077 Traumatic Childhood to Prison Time: Shaun McClure

Shaun’s journey is one of pain, survival, and ultimately, self-healing. Bullied as a child, beaten down emotionally and physically, he grew up feeling repulsive, unwanted, and angry. As a child he was jailed and over the next 25 years, he found himself trapped in a cycle of burglary, car theft, and incarceration.

But prison didn’t just hold him—it woke him up.
 Shaun fought for access to books and immersed himself in psychology. He found unexpected wisdom among the “lifers” who had built purpose into their permanent sentences. For the first time, Shaun began to understand his trauma, and how it shaped the choices that landed him behind bars.

This episode is raw, honest, and deeply human. It's not just about crime—it's about the power of reflection, resilience, and redemption.

🎧 Listen now to hear how Shaun began breaking the cycle from the inside out.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I was 12 years old. We weren't here for two months before my mother had to kill her boyfriend defending herself. And it tore me up, you know. I didn't know what was going on. All I knew is I heard the gunshots. At school, they told me that I was educationally retarded. Turns out I'm on the other end of the scale. I'm closer to genius, but they didn't know. Sean.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Welcome to Multispective. I am so excited to have you here on air with us.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Yeah, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

I think that your story, in a sense, really is the embodiment of sort of like sharing about men's mental health and how it sort of came to you as well at a little bit of a later stage in your own life, right? Where are you from? Where are you raised? You know, your family situation. Yeah. Where does it begin for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

So, I try not to admit it, but I'm from California. I was actually born in Bakersfield, California.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Had a really large family. They're all rednecks. Bakersfield is where everyone that was in the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma and Texas came to. They all went out there. So we had a really big family, really rural country family. And I grew up pretty well. But we left. And when we left was a big part of my trauma. Right away, we left California on a, We flipped a coin. My mother did. She was escaping her boyfriend that was beating her, and my dad stayed out in the car all night with a gun watching him, but they flipped a coin. It was either Alaska or California, or Alaska or Arizona, and we ended up in Arizona in 89. I was 12 years old. We weren't here for two months before my mother had to kill her boyfriend defending herself.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

And this is the same boyfriend.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yeah, the same boyfriend. So I don't know exactly what happened. I've never really talked to my mother about it. But I think there's a fair chance that this guy was the best friend to the other guy that she ran from. So there may be more to the story there. But after we got to Arizona, he started beating my mother. One night. And it just ended up in him being shot. All of my cousins were told that my mother and him are in a car wreck and he passed away. But that's how beat up she was.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Yeah, that was 12 years old. And I'd already suffered through other trauma. I kind of got off track on that, but I'd already been molested by a female cousin. And we took that a lot different. So that's a big part of men's mental health. So with us, it wasn't a molestation. It was a score. A

SPEAKER_00 3:28

score.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yeah. So we were, you know, I was eight years old. So we're like, oh, yeah, that's sexual peak. You know, we were proud of that. not knowing how it would affect us or that it would affect us. I don't know if it did affect my other cousins, but it's not something we talk about. But we went through that, and then I was bullied. When I started school in Arizona after the murder, I ended up being a social pariah. I went through all of my school years. I never had a date, never had a girlfriend, none of that. I was so bullied, I would shut down. I wouldn't know what to say. I'd just lock up. I didn't know how to come up with a comeback. And finally, I'd wait until they laid hands on me, and I'd just unleash. And then I'd get in trouble for it. And actually, the first two times I was arrested was for beating up adults when I was a child who were picking on

SPEAKER_00 4:29

me, even though they assaulted me first. And then it's like life's way of saying, what are you going to make out of it? At the age of eight, when you're only starting to make sense of like the world, you're being molested. Bam. This is the very first thing that you're kind of understanding of like, okay, this is how I guess it's meant to be. And oh, we're supposed to take pride in sex because that's what everyone is talking about. And so, yay, like, yay me. I had a sexual experience, obviously at that point, not understanding that actually this is a form of molestation. At 12 years old, again, something really big happening. Did you witness your mom shoot your dad?

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Yeah, the boyfriend, yeah. I didn't see him get hit, so I was pushed out of the trailer right as it happened. My brother pushed me out and said, go get help. And I ran house to house, beating on doors, trying to get it open. And it took like the fourth house before someone let me in. And then she wouldn't let me back out. And I was really freaking out. I grew up country values. You do what your elders tell you. You don't talk So this old lady told me to sit down and be quiet and wait. And I did. And it tore me up. I didn't know what was going on. All I knew is I heard the gunshots and that was it.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

You mentioned that your brother was there. He was in the trailer this whole time. What happened to him? Does he recall witnessing it? How old was he at

SPEAKER_01 6:07

the time? He was two years older. And he stepped in the way. So first, he was trying to tell me to go back to sleep. And I ran back. I ran outside and I wasn't going to sleep. I was going to go help. And then when the boyfriend came after me, then my brother got in between us. And it had been a whole thing. And they pushed me out. And for some reason, that guy had the gun and thought it was a smart idea to put the gun on the table between him and my mother. We grew up around guns. My dad was a gunsmith. Every one of us is very well versed. It was actually her gun. My father gave it to her for protection.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

I just want to know a little bit more about your mom and how she felt. found herself in these kind of cycles of relationships. Do you know very much about her past and her childhood? Well, I don't think

SPEAKER_01 6:53

it, for her, it wasn't a cycle. She went from my father to a boyfriend. And I don't know if the boyfriend and the friend thing, if there was anything. It's just really weird how my mom moved in with the boyfriend immediately. We left together. The boyfriend's friend. So that it's, I haven't really delved into that. But she did end up with a bunch of, a few boyfriends that weren't the best. And I think it just comes down to codependency, you know, having someone that's taking care of you. Cause my, you know, my father was an atypical breadwinner and my mother, the housewife, the den mother and all that, you know, but it didn't have the best values, the best goals or anything. Who knows what they were thinking? It's the seventies, eighties.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Right. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Were you pretty close to your mom?

