It was in the early morning hours of an unremarkable Friday in 2017 that my life, which I previously thought was on a set track to success, horrifically and irrevocably derailed. I remember waking from the deep slumber that only sleeping with your daughter safe in your arms can bring. I remember feeling disoriented, thoughts racing to process what I was seeing, as blinding beams of flashlights darted in through the windows. Mistakenly believing I was about to be robbed, I did my best to leave my daughter to her blissful rest, but as soon as I got out of bed, the shouting started.

“FBI! FBI!” came the chilling shouts from the men wielding the flashlights. I ran to the front door to warn them that my daughter was asleep in bed, but as soon as I opened the door, I found myself staring down the barrels of guns aimed and ready to fire into my home. I’ve experienced a spectrum of emotions while I’ve been incarcerated, but nothing scrapes the bottom like that moment does. From spending eight months locked in a bathroom with bunk beds—also known as solitary confinement—to the joy of winning sports championships, from the loss that comes with never getting to say goodbye to friends I made inside that I will never see again, to the stinging resentment I felt toward people I believed would be there for me but have become literal ghosts the minute I set foot inside prison, the only time I have felt heart-shattering pain is when I’m reminded that I’m missing the formative and most critical moments of my daughter’s life. My beautiful child, my princess, is forever looking back at me over my sister’s shoulder, fear drawn across her small features, as I sit in my kitchen, in handcuffs, surrounded by furious men with guns and bulletproof vests.

Flash forward to Father’s Day 2020. I’m in the Special Housing Unit and the only means of communication I have with the child I helped create is a pen held together with tape and scraps of paper splattered with the tears streaming down my face. This is all I have, scrawled letters as the only means of telling my daughter how she is my entire world. I would give anything to give Adelina a father’s hug, but I have nothing to trade to turn this painful hope into reality.

I see videos of her playing softball, see videos of her playing with the family dog, see videos of her doing flips into the pool. These are memories I do not share, moments that I can only view through someone else’s lens. And I’m so grateful that she’s being taken care of, feel immense peace that she’s provided for, but somehow that relief doesn’t balance out the unspeakable pain of missing her daily life. I push that pain down so far, have become an expert at pretending it doesn’t even exist, that I don’t feel anything at all… then a little girl’s love reminds me just how broken I am. I remember opening the first letter she sent me after I arrived, remember it saying, “Dadda, when do you get out of jail?” There are tears, and there are tears, and there are tears. Sobbing in my kitchen, in handcuffs, and sobbing on a prison bunk, so far removed from the light of my life. There are no words that I can use to describe the emotions that explode in me when I think about not being a prominent figure in the life of my small wonder, the product of my DNA and so, so much love. While I cannot understate the pain, there is one small positive: allowing myself to feel the pain of missing her means I am still capable of feeling anything at all. In here, it’s easy to forget that I do.

I know I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m blessed to have my daughter’s mother, stepfather, and stepsister present in her life to create an environment that promotes family first. How rare is it to say that my daughter has a man in her life that fills a fatherly role while still deferring to me as her actual father? By some combination of fate and luck, my daughter has that privilege. I see so many people in here struggle with traumatic family situations, children left with no one to look up to. One of my close friends has four children, and their mother has completely abandoned them in search of drugs while he’s been incarcerated, leaving the children to be handed back and forth between aging grandparents. When I hear these kinds of stories, it reaffirms how blessed I’ve been. As a man, it’s hard to swallow my pride and to be genuinely happy that my daughter can have such an amazing childhood without me there by her side. It’s emasculating to be so reliant on others for her well-being, but what I’ve learned is that pride and resentment only cause her further distress.

Our children know when their parents have contention and mistrust between them. Adelina’s mother and I haven’t always had the relationship we do now. When we would meet to switch off weeks, the tension and animosity between the two of us was tangible. Even though Adelina was too young to have lasting memories of these exchanges, she could feel the unspoken tension between her parents, and it upset her. Learning to swallow the desire we all have to be right, learning to beat back the resentment that only a failed relationship can bring, and instead focusing on what’s best for our daughter was one of the hardest but most rewarding lessons I have ever learned. I know that when I get out, I’ll be able to step back into my daughter’s life and be the father I’m meant to be because of the relationship I now have with the people I rely on to take care of her while I’m here. 

All that said, I also feel like my situation is a perfect example of how our country’s continued War on Drugs is an incredible failure. I’m in prison for distributing the most medicinally beneficial plant on the planet. I cannot in good conscience tell my daughter that what I did was wrong. Case in point, I was asked by a drug counselor here what I would tell my daughter about cannabis, and to be honest, what I would tell her is simple: use cannabis for what creation intended it to be. Instead of relying on a medical system created to promote addiction to chemicals created in a lab, I believe she should look into more natural solutions to any difficulties she has in life. From anxiety, depression, or just wanting to relax after a rough day, I believe cannabis is a better alternative to Xanax, Prozac, or a bottle of wine. I hope she never needs any substance to numb the pain of existence, that she never has any bad days that have her reaching for auxiliary relaxation. I hope she never needs or uses any drugs and takes over the world on the power of her mind, that she waits until her brain is fully developed before experimenting with any substances, but I also know that isn’t how this world normally works. 

Prison is supposed to be about punishing and rehabilitating someone who has harmed society by their actions. The question I always come back to in my case is this: who exactly is the victim of my crime? Is it the consenting adults I sold cannabis products to? Was I harming society by making sure the product I distributed was of the highest quality? I don’t believe anyone I sold cannabis to views themselves as victims of crime. Some would argue that not paying taxes on the financial gain I received from selling was harming society, but I would argue that if I had the option to pay taxes on it, I would have gladly paid any amount to avoid missing my child’s life. Now society pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep me in prison, to move me all over the country, and pays for the children of many of us in here as well. It seems to me like the biggest victim in my entire case is my daughter. She is the one missing her dadda while I sit here and write novels and create a plan for my future. I do the best with my time because I know the kind of father I plan on being when I leave. I know that one day my daughter will tell her friends that I was once in prison for cannabis, and all her friends won’t believe it. By then cannabis will be such a part of our society that people will forget how many people’s lives were ruined for reasons so outdated and archaic that it might as have been for no reason at all. They won’t believe it because of who I will become. I may have committed a crime based on laws I don’t believe in, but I don’t plan on ever being a criminal. I will be doing things the right way when I get out, and success is all my daughter and I will know. 

My name is Jeremy Grove. I’m currently serving a mandatory minimum sixty-month sentence for marijuana trafficking. My daughter, Adelina Bean Grove, is an astoundingly intelligent, breathtakingly beautiful six-year-old who loves her father even though he’s behind bars. One day I hope she looks back, reads this, and understands where her father was in his life. Adelina, having you as a child is the greatest blessing of my life. Never stop believing in yourself. People are programmed to push each other down and keep the people around them from reaching the level of success they were meant for, but I want you to build up your friends and the people you surround yourself with, to create an environment that bolsters positive change in the world. No one believes in me the way I believe in myself. If there’s one thing I would like to pass on to you, it’s that same belief. You are capable of leaving a legacy of positivity in this world. I can’t wait to get out from behind these bars and show you how true that statement can be.