Navigating Freedom, Reentry and Motherhood: The Challenges for Formerly Incarcerated Moms

The judge sentenced Wood to complete a residential drug addiction program with the Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco. If she didn’t complete the program, she would be back in prison.

“I still was thinking of leaving and going back to hustling and the whole drug scene,” said Wood.

Instead, she made the decision to stay in the Delancey Street program for six years and eventually started working in the intake department and mentoring other residents.

Meanwhile, while Wood was doing work on herself in Delancey Street, her children were growing older and facing their own challenges. Wood’s son went into prison for the first time at age 14.

“My son kind of followed me into that pattern that I was in with the gangs and drugs,” Wood said.

He was released when he was 25 and has been out for years. He and Wood have a great relationship today, she said.

But Wood’s daughter still resents her absence and struggles with mental health and substance use disorder like Wood did. As a result Wood is now raising her daughter’s three sons.

“She’s in the same struggle that I was in all those years,” she said. “Now I’m trying to break this cycle.”

At Seeking Safety, most of the women Wood sees are Black and brown. She’s trying to make the strong connections women like her need, and she knows that success is not guaranteed.

“We can see the potential in them, but they can’t see it in themselves,” she said. “Until they’re able to see it, it doesn’t matter.”

‘You’re pretty much on your own’

Many formerly incarcerated parents have to navigate how to rekindle family relationships after they’re released. Damage from years of separation can be hard to repair, and advocates say parents are often given no help in child custody cases while incarcerated.

A week before Linette Galindo’s eldest son turned 7, back in 2004, she was incarcerated. Her sentence lasted almost 17 years. While she was away, her ex-husband, who had custody of her children, didn’t allow her regular communication with her kids.

“I had to fight through the courts to be able to at least try to get letters and pictures,” she said. “Which is very hard to do when it is just you by yourself trying to figure this out.”

While in prison, Galindo’s ex-husband remarried and relocated her children to Colorado. For six years she didn’t know where her children were, she said. Like many mothers in her position, Galindo became a regular in the prison library and started studying child custody laws.

Then, in 2019, a year before her release from the California Institute for Women in Chino, her ex-husband filed for adoption of their kids. Like many incarcerated parents, Galindo received no legal help in her adoption hearings.

“I had to represent myself,” she said. “I had to become an attorney.”

Galindo lost her case, and when she was released she tried contacting her kids.

“I went on social media, like anybody would, and tried to find pictures of them on Facebook, Instagram. Just to see what they look like,” she said.

Galindo’s ex-husband discovered she was looking for pictures of her children and reported it to her parole officer, who advised her to stop looking them up on social media, and she stopped.

She has now been out of prison for almost two years and is currently living in San Bernardino with her sister, working at a local factory for minimum wage.

Eventually, she wants to become a drug and alcohol counselor to help women who have had similar experiences.

“​​A lot of my determination comes because one day I know my kids are going to come looking for me,” she said. “I believe that in my heart.”

‘There’s not a lot of resources, especially for us undocumented people’

Much of the success for formerly incarcerated people reentering society depends on their social networks and how many barriers they have to overcome.

Laura Garibay came to the U.S. from Mexico and was granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status in 2013, prior to her incarceration.

Garibay, 37, is a survivor of domestic violence and went to jail after an incident with an abusive ex-boyfriend. The case was later dismissed. Garibay served only four months in jail — but during that time, she was unable to reapply for DACA status, making her ineligible for government assistance, including food stamps and supplemental income, when she was released in 2019.

Garibay, who lives in Fresno, slept in motels and sometimes even in cars, she recalls.

A glimmer of hope arrived in March 2020, when a judge granted Garibay full custody of her daughter after she proved that the ex-boyfriend, who was her daughter’s caretaker, was not providing a safe living environment.

“As soon as I saw my daughter, she ran towards me and I ran towards her,” said Garibay. “We just didn’t want to let it go.”

But after winning custody, she and her daughter still had very little money and nowhere to live, so they had to seek support from the abusive ex-boyfriend, who helped pay for an illegal sublet in Shafter, a small farming town in the Central Valley, she said.

“There are no other people that could help me out — so typical of a person who’s in an abusive relationship,” she said. “That toxic cycle continues.”

Garibay ended up getting pregnant with the ex-boyfriend. Shortly after, they were evicted when the landlord found out they were illegally subletting, and Garibay took her daughter to live with a friend in Tehachapi. Garibay said that’s when she was diagnosed with depression and anxiety and started seeing a therapist.

“They saw how severe my depression was,” she said. “The thing that kept me going was my little girl. I need my little girl. My little girl needs me.”

A 2015 study found that half of formerly incarcerated people and their family members surveyed nationally experienced negative mental health impacts related to their incarceration, such as depression and anxiety, and in California this disproportionately hits Black and Latinx incarcerated people.

When Garibay finally separated from her ex-boyfriend, she was 7 months pregnant. Again, she was homeless. But she was going to a support group, which eventually referred her to a reentry program called Root & Rebound, which provides services in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and the Central Valley. They helped find her a place to live in Fresno.

“They said, you’re going to have to pack whatever you could fit in a car. That’s all we’re bringing,” she said. “We’re placing you in a program that has a lot of security. You’re going to be safe there.”

Garibay was referred to another nonprofit program in Fresno called Rescue the Children, where she lived for 18 months and received clothing, housing and therapy. It’s common for women reentering society to have to seek out many different resources from different places because prisons and state governments don’t provide enough help, said Claudia Gonzalez, who works with Root & Rebound and helped Garibay navigate the resources available to her.

“Nothing is mandated. There’s no law stating that parole officers have to find resources for you,” said Gonzalez.

Garibay currently attends Fresno City College and is pursuing a career in the legal field. But she is still waiting for her DACA approval, which means she still can’t legally apply for jobs. Her college will stop paying for her housing in September.

“What does this mean for me and my girls again?” she asked. “You know, it puts us back in a limbo.”

Garibay depends on scholarship money and small amounts of government assistance that her two daughters get since they are U.S. citizens. There are still days when her depression feels overwhelming.

“I have a 1-year-old and I have a 13-year-old that depend on me,” she said. “They have nobody else, and because of that reason, that’s the reason I push forward.”