Director’s Statement
At the heart of ‘Order My Steps’ is the truth that incarceration shreds family bonds. Children are the “hidden victims” of our broken criminal justice system. They suffer lifelong consequences from the trauma of forced separation - often compounded by poverty, lack of adult support, or a dangerous living environment. A child’s ache of abandonment can harden into a sense of betrayal by the person at the center of her life. Broken systems make child-parent reconciliation immensely difficult.
Everyone on our team, in one way or another, has interacted with these broken systems.
The experience of our producer, Eva Minemar, whose father was in prison during much of her childhood, speaks to the core issues of ‘Order My Steps.’
Recalling visits with her father, Eva writes:
I remember being told to smile but the best I could do was grit my teeth because I was holding on as tight as I could… The system was cold, rigid, mean, and treated the families of the incarcerated like the incarcerated themselves. This would not be my last memory of what it was like to love someone who is trapped on the inside. This would not be the last time my father was sent ‘away’.
‘Order My Steps’ intimately dramatizes the stakes of long-term detention. In our story, an incarcerated mother and her grown daughter reunite in defiance of the broken systems that have kept them apart.