Imagine stepping back into a world that's spun forward without you for nearly two decades. Tyler Corcoran's journey is a testament to human resilience, and in our latest episode, he opens his heart about the road from confinement to the wide-open possibilities of life post-release. His candid reflections on embracing the simple joys and tackling the complexities of today's society offer an inspiring look into the courage required for such profound change.
Tyler's tale not only highlights the personal victories and setbacks that shape us but also reminds us of the importance of community and connection as we traverse our own life's journey.
Be sure to check out Tyler and Steph's new podcast Mom and Dad's House at https://substack.com/stephaniesambari
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
Imagine stepping back into a world that's spun forward without you for nearly two decades. Tyler Corcoran's journey is a testament to human resilience, and in our latest episode, he opens his heart about the road from confinement to the wide-open possibilities of life post-release. His candid reflections on embracing the simple joys and tackling the complexities of today's society offer an inspiring look into the courage required for such profound change.
Tyler's tale not only highlights the personal victories and setbacks that shape us but also reminds us of the importance of community and connection as we traverse our own life's journey.
Be sure to check out Tyler and Steph's new podcast Mom and Dad's House at https://substack.com/stephaniesambari
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
I'm Susie Landolfi and welcome to be crazy well so there's hi, hey everybody. There's mama, what's up Coming out? Step one's coming out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's coming out in a month and a month to go one month in county, yeah.
Speaker 1:Get it out of me.
Speaker 2:I can remember that last month I mean you can get this out of here. Yeah, oh, my God, that's how I feel. I'm just like how is it going to be in here for another month? I can't even conceive of it.
Speaker 1:I feel like it. You did conceive it. That's the problem. He did this to me. Yeah, I love when we say that right, you did this to me, like we had no part in this. Well, what I was even there. I was making the shopping list.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:You can't have fun. All right Bye. Oh man, how wonderful. So I just want to point out to everybody so we're all so lucky because we have Tyler Cochran with us again to get part two of his amazing story and we were just joined by his partner, steph, who they're attracting their first child. You know, I said first love of my life. Yeah, love of your life, first child, and so you now have a baby coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Let it go from the day you got out and your family was there, out of prison after 20 years, 19.
Speaker 2:19 years, yeah, teen years 19 years. Yeah, yeah, out of prison. November 24th of this year made it two years since I've been home.
Speaker 1:Now, okay, so only in only two years. So now we're going to let everybody know what happened to you. You know, man, I love this. What happened to us in the two years from the day you got out. Yeah, so we'll do a half hour of one year and a half hour of the second year, because a lot happened to you in the last year Like a lot happened, yeah, but a lot happened to you in this year, right yeah?
Speaker 2:So, um. So I was re sentenced by the judge to remove the life sentence removed. The uh, the uh uh, since me to time serve is what it was called. And uh. And then I was released 10 days later in um. In November I was released 1124 of 2001. I believe it was.
Speaker 1:That's going to be just before Thanksgiving or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the day before Thanksgiving, and so what happened was was that there was this whole time period. Are you still there, cause I think you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you froze, I froze. Somebody's frozen. I'm still here. You're frozen.
Speaker 2:They will come back. Uh, you froze on there, we go there we go yeah.
Speaker 2:You froze for a second. So so I get released. Uh, I mean, I get re sentenced about 10 days after that, almost two weeks, uh, I actually get released. They had to expedite the process, uh, because of the nature of the resentencing, where the judge uh removed this life sentence and like all of these different things.
Speaker 2:And, and so, uh, the day before uh, thanksgiving, I come home and, uh, I had always envisioned that I wanted this like quiet home, company, right, that it was going to be just me and, like you know, maybe some you know a few members of the, my immediate family, my brothers, my sister, my dad, my uh, my mom, nora, my stepmom and um, and with me, getting released the day before meant that everybody was at the house on Thanksgiving uncles and aunts and cousins and all this different type of stuff People hadn't seen since I was a little kid and uh. But to backtrack a little bit, the day that I get released, um, the way that you go, the way that you get released from prison, is called R and R is called receiving or release. And uh, you go into this building where, um, they process you out, right, take your fingerprints.
Speaker 1:Hang on, I got to close my window. My dog's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, go for it.
Speaker 1:Stop, stop, stop. Oh my God, it's probably something right. It's always yeah, this house Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, and zoom I'm getting used to still, because you know a lot of these things right when it comes to tablets and iPhones and social media and podcasts and all of these different things are so new to me because, you know, the technology wasn't even out when I, uh, was incarcerated.
Speaker 2:So so anyways, I'm just getting used to it, right, and how to be relaxed? Um, so, anyways, uh, I go to R and R the morning of my release. I go into this building they're processing me out and I get put into this van and this time I'm not handcuffed. Every time you went somewhere in a vehicle while you're incarcerated your handcuffed, shackled around the way, shackled around the feet, and, um, and this was the first time that I was going to be in a moving vehicle where that wasn't taking place. So they put me into this van and, uh, they drive me out to the outside of the institution and they pull off to the side of the road and basically let me out. And my family was there with these big signs that said welcome home, tyler, and all of these great things, and it was such an amazing time.
