Letter to My Teenage Self: You Will Be Saved by the Power of Your Words
Sixteen years after going to prison, Kwaneta Harris tells her 13-year-old self everything she wished she knew sooner.
Dear Kwaneta,
Growing up, attending an all-white Catholic school with two other Black girls, Brooke and Amy, makes you really hate having your name. But guess what? You won’t always. You, Ms. People Pleaser, will demand your name not be shortened or mispronounced. How can I be so sure? I’m you, at 52.
You don’t believe me? Of course not. You stopped believing everything and everyone at age 12. Now, you’re 13 and addicted to sexual self-destruction. You’re still suspicious? Allow me to convince you with our deepest secret: At age 12, you were kidnapped and gang-raped for three days.
This was 1984, and the police refused to search for a Black girl. So, the community did. Your family, friends, church and the neighborhood organized search teams and canvassed door to door, checking garbage dumpsters, abandoned houses and cars. Finally, they rescued you.
Mom was almost arrested after the Catholic hospital nurses implied that because of the assault and subsequent S.T.D.s, you were promiscuous. They wanted to perform surgery, but Mom didn’t trust them to cut your toenails, let alone your body parts. You just went home.
That first night, you overheard your Southern Baptist grandfather and great-uncle despairing: “When they found her, she ain’t look like she was even trying to get away. Probably was her boyfriend...runaway. If she start actin’ like her crazy daddy, she going to a home.”
After hearing that, you spent every day pretending. Pretending to be normal. You laughed and joked. You studied your peers to mimic their behavior. In 1984, nobody understood the trauma of childhood sexual violence. That you don’t just “get over it.” This is how trauma works: Every new encounter or event is always contaminated by the past.
You wore your Sunday best and carried your scrapbook stuffed with honor awards and report cards. You were walking stiff, still recovering from the surgeries. Mom made you take a second shower with instructions not to apply Jean Naté perfumed talc after. She combed your hair in two braids, removed the nail polish and wiped off the Bonne Bell lip gloss. All this for an appointment with police detectives. Granny kept saying to show them your grades. You were afraid of those two burly detectives grilling you, under the pretense of playing devil’s advocate, about boy crushes, menstruation and sex. You never actually opened the scrapbook. Because of those bullies, you end up carrying a lifetime of distrust for law enforcement.
In school, everybody knew about the assault. But your nonchalance gave them — and law enforcement — permission to see you as the trope of the “hypersexual Black girl.” You played into the myth.
In gym class, boys you’d played floor hockey and soccer with since third grade pulled you into the sports equipment closet to grope you…and more. The girls called you a slut, but the boys called you cool. The only people willing to hang out with you were the boys who never asked, just took — sharing you with older brothers while coaches looked the other way.
Eventually, you will learn about adultification of Black girls and the high standards to be deemed a credible “victim.” Still replaying that scene with detectives and regretting not opening your scrapbook? Girl, let that go. It wouldn’t have made a difference.
The heavy mask and shame you carry from those early years will push you to remain in two abusive marriages longer than you should, believing that if you were quieter and more obedient, these men would change. If you could just stop provoking them. Listen, you can only change yourself. Forget what you learned in Catholic Mass and Baptist Sunday School about women’s roles — your value isn’t determined by a man. All the years of playing pretend will catch up with you, and the next time a man harms you, you will finally stick up for yourself. This act of self-preservation will lead you to prison.
Prison is bad, but there’s something far worse waiting in those concrete walls: solitary confinement. This will be the most terrifying experience of your lifetime, and I need you to understand why. What you endured in your past — the childhood sexual trauma, the kidnapping, the sexual violence, the domestic abuse — as horrific as it all was, it pales in comparison to what isolation does to a human soul.
In the early days, there was always some safe haven you could run to, some corner of the world where you could catch your breath. But in solitary, that refuge will disappear. The constant sounds of other women attempting suicide, the self-harm, the abuse — it will become an inescapable symphony of suffering. You won’t just live in perpetual fear of being revictimized by predatory staff or enduring physical abuse. You will also exist in fear of losing your very grip on sanity. These won’t be days of living — they’ll be days of surviving, of existing in the barest sense of the word. And it won’t just be days…you will spend over eight consecutive years in solitary.
But here’s what you need to know, young one: Something extraordinary will happen in that darkness. Eventually you will recognize the mask you wore for so many years, pretending everything was OK. You will start seeing it on the other people’s faces, and it will ignite something within you. With the fervor of a born-again preacher, you will begin sharing your story of being harmed and causing harm, and in doing so, you will encourage others to share theirs. You will create a support group right there in that armpit of hell, a solitary confinement cell in Texas. You will return to your first loves — reading and writing — and build a writing group that gives voice to the voiceless.