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Uh, yeah, we're fairly close. We weren't, we're close family, close knit family. We weren't real, uh, affectionate. We're not huggy, lovey, touchy, especially me. But I think that's more from all my time, all my prison time.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

So walk me through this. So you'd been molested at eight years old. This was never really something that you shared with too many people. I mean, it was your cousin and you basically that knew or were there other people

SPEAKER_01 8:09

around? All of our cousins knew. I don't know if we all knew that we knew until later, but But I knew of two of my cousins that had. And then when I mentioned it to my brother, he said, well, we all were. And so I guess he had as well. She was 19 and she was an adopted cousin, foster cousin that had stayed with the family after she turned 19. It took a long time to understand how it really affected me. And that's, you know, that's later in the story, but it took a long time to put the pieces together because it's not something that's obvious, you know, You know, something that's, you know, I'm not a woman hater or beater or sexual predator or anything. You know, any of these other things that could have happened, it manifested itself in its own form of codependency or its own yearning for acceptance. You know, because I was at the sexual peak and it went down to the very bottom all the way up until still going through there. You know, still, and I figured out that's why a lot of people recidivate and why they go back to drugs, why they go back to alcohol, is because they don't, they seek, and I use it in speech sometimes, that sometimes I tell them, I know what my problem is, it's women. I say it jokingly, really what it is, it's the need for women, it's codependency, it's not just sex, it's having someone to share someone with, a couple, you know, all these things. And younger, it was about the sex, the companionship, the need, you know, I've done all this, and now I can't get nothing. So where do you go to find an easy woman? Where do you find a woman willing to sleep with you? Well, it's a bar. It's doing drugs. It's doing this and that. People are going through the same mental health or drug issues that you are, so that's where you're going to gravitate to again.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Right,

SPEAKER_02 10:03

right,

SPEAKER_00 10:03

yeah. And then so you kind of go back into that same cycle, that same circle of people, and it's just you kind of find yourself doing the same things again, and next thing you know, you're back in the system, and you're coming back out, and you And the hardest part about it is like, you know, even for individuals coming out of prison, they want to break through and kind of move into a different circle and a different kind of lifestyle. But it's hard because, you know, then these other communities are not as welcoming as well. There's not so many companies, organizations, people, groups that are open arms. Come on in. You know, you've come out of the system. We hope and we believe that you're willing, you want to change. And like, let's help you.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Yeah. Luckily, there's more. There's definitely more people and more organizations. Unfortunately, I'm learning they don't work together as well as I like because there's friends on my page that I've reached out to that are doing the same thing. They're doing prison reform. They're doing speeches. They're doing recovery work. They're doing podcasts. And there's three specific individuals that all work with the same organization. They haven't gotten back to me at all. And I'm 90% sure why. And it's because... everything is so, I want to say loaded, or everyone's so worried about what everyone else is doing. So me being part of NAMI, they're worried about NAMI's values, their agendas, their things that they accept. They're a religious-based organization, so they don't have the same view on mental health as others do. But there are changes. There are people accepting. Like I said earlier, this town's really accepting me. I'm actually the I've rented the lower level of the house of the former mayor. After the last election, he didn't get reelected, but the mayor is one of my friends. The city councilman is a friend. Chamber of Commerce, I have friends on there. And then they made me the president of the nonprofit here, of NAMI. I'm actually their president.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Hey, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

They've all accepted me because I'm putting in the work. They see me trying to do it. And that's what's driven me forward. That was one of the that I realized while I was inside. I was always a peer facilitator of some sort, a peer instructor. And I thought I was faking it, and I was for a long time. But really what it was is on-the-job training. I'd always do my best when I was in those roles because I had to educate myself to help them. I had to represent myself a certain way to show them. So I was faking it. Even when I was still messing up and in those roles, I would still do everything I could to represent it the best that I could. And it finally seeped through and I learned a lot now when I got out this, because I always thought I wasn't qualified. I didn't have the credentials. I didn't have the education.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

And

SPEAKER_01 12:57

then this time I got out there like, yeah, you got war wounds. You're who we need. And now that's what I'm utilizing.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

And you know, a lot of the times it's like, you know, you mentioned that you're faking it for a while and sometimes that's what it is. It's like you just got to do the motions of what is asked and then at some point without even understanding or realizing at what point you started to internalize it. You started to make it a part of your identity and your personality and you connect with it on such a level that it becomes real.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

And that's the same thing with goal setting. It's the exact same process for setting and achieving goals. You're going to make a little step and just keep on doing it. Say you want to go to the gym. Just go to the parking lot. You make it to the parking lot, that's an achievement. Count that. If that's what you need to do, make it to the parking lot. Pretty soon you're going to go in there and it's going to be like, all right, I got to get three sets. And you're going to realize, dang, now I've got goals of that. I got to get these sets and I'm a jam right now.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