Speaker 2:And, uh, I get into this uh van that they had rented and it's it's my two brothers, my sister, my stepmom and my dad, and then my two brothers partners, my sister in law, j, and my sister in law, jess, and uh, and then, uh, some nephews now we're in there. There was a couple of kids, now you know, that had been born since I was away, and all of these amazing things, and, uh, and they drive me, um, uh, I was released into Coachella Valley and then we're going all the way out to 1000 Oaks where my parents had now, uh, been living, um, and so I'm heading out to this new place that I've never been before and, um, so we drive on the way home and I roll down the window and I do all of these things that I was never able to feel. And you know what was really weird about that was that, um, how familiar it all felt. I thought that it was gonna be this big impact like, oh my God, I rolled down this window and I put my arm or my head out of it and it's gonna hit me so hard.
Speaker 2:But what was crazy was how familiar and how comfortable everything was that I had fallen back into, even though it had been so many years since I had been able to do that, and I was just kind of like reflecting on that as I was experiencing it and thinking about the surrealness of it all and, intermingled with this, like deep level of familiarity and comfort also.
Speaker 2:So we get home and I walk into my parents' place and I've never been here and they had moved there early on, probably about six months to a year after I had been incarcerated. They had moved out there. So my little brother went to West Lake High and like all these different things, and we pull into this community. That was so nice, you know, like these houses were beautiful and everything was green and the streets were clean and paved and in a really way that I could tell, and I had never lived in a place like that before. You know, even when my father was doing better, before I had run away from home and all of these different things, lancaster was still such a hard place to grow up that it never looked like how 1000 Oaks in West Lake looked.
Speaker 1:I know I live a couple of miles from 1000 Oaks, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a beautiful place. I love it. That was where my first place was at. I had, I mean, probably six months after I had come home, I was already working to a place that I could afford my own two bedroom apartment, 1000 Oaks and I quickly made that jump and started to go into those next levels of adulthood on the outside.
Speaker 2:And I think that was one of the biggest things for me was, you know, I had gotten to a place on the inside where I was extremely comfortable with understanding the environment and I knew how to socially navigate it. There was a certain level of confidence that I had and I was also very independent. You know, art and boxing and all of these different things, barbering and all of these different things that I had learned along the way was helping to provide me a life of stability and prosperity on the inside. And now I come home and I felt, like all of these new experiences with technology and adulthood, I had never had a driver's license, I had never had a credit card, I had never had a car, any of the never had an apartment job, so any of these things that had to do with adulthood. I come home and now I feel extremely insecure right and all of these ways that I hadn't felt for many, many years.
Speaker 1:And are you living with your mom and dad at this point? This was the point.
Speaker 2:I know. So when I first come home I go to my mom and dads because of the holiday week, and then after that I report to a transition house in Wilmington, down by the San Pedro in the harbor area of Los Angeles, and I was only there for a couple of days. I didn't have to go and I didn't, and my parents wanted me to stay home. But I was also like wanting to see if I needed that type of support and understanding from people that had also been through the system or staff that had worked with people to the system in these transitional homes, and so I wanted to go and see if that's kind of like what I needed when I was transitioning into society now and come to find out. I stayed two days and then I went back home to my parents place. I was like I don't need the transitional house, not in the sense of what they provide they're great, people do great work but just in a sense of that.
Speaker 2:My family was far away, the transitional home was out in San Pedro, my family's, without folks, and so all of these different things. I talked to my parole agent, which I discharged my parole. After a year I'm no longer on parole or anything. But I talked to him and he agreed to let me go home to my parents and that type of thing. So I go home to my parents and first thing I do is is I go to get a driver's license and a bank account and I begin to kind of like enter into this world of adulthood and society that I had never been in before.
Speaker 2:And I started quickly running into a lot of roadblocks, right Like I didn't realize the importance of credit in the free world and that you may even have the money for a car. But if you don't have credit, then not gonna, unless you're just buying that thing's outright or to get a place with no type of financial history. I had to have people in my life cosigned for me to get a place, even though I could afford it So-.
Speaker 1:The landlord was the prison system, so it's not like-.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, exactly, I was right right right, and so I didn't have any type of.
Speaker 2:I was essentially a ghost when it came to finances and things like that, and but after about three weeks to four weeks of me being home, I walk into a gym, a boxing gym in Woodland Hills, and I was looking for a place to train just for myself. Boxing has been a passion of mine my whole life, and so I wanted to keep it up, even though I was home now, and start off with these healthy habits that I actually continue, these healthy habits right that I had already kind of developed, and so I walk into this gym.
Speaker 1:Where's the gym?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's in Woodland Hills. It's off of a Venturbo.
Speaker 1:So it's south of where your mom and dad live.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't too far away. I typed in boxing gyms and then I started to look through all the different stuff that had to ring and things like that. I wanted to have a ring in it and have a very you know, very authentic boxing feel to it. I wasn't really looking for just like a regular gym with a heavy bag. And so I find this place, I walk into it and I started training there. I quickly I started I talk about my story a little bit. I was telling them that I can't afford a membership right away, that I was just getting on my feet and things like that. And the owner and there's two owners at the time and they just wanted me to be there they said, man, we think it's amazing, right, that everything we've done, we're proud of you. We just want you to be here and train here and feel free, and then we'll catch up on everything later on. You know, type of grace period.
