Imagine facing down your darkest struggles and emerging not only victorious but also as a beacon of hope for others. This is the story of Carter Thomas, our guest on 2Cups Cafe, whose personal battles with addiction and his transformation into a licensed counselor and founder of Good Company Christian Counseling inspire all who hear it. Together, we trace Carter's compelling journey and how his renewed faith played a pivotal role in his mission to heal others. The conversation offers a candid look at the normalization of drug use and its profound impact on the black community, shedding light on the critical need for integrated mental health and substance abuse treatment.
The path to redemption is never a straight line; it weaves through the adversities of life, as our discussion with Carter reveals. We share stories of resilience, like the single father who, against all odds, pursued higher education while raising two sons, and my own experience of turning personal hardship into a ministry dedicated to supporting single dads. Our chat traverses the deep connections between trauma and physical health, emphasizing the importance of self-advocacy and the power of personal stories in guiding others toward healing and empowerment.
Join us for a deep exploration of the evolving perspectives on substance abuse treatment, where empathy and understanding emerge as crucial elements in addressing addiction. Carter and I examine the global impact of the pandemic on counseling, the importance of building relationships across communities, and how inclusivity remains at the heart of effective support. These stories of recovery, resilience, and redemption are not just testimonials; they are invitations to find strength in vulnerability and to witness how one man's journey can illuminate the path for many.
Follow Allen C. Jackson - @2cupschronicles
Imagine facing down your darkest struggles and emerging not only victorious but also as a beacon of hope for others. This is the story of Carter Thomas, our guest on 2Cups Cafe, whose personal battles with addiction and his transformation into a licensed counselor and founder of Good Company Christian Counseling inspire all who hear it. Together, we trace Carter's compelling journey and how his renewed faith played a pivotal role in his mission to heal others. The conversation offers a candid look at the normalization of drug use and its profound impact on the black community, shedding light on the critical need for integrated mental health and substance abuse treatment.
The path to redemption is never a straight line; it weaves through the adversities of life, as our discussion with Carter reveals. We share stories of resilience, like the single father who, against all odds, pursued higher education while raising two sons, and my own experience of turning personal hardship into a ministry dedicated to supporting single dads. Our chat traverses the deep connections between trauma and physical health, emphasizing the importance of self-advocacy and the power of personal stories in guiding others toward healing and empowerment.
Join us for a deep exploration of the evolving perspectives on substance abuse treatment, where empathy and understanding emerge as crucial elements in addressing addiction. Carter and I examine the global impact of the pandemic on counseling, the importance of building relationships across communities, and how inclusivity remains at the heart of effective support. These stories of recovery, resilience, and redemption are not just testimonials; they are invitations to find strength in vulnerability and to witness how one man's journey can illuminate the path for many.
Follow Allen C. Jackson - @2cupschronicles
Give me one for the wake up. I'm so grateful for another day to help stimulate the mental Time to strategize. Huddle up, where's your sicko? I can feel the moment radiate through the convo. Talk is cheap. Turn your faith into work. I drink my second cup and put my hands in the dirt. Two cups drinking straight drip from the earth. Pappinated conversations. You heard them here first. One fuck to wake up. One fuck to wake up. Two, two fuck to work. Pappinated conversations you heard them here first. Welcome back to Two Cups Cafe, where I'm your host, Alan C Jackson, aka Two Cups, and who I have coming through for a high-quality caffeinated conversation is none other than Carter Thomas. What's up, my brother? How you doing, sir? Now I really wanted to give you a super big, big, big, you know intro, Intro, but I'm going to just walk this back. A super big, big, big, you know intro, but I'm going to just walk this back. Well, you are a licensed counselor, you have your own company, Good Counseling, Christian.
Speaker 2:Say that for me one time. Good Company, christian Counseling Good Company because we keep good company right.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's right, all right. So Good Company. Christian Counseling, how long has your business been in operation?
Speaker 2:This is the 12th year. I'm coming up on 13 years in December. All right.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful, so I want to rewind it back. Man, you have an interesting story that I think the world should hear. I know you do great work in the community. You've been an active counselor even before you started your own company. You worked in many facets and, if I believe it, we can rewind it all the way back. Man, you have a history in substance abuse counseling as well. And take me back, man