So I do want to go a little bit more into your story. So you mentioned that, you know, all of this was happening. What was the kind of cause of you being

SPEAKER_01 14:00

bullied? Why were you sort of the target? There's one specific reason related to a famous person's niece. I don't know if it's true or not, but I tried to get her aunt fired and she broke my nose in the middle of the plot during the sixth grade. And ever since then, I was, like I said, a social pariah. But I also have bad teeth and a bad nose. And there's a lot that I didn't realize about that for a long time. So people would make fun of me about being a mouth breather, about bad teeth, about my nose, the way I sound, all this. Well, I didn't realize until way into prison, I can't breathe out this side of my nose. So if I have the littlest sinus problem, I'm a mouth breather. And then I have an overbite. There's a couple of things that were real misses. And one was not getting my nose fixed twice. So you're just going to break it again. So they didn't fix it. And the other was my teeth. I had a retainer and I lost it twice. But those two things were the biggest. And it's still big. I can't get a date because of it. I haven't had a relationship in eight years. I've been free for three. It's one thing I've come to accept that Generally found unattractive and almost repulsed by women. I just had to come to accept that I'm enough. Because the only ones that have accepted me are the ones that have been on drugs. And this time I've raised my standard where I'm not going to go to the bar and pick up a woman. I'm not going to sleep with a woman on the first time I meet her.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

I've done episodes previously in the past with people who've sort of been in relationships, but very toxic relationships or found themselves in just these cycles of relationships that were just not right for them. And, you know, one of the things that a lot of them said was, you know, one thing I had to do was change that narrative for myself. I had to start loving myself enough for me to start attracting the right kinds of people, the people that I wanted that were truly going to be good for me. So the moment I started to say, I'm not going, I'm going to start saying no to people that are not right for me. I'm going to draw boundaries where I need to draw them. And in that time, spend as much time doing the self-care, the self love, the meditation, the yoga, doing whatever it takes to kind of give yourself that grace and that love that you need, you're already kind of on that step of like, hey, this is what self-love looks like for me. This is what my boundaries are and I'm going to stick to that. So that's

SPEAKER_01 16:25

really commendable. And I take it a step further too, because I can't set these standards for the woman I want and not have standards for myself. So the way I look at it is, all right, if this is the woman I want, who would the woman I want want to be with? Who would they find acceptable? What standards would they find acceptable? And I have to reach those standards because the woman I want to be with is not going to want to be with a scrub. She's not going to be with some guy that's vegging out watching video or playing video games and watching movies all day. The woman I want is going to be with a guy that's working, that's grinding, that has purpose in his life. So I try and keep myself to those standards as well.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yeah. Now, when you first initially, like reached out to me, you'd mentioned that you'd been in and out of the prison system for 25 years. Am I right? Yes, ma'am. And all of these were, you know, regarding or happening because of drugs and assaults and, you know, kind of bits of violence here and there. Can you kind of walk me through it a little bit from the very beginning?

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah. Well, most, all the violence is usually, except for one time, was towards me. The only time it wasn't was when I was high and I thought someone stole some money from me. Yeah. And he didn't. It was really bad. For the most part, I'd always just been stealing to support my habit or just being dumb. You know, in Oklahoma, I was just stealing cars. I'd be stealing cars. I wasn't even selling them. I was just joyriding them. And the first time we did a burglary at a bar, me and my friends, so we could get some meth and I got caught. They gave me six months. I got out and had to do probation. They said I never checked in. I did. So they violated me, put me in for three. Well, they gave me three and a half years. Then they gave me the six months. But I kept going in and out, in and out. And there's no actionable effort at reducing recidivism or trying to help us. It was, you stop doing drugs, get a job, and you'll be all right. That's the extent of their help. And maybe not even that. Back then, it was just stuffing on the yard. And I really started educating myself. Really, it started out with faking it until I make it. I got a job as a typing tutor, and I had no idea. I couldn't type 25 words a minute. But I got this job because it was a high-paying job. It was 50 cents an hour. My buddy was like, hey, I can get you this job. I was like, we'll teach you to type. As you go, I was like, all right. So that's kind of how it started. I kept getting those good jobs, and I'd teach myself as I'd go along. But I'd get right back out, and I'd do good for a week, two weeks, get a paycheck, and it's time to try and find a woman And I started getting high, getting drunk, and never would. I just partied. The excuse was, I'm going to party because I need to meet somebody. And I just partied and ended up having to steal something to support my habit because there was no functioning addiction for me at that time.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

That's so fascinating. So I went in for six months. I find it really fascinating that your motivation was to find a partner, to find a woman. And that was why you were taking drugs as opposed to sort of, you know, for a lot of people being the other way where they're driven by the addiction of drugs. I need to find the drugs. And then, you know, like woman and all would be sort of like a part of that whole journey, but it was the other way around for you. Would you say that you were addicted to drugs at any point or not so much? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

I don't think it is as deep as I thought it was. I think it is more of the mental health stuff. Right. You know, because all of my addictions, I never really tried to get rid of them, but the moment I really tried, they fell away. Like, tobacco, one of my greatest ones I kicked, I kicked while I was inside. I was like, I'm done with this stuff. I got some lozenges, bam, it's done. I haven't had an urge since then. Same with methamphetamine. I was in and out. When I had I had the breakthroughs like, all right, I was studying psychology. I was in prison. And the second time, I'm always trying to teach myself. You had to fight for an education in there. And I fought, I wish I fought like that when I was in school. I was in remedial classes in school. They told me that I was educationally retarded is the way they said it. And it turns out I'm on the other end of the scale. I'm closer to genius, but they didn't know.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

What was the prison system like for you? The few times they several times that you were in there. Did you make friends? Did you find that you were seeing the same people again and again? Did you feel like it was, in a way, good for you?

