From the driving force’s seat of her Tesla, Lara Love Hardin leveled a gentle stare upon a home on a sun-bleached cul-de-sac in Aptos, Calif. and talked in regards to the afternoon in November 2008 when she was handcuffed and yanked out the entrance door by a sheriff’s deputy who informed her she didn’t should be a mom.
“This complete avenue was stuffed with in all probability 10 sheriff’s vehicles. The neighbors have been all standing right here,” stated Hardin, now 56. That day capped off a prolonged drug binge that price her six years of sobriety and custody of her 4 sons, ages 3, 13, 16 and 17. Hardin’s second husband was additionally arrested; their toddler went to emergency foster care.
“There was no extra magical considering,” she stated. “There was no extra, ‘I can speak my means out of this, I can spin a narrative.’ It was simply over.”
Earlier than her cataclysmic nosedive, Hardin owned a pet cemetery. She is now a literary agent and ghostwriter who has collaborated on a number of best-selling books, together with ones by the Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. She represents Stanford professors. She has had lunch with Oprah.
Most individuals would have bother pulling off such a dramatic pivot; if it appeared in a novel, an editor would possibly flag it as unrealistic. Hardin wrote a memoir as a substitute: “The Many Lives of Mama Love,” which explains in heartfelt, humor-tinged prose how she constructed a bridge from her previous life to her present one. The e-book comes out from Simon & Schuster on Aug. 1.
The neighbors who watched her arrest that day have been the dad and mom of her sons’ buddies, who’d introduced over dinner when her youngest boy was born. They have been additionally her first victims. Hardin had stolen a checkbook, bank cards, present playing cards, mail and painkillers from their properties, pirated their Wi-Fi whereas playing and smoking heroin, and appropriated certainly one of their social safety numbers to use for an Amazon card she then used to purchase a Kindle and parenting books. She’d additionally rifled by way of a resort room and vehicles, trying to find something that may finance her subsequent repair.
“It was simply survival mode. If I didn’t have the medicine, I might die,” Hardin stated.
Throughout a 90-minute tour of her crime scenes — it was solely her second go to to her previous house since her arrest — Hardin recalled the preschool trainer who requested why she was lurking in a distant nook of the parking zone: “I believe she knew. There’s barely haggard mother drop-off look, after which there’s ‘I’m residing on heroin and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.’”
She pointed to the window of what had been her boys’ playroom and the yard the place they performed basketball and piled right into a scorching tub. She talked about trick-or-treating on the cul-de-sac, how proud she’d been of her blue accent wall and carpeted grasp tub.
Her remorse and regret loomed over the day, sturdy as redwoods.
Rising up within the Boston suburbs, Hardin stated, “I used to be the child within the residence, the poor child with the one mother.” After a childhood spent escaping into books, she was the primary particular person in her household to go to school. She fled to the College of California, Santa Cruz, then to U.C. Irvine, the place she obtained an M.F.A.
Right here’s what they don’t educate you in grad college: Should you cost $500 of groceries on a stolen card, then understand you forgot milk, the second transaction counts as a separate crime. Hardin pleaded responsible to 32 felonies and confronted 27 years in jail. Because of a plea deal, she spent 10 months in county jail, a determine the sheriff’s workplace was unable to verify as a result of, in accordance with a public info officer, California regulation prohibits the disclosure of felony histories of people who find themselves now not in custody.
Promotional copy for Hardin’s memoir guarantees a jaunty-sounding account of “her slide from soccer mother to opioid addict to jailhouse shot caller.” However, parked exterior the Santa Cruz County Jail, a grim octagonal constructing the place she tried to finish her personal life, the view was decidedly extra “Regulation & Order” than “Actual Housewives.” Even the rosebushes Hardin as soon as earned the privilege of pruning appeared defeated. Inexperienced indicators bolted to partitions and fences warned, “Unauthorized communication with jail inmates is illegal.”
Hardin survived incarceration by making her voice heard. She began writing — essays, poems and quick tales, plus authorized and private correspondence for fellow inmates. “I fear I may get in bother for pretending to be different folks,” she writes of this aspect hustle, which earned her the nickname Mama Love. “I don’t but understand that what I’m doing is honing my empathy — the superpower of all nice ghostwriters.”
However the hardest half was but to return. As soon as Hardin had served her time, she discovered how onerous it was to discover a job and housing when she needed to examine a field indicating that she had a felony document.
“There’s over two million folks sitting in jail proper now who imagine that they’re paying for his or her crimes,” Hardin stated in a 2019 TEDx Discuss. “What lots of them don’t understand is that they’ll pay for these crimes for a lifetime.”
The identical week Hardin utilized for meals stamps, she landed a job as a part-time assistant at Thought Architects, a literary company based by Doug Abrams, who represents Tutu and Mandela. He by no means checked her references.
“I resolve that if I’m requested, I’ll reveal my background, but when not I gained’t volunteer the data,” Hardin writes. “It’s a don’t ask, don’t inform coverage that I really feel nonetheless jibes with my rigorous honesty coverage.”
