Meet Lauren
Before everything unraveled, Lauren had dreams. She was returning to school, building a medical insurance billing and coding career, and finding stability for her growing family. She was living in Beaumont, Texas, searching for opportunities, unaware of how drastically her life would change.
Her story doesn’t start or end with incarceration. But incarceration is the fault line where her life split in two.
"I didn’t know I still had to check in with the other bond company,” she recalled softly. That misstep she didn't even know she was making led to a bond forfeiture and, eventually, two more charges that carried the weight of possible prison time. “That’s when I knew what I was facing.”
She was just two months postpartum. Her youngest son was barely learning to hold his head up. Her other child was still a baby, too. Turning herself in meant leaving them both behind.
“I did it because of my kids,” she said, the emotion catching in her throat. “I didn’t want to be out, get pulled over, and have them in the car. I couldn’t risk that. So I turned myself in.”
Her mother stepped in to care for the babies. But the ache of that separation never left.
The jail they first placed her in was horrible. Dirty water. Crowded cells. Dehumanizing conditions. “It felt like we were caged up like animals,” she said. “It wasn’t clean. We were treated like we weren’t even people.”
Later, she was mysteriously moved to a program facility across the street, Little Baker. There, things were better. She could take classes, become a trustee, and even eat food from outside the jail walls. But the uncertainty was still suffocating.
Then something happened that cracked open a tiny door of hope.
She was seven months pregnant when Carl from Grassroots Leadership came to interview her. “They woke me from my sleep and said someone wanted to talk to me. I didn’t know what it was about.”
Carl explained that Grassroots Leadership was working to bail out mothers from jail in time for Mother’s Day. They were choosing just a few people to help. She didn’t let herself get too hopeful, but still, it stirred something in her.
“I didn’t tell anyone. I just prayed and prayed. Out of all the women in the tank, I was the only one chosen to do the interview.”
Carl returned with the news three days later: she would be bailed out.
“I just cried. I felt like it was a blessing. A real one.”
Her bail was $25,000, an impossible amount in her situation.
Lauren was incarcerated, trying to survive as a single mother. She needed to eat. She needed diapers. “Instead of jail, I needed therapy and a job. I needed someone to help me”.
Without the support of Grassroots Leadership, she would have remained behind bars and given birth in jail.
“I wouldn’t have seen my baby’s face. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to breastfeed. I wouldn’t have had a relationship with him at all.”
In jail, being pregnant didn’t mean being treated with extra care. In Jefferson County, she was given the basics—prenatal vitamins and monthly check-ups but the tone shifted once she was moved to Harris County. She was just another “inmate”.
There, she learned how the birth of her son would happen. She would be shackled at the ankle, even during labor. She wouldn’t be allowed to hold her baby. He would be immediately taken to a separate room. Child Protective Services would take custody if her emergency contact didn’t arrive in time.
“I was terrified,” she said. “I prayed every day that something would change.”
And it did.
Once released, she stepped into a world that had moved on without her. “Even just being gone for seven or eight months, everything changed,” she said. “Getting back into the free world was hard.”
But she had help. Carl checked in regularly, and she was matched with a mentor, Latrica. But being seven months pregnant, finding a doctor who would take her without a medical history was a struggle. So was finding a job. “I just want to work, support my kids, and be stable,” she said.
She hasn’t yet regained custody of her children. She’s still fighting, navigating legal processes, searching for a lawyer, and building a life stable enough to bring them home.
If not for that one visit, that one interview, that one act of grace, her story might have ended so differently, like the thousands of pregnant people who are admitted to jail every year. But Grassroots Leadership came right on time.
Now, she’s trying to build the life she dreamed about before she was incarcerated.
“I’m working on getting a job, transportation, and a home to get my babies back. I just want to be their mom again.”