SPEAKER_01 21:50

In 25 years, it's a lot. I've run the gamut. I've been in dungeons, and I've been in really, really nice places. I've been... you know, bullied and lame on one yard to one of the shot callers on another. Just going back and forth, depending on the yard, depending on the situation, depending on where I was at the time. Because there were times when I was addicted in there. And then there were times I just wasn't. Generally, I did all right. I'd have one or two friends. And that's how most people are. You don't have a lot of friends. You have people that you're cool with. And then usually you have what they call a road dog or your homie. You usually got one good partner that's got your back. I've had a few. It's all different. There's been yards where, like in Oklahoma, I was on the cowboy crew. I rode a horse every day for three years. Wow. Yeah. People watch Yellowstone. I lived it. We were out there roping, riding. No way. Because I tell people I grew up on the white trash side of country. Right. All my family were cotton pickers and potato farmers. We didn't have horses. Right. But the moment I got on one, they couldn't get me off. And it actually changed the whole trajectory of my life because my all-encompassing goal is to have horses again. So that's one of the pivotal things. So it was good. Yeah. The self-education, one of the things that I really did is I hung out with the lifers. One thing you do when you get there is you kind of figure out who you're going to kick it with. You don't want to be with the troublemakers. You don't want to be with the squares and lanes or the rats or preachers. You got to find your lane. Well, early on, I found out mine was with the lifers, the ones that had their crap together, the ones that knew that they had to make the best of it. And those are the ones I hung out with. And they really drove me towards bettering myself. And I'd always try and... Sun Yards had these interlibrary loans where we could order any book from any library in America. We'd just find the book in these catalogs they had, write out all the ISBN numbers, and they'd send us the book for four months.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

So

SPEAKER_01 23:56

I just had stacks and stacks. It was... It gave me a purpose. And so it really helped to educate myself. And between that and then everything I've done outside, I'm a completely different person and nothing like what I would have been had I ever gone to prison. At best, I probably would have been some nine to fiver that, you know, and it's not a bad thing. You know, people that need to do that or enjoy doing that, but, you know, go home, watch TV, get up, go to work and do it again. You know, that could have been my life. There's nothing wrong with But now I have purpose. I'm a part of the community. And that's because of prison. It's oddly enough.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

And the other lifers that were in prison there with you, would you say that they're on that same journey as you right now? A similar journey in that they're not being like, you know, reprisoned again? The

SPEAKER_01 24:47

lifers aren't getting out. Those are the ones who are never getting out.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Oh, you mean when you say lifers, like life sentence?

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Life sentence, yeah. One of my really good buddies, I say really good buddies because I shouldn't because I looked up his crime afterwards. It's pretty gruesome. But he came in at 15, and he was doing life plus 45. What happened with him? Well, he'd also been molested by a woman, but he dated her. She was 35, and he was 15 and dating her. But she cheated on him and broke up with him, and he decapitated her.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Wow. At 15?

SPEAKER_01 25:29

At 15. teenagers, 35-year-olds, but because it was a male and a woman, they didn't take that into account. They took it as a crime of passion in their relationship. Generally, the murderers. So generally, the murderers are crimes of passion. Generally. It depends on the demographic. But for the people that I hung out with, they weren't doing drugs. They weren't doing anything wrong. It was usually just rage or something of that effect or accidentally. There's a couple of people that accidentally killed their friends that were doing life. But those are the ones that they're on their spiritual journey. They're on their educational journey. They knew that they had to make the best of what they had. But the ones I did hang out with, I have a whole slew of friends on my Facebook that are doing great from all walks of life.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Can you talk to me a little bit about the mental health aspect of it for you? Did you ever sort of in that process of unraveling what had happened to you in your childhood? Did you ever shed a tear?

SPEAKER_01 26:29

Not really, though. So that's one thing I've been talking about with people. So they talk about men's mental health. Well, first, let me come to how I figured it out. So like I was saying, I was studying psychology, and it was actually the second time, but I was going over childhood development. And we know that a child born to alcoholic parents or a child that was exposed to alcohol in the womb is prone to have anger issues, alcohol issues. We know what's going to happen. We can list out all these developmental issues that a child's going to have from his childhood. We know what's going to happen. And I was like, well... why doesn't that apply to me? No one's ever said anything about my childhood in any of this stuff. And I was like, why doesn't it apply to me? And he's like, if it does apply to me, how? How could my childhood have affected me? And that's when I started breaking down each trauma. It's like, all right, well, okay. So if it did affect me, then that means something outside of me can affect me the opposite way. That means I can improve myself. If outside forces made me, you know, messed up my cognitive dissonance and my honor and everything else, Well, outside forces can do the same, or inside forces, you know, I can make myself better. And that's when I realized, like, all right, I'm going to start telling my story, and we'll go from there. And that's kind of how it started. It was just telling my story.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