Speaker 2:After about two weeks of me being there, I noticed that they were like they needed a lot of help. You know there wasn't anybody there that was really training on a regular basis, there wasn't anybody that were really running classes, and the owner just seemed overwhelmed and he didn't know that I had been training guys on the inside. I didn't bring any of that up, but I told him that if he needed any help I could hold the mitts. And so he asked me if that you know, do I know what I'm doing? And things like that. And so I said yeah, and I could tell that he was going to call me on it, right, like I could see it in his eyes that he was going to, that he was thinking about it, and then he was going to see he was going to make me put my money where my mouth was Exactly right, yeah, say in his bowl with him.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, about five minutes later, sure enough, he says Tyler, ready, I just tell you accent. He says, tyler, come on over here. So I go walking over. And he says, hey, go go into the ring and work with so, and so let me see how you do in the pads. So I start running a guy on the pads and I could. This was so comfortable to me, you know, and in fact it was actually a very comforting feeling because I had just been doing this weeks prior and now there had been this period of where I was in this constant state of feeling uncomfortable and now something from my life before this monumental shift was back in, and so I was in a place of familiarity. And so then he's like can you handle two people? And I said, sure, more. You know, however, many more than Mary? I said, put some in the ring and I start running a class, right then.
Speaker 2:And then I go home and I tell my dad and I said, dad, you know, I think I'm going to get a job at this gym. I think this guy's like he asked me to get in there and work the mitts and stuff, and I could tell that he liked what he was seeing. He said I think he might offer me a job. And so about a week later, sure enough, he offers me a job there. He says shadow me for about two weeks, let me see what you do and at the end of it, if I like it, then I'll hire you on. Now, hiring on, you know, meant you know, no payroll, no pay stuff. It's like cash or Venmo or Zell or something like that. And that was good at that time. But later on I quickly noticed that I needed to get those things to apply, my financial history and all of that.
Speaker 2:So, anyways, I'm at this gym and one day one of this member there says, hey, he'd been working with me for a while. And he says would you be willing to do house calls? And so I said, yeah, I've never done him before, but of course I would for you. I would, you know, train with somebody that you want me to train with. And he goes good, I want you to work with my brother. I think he would really love you and your style of training. But he's never going to come to the gym. And so I said, yeah, no problem, send me his address and that type of thing. So he sends me this address, I put it in my maps and next thing you know, like you know, whatever, the following week or whatever it was, I'm driving to this location and I start noticing that Thousand Oaks was nice, but this place is really nice, right?
Speaker 2:And come to find out, it's Bel Air. And so I pull up to this huge place in Bel Air and I'm like, wow, this is really amazing. And I mean a few weeks prior to this I came home from being in prison. So the guy says, hey, my name's Jay and this and that, and ends up being Jay Z's circle of very close circle of friends. This guy named Jay Brown shout out to Jay Brown. Emory Jones shout out to Emory. Emory lived right down the street man, and these two guys are brothers, they're close circle and they're a quiet of people, and so for them to let me into their circle was amazing.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I think you cut off again.
Speaker 1:I'm still good. No, I can still hear you. Can you hear me?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I can still hear you. Okay, great. So, even more, so Just keep going whether I know there's the reception out here is terrible, but so anyways.
Speaker 2:so it ends up being Jay and Emory and all of them Next thing, you know, they're just kind of like hey, I think that there's.
Speaker 2:You know, I have some friends of mine that would really like to work with you and they're sitting me up into Hidden Hills in Calabasas and I'm working with all of these different people and I won't name everybody because you know, I know I want to respect people's privacy and stuff like that but I was working with a lot of celebrities. And now, after only being home out of you know the joint, after 19 years, I'm like in Bel Air, hidden Hills, you know Palisades and Malibu, and I'm just traveling around and I ended up leaving that small gym that I was at and I'm just doing like house calls with clientele and stuff like that. And one day I walk in to a gym in Calabasas called Craft Boxing and it was newly opened and I was looking for a place to bring my clients in the area. And when I walked in I met these two women at the front desk and I said Hi, my name's Tyler. I'm a boxing trainer in the area. I have clients throughout this location and I'm looking for a place to bring them.
Speaker 2:And I had a short conversation with them and they said man, we really want you to meet George. And I went George, yeah, george, former in the third. And I was like, oh man, I was super excited, you know, because, yeah, you know, the form in family and boxing is, you know, such a powerhouse. And so George comes. Later on that day I shoot off work with some clients and I get a call and they said, hey, george has agreed to meet you and me and the you know and have this meeting, and so I go back to the gym that same day I meet George, and George was amazing, right, he had this quality of like just dropping in with me and being very present, and he was so supportive of my story, you know, and at the same time, though, too, he wanted to make sure that you know I was who I said.
Speaker 2:I was, and like all of those different things.
Speaker 2:And so he was like he was reading up on the case and like all of that.
