Reentry: Returning to Community, Returning to Self

Description

Through the lived experience of incarceration and reentry, WayOfLife explores what it actually means for a human being to come home after years of separation from family, community and society. Reentry is examined not simply as release from incarceration, but as a process of rebuilding identity, relationships, purpose, belonging and place within a world that continued changing while the incarcerated person was away.  The conversation also turns the question toward the community itself. While returning individuals are continually asked whether they are prepared to come home, WayOfLife asks whether families, institutions, employers and communities are equally prepared to receive them. Through lived experience, storytelling and human reflection, the program explores the unique relationship between the person returning and the community receiving them, creating space to examine accountability, stigma, transformation, restoration, belonging and what it truly means to come home.