Rehabilitation and Breaking the Cycle of Intergenerational Incarceration

By  Heather C. Jarvis / Prism Reports

My youngest daughter, Annalaya, has only ever known me as a voice on the phone. She was 5 months old when I got incarcerated nearly a decade ago. She calls me “mommy,” but I have never been physically present in her life. I’ve mailed her presents but never witnessed her blow out her birthday candles. I’ve never witnessed her slurp spaghetti, pick up toys, or skip excitedly through school doors on her first day. I don’t know how she likes her eggs cooked or what she acts like when she is mad. 

I do know she is a curious spirit who asks hard questions. She has an innocent wisdom I admire.

“Mommy, why are you there?” she questioned me once over the recorded line, our only bridge to connection. She was around 4 years old at the time, spunky, and full of personality.

I had anticipated this question—just not so soon.

“Well, Mommy was bad and got in trouble. I have to stay here for a while. I’m in time out. But it is OK. I’m learning how to be the best mommy ever. It’s like mommy school,” I told her.

“Well, when are you coming home?” her little voice puffed.

“Soon, baby, soon,” I replied pitifully.

In her world, Annalaya knew the perfect solution for me. “Mommy, sometimes you have to say sorry, even if you’re not! Tell them you’re sorry so you can come home to me,” she said like it was a matter of fact.

“If only,” I thought to myself.

I know the longing Anna feels. My own mother spent a good chunk of my childhood incarcerated. The presence she craves—that of her mother—is a sort of tender helplessness I experienced waiting for my mother to come home.

While I will never know the pain that tripped my mother up and landed us in this cycle, I do know the struggle of trying to break it. I had my oldest daughter at 14 years old. Last year, she entered the juvenile justice system for behavioral problems, thus completing the three-generation cycle of incarcerated women in my family. I have felt and lived through all the tribulations one could experience while caught in this vicious cycle, from child to mother to mom.

Cyclical incarceration feels like a strong tide that pushes against us, forcing us in directions we did not choose. We fight against the trauma and adverse effects that cause us to unconsciously sabotage relationships, social situations, our stability, and mental health—or simply the ability to see anything outside what we have always known.

I could blame my circumstances on the environment I grew up in, my socioeconomic conditions, or the fact that my father, a neighborhood drug dealer, raised me. I could blame my mother for being gone or my teen pregnancy or numerous other things I’ve endured.

But I won’t.

Doing that would only force blame on those in my life who did the best with what they were given and gave me all they had at the time. You cannot teach a child things you yourself do not know. I refuse to add more weight to the regrets my parents already carry.

There is a complex battle inside my head. Yes, I missed a good chunk of my children’s lives. Yet now that I’m approaching freedom, I realize I could never regret one thing, one moment, one bad choice that has led me to become the woman I am today.

I am strong, resilient, and restored. Growing up, I would have never said, “I want to be a prisoner,” but the person I am now can only reflect on the growth I fought for during this experience to move forward. I did everything I could while incarcerated—I relentlessly pursued redemption, change, and true healing. I learned the things my parents didn’t know. I went through numerous treatment programs and completed an associate’s degree. The availability of these programs in prison was crucial to my rehabilitation and the first step toward disrupting our generational cycle of incarceration. These resources can expose incarcerated people to opportunities that seem so far out of reach. They can show us that there is more for us than what we have always known. 

The thought of reentering my children’s lives—especially Anna’s—is scary. I constantly ask my loved ones, “What if she doesn’t like me?”

A friend who threw my baby shower for Anna reassured me. “She will, Heather. Think about it this way, you have a clean slate. That lil’ girl has all types of fantasies about how cool you are in her head. She will only know you as who you are now.”

She is right.

I regret I wasn’t the one who broke my family’s cycle of incarceration, leaving my children to experience its effects. But I am proud of the new path I forged and how it can change the trajectory of our generations to come. With my ambition, I will model something new and different.

I will go out and teach both of my children the hard lessons we all have to learn. Sometimes, it is not enough to say sorry. You have to prove it and really learn from your worst mistakes.

As of the publication of this article, Heather Jarvis has been released from prison and reunited with her family.

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