The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing

Hardin adjusts to life in G Block, where music is always playing, and takes in her new world as she worries about Kaden. She finds a pay phone in the block and collect calls her mother again. Her mother informs Hardin the cumulative charges against her add up to 27 years in prison and that people are hurt and angry. She can’t help with bail and doesn’t know where Kaden is.

Hardin is embarrassed, ashamed, and guilty. She fears that she has lost her sons and decides to die by suicide. She quickly learns the guard’s night routine and determines to hang herself using her bed sheet. She believes her death won’t hurt her children because they have already lost her to addiction and jail. She tries to recall when she first took an opiate and remembers finding Percocet in her in-law’s home in 1991. She found relief from anxiety by using the pills and decided to steal more of them to keep the feeling going.

Hardin wakes up in bed and realizes she slept through her suicide plan. She unties the sheet from her neck and plans to try again at night. She is struggling through detox and withdrawals.