When you started telling your story, that people started to warm up to you a little bit more and started to sort of, you know, soften towards you a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Oh, for sure, yeah. It usually floors them. They're like, what, really? Because they don't expect it out of me, especially if they know me at any amount of time, especially during the amount of time that I've done. Like, God, we couldn't imagine you doing that much time. Because I'm polite, I'm I'm a gentleman, I open the doors, yes ma'am, no ma'am, yes sir, no sir. I try and be a consummate gentleman at all times. So a lot of people don't understand that. So anyways, once I understood the mental health aspect and how it could affect me and I started telling my story, I was able to start psychoanalyzing myself more. The more that I spoke about it, the more I was able to understand it. The more I was able to understand it, the more I was able to have hope. And then people were feeling connected to it. People were resonating with it. They're like, oh, that helps me so much because I've had so much trauma that usually if I'm talking to someone, I share trauma with them. And I can have a modicum of hope for them. That's all I care about. If I can provide a little bit of hope. And that's actually one time that I really shed a tear was– I was speaking with our program director, Patty, and she had told me about, so I do an art class I teach once a month called Creative Expressions. It's a free art class. Anyone can come. We provide all the supplies, and I guide you to how to paint an acrylic painting while telling stories of my incarcerations, my addictions, whatever it may be. But she was telling me about this lady who's a twin, and her brother, was so happy because he hadn't seen her smile in so long and she bought paints and did this and that. It just touched me so much how happy it made him. It made me cry. It shows me that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, that I'm having an effect. But going back to men's mental health, and that's one thing, a project that I'm working on is Man Up About Your Mental Health. People say it's okay to cry, but it's okay not to cry too. We can be men about our mental health. We can be masculine. We can be warriors. We can be strong. We don't have to shed a tear. You can. It'll help, but you don't have to. You don't have to be vulnerable. You just have to talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 31:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

It's something still in development. Just man up about your mental health because you don't have to be vulnerable. Especially because we're designed or the way we were evolved or however you want to say it, as warriors, as protectors, as hunters, gatherers, this is our core. So vulnerability is not something that's natural to us. So we don't have to... It should be a requirement to make ourselves vulnerable. But there's a way there. You start out gently and then you build a connection. It's really important, especially for men in prison. That's one thing I wanted to work on. It's really hard for me now. I'm learning that my PTSD behind incarceration is stronger than I thought. But I was going to work on men's mental health in prison, but it's just a real struggle for me to do it. anything with law enforcement. One of the programs I teach and I teach in high schools is called Ending the Silence. It's a mental health program about the stigma behind talking about suicide or emotions or any of those natures. One of the things that I thought was really powerful is if we do the SAM program in prison so the parents have something to talk about with their child so that they can help guide their child and their child can help guide them. But right now, it's just not on my path for me to go back to prison. Like I said, I was arrested twice when I shouldn't have been and held illegally once. When I did the 14 years in Oklahoma, they lost jurisdiction over me. They ignored the ruling of a higher court and they had no jurisdiction to sentence me or hold me. But they still did. I did everything. That's one thing I say. Mental health is not an excuse for the things that you've done. I've done everything that they said I'd done and I paid the price for it. There's no excuse. I made the choices. But they held me illegally for 14 years. They lost all jurisdiction over me. So it's kind of hard for me to willingly go back into that type of situation. I had a chance to go to Mexico to one of the Puerto Vallarta or some beach place, I couldn't do it. I couldn't deal with the thought of going through the security checkpoint and they're like, oh yeah, hey, remember this back in 1995 that you never got caught for? Oh

SPEAKER_00 33:45

my gosh,

SPEAKER_01 33:47

yeah. That's one thing I'm working through. It's really hard. The longer that I'm out, the more fearful I am of losing what I have. It's not completely illogical. But I really had to learn

SPEAKER_00 34:04

to reign it in. Right. And they

SPEAKER_01 34:37

know that. So I actually did go to one thing. It is a trigger for me, but it is.

UNKNOWN 34:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

the Gila County Youth Violence Summit, the first annual one, where they really wanted to talk about youth violence in rural communities. And I went to that, and one of the things they said was they know that the more that you interact with a child in a legal way, you know, it was cops arresting or anything like that, the more you interact with them, the more likely they are to go to prison. Really? So that's good now, but it's what happened to me. The more and the more is inevitable. So once you've been through it, it's very likely too. And some people, they associate it with maliciousness, but the way I look at it is every cop is like everyone in your office. So imagine you work in a large office that you may have worked at one time.

SPEAKER_02 35:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Imagine if all those people were cops. Now imagine them doing investigations. Imagine those people filing reports. Imagine those people cutting corners, doing things wrong, not really even caring. And what kind of actions may happen, you know. Right. They're going to take the easy way out at anyone else's expense because they're lazy or they don't care, you know. It's damn if you do, it's damn if you don't. I don't know what the answer is. Yeah. We've been having legal issues since the Greeks, you know. Aristotle was Complaining about prisons and incarceration and the way that we dealt with those types of situations.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Can you tell me, if you're comfortable delving into it, how has Trump coming into presidency affected things for you? Or has it?