Your words will reach far beyond these walls — you’ll write for NPR’s This American Life, get published in Teen Vogue, The Boston Globe, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone and other major media outlets, collecting writing awards and fellowships. You’ll also co-write an entire book about solitary confinement with another incarcerated journalist and two successful academics. But none of these accolades will compare to the profound purpose you will find in becoming a mother figure to hundreds of young incarcerated women you’ll collectively call your surrogate children. That pure sense of euphoria when you see your surrogates’ faces light up as they finally understand that they’re not to blame for their abuse — that’s beyond priceless. That’s redemption.
Your life won’t be all bad. Prior to prison, you will travel to four continents and live in several countries. You’ll become a nurse and an amazing mom. You will have two college graduates who will be raised in a typical suburban over-scheduled lifestyle. You will also have a teenager who will only be four months old when you are arrested. It will be torture being away from everyone.
Eventually, you will stop crying yourself to sleep. All of your friends and family will stand by you. For the first time, you will begin to unpack and study trauma. You will learn about dad’s mental illness, courtesy of the Vietnam War. Everything you’ve suffered through will have a name: intimate partner violence, internalized racism, colorism, gaslighting, sexual harassment, microaggressions, systemic sexism. Ahhh, just wait, things will start to make sense.
I wish I could explain everything to you so that you don’t have to go through so much. But there’s no way you can understand all this at your age. One important thing stands out, though: I’m giving you permission to say “no” — to stop apologizing and stop dimming your intelligence to make boys comfortable!
As far back as elementary school, you deliberately hid your brilliance, playing small to make boys feel big. Sitting in A.P. chemistry, you know the answers but stay silent. You dumb down your vocabulary when you talk to boys you like. Like so many girls, you think making yourself smaller will make you more attractive, more likeable. But every time you dim your lights, you’re telling yourself that your intelligence is something to be ashamed of, and that your worth is measured by how comfortable you make others feel rather than by your own achievement and potential.
Here’s the truly dangerous part: When you train yourself to shrink, to accommodate male fragility, you’re unknowingly rehearsing for future relationships with men who’ll demand you become even smaller. That habit of suppressing your intelligence? It’s like a beacon for men who feed off your self-doubt, who need you to stay down so they can feel powerful.
I’ve seen too many brilliant women end up with partners who are “intimidated” by their confidence and independence. Think about it. If you’re already in the practice of making yourself less than you are, you’re halfway to accepting a relationship in which someone else requires that of you.
Don’t assume you will learn any of this in prison. You will learn it in spite of prison. Prison itself will teach you nothing.
Now, I know what you really want to know. No, you will not marry Michael Jackson or get adopted by Bill Cosby (thank God!). All the hours of exercise dedicated to enlarging your breasts, from Judy Blume’s book, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret — waste of time. But, if it’s any consolation, an essay you write will appear alongside Blume’s in a book. You will keep your promise to Big Mama to never do drugs, smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol. Though Pops lied: You will not outgrow your fear of the dark. Oh, and a company called Amazon will go public one day — buy all the stock you can!
Baby girl, I know right now you’re searching for love in all the wrong places, trying to fill that emptiness inside. Listen close — you are already whole, already worthy, already enough. The storms that are coming try to break you but they only reveal how unbreakable you truly are. When the darkness feels like it’s swallowing you whole, remember this: You have a light inside that nothing and no one can extinguish. Hold on tight to that fierce spirit of yours — there are going to be days so bright they’ll make all these shadows feel like nothing but a distant memory. We make it, baby. We make it beautifully.
With all my love,
Your future self
This piece is part of a larger collection of letters from incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to their younger selves. Dear Teenage Me: Voices From Beyond the Barbed Wire is edited by Christopher Blackwell, Deborah Zalesne and Jamie Beth Cohen, and is currently seeking representation. Head here to read the first letter we published, from Hector Ortiz.
Kwaneta Harris is a former nurse and business owner, and is now an incarcerated journalist. Her writings have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, The Marshall Project, Teen Vogue and others. She also publishes the Substack newsletter Write or Die, and is a co-author of the forthcoming book, Ending Isolation: The Case Against Solitary Confinement.
Julie Benbassat is an award-winning illustrator, painter and animator.
Wow. Amazing story, amazing writing. Thank you for sharing your powerful story.
Wow. Simply wow.