Speaker 2:And then he had, like I think, three different interviews with me and and I really appreciated that because of up to that point I really hadn't had an employer or anything really try to drop in with me in a real way. You know, the majority of them just saw maybe the value of my work ethic or the value in, you know, maybe what I can bring to them. But George had a different approach with me and it was more about this collaboration and this collaborative field. And so so George, after meeting with me about three, four times maybe, asked me if I would be willing to be hired on the craft boxing. And that really changed my life yet again, because craft boxing is where I was able to meet you. It was where I was able to meet Steph right, which is the next chapter of what I'll be going into after crafts and all of that and also, too, it was a place that really allowed me to continue to move forward and legitimize, you know, in the workforce and and as an adult and all of those different things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I want to ask you a couple of questions, because you make it sound very easy and I know there are just changed a job, and it wasn't that easy. Yeah, people that have gone through a divorce, and it was really horrific. Yeah, something about you and about how you approached it. Was there ever a time, though, that you felt I don't deserve this, or is this real, or will I fuck it up? Or like? Was there ever this time of ever feeling overwhelmed or unworthy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, all that. I mean throughout the entire time, and still continuously. I feel like those things, those types of emotions, are inevitable. Right that I'm going to continue to fear.
Speaker 2:I'm going to continue to feel fear, doubt, insecurities, I'm going to feel anger and hurt and all of the tougher emotions in life that, like you know, is really important to learn how to navigate a process right and process those emotions in a healthy way. So when I came home, one of the things that was the biggest surprise for me is that I grieved my life and I missed it and the pressure of everything out here you know of like it was really hard. A lot of people didn't understand it.
Speaker 2:My family didn't understand why it was that I was out there trying to work, getting out driving every day, going around like it's just really exercising my freedoms, and for people on the outside of the people looking at it from the bird's eye view would understand it. Of course he needs these things, you know, but my family did it. They wanted me close and to hold on to me, and I was resistant to that, and so all of that was a challenge. You know, of me being able to search for some of the security and the stability of that which I was just talking about before my release.
Speaker 1:And your child. You didn't have it either. Bless your mom and dad. Yeah, the best they could and they didn't do it perfectly. Yeah, you ran away. Yeah, home, that was difficult, yeah.
Speaker 2:And that was the part about. So you know, when I first came home, I went into a really difficult relationship, right, and I looked up this person that was a part of my life when I was a kid and I had went away, you know, this teenage girl that I was with at the time and this and that, and I think, come to you know, later on in life I started to realize I mean later on, when I ended that relationship and stuff is that I realized I was looking for something more of a comfort to me and that was familiar and that I didn't have anything that was very familiar out here. And so the stability I was like always trying to grasp for, that stability that I never had, that I had created on the inside, but I was looking for that same emotional feeling out here and had never had it. I lived in like I feel like a state of panic and anxiety from the moment that they told me that I was going to be released, you know, and she removed the life sentence.
Speaker 2:It was hard to really also understand what it feels like to have financial pressure and the way that everybody out here just becomes at some point numb to the financial pressure right, otherwise you'll always think about, like what happens if it all goes away? What happened if it all crumbles? What if I'm not good enough? What if I'm not smart enough? What if I'm not who I think I am? What if I? And all of these different fears for me anyways came into the picture, and that was my own self-conversation, the challenge of being out here, of relationships, of finances, of family dynamics, of individuality, of my own understanding, too, that I don't have limitations on me in the same way and that the fear of reaching for something that feels limitless can also hold me back. And what am I going to do with that? Do I face the fear and reach anyways and take chances and things like that? Because so much of how I felt when I came home also re-triggered a lot of how I was when I was 16 years old, and 17 years old and out of control.
Speaker 1:Yes. And so, when I was feeling like I was, yeah, get those years of development that developed in prison. There's great things you developed, yeah, and it was a very contained system, not what your friends and family and everybody else was doing in terms of navigating their development in this world, so you had some superpowers and huge deficits.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, huge deficits. And this is where this is how I looked at it. I looked at it like this. I looked at it like this is the conversation I started to have with myself when I was feeling these things and I was feeling really like where I feel like the majority of my time was spent in this space of doubt and fear and insecurities and questioning and triggers and all of these different things. And then I started to have this self-conversation where I realized that, no matter what is triggering the fear, no matter what is triggering the self-doubt or the insecurity or the inadequacy, that, before I get to the place of being able to identify what's triggering it, I have a decision to make of whether or not I'm going to face the trigger and cope with the trigger, and the way that I'm going to do that is through the healthy habits that I had initially implemented in place and had learned along the way in order to be able to handle those very same things.
Speaker 2:So I started to go oh you know what, even though financial pressure is making me feel very afraid of whether or not I'm behind in this, or am I going to be able to keep my house, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do all of these different things, or whether or not it was the fear of some form of violence against me in prison, of like, oh I'm young, I'm going on to the yard, I don't know if I'm going to be able to protect myself, am I going to be targeted? Who are all of these different things? No matter what, one thing that I was familiar with was the fear, and I was also familiar with how to cope with the fear and to use things like exercise and my support network and communication, and to use things like reading and writing and meditation and solitude, going and thinking, where I can be alone and think and not have this bombardment of agendas and expectations brought into my decision making that are beyond my own.
