What We Do
Reentry Sisters is a brave space and safe haven for women and girls. As system-impacted women, we celebrate our successes and lend support during our challenges. We uplift, encourage, and share information to help each woman achieve and sustain a life free of the carceral system, family policing organizations, and unhealthy relationships.
There are support groups for women returning to our communities; however, Reentry Sisters focuses on the unique needs of women. Women need a place to be messy and real in a non-judgmental forum among women who “get it.” We welcome women on home confinement, probation, or at any phase of the reentry process. Our monthly hybrid (in-person and Zoom) meetings help women from all over the state retain vital connections. Our open space encourages conversation about our fears and challenges, what makes us laugh or cry, and exchange social services information.
Community Awareness
2024 -2025 The National Endowment for the Humanities announces $37.5 Million for 240 Humanities Projects Nationwide.
Reentry Sisters board member Catherine Besteman and executive director Linda Small are on a collaborative research team with Bridget Conley and Brittany Arneson from Tufts University.
Our project, The Praxis of Care: Carceral Disruptions and Community Resistance Project will collect stories from currently and formerly incarcerated folx, family members, volunteers, and staff about their experiences to coauthor a book that examines the experience of incarceration and caring for justice-impacted people in Maine and Massachusetts.
Community Awareness
2024 -2025 The American Council of Learned Societies Digital Justice Grant The ACLS Digital Justice Grants Program supports digital projects across the humanities and interpretative social sciences that critically engage with the interests and histories of people of color and other historically marginalized communities through the ethical use of digital tools and methods.
Reentry Sisters board member Catherine Besteman and executive director Linda Small are on a collaborative research team with Brandon Brown and A. Cuba Jackson.
Freedom & Captivity Archive Project: Archiving Carceral Experience
Freedom & Captivity will build a digital archive of carceral experience - the hidden stories of Maine’s incarcerated community members - and perform that archive at venues across the state. The curated archive will be housed at the Maine Memory Network, Maine Historical Society’s digital history platform, and all the material collected for the project will be archived in Colby College Library’s Digital Collections. This will be the first archival space in Maine to hold stories about incarceration, curated and sensitively contextualized by those most impacted by carcerality. By offering a platform for the voices of those previously silenced by carcerality, our project aims to shift the narrative around justice, accountability, and the need for incarceration in the wake of harm.
Education and Housing
Reentry Sisters is opening the Reentry Sisters Educational Transition Home, a safe, loving, and healthy environment for women to complete their education while returning home from prison. Our Home provides the necessary structure and community support for women to complete their education, reducing the 90 percent college dropout rate during the transition from incarceration. We offer wraparound services that include technological tools, affordable housing, mentoring, community connections, wellness programming, pathways to meaningful careers, and an onsite house manager for up to nine women.
Karla’s Place, the namesake of one lost Reentry Sister, represents the need to create a learning community, based in accountability, care, and personal growth through education.
Please contact us to learn how you can support this special project!
Community Partners
Opportunity Scholars - Liberation through Education
Opportunity Scholars, through the Center for Effective Public Policy, supports and celebrates the accomplishments of people with lived experience in the carceral system, connecting them to higher education and fulfilling careers. Opportunity Scholars members support personal, professional, and academic growth by' fostering relationships with higher learning institutions, legislators, and community partners. Through our mutual support, Reentry Sisters and OS promote the expertise of system-impacted women in and through higher education.
Community Partners
Women's Justice Commission - Council on Criminal Justice
Congratulations to Reentry Sisters board member, Erica King, who was appointed to the Women's Justice Commission!
The Women’s Justice Commission is a multi-year research, policy, and communications initiative that documents and raises awareness of the unique challenges facing women in the justice system and builds consensus for evidence-based reforms that enhance safety, health, and justice. The project spans the full scope of the adult justice system—from arrest and diversion through prosecution, incarceration, release, and community supervision—with a particular focus on trauma-informed and gender-responsive prevention and intervention strategies.
