When Kendra Wright was incarcerated for drug-related offenses at Oregon’s only women’s prison, her then-6-year-old daughter, Selene, was placed in the care of Wright’s grandparents. Prohibited from speaking to Selene, Wright cherished what little contact she had: Wright’s grandmother would call her while Selene was in the same room. “It was the only way I could hear her little voice,” Wright said. 

But in 2013, Wright was accepted to the Family Preservation Project, an initiative then run by the Oregon Department of Corrections designed to break intergenerational cycles of incarceration, poverty, and addiction by helping imprisoned mothers maintain relationships with their children. More than 75 percent of incarcerated women in Oregon are mothers, and many of their children are at risk of suffering the same traumas they did.

[For more of this story, written by Christina Hillstrom, go to http://www.yesmagazine.org/pea...fter-prison-20170514]