Speaker 2:So that's the way I started to approach it and when I started to approach it from the same way that I dealt with things in there and I used a lot of those same coping skills, they relieved the stress and the pressure out here and they made me feel more familiar and comfortable back in myself. Go ahead.
Speaker 1:But you're telling me that those wellness practices and that's what I like to talk about you were practicing things that helped you deal. Right, You're telling me that wellness practices supersedes the situation. Here's the funny part Wellness practice in prison work out here. Is that what you're telling?
Speaker 2:me. That's exactly what I'm telling, and this is the funny thing about it. We're actually doing a bit on this stuff and I right now, right, so we have our own podcast, right, it's called Mom and Dad's House and you can subscribe to it on the sub stack and I'll put all that out there. But my point is is that, out of that thing right there, right, is that I'm literally writing, this Thursday, 10 tips for wellness in prison, and what's going to be funny, right? Yeah, this is the funny thing is that they're the same tips. They're transferred, that's it.
Speaker 1:I have a friend who's a dear POW from the Hanoi Hilton. Yeah, charlie Plum. Eight and an eight foot cell, tortured the whole thing. No communication. They did this little scratching thing.
Speaker 2:I can't. Imagine.
Speaker 1:Like you got to meet them and so, and then he got out, by the way, his wife thought he was dead, so she remarried, she married somebody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so then there's that now. Now he's coming home to a world that's blown apart, yeah.
Speaker 1:So this idea that a way of being, yeah, those principles and practices I like to call them principles Like, even though you fear and sadness, you don't give away to it, you go and do the principles, which is being honest. You know when you have it. So, principles and practices, wellness practices, they fit in any situation. We are situational. We think that the situation changes us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:We allow it.
Speaker 2:That's right yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah.
Speaker 2:And so it's funny you say a way of being, because one of the first books that I read where I was like starting to embark on this wellness journey and this, this like commitment to therapy and maturation in my life, right, and where I knew that I was having to take the chance to take it in my own hands. And one thing, before I forget and I go into that line of thought with the way of being is is I forgot to mention on last segment. I talked a lot about me and how this resonated in this and I was doing this and I was doing all these different things and me, me, me, me, me and I was listening back to it and I wanted to make sure to give a solid recognition to the fact that I also had so much help from so many people that loved me. My dad never gave up on my brothers.
Speaker 2:I'm there's so many different people my mom, nora, right, who filled that role right where my biological mother couldn't, and so many different people along the way even use it right, even to this day. You know, you like, the support and the love and the kindness that you show to me means a lot and I didn't get to mention that really in the last time, and it feels weird for me to talk about an hour or just me and go. All these things I did, you know, so I wanted to put that out there. But a way of being was one of the first books that I read, where I was like, wow, I'm trying to dive into therapy, and it was written by this guy named Carl Rogers, which I know you know, right they call me the grandfather of humanistic psychology and a way of being in there.
Speaker 2:One of the things that he really talked about is that is that really, the majority of people want to be balanced and to and to feel this level of healthiness and balance in their life, and that we all have the tools inside of us in order to be able to get to it. And then we have to create an environment of where those tools can really flourish. This is the way that I interpreted the book right, and one of them was creating this space where you feel safe and you feel comforted and you feel valuable and you feel like all these, and only in that space, right, there is where you don't have this survival mode, this instinctual mode, and you you relax enough to then be honest and to be honest with yourself and to be honest with, maybe, your therapist or to be whatever that looks like in your life. And so when you were talking about it's a way of being, is that that's what Carl Rogers was really actually talking about? He was talking about how the act of therapy becomes a lifestyle, beyond whether or not you have a therapist, you know, and that every therapist yeah, every therapist's goal is to is so that way you're the person that is coming to you for some type of guidance eventually finds it within themself and becomes autonomous and they're in a healthy lifestyle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so so what I was looking for when I came home from in there was I was I was telling myself, everything changed. Now I'm home. And so I was telling myself the very thing that I told myself when I first went into prison, which is the rules don't matter now. Now I'm in a new space and there's a whole new work. You know a set of rules that I have to, and then I realized that it's not fucking true. Right, I'm home, but the rules haven't changed the way that I live my life and the lens that I filter it through. I take it with me everywhere because it's who I am as a person, to my core right, and I really believe that's where a lot of my success came from is. That is, that people that gravitate to me and who I gravitate to is because we really feel the sincerity in one another, and nobody's perfect, but we're trying to be better and we're trying to improve, and we're always trying to help and never trying to hurt.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that's it, you know, it's so funny. So when I was an Antioch studying to be a therapist, we started this wonderful woman and an eye she was an alumni actually and we started a counseling center called is of being for the LGBTQ community.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, I love it, I was not, and so, like we were so clear that that way of being in the world gets to be your core, so in boxing we talk about core, punches, core. Everything comes in your core. This has to be strong in order for everything to work together. So it's close of where you are, and Paul Rogers actually was really a threat to so many therapists who wanted to lose a model and not just be with oh, you just have to appreciate everybody, be with and be authentic, and they're like you're ruining the whole thing.
Speaker 1:You're telling them that we're not that specialist therapist.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Exactly what I'm telling them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and the other thing, too, is that I also read this guy, victor Frankel, right and First meaning hang on, let me get the book.
