Fifteen years ago, JD was incarcerated in a Pennsylvania jail while experiencing postpartum symptoms. Despite having given birth less than a month prior, she was placed in solitary confinement. Now, as a board member of a non-profit that provides services for justice-impacted women, JD knows all too well how often incarcerated women’s needs and struggles are overlooked. In an act of vulnerability and courage, JD opens up about her own time in isolation, the ensuing trauma, and its impact on her advocacy work.  —Kilhah St. Fort

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Three weeks after giving birth to my son, when my body was still raw with pain and my emotions tangled in postpartum vulnerability, I was arrested on charges that were later thrown out. That moment, though unjust, was only the beginning of the nightmare. The arrest itself was not the punishment—what came next was.

I was taken to the county jail, my body still healing from a difficult labor, still bleeding, still adjusting after birth, still overwhelmed by the hormonal storm that every mother endures in those first fragile weeks. Instead of care, compassion, or even the most basic human consideration, I was immediately thrown into solitary confinement.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I endured there. My lupus flared up violently under the stress, leaving me in unbearable pain, my body burning from the inside out. They gave me a thin mat on the floor, and for ten days, that cold, filthy space was where I lay, bleeding, aching, terrified.

The cells around me echoed with screaming, yelling, and the constant sounds of women unraveling. It was less like a jail and more like a psychiatric ward—chaotic, cruel, and dehumanizing. Women banged on their doors, cried through the night, and pleaded for medical help that rarely came. The isolation was physical, but it was also emotional and spiritual. I was trapped inside a nightmare that seemed designed not only to punish but to break me.

My greatest fear was that I would die there. I could feel my body deteriorating. My postpartum bleeding continued without proper sanitary supplies, and every hour brought new waves of pain from my untreated lupus flare. Medical care was nearly nonexistent. The officers looked at me as if I were less than human, as if my suffering did not matter. A shower was considered a privilege, not a necessity. Every moment was a reminder that my life, my health, and my dignity meant nothing to the system that locked me away.

Ten Days of Hell

Ten days might sound short in the span of a lifetime, but in solitary confinement, time stretches and warps. Each minute felt like an hour. Each day felt like a year. I counted the cracks in the walls, replayed memories of holding my newborn son, and wondered if I would ever see him again.

The psychological toll was as devastating as the physical one. Solitary confinement strips away all sense of control. It reduces you to a number, a body in a cage. For someone postpartum, whose body is already vulnerable and whose mind is already navigating enormous hormonal changes, the impact is catastrophic. I cried silently in the dark, sometimes rocking myself to feel some sense of comfort. The officers dismissed me with cold indifference, but inside, I was unraveling.

At times, I thought I might not survive. Not only because of the physical neglect, but because the weight of despair felt suffocating. Postpartum depression is a well-documented condition even under the best of circumstances. To endure it in solitary confinement, without medical support, without family, without even the possibility of human touch or reassurance, is cruelty beyond comprehension.

The Transfer

After ten excruciating days, I was finally transferred to a hospital. By then, I was weak, my body depleted from blood loss, infection risks, and the unrelenting pain of my lupus. I remained in that hospital for two months, slowly regaining my strength and realizing how close I had come to losing everything, including my life.

Those hospital months were both a relief and a reckoning. I was safe from the cell, but I was not free from the memories. Lying in a hospital bed, I replayed those ten days again and again, trying to make sense of why this had happened to me. The charges against me had no merit—they were later thrown out. Yet the punishment had already been inflicted. The scars had already been made.

The Lasting Impact

I never faced another arrest after that, and in some ways, I know I was fortunate. Many women return to jail again and again, caught in cycles of poverty, trauma, and criminalization. I broke free, but the truth is that solitary confinement leaves scars that do not fade.

It is not just the walls, the isolation, or the deprivation. It is the way it strips you of your humanity at your most vulnerable moment. To be postpartum, in pain, and locked away without care is more than neglect; it is abuse. I carry the memory of those ten days with me, not as a wound that has healed, but as a reminder of how easily dignity can be stolen.

Even now, years later, there are triggers. The sound of slamming doors, the echo of footsteps in a hallway, even the sterile smell of a medical facility can pull me back into that cell. Trauma embeds itself in the body. It becomes part of how you breathe, how you dream, how you live.

A Crime Against Humanity

Solitary confinement should be considered a crime against humanity. It is wrong, it is inhumane, and it is something that haunts a person for a lifetime. Study after study has shown that solitary confinement causes severe psychological damage, increases the risk of suicide, and does nothing to rehabilitate. Yet in America, it is still widely used, even against the most vulnerable: the sick, the mentally ill, the elderly, and postpartum mothers like me.

Some may argue that solitary is necessary for discipline or safety, but I know firsthand that it is neither. It is a tool of control, a method of breaking people down rather than building them up. In my case, there was no justification. I was not violent. I was not a threat. I was simply a woman recovering from childbirth, in pain and in need of care. The system responded not with compassion but with cruelty.

Why I Speak Out

I tell my story not because it is easy but because it is necessary. Silence protects the abuser, not the abused. By sharing what I endured, I hope to shed light on the hidden realities of incarceration—realities that are often ignored or dismissed. When people hear “solitary confinement,” they may think of hardened criminals or disciplinary measures. They rarely picture a postpartum mother, bleeding and sick, locked in a cell. Yet that is the truth. That is America’s truth.

I also speak out for those who cannot. Many women who endure solitary do not have the chance to share their stories. Some are silenced by shame. Some are silenced by ongoing incarceration. And some are silenced forever because they do not survive. Their stories matter, too. Their lives matter.

Toward Change

My experience propelled me into advocacy. I could not let what happened to me be forgotten or repeated. I began working with others who had survived solitary confinement, raising our voices together to demand reform. Through campaigns, coalitions, and testimony, we are pushing back against a system that normalizes cruelty.

There is hope in collective struggle. Change is possible when people listen, when they care, and when they act. Ending solitary confinement will not erase the scars it has left, but it will prevent new scars from being made. It will affirm that every human being, no matter their mistakes, deserves dignity, care, and the chance to heal.

Those ten days in solitary confinement are etched into my soul. They remind me of my own strength, but also of the deep cruelty that exists in our justice system. What I endured was not justice—it was torture.

I survived, but survival is not enough. We must demand a world where no woman, no mother, no human being is subjected to such treatment. Solitary confinement is not safe. It is not justice. It is violence, plain and simple.

And it must end.