My name is Amida Tovar, from San Diego, California. I have turned 48, this month. This isn’t my first prison bid, just my first “Federal” bid. I don’t know where to start. I am six months to the gate. I am awaiting for the “half-way house” paper work to so call “circulate”, and I am waiting for my second team, with my Case Manager. Women ask if I have recieved my half-way house date yet, and I answer no. Everything is different from state prison to federal. I find myself in Aliceville, Alabama. A long way from home. I have reached out to every free book project on the roster if they could send me a resource book by Root and Rebound, called The Roadmap to Reentry. I have a 15 year old son in foster care. So when I get out I’ll be under Federal probation, Under Child Welfare Services, trying to get my son back, under the hal-way house, so I’m pretty much walking on literal egg shells. Well, not really. I am pretty confident I can succeed with getting my son back and finishing up with a successful probation. I feel the only challenges are my mental health care, one because the BOP has misdiagnosed me here, and I am not being properly taken care of in that situation, untreated mental health and not recieving the proper meds is messing with me. Housing is an issue, and employment. I do well under structure and routine. I do work hard, I just need resources for the South Bay part of San Diego , my son is in the 92154 area code, I don’t know where the half- way house is or how the rules are what my rights are. This book by Root and Rebound, help me educate myself on family law and I was able to get my son back in 2020, and close my cws case, with success. I would like to know about the dos and don’ts about Federal Probation and what the probation officers are and are not allowed to do to us. When I was a the San Diego holding facility GEO. I listened to women talk about how most had probation officers who had set them up to fail. I had been in that facility, and at least 30 cases of women who had probation officers that set them up to fail. That’s why once I get out I will be documenting my Federal Probation Journey on social media, on how to close a cws case, my journey on how to get my son back, and once I get out about how messed up Aliceville really is behind close doors. But not until I get out, there’s a lot to be said about RETALIATION here, and I’m that close. Thanks for hearing me out.