Speaker 1:It's right here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, man search for meaning.
Speaker 2:That's right. And I got to learn about like existentialism and things like that, and for me, that was one of the ones that I connected with the most, because I remember when I was finally hitting with the gravity of my choices and the consequences, internalizing the consequences of them, and it was felt, it felt so unbearable that I remember I talked to my dad and I told him I said I don't know what to do, like I don't know where to go from here. I don't know how I got so far out of control. You know, when I ran away at 15, I was just looking to just like I was looking for wellness, I was looking for health, I was looking to be happy and content and find stability and like all of these different things, and instead all I did was make it even worse. Yeah, that's how I felt and I was like I don't know what to do.
Speaker 2:And my dad told me you have to find a life of purpose and of meaning. And so he said wherever you go, no matter where it is, that's where you are and you take you with you and you can choose what kind of life you want to have. It may not be the life you would choose for yourself. It may not be the life that you would have wanted, but it is the life that you have and you have to do the best with that, and the only way is through finding a sense of purpose and meaning. And it really rang true with me, based off of like the books that I had been reading, and then that's what I connected to existentialism was finding this purpose, and if you have a purpose, you can endure anything, was my mentality, and so I started on this quest for a purpose and it was like, oh, I'm an artist and I was learning how to draw and paint and all this and I completely committed, like my identity, to it. And then in that past, I mean, I still do it, I still paint and draw, I love it, I still consider myself to be extremely creative and I pursue those things even to this day.
Speaker 2:But my purpose felt deeper than that, because I felt like, at any time I've heard stories of people losing their sight or losing their voice or losing their ability to like a paraplegic who loses their ability, even lose their limbs, and they have to now live this life and what would be looked like extreme amount of confining, even more than incarceration in any way. And what do you draw on? And for me, what I identified after finding and searching for so many different things was I called it finding purpose through my principles, and that my purpose in life isn't a occupation and it isn't, it isn't a skill. My purpose in life is to live all of those things and, to the best of my ability, is to live my, my experiences, through the lens of my purpose and my principle. I mean through my principles.
Speaker 1:Always, every decision, every decision.
Speaker 2:Now, I'm not perfect, right and when I feel. There's times when I feel afraid and I lie because I feel afraid.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I don't want to hurt somebody's feelings. I don't want to do that. You know we had it the other day where I couldn't meet it for the podcast and I felt so bad and everything in me wanted to like send you a text that just said like you know, come up with some excuse on why I couldn't you know, but instead I just had to call you and be honest.
Speaker 1:You had to breathe.
Speaker 2:then I was just dead after a long day and I wanted to get my You're exhausted. Yes, I didn't do it, that's right. But what I mean is is that is that it gave the space for then you to go.
Speaker 2:I understand it, I get it and all and made me feel so much more relieved and closer because of those different things. But it's my principles that allowed for that, just like it was your principles of understanding and being patient to understand that you know that's a thing, and then you extended me grace in that way. So for me.
Speaker 1:It was like yeah go for it. I was just going to say this idea of principles, so I just want you to know that a very funny actress, melanie Wilson if you're out there, melanie, I'm forever eternally grateful for your friendship and and what you said. So one day, when she had to audition yet again, after moving her value over and over and over again, she said Susie, I'm tired of this shit. I'm going to make my life my career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, and I said well that's what I'm in right now.
Speaker 1:That's right. You just said it in a different way. Your life is your career. So you paint, you box, you're going to be a dad, you're a partner, you're all of these wonderful things. Yeah, and at the core are your principles, because without them, none of those things have meaning, because you will not be a good dad, you will not be a good partner, right, you will not be a good boxing trainer without it, because you'll be dangerous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I was, and that's the and that was the hard lesson for me was that I know that if I'm not filtering my decisions and my perspective on life through the lens of the things that I believe in, that's right, because not?
Speaker 2:everybody does, but I believe in things like honesty, compassion, empathy, boundaries I mean empathy, even for myself by setting boundaries but strength and all this stuff, and then the complexities of life, allow for these things at times to clash constantly. Right, and I have to fight to keep those things in my life. But that's how much I value them is is that they're my purpose and it's the thing that makes me feel deeper about my life, because I feel like when I don't do those things, I internally feel weaker, and when I do those things, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I do those things, I feel stronger internally. And so here we are. I walked into crafts. I've been following my principles, or my purpose. That did not change when I came home. Right, it was the way I lived in there. It's the way that I live out here, and I was in this relationship that I didn't. That was not good for me, and so I got out of this relationship and now I was single and I was just like you know, this free guy and the whole world knows a single guy.
Speaker 1:I love story folks. Everybody wants to end on a love story. Here it comes.