SPEAKER_01 36:26

It hasn't really, other than I've stocked up on water and toilet paper a little bit more. Just because he's come in like a gangbuster and you don't know what's going to happen. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 36:38

that's kind of what I was referring to. It's just looking out for criminals and putting more into the system. There's like overcrowding in a lot of prisons right now because he's just like, yep, catch all the criminals, put them all in. To an extent. So I see both sides of it.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

I don't know. I really don't get into politics because my sphere of influence is mental health and addiction. He does things I agree with. He does things I don't agree with. One thing I definitely need to say is they need to have a filter for him. It is kind of scary, you know, some of the stuff when they talk about getting rid of funding. I don't know who to believe. So one thing I learned in prison, We used to watch a lot of news. So I watched a speech from Trump, and this is during his first presidency. Immediately, I watched the news afterwards. And they chopped it up and said something completely different than what he just said. And I just watched it. I was like, that's not what he said. That's not even what he's implying. So what are you doing? So the thing that I learned is you have to watch five news stations, read five papers, do a bunch of research, and then come up with an educated decision on your own. Because everyone's got an agenda on what they're pushing. And it's so bad because it separates us, it divides us, it takes us away from the things that really matter.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Did you ever seek therapy or any kind of professional help and guidance through your journey, through your mental health journey?

UNKNOWN 38:21

No.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

No, not at all. Even though that's one of my gears. I have this whole gears of mental health, but one of them is seeking help. By the time I figured it out, honestly, I knew everything. I'd been through so much. I knew what I needed to do. Though I do want to seek it now. I don't know how to do it. I need to figure it out because I don't have insurance. Just to work through it. Just so I can be more effective. And there's not a whole lot of help other than each other. And that's one of the reasons I figured out why I talk so much. It's because we talk to each other in there so much. We have books, but there's some places where if you're in the hole, you may run out of books for six out of the seven days. You don't have a book. So you just sit there and talk through the window to the next person.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

So is it something that they did not provide in the prison as well, like group therapy or mental

SPEAKER_01 39:14

health? I even created a program with a cellmate. Well, actually, I should say my cellmate created a program and I helped him. But it was called CART, Creative Artistic Rehabilitative Therapy. We made it sound really wordy to make it sound professional. It was a way of using color therapy and emotions, understanding how certain colors may affect you. It was early mental health awareness and we didn't know that. That's what we started doing in there. We'd get together and we'd just talk about how these colors together made us feel, what we thought of. It was really just a bunch of fun and playing. That's how my creative expressions came about. We would have Thinking for a Change. It's one program I was certified to teach. Basically, they're all cognitive behavior programs. It's talking it out, talking through. Most of But most of the professionals, not all of them, weren't worth very much. You know, they didn't try hard. We've had addiction counselors argue the effects of drugs with a bunch of addicts. Oh,

SPEAKER_00 40:22

gosh. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Like trying to throw a fact. Yeah, like trying to just throw a fact at someone who's just not going to receive it.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

But one of the things, and I don't know if they realize this, but the most effective treatment was each other. Because we created our own rules for each other. And those rules created values. They created systems. So one of the things, you know, you couldn't be called a punk or a bitch if you had to fight. You had to keep your area clean. You had to keep your hygiene clean. You had to talk to people with respect. There's all these things that you had to learn to do in this community that the longer that you're there, they became part of you. And like... Sneak thieving. Sneak thieving is one of the biggest no-nos. What is that? That's just stealing. Stealing from someone. Right. And they call it sneak thieving because back in the day, it was okay to just go take it from them as long as you stood up to them and took it from them. But the ones that would, while you're out getting your job, basically burglars, that was like the biggest no-no. And often thought, well, that's about stupid. So these people are brainwashing everyone to say this stuff is wrong when everyone's in here for this stuff.

SPEAKER_02 41:34

Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 41:36

exactly. I was like, why is it wrong in here and not wrong for Joe Blow that's out there sweating his butt and grinding every day to feed his family and you're out there stealing it? It's okay for that? And I was like, well, it's just not okay at all. It's not okay for us. It's okay for them. And I was like, we're just brainwashing each other. But it actually helps.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

At least build that habit, right? Understanding that in here, if you do this, you're going to get beat up. If I do it outside, I'm probably not going to get beat up. I might just get away with it. And even if I do get caught, I'm just going to get put into prison hard.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

They call it beating them off the yard. If you get caught sneak-thieving, there's no rules. That's one of those ones. But it created more of an honor in myself, too. The way I carried myself. So I'm walking with my head up, my shoulders back. And that's one of the things that prison taught me that instilled in me was the honor and belief in myself and the strength in myself to give the confidence to walk

SPEAKER_00 42:36

tall and

SPEAKER_01 42:36

proud

SPEAKER_00 42:37

right

SPEAKER_01 42:39

that's really great it's a subliminal change but it's through those actions in that environment that took me from the small and weak meek person because I never knew how tall I was even though people told me that I'm tall I never realized I'm tall I'm 6'4 and so I never really realized until I see pictures later like man I'm way bigger than everybody but in school I walked through my head stoops and no one would see me no one knows me I didn't realize all that until years later. In prison, people are like, walk your head up. They tell you. They kind of train you in there. Usually, if you're lucky, people will look out for you. It's not as rough and tumble as you think. There's actually a lot of people who root for you. They want you to be better.

