Mass incarceration is a difficulty that affects many individuals of color in America. There are far too lots of us who’ve had or have family members behind bars. If you personally don’t fit that description, likelihood is someone who does.

Regardless of the circumstances that brought them there, the experience of getting a loved one reduced to a number is heartbreaking for those left here within the free world, especially children. Whether trapped inside driving distance or across state lines, they’re so close, yet up to now away. Dreaming of their face or fantasizing about their voice, only to experience it in overpriced, often incoherent 15-minute increments.

I used to be watching ON Netflix premiered on August 14, and I can’t stop desirous about it. Before it debuted on the streaming platform, I had heard raves about this award-winning documentary, which focuses on 4 young girls growing up with fathers in prison. Before I pressed play, I knew this documentary would hit home and touch on an element of my personal story. You see, my very own daughter, now 17, spent a big a part of her life because the child of an incarcerated parent.

The way co-directors Natalie Rae and Angela Patton present the documentary from the perspectives of Aubrey, Santana, Ja’Ana and Raziah, 4 girls who take part in a father-daughter dance at a Washington institution, is totally sensible. Viewers are given a glimpse into the world of kids who didn’t ask for any of those burdens but are coping with them as best they will. While each girl’s relationship with their fathers is different from the others, one constant is how each father’s decisions have affected them. As the film crew follows the ladies over time, you get to see the ups and downs they undergo of their young lives.

I knew my very own daughter was affected by the absence of her father, but this documentary made me have a look at lots of her childhood memories from a special perspective. For 90% of her life, her father was either a number within the prison system or unable to be the daddy he might be due to these experiences. While watching, I felt like I used to be watching different parts of my seed depicted on screen, knowing that I’d never have the option to totally understand her pain.

For all of my 38 years, I even have at all times had a father in my life –– although my parents were never together, so to talk. I never knew what it was like to not have a father around. And yet here I’m, a mother to a toddler who knows who her father is, but doesn’t really know him. A baby who has to observe friends and even strangers grow up and spend time with their fathers, but won’t ever have the option to know what it’s like. We have at all times had open conversations, but regardless of how open you might be with your mother, there’ll at all times be belongings you keep to yourself. I can only imagine her thoughts and emotions.

Although Aubrey, Santana, Ja’Ana, and Raziah’s ages and circumstances are different, their stories represent the experiences of thousands and thousands of kids and teenagers across the country. Their stories jogged my memory of my very own daughter’s journey with her own father.

Their relationship was a bit complicated before his death in 2022. They weren’t as close as Raziah and Alonzo, or as estranged as Ja’Ana and Frank, but she loved her dad. He’d been out and in of the system before, but nothing serious had lasted. That all modified when my daughter was three.

In the early years of her father’s imprisonment, when she was little—around Aubrey’s age—my daughter was overjoyed when her father would send her a letter within the mail. He would express his love for her, how much he missed her, and the way much he hoped she had been a superb girl for Mommy. Her enthusiasm for his release was whilst optimistic as Aubrey’s. To my daughter, it was as if all the pieces on the planet could be all right if only her father could come home. As she grew older, she became increasingly indignant and eventually indifferent, paralleling Santana’s behavior within the movie.

When the audience first met Santana, I needed to stop for a moment since the tears were flowing. This beautiful, intelligent, eloquent girl was filled with anger at the person she loved a lot. She couldn’t understand why her father couldn’t just do what was right.

People are quick to say that children don’t understand, but that is not true. Don’t you remember being a toddler? You may not have at all times known all the pieces, but you knew when something was mistaken. reminds us that children could also be small, but their pain is commonly much greater.