New Moms Behind Bars Get Help From Someone Who’s Been There – By Giles Bruce (US News) / Oct 12 2020
Nina Porter spent most of her adulthood behind bars, even raising an infant daughter in prison. Now, she’s drawing on her struggles to help other moms get by in a sometimes unwelcoming post-prison world.
INDIANAPOLIS — Nine years ago, Nina Porter gave birth in a hospital bed with one of her ankles chained to the frame.
Corrections officers stood watch as Porter held her daughter, Gianna, to her chest for the first time. Back at a nursery inside Indiana Women’s Prison, Gianna slept in a crib in her mother’s cell, about 2 feet from her pillow.
The prison program allowed Porter to keep her baby with her — including when she went out into the yard — until her discharge nearly a year later. She didn’t recall ever bonding so closely with her previous 11 kids. She finally felt her life moving in a positive direction.
“I didn’t want to be a messed-up person,” she said. “I didn’t want to be a messed-up mom once I realized what a real mom is.”
When Porter was released in 2012, however, she didn’t know how to stay on that path and resorted to what she knew: drugs and crime. She never returned to prison, but her struggles eventually led to a new mission of supporting incarcerated moms as they adjust to life on the outside.
Continue to article: https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2020-10-12/new-moms-in-prison-get-help-from-someone-whos-been-there