SPEAKER_02 43:25

That's

SPEAKER_00 43:28

amazing. Would you say that that was the case all across the board in all of the prisons that you went to or

SPEAKER_01 43:35

Generally all over is about that way. It depends on where you are because like Oklahoma, they're more likely to rob you than they are to help you. Right. Because I did a time in Oklahoma and I did a time in Arizona. In Arizona, so everything in prison is super racially segregated. Everyone has to take care of their own race. So when you get there, when you first get there, the whites are going to bring a food box, come tell you the rules, tell you what's expected of you. And it's going to be every race is going to do that for their, and each one has their own rules. And each one looks out for each other. Well, in Oklahoma, it's a little bit different. They're a little more predatory because they don't have the older gangs. Like out here, we had the Arian Brotherhood and they kept everything in line. Or they had the Sotanos or Mexican Mafia. The older established gangs. Oklahoma didn't. So it was a little more free-for-all and they didn't look out for each other as much. Sometimes it depends on you were. So like I said, I've seen the whole gamut of Awesome to hell. Oklahomans, like I said, they're their own thing. It's like every yard's different there, whereas here they're more uniform. But they've always subsisted off of inmate labor since day one. The inmates basically provided their own food. They provided their own clothing. They transitioned away from it a little bit, but a lot of places still do it. Colorado still has prison farms. California still has prison farms. But now they're turning into big business. Whereas they used to supplement the kitchen's food, now most places that have prison farms send that food off and we buy lower quality food for us. And both places actually, but especially here, they have correctional industries where they'll send the inmates out to work and they get paid minimum wage. One place takes a cut of it, another place takes a cut of it, and then you get a little bit of it. So I worked for one place, Swift Trucking, where I rebuilt big semi trucks. I then also worked for a place that produced food for supermarkets. We made the deli foods. This last time, I actually was released with five grand because I was making$3 an hour, which is pretty good when you don't have bills.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

What kind of support are these prisons providing you in terms of finding home, finding job, just reintegrating back into the world?

SPEAKER_01 46:02

It used to be not a whole lot. It used to be nothing. At the most, they might find you a halfway house. Now, they're getting a lot better at it. Now, they're making a bit of an effort, especially if you get to another yard where they have a second chance program where they're starting to provide resume help. There's one yard here called the Second Chance Program, which I think they still have it. I know they're doing an art program there, but it's really heavy on having everything ready for you. Your social security card, your driver's license, food stamps, living conditions. But it's really small, this one yard, for this whole population. So probably, you know, 20% of the population that's getting out gets those services. And not everybody wants them because there's a stigma behind going to those type of yards because you have to sign, what do they call it? I forget what it is, but it's integration. You have to sign that you'll house another race. And that's a big no-no in Arizona. So not everyone will go to those yards because of that. Of course, that's why I went straight up there's I don't care I'm trying to get out

SPEAKER_00 47:12

I wonder why they sort of do it in that way where it's like they try to make it they're giving an offering but in a way where you know there's so much stigma around it that people don't want to even do it but why would they do that

SPEAKER_01 47:22

well part of it's self-induced you know this whole segregation which initially it was done for protection of everybody you know is it was necessary so there's a control you have to have a government and it's basically a bunch of little tiny nations and you control your people we'll control our people and we'll all get a Great. But it's all racism. It's all backfiring. Part of the reason is funding. They don't have the money to do it for everyone, so they make it hard for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 47:53

What do you think are some of the biggest issues that you can see with the prison system in the States, and what do you think can be done to fix that?

SPEAKER_01 48:01

The biggest problem is... not addressing the mental health issue. They address the drug issue. They don't address the mental health issue. The drug issue is the result. It's not the cause. Or generally, it could be the cause to begin with, of course. But generally, it's the, it's an effect. It's not the cause. But they just, but what they need to do is focus on mental health, education, and vocation. And I've got a way that they could do that, at least on one complex. We'll take Buckeye Yard here. Buckeye has... at least six yards on that compound, you know, from minimums to maximum. Each yard could be developing a part of HUD housing. I'm not sure if you're familiar with HUD housing. It's like a low-income housing or a habitat for humanity. They'll go build houses in disaster areas. So these yards could be building those and constructing those. One yard could be the heavy machinery yard. One yard could be the trade yard. One yard the blue-collar planting yard, and they all have to work together to get these jobs done, but then throw in food privileges. One of the things that's clear across the board is you can't use food as a punishment, generally. Okay, don't. Use it as a reward. If you're on a mess-up yard, give them Nutri-Loaf. Nutri-Loaf is everything on your tray, thrown into a blender and then put back on your tray. That's Nutri-Loaf. Terrible. Start out with that. Yeah. And then the more privileges you had, the little bit better. You're not going to stay sirloins or anything, but you're giving them good, healthy choices that they can get enough of. And then you're giving them the art privileges. You have to have privilege. You have to give them stuff that they're going to feel good about and reward them. And you have to rewrite their very being. Because most people aren't like me that are in there. Most people that are in there grew up with Way worse values. I grew up still with values. I went through my issues. I had a traumatic childhood, but for the most part, it was a normal childhood, loving childhood. But you have to think about the people whose mothers were crack horse or their fathers were drug dealers or child molesters, whatever it may be. What kind of values did this child grow up with in their entire life? And now they're an adult committing crimes and doing drugs. You have to rewrite all of that. You have to get rid of all that old person. So you have to build new systems in their mind.

