me and my tears that I cried when I throught about being states (hundreds of miles) away from my daughter.

I stood by as my entire situation became politics, as the same staff who knew that I was not a threat to anyone became the ones secretly moving to send me to one of the most violent youth prisons in the state. I cired in my room while serrving 456 days of solitary coninement at Bordentown Youth Prison, where officers placed sheets over my window to prevent me from seeing out.

I have undergone breast surgery while in NJDOC and now I am preparing to undergo Genital surgery which is approved and going to completed by temple University, the plights that I have gone through within the mens-prison, has made it almost imposible to prepare for a surgery that requires the patient to be in a safe, private and smoke-free place.

The NJDOC, continues to push their anti Muslim and transgender views on me, often saying “are you sure this is what you want” “I would not do that if I was you” “your still going to be a man”. For once in my life I have controll, and understanding of who I am, I wont allow others ignorance to distract me from finally being happy, this place has taken enough from me, Indeed I came to prison as a child…I will nonetheless be leaving as a adult….as a Parent.