Real Reentry: He’s Come so Far
By McKenzie Ring, Director of Marketing and Communications
On Easter Sunday, a RISE staff member received a photo from a participant, Ray*, who returned to the community in 2022. In this photo he's pictured with his girlfriend and their three children - all dressed up in periwinkle blue and flowers, ready for Easter church service. They're beaming with smiles from ear-to-ear and hugging each other tightly. It's precious!
He texted that it was his first Easter sober and wanted to share it with his RISE family. I've looked back at this photo four or five times today and, truth be told, I get choked up.
A difficult life was Ray's birthright. No father and his mother was in-and-out of his life from the start. He was left for his grandmother to take care of him when she could. They slept from one Walmart parking lot to the next, he was passed along to foster homes in between...6-10 different ones after his grandmother died at his ripe age of 14. Lonely and young, he got pulled into the streets, gang life, and addiction - which eventually resulted in spending half of his life in-and-out of correctional facilities.
Housing insecurity, lack of belonging, and pain has been his entire life, and he didn't ask for it.
When Ray returned to the community, he struggled like so many do. Addiction took over and he lost touch with us. He went back to prison. But he came back home, he reached back out, and RISE was here. We'll always be here if they're ready. And now he's celebrating 1 year sober and we're celebrating with him. We'll celebrate every little step he takes.
So yeah, when I see him and his family in that periwinkle blue and floral print smiling from ear-to-ear and healthy on Easter Sunday, I choke up, because he's come so far.
Sadly, this is one of many stories like Ray’s, just here within RISE’s participants. There are countless others across this state and country. Housing, having parents at home, a sense of belonging, oppression - all play parts in the trajectory of a child’s outcome as an adult.
From what we know, over 52% of our RISE participants experienced housing insecurity as children.
As of 2020 when we began collecting this data point, 40% of RISE participants had experienced the foster care system.
It’s not lost on me that an extreme and deep rooted loneliness is behind the reality of these statistics. Several of our participants are parents and want to do better, but the need the opportunity to do so. We need to “set the table” so they can at least have the chance to decide if they’d like to sit down and “eat”.
April is Second Chance Month, and those coming out of incarceration simply need a second chance, because like Ray, his is his first chance. This second chance is a way to provide him the opportunity to have a home. He’s quite literally never had that outside of prison walls.
This second chance is simply providing him the resources to work on his sobriety every day. This second chance is providing him the opportunity resources to be an active and present parent to his children - something he never had, but also something his parents never had.
This second chance allows for the generational cycle of incarceration to stop with him.
*Name has been changed for privacy.