SPEAKER_02 50:50

You

SPEAKER_01 50:51

have to create honors and values and purpose. And one of the ways of doing that is giving them something to create. Another of the triggers for me or another of the realizations was I'm a phenomenal artist now. When I went into prison, my stick figures looked like they were having seizures. That's The only thing I could draw was flies. It was terrible. And I used to get mad. I literally, I would get mad that I could not draw anything. And I had a buddy of mine, we called him John Wayne, who was an awesome artist. He could draw anything. He would take pictures, like the one I remember the most was he took three, four different pictures and some pictures out of a magazine and put this guy playing poker with all these World Series Pokers guys and had the ball and the bottles and the chips, and it looked like it was a picture. And this guy just sat there and did it. Well, he told me how to draw portraits, and I never paid attention. It went in one ear and out the other. About seven years later, when I was in segregation for fighting, I tried to draw a portrait, and it came out half-assed all right. So I got a book, and I just kept on practicing and practicing, and pretty soon, I'm making a living in prison off of my art. And I got to where I was taking my stuff around, and I'd put two, three hours into it, and I'd start walking around because it's badass. And I know it is. And people are telling me, oh man, I love that. And one day I realized, man, why do I keep doing this? Why am I intentionally out here seeking approval and attention? Oh wait, because it feels good. I didn't get that before because I didn't do nothing good. I didn't do anything to receive attention and praise. So man, that's what everybody needs. They need that feeling. So I think that's one of the things that would really help a person is to help them Help them find a way to create something that they can be proud of. Make them feel good. Make them feel like something that's worthwhile.

SPEAKER_00 52:55

I kind of like validate and appreciate them for the way that they are. This reminds me of an episode that I did with an individual who talked about they reached a breaking point in their own lives and they were sitting there in their apartment with a gun in their mouth, ready to just end it. And in that very moment, got a call from someone. It was an old lover, an old flame. And that person called him and was just like, hey, let's talk. I miss you. And he was like, that changed my life. Like this person had no idea I was literally on the verge of killing myself. And it was the one thing that I needed in that very moment was someone outside of me to have hope and faith and belief in me. I just found reason to live again. When you don't have that and you can't find that voice inside of you, it really makes such a huge difference to have that from someone outside.

SPEAKER_01 53:43

Yeah, I was listening. One of the podcasts I listened to is Buja Andres Kulian, I don't know if you've heard of him. He does a lot of the really strong masculine stuff. But he was talking about a show that he did where he called a guy out. He's like, man, you're jacked. You know, he's doing an inspirational speech. I mean, you're jacked. You're looking good, man. Good work. And that guy came up to him. You know, he's a big buff guy. And him and his wife came up to him. And his wife's like, man, you don't know how much that meant to him. Because, you know, you don't know where a person's at. You don't know where they're at in their mental health or in their struggles. And just a little compliment, just the smallest compliment can change a person's day, their entire outlook. And it's something I try and do, you know, something intentional. You know, be... It's like when someone says, good morning. Morning. Good morning. How are you doing? Be a little more intentional about your kindness and about your words because that person may need it.

SPEAKER_00 54:43

Sean, final plug-ins. Can you tell us a little bit more about the work that you're doing right now, the project?

SPEAKER_01 54:47

There's a couple of projects. Right now, of course, the main one on my plate is support on the trails. Like I said, I'm the president of NAMI, the Philadelphia here in Payson. It's the National Alliance on Mental Illness. And we're going to take their proven support group, connection support group, and take it on the trail. And we're going to hike about it. We're going to get out there and we're going to meet at the trail. We'll have a little gathering. We'll talk about a subject. We'll do like the check-in, see where everyone's out, and then we're going to take off walking, enjoy the nature and scenery. Because, you know, naturally, the outdoors just really gets into your soul. You know, you get Get away from the worries of work and kids and bills and everything else and get out there in the nature where you can breathe and talk and really let it out. So we're going to get out there and we're going to hike about it and get the support group on the trails. Love it. Hike

SPEAKER_00 55:46

about it. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 55:47

And then, of course, there's my radio show. Yes. Stigma Shift. It's on KRM 96.3 here in Payson. And we stream it at krmfm.com every Thursday at 8. But it's really just my stories or my views on my struggles and how I'm overcoming them. Stigma Shift came to mind because I'm also a mechanic. And it's like shifting gears. So I came up with the gears of mental health. It's just another way to look at everything to another tool of understanding. So you hit first gear is your awareness that there's an issue or something going on or something that you need to change. You have to hit that first gear. You have to know. And that second gear is taking that action. You're seeking help. You're looking for help or you're reading the books. You're watching videos. You're taking action on the issue that you have. And then you're going to hit third gear. That's when you're getting that healing in your growth. That's when you're accepting everything that you've been seeking, this knowledge, the learnings. And then you go into fourth gear. Fourth gear is where most of us live. Or when we're optimal, that's where we live. That's where we get purpose and growth. This is when we're really working everything, but now we're starting to share a little bit. Now we have a reason for what we're doing. And the fifth gear is a fleeting gear. This is the gear of bliss and happiness, but like pure, pure happiness. We can't stay in that gear forever. Some people do. I mean, there are people like that. They're freaks of nature, but there are definitely people like that. But you got to shift back down. And these gears have been halted. You'll go back and forth through them, and you may be in different gears in different aspects of your life. I'm working on it. This is an idea that I'm working on putting in a book. I was

SPEAKER_00 57:54

just about to ask you, like, you should put this in a book. This is like book-worthy. So, Sean, thank you so much for being on Multispective and sharing your story and your perspective on air with us. Yeah, super, super powerful.

SPEAKER_01 58:07

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 58:12

If you enjoyed the episode and would like to help support the show, please follow us I'd like to recognize our guests who are vulnerable and open to share their life experiences with us. Thank you for showing us we're human. Also, a thank you to our team who worked so hard behind the scenes to make it happen.

SPEAKER_02 58:33

The

SPEAKER_00 58:36

show would be nothing without you. I'm Jenica, host and writer of the show, and you're listening to Multispective.

UNKNOWN 58:45

Multispective Bye.