Chrishona Hodges’s Life Sentence
January 11, 2025 at 12:12AMElly Fishman originally profiled Jerryon Stevens, age 24, for Chicago Magazine nine years ago when he was a teen facing “an inflection point in his life.” Stevens was once a straight-A student. His life changed after he fell in with a gang and started selling drugs in his neighborhood. Stevens has been incarcerated since 2021, awaiting trial on a murder charge. In this thoughtful and harrowing piece, Fishman focuses on Stevens’s ever-so-dedicated mother, Chrisona Hodges, and the emotional and financial toll Hodges has been paying and will continue to pay as she tries to keep Stevens connected with friends and family—most importantly his five-year-old daughter, Malani.
For Chrishona, the toll of Jerryon’s incarceration takes many forms. There’s the money, for one. To raise $25,000 for a lawyer to represent Jerryon, she had to borrow from her siblings and cash out some of her 401(k). She’s also spent thousands of dollars more for phone and text communication with her son in jail and for deposits for him in the prison commissary. Then there are the hours spent consoling Jerryon and passing along his messages to friends and family he cannot reach directly. The sleep lost from worrying about Jerryon’s mental health. The time spent splitting childcare with Jerryon’s ex-girlfriend to help raise Malani, who calls Chrishona “Ma.” And all the while, there are the ever-accumulating painful moments that rise up when she feels her son’s absence most sharply: an empty house, missed birthdays, holidays without him. But despite the relentless hardships, Chrishona still holds her family together, keeps Jerryon connected to Malani, and fiercely cultivates joy — not just for herself, but for everyone around her.
Nearly nine years ago, I wrote a story hoping to give people a glimpse into a world — Jerryon’s world — they might not otherwise see. It was an act of witness, showing what it means to survive, and even possibly thrive, against the odds. Now, sitting on Chrishona’s porch, I consider a new question. As I describe the happy setting to Jerryon over the phone, I reflect on a concern Chrishona contemplates in her quiet moments: Do her relentless efforts to create a stable, joyful home do anything to lessen the collateral costs of her sons’ incarceration? There’s no clear answer, but Chrishona’s fight for normalcy remains indefatigable.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/01/10/chrishona-hodgess-life-sentence/
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