Thirty-six-year-old Zena Jones was in and out of prison first for drugs, then for violating parole. Not even concern for her first son, Chase, stopped her from getting high, she said.
“I guess just being a single mom by myself, just the atmosphere I was in, I fell back in it,” Ms. Jones said. “My drug addiction really got a hold of me, and I couldn’t put it down. I was out of control.”
She lost temporary custody of Chase to her sister-in-law and swore she would do better if she had another child.
Several weeks after her release from Silverdale Detention Center this year, Ms. Jones didn’t struggle to stay off drugs — seven addiction meetings a week and thoughts of her newborn son broke that desire.
“There’s nothing in this world that could take me away from my baby,” she said, looking at newborn son, Gage, lying on a white blanket at her North Chattanooga residence.
But she acknowledged having to battle feelings of loneliness as she cared for now 16-day-old Gage while his father — her husband — is serving time in Georgia state prison for violating parole.
“Being alone, it’s really affected me emotionally,” said Ms. Jones, who discovered the support program Family Way while at Silverdale.
Finding a way
Leaving life behind bars is merely the first in a long series of challenges women face. Women worry about reuniting with their children, finding jobs, paying rent, staying clean and avoiding reoffending, experts and counselors say.
In Hamilton County, Family Way, a division of Council for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services, helps women find a house and job and offers counseling, but only if they are sober, Director David Brown said.
The program is unrelenting, but teaches women how to stay clean and raise children, he said.
“It’s hard enough to learn how to get sober, much less try to get sober and learn how to be a mother at the same time,” he said.
Once sober, women get housing through the Chattanooga Housing Authority, pay their rent on a sliding scale, find jobs and can put their children in day-care or preschool programs, Mr. Brown said. After two years, most women can live on their own.
Some, but not all, women enrolled in the program come from prison.
“There are not many places that put recovery first,” he said. “The kids are the ones that have been the losers in all this.”
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