Speaker 2:So, anyways, I was like I'm done with relationships. I don't want to even think about a relationship, right? I'm just single and I'm gonna work and I'm just gonna like, I'm gonna live my purpose right on my purpose and work right. So I'm like all of these different things and then yeah yeah, you hear me, babe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now she picks her head out. So, anyways, and then one day I come into the gym and a mutual friend of Steph and I, named India, who you know, introduced us and she said you know, Tyler has a really interesting story and Steph's podcast, and all of these different things, and so she wanted to make those connections and so Steph and I meet for the first time and I was like I'm attracted, right, but yeah, but I was like no relationship type of thing. I wasn't even thinking of a relationship with Steph at all. I was thinking more of like well, this might be a work thing or whatever. But I also wasn't necessarily traumatized by this relationship before. So that way I was willing to shut down something that I ended up feeling good about, right.
Speaker 2:And so Steph comes in. She has this like dyed purple hair and she's like edgy and all these different things, and she's like she's funny, smart, yeah, she's belly, she's smart, yeah, and she was a part of this class. She was, you know, she started part of this class that was coming into the gym and I was seeing her more and more. And so then we decided to go to a work dinner, right, when we were gonna talk about podcasting and stuff like that, and it ended up being it was a lunch.
Speaker 1:Very kind.
Speaker 2:A work lunch, right, and it ends up going another way. But the exciting part was that where before in my life I was feeling like insecure and I was feeling confused and lost, and where I was feeling really guarded in a lot of different ways, steph's personality was so liberating for me that it made me feel like, when I'm around somebody that maybe I potentially like, that I don't have to feel that way, and so I was. I just decided I'm gonna go for it, and so Steph and I. What happened?
Speaker 1:She didn't decide.
Speaker 2:you fell in love with me. I know she said we went out to this lunch date. Yeah, we went out to this lunch date. She looked at it and she goes oh my God, tyler, stop falling in love with me, all right that's one of the best lines, steph.
Speaker 1:That's one of the best lines I've ever heard. I'm stealing that, I know.
Speaker 2:I know I'm getting all shy now that I'm talking about it, but sorry, she's turning red Steph.
Speaker 1:I love it. Meanwhile, we're all talking about it, right, as you guys get closer and closer. I did about it, oh yeah there was like gossip at the gym right. Well, here's the thing is that we were feeling because I said let's go on out here play we were.
Speaker 2:I know there was gossip because about three weeks after us dating I get her pregnant. She's pregnant. Whoops. Did you know that happens from sex? I had no idea it does.
Speaker 1:You were too hot.
Speaker 2:You were too hot and you got too powerful.
Speaker 1:It happens when it's really supposed to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's. The thing is that I had never, even before. When anybody asked me about kids, I was always like I don't even can't even think about that. Right now I'm before. It was because I had life in prison. I was never gonna have kids, yeah. And then when I came home, it was I'm just out of prison. I shouldn't be thinking about having kids and their responsibility of these write all of that. I just need to just be home and acclimate.
Speaker 1:Wait a minute. You just spent 19 years taking care of some children, Some of those men and children in prison. You were a whole bunch of people in prison.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the funny part. The funny part is that when she told me she was pregnant, the first feeling that I felt was so happy. I felt a level of joy that I didn't even realize was there and that was attached to that. And then the other thing I felt was an extreme amount of gratitude that it was with Stephanie, because Stephanie's first words were after she told me was I hope you don't think I'm one of these. I need to get married now. Time of girls, right.
Speaker 2:So my point was that even inside of that, she's so independent that it helped me to also feel this level of gratitude for somebody in my life who doesn't wanna try to apply pressure to this. It just allows me to feel it. And I felt so happy about it and I felt like this is the reason why my purpose was my principles is because now I get to now funnel all of that into this little being who is now my responsibility, to love on and to direct and guide as much as possible, and it's been so fulfilling and then up to this point. So Steph and I would move into with each other and we have getting a place together and we have a beautiful home, and I look out at my view sometimes, and it's the Pacific Ocean, you know.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think to myself wow, just two years ago I was looking out from behind bars and never would have thought that this was actually possible in my life. And here I am, two years later. I step out onto my back patio and I look out at the ocean as it leaves the continent and I just get struck with this overwhelming sense of love and gratitude for the fact that life is so unpredictable in so many different ways. But the fact that I've just fully embraced the journey and the ride of it and that I just wanna do the best that I can process it in the best way, be kind, be gentle along the way, is like. I mean, it's just blessing after blessing.
Speaker 1:You know, it's that idea that we talk about all the time, about we're energetic beings, we are responsible for the energy that we have inside of us, we present outside and we are all part of the tribe. Like this thing, idea of independence no such thing. We're interdependent, and people that really honor interdependence means that they care about the tribe and they care about being a great member of the tribe, so they take care of themselves. So you were there, taking care of yourself, getting your principles in order, your purpose. Steph was doing the same thing. She came from a family. She came out here to do her purpose and her meaning and to do her life. And two people, two adults, two full individuals. I will never say, oh, how's your better half? If you're dating or being with a half a person, don't? First of all, it's getting blood and guts all over the place. So a half person?
