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A Prison Lullaby for Mother’s Day
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Krystal Lowe was in a jail in rural western Kansas in 2023 — facing drug charges — when she began to feel morning sickness. She’d given birth to a son a few years earlier, and the symptoms were familiar. But the environment wasn’t. “I didn’t have comfy pillows — just a mat — and I was on the floor a lot, trying to deal with all the aches and pains,” she told me. “I saw a doctor maybe twice.”
Shortly before she gave birth, she entered Topeka Correctional Facility. Amid all the horror stories around the country of women and their newborns suffering behind bars, Lowe told me she was lucky. The Kansas Department of Corrections took her to a hospital, where she gave birth to her daughter, Adeyson, with her family present. Her brother took in the baby.
Lowe and Adeyson now spend time together through Play Free, a program for incarcerated parents run by the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center, a museum in Topeka. Last year, the museum brought in the Lullaby Project, a program based out of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, which pairs professional artists with parents to write songs for their kids. Lowe was one of several women to participate in the program at Topeka Correctional Facility during the pilot phase. We’ve uploaded her lullaby for Adeyson, “Wait for Me,” to YouTube for Mother’s Day.
“Growing free / hold on, wait for me. / Hold on to your dreams / baby Addie,” Lowe sings, reminding her daughter to “Remember where you came from /Always remember your worth.”
Adeyson can listen to Lowe’s song in a unique way: The museum purchased quilts, and a volunteer sewed a small music player into it. When Adeyson presses a button in the corner of her quilt, she can hear her mother’s recording of “Wait for Me.”
Lowe isn’t a professional songwriter. Following the project’s curriculum, Topeka music therapist Holly Taylor asked her to brainstorm themes for the lyrics by writing a letter to her daughter. Since Adeyson was 2 years old, they decided to write an energetic sing-along, rather than the quiet sort of lullaby you might sing to a newborn.
“I didn’t want a baby bop,” Lowe told me. “I wanted a real song she can have for the rest of her life, where she can be 25 and say, ‘My mom wrote this for me during this chapter of her life.’” She struggles with the fact that her daughter may not understand why they’re separated right now. The song will memorialize this moment even after they reunite. “I don’t want to shield her from knowing I was in prison. It’s such a big part of my story.”
To record the vocals, Taylor brought a small device into the prison and found a quiet corner. Lowe had never recorded a song before. “I was shy about singing, but I knew the love was the most important part.”
Lowe also has an older son who is currently in foster care. When she is released next year, her first goal is to reunite with both her children. At the same time, she feels sympathy for other mothers she meets who will “have to watch their kids grow up to adulthood from inside. It’s unimaginable.”
“I know there are so many prisons across the nation that don’t have anything like this,” Lowe told me. “A lot of people think if you’re incarcerated, you’re a bad mom, but that’s not the case, and I’m living proof. I’m trying to better myself every day to be the mother my children deserve.”
LINER NOTES
Song: “Wait for Me” | Artists: Krystal Lowe with Holly Taylor