Abrams stated he had a way that Hardin had “been by way of some onerous occasions,” however was instantly impressed by her expertise. On the suggestion of a buddy, he looked for her identify on-line. An article within the Santa Cruz Sentinel described Hardin and her second husband because the “neighbors from hell,” he discovered.
“Right here is anyone that I’ve simply employed to assist me run the corporate and do the banking and the accounting,” stated Abrams. He was working from a house workplace; his kids have been on the premises; he was (understandably) involved.
Abrams known as Cynthia Chase, the director of the re-entry program Hardin accomplished earlier than leaving jail.
“Doug stated, ‘Are you able to assure that she’s not going to relapse?’ I stated, ‘No. Anyone who says sure is mendacity; that’s not how restoration works,’” stated Chase in a cellphone interview. She is now Hardin’s associate within the Gemma Mission, a nonprofit that helps incarcerated ladies as they re-enter society. “What I can let you know is, not like the typical particular person off the road, Lara has a lot extra to lose.”
After a “darkish evening of the soul,” Abrams saved Hardin on the payroll for 12 years, a call he considers the most effective he’s ever made. She ultimately grew to become the co-CEO.
He stated, “Her identification theft crime was additionally her identification translation superpower. She may get anyone’s voice, thoughts and soul onto the web page in a extremely highly effective means.”
Anthony Ray Hinton labored with Hardin on “The Solar Does Shine,” his best-selling, Oprah-endorsed memoir in regards to the a long time he spent imprisoned in Alabama for 3 murders he didn’t commit.
“I felt so snug telling Lara issues I’ve by no means informed anyone,” he stated in a cellphone interview. “Each time I might cry, Lara would cease and say, ‘Maintain on. Let’s take a second.’ She didn’t rush me to get again. I knew then that this can be a light soul.”
After writing 12 books for different folks — 11 of them male — Hardin nonetheless wasn’t certain if she was prepared to inform her personal story. She stated, “Disgrace is so sticky. I used to be so used to maintaining my secret.”
After her TEDx Discuss, Abrams inspired her to get cracking on a proposal, which he offered in a five-way public sale that ended within the excessive six figures. She used a part of the advance to complete paying greater than $15,000 in restitution for her crimes.
In early 2022, Hardin rented a home in Thailand, the place she wrote a draft of the memoir in seven weeks. She stated, “As I used to be writing the darkest chapters, thunder was shaking the villa.” She appreciated the symbolism.
When Hardin despatched the manuscript to Eamon Dolan, her editor at Simon & Schuster, he identified that “I ponder” appeared 43 occasions.
“It was me not committing to what I used to be going to say. It was hedging,” Hardin stated. “I dove again in.”
In a cellphone interview, Dolan went on, “I don’t need a memoir to be the means by which an writer figures themselves out, and oftentimes that’s the case. Lara had considerably figured herself out. She didn’t maintain again. She pushes herself more durable than nearly anybody else I do know in my private {and professional} life.”
“The Many Lives of Mama Love” accommodates notes of “Wild,” “Orange is the New Black” and “Catch Me if You Can.” Hardin delves into her troubled childhood (her earliest reminiscence is of her mom smashing her personal head in opposition to a wall); two failed marriages; the escalation of her dependancy from opiates to Valium to heroin; and her dedication to rebuild a steady house for her sons, all 4 of whom lived together with her first husband till she obtained again on her toes.
She additionally addresses the Tornado-like calls for of the felony justice system. As an illustration, by the phrases of her discharge, she needed to be at drug court docket and a work-release program on the identical time. This was difficult, even for somebody with a automotive (albeit one which had bother with hills).
“I used to be coming from a spot of privilege, being a white girl, being center class, having an schooling,” Hardin stated. “It was nonetheless nearly unimaginable to not get despatched again to jail. You’re arrange for failure at each flip.”
In a cellphone interview, Hardin’s son Ty Love, now 27, recalled the primary time he visited his mom after she was arrested — “the glass pane, the orange jumpsuit, the cellphone on the wall” — and stated, “I bear in mind her placing on a courageous face for our profit.”
Studying his mom’s e-book took him again to that troublesome time, Love stated, however “it was additionally therapeutic as a result of I obtained to see my mother’s perspective. I used to be comfortable to see her utilizing herself as a light-weight a bit bit extra. She’s positively certainly one of my heroes.”
As Hardin drove over a bridge into downtown Santa Cruz, she stated she nonetheless goals that her kids are being taken from her. Pointing to a home on a hill on the opposite aspect of the San Lorenzo River, she stated, “I bear in mind being in jail and searching up there. I simply needed to be somebody who lives in a home.”
Now, as soon as once more, she does. Hardin is married to her “third-time’s-a-charm husband.” She doesn’t use medicine. And final yr, she opened her personal company. It’s known as True Literary.
“I picked the identify as a result of I like true tales you wouldn’t imagine in the event that they have been fiction,” Hardin stated. “And since I wish to do what’s true to me.”