Speaker 1:So the point being is that you've gotta be a fully formed, principled being in order to create a principled, purposeful partnership.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was the thing that I was really thankful for is I look back up to this point right now in my life and I see, even in this two years, which feels like a lifetime and in that time, right there, I think about stepping right into a relationship that was toxic, making the choice to leave that relationship, feeling secure in the fact that I know that if I get myself into something that's not healthy for me, I have the strength and the ability and the awareness to then pull myself out of it.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 2:And then what helped inside of that was to then be able to enter into a relationship that I was able to then feel the exact opposite of the one that I was in before, where at one point, it was like so just filled with frustration and my feelings being heard in a lot of ways, and then, when step is like the exact opposite of that, and so it's nice to be able to learn how to identify when somebody else's hole as well because of my own journey, and to be able to say, wow, this is the type of influence I want in my life, right, this is the type of emotional influence and the type of support, and so it's been an interesting to learn about that and to also look around at a lot of people that are stuck in terrible relationships that they're not happy about and it's so intertwined with, sometimes with finances and history and families and all of these different things.
Speaker 2:It's really hard for people to disengage themselves from it. But I've noticed that relationship is like one of the most important parts out here of exercising your principles in, because if you don't, then even if you yourself are organized and maybe you feel like you have your life together, if you allow somebody into your life that isn't that way, they will sap everything from you in that process.
Speaker 1:It's just like you end up torturing each other.
Speaker 2:You know yeah and I just was like I'm not, I worked too hard, I didn't just work through 19 years of fighting. Yeah, I felt like my whole life. I remember, when I was getting out of the thing that I told myself I said man, you know, I feel like I'm in fight in my whole life and I sure as heck did not fight up to this point to get as far as I did while I was in prison. To come home and only go backwards into a space that is unhealthy. This is not gonna happen for me, and so I decided against it.
Speaker 2:But anyways, aside from all of that is is that it just opened up continuously this like blossoming relationship. I love stuff, I love being with stuff, and it just has enriched into my life, my work, life and everything. And now I'm gonna have a son, which is mind blowing. Can't wait to have him strapped to me and I'm like envisioning it now and like before, where I couldn't even see it, and all of a sudden I just see it everywhere. You know, yeah, always, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1:Tyler and Steph. Steph, and wait a minute. What's your son's name? Have you guys picked a name?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Asher.
Speaker 1:Asher.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:H-E-R. Asher, that's right, yeah. All right, Asher, we're waiting for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're waiting on you, buddy. We can't wait to meet you.
Speaker 1:We're waiting, like we're here. We're ready for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, Tyler.
Speaker 1:I can't thank you enough. I can't even tell you the amount of comments that we got about your story and more, not just about your story, about you and your journey and who you are now. Like it was so clear to people. And that's how we help one another. We help one another by telling our stories and then we go oh, I'm gonna do some of that. I'm gonna go and talk to my partner. In a kind of way I'm gonna go and do I'm going to the gym today because I keep going off and going to have that beard and going to the gym.
Speaker 1:So we deserve to. We call it influencing. Now we deserve to inspire one another to create the person we deserve to be and the life we deserve to live.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, well said, All right, I appreciate it. Now I'm gonna drop one thing before I go, Please. So, Steph and I, mom and dad's house right For the listeners that wanna support and they wanna hear more of my story. They wanna hear more of what's going on and all of those different things. They can find out what's going on at Stephanie Simbarri's sub-staff. Yeah, you got to sell Simbarri. I don't know how to say this.
Speaker 1:I was like plug the sub-staff again. I'm in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's important. I wanna put it on there because I wanna make sure that. And we'll type it yeah, we get to continue these types of conversations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Stephanie will type it when she posts this. We'll make sure all of that is posted in the blurb.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna have you on our podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're gonna come in and I'm gonna be asking all types of questions.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I would love it.
Speaker 1:When the therapist becomes the therapist.
Speaker 2:That's right yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, it's something we're doing together. That's why I wanted you to plug it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, yeah, we're doing it together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just easier if they know where to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sub-staffcom slash Stephanie Simbarri. Okay so text that to me, Tyler.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because we've got your pictures and we've got some, and Cindy will write up the whole blurb when we post this. So she always does a teaser on Sunday and then it posts on Monday and we'll put all that in the writing so that people will be able to just know how to get to you guys and your mom and dad. And pretty soon who knows, any week now you could be mom and dad. You could be the real deal Anytime.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're about to be there. No, we have to wait till it's various season.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we gotta wait till it's. Yeah, we should. I can't have a camera going and that's just. You need an appointment. Oh my God, I'm surrounded by them.
Speaker 1:Sorry, don't be a dude, that's why I don't want one.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:I love them dearly. They should run the world.
Speaker 2:Actually, they should have their own little world to run because there's, yeah, their own little world to run their own little very meticulous, dedicated. Susie, well, I want to say though thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was all my pleasure and I will never forget the day I walked up to you once. I heard After you teaching there for a while and someone says you know he was in prison for 20 years. He just got out and I went, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I really go inside.
Speaker 1:I want to do a podcast because I'm not ready. I'm not ready, not ready.
Speaker 2:I know I'm still nervous about it. I still even like the fit, even like the zoom and the face, but it feels good and I always want to help. You know, I want to be a part of the solution. Oh we helped Tell our story. Yeah, yeah, absolutely All right. Thank you so much, bless you Bye, bye, bye, asher.
Speaker 1:I'm going to talk about what they do. That's probably why they hate you. Your best self, love yourself and love. I'm talking about what they do. I'm talking about what they do.