Partnering with Maine College of Art & Design
With the generous support of MECA&D faculty and students, we collaborated to create Radical Love Bags for women transitioning from prison. MECA&D students screened original art on the front of the bags and filled them with custom-designed and crafted journals, hand-made paper with inspirational messages, lovingly added art supplies, and other creative items.
Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition
Reentry Sisters works with MPAC to advocate for ethical, positive, and humane changes in Maine’s prison system. In collaboration with MPAC, Reentry Sisters presents public programming and educational events that highlight the specific issues faced by system-impacted women.
Medomak Exchange
Reentry Sisters coordinates with MEDOMAK EXCHANGE, a Maine non-profit organization serving the people of Waldoboro and surrounding towns through the Good Things Thrift & Craft Shop, to provide clothing and other necessities for women returning to their communities from prison.
The National Council of Currently and Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls
Reentry Sisters is proud of our partnership with the National Council, both founded by incarcerated women to end the incarceration of women and girls. The National Council supports Maine sisters with a guaranteed income for a year to help with transition expenses of housing, food, and other necessities. The Council is supporting Maine's first gender justice symposium, organized by Reentry Sisters and Opportunity Scholars.
The Spiral Goddess Collective
Trauma-informed Yoga
Trauma-informed yoga recognizes that trauma lives in the body and that conscious breathing and movement practices like yoga help us to move trauma out of our bodies. A variety of choices and options are offered along with guidance that encourages us to do what feels best for our minds and bodies in the moment. This approach empowers each of us to be an expert and decision-maker for our own body and practice.
Spiral Flow Yoga is designed to meet each mind/body where we are, to make yoga accessible, and to give participants tools that can be used daily toward self-care. The Spiral Goddess Collective Community is non-judgmental and welcoming, as is our curated space, which includes a lending library, an active-wear clothing exchange, oracle card decks, snacks, and more!
These yoga classes are being provided to Partners for Peace—survivors and staff—as well as HEAL, McAuley Residence, and Reentry Sisters at no charge, as a part of our social justice mission. No previous yoga experience required. Dress comfortably and we have everything you need!
See our full schedule of offerings at www.thespiralgoddesscollective@gmail.com
For more information, please contact Sarah at thespiralgoddesscollective@gmail.com
Recent Events
State of Women's Incarceration Forum
Date: May 17, 2024
Time: 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Location: University of Southern Maine (USM), Portland, Maine
Reentry Sisters, the National Council, Women Transcending, and the Opportunity Scholars, with the generous support of the Bingham Project at USM, offer a forum by justice-impacted women to strategize; share resources; and create action plans for legislative change, the use of clemency laws and early release, reentry services for women, and ending the incarceration of women and girls.
We invite activists, advocates, and allies to join us for an immersive and interdisciplinary approach that brings together leaders from across multiple states to end mass incarceration for women and girls.
Featured Speakers:
former Maine State Representative,
former Mayor of Hallowell, Maine,
and owner of C Warren Consulting
Executive Director, New Beginnings Reentry Services
Boston, MA
Gender and Racial Justice Policy Expert,
Senior Project Manager at Forward Justice
Raleigh, NC
Field organizer, National Council for Incarcerated
and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls
(Joined by Sashi James and Mallory Hanora)
Clyde's at Portland Stage - A Play about Reentry from Prison
A must-see play about reentry.
Portland Stage featuring Clyde's.
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage serves up this delicious comedy that centers laughs, redemption, and restorative justice. The formerly incarcerated kitchen staff at Clyde’s are navigating their new lives on the outside and their tough-as-nails boss — all while on a quest to create the perfect sandwich. The menu features loveable characters, big dreams, and a heartwarming story that’s good to the last bite!
Tony Award nominee for Best Play, 2022.
“A laugh riot with real meat on its bones.” –The New York Times
On April 7, the Artistic Director of Portland Stage, Anita Stewart, invited guest speakers, including Linda Small of Reentry Sisters and Joseph Jackson of Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coaltion, to participate in a panel discussion after the play to discuss what it is like to return from prison in Maine.
Tickets also available at Portland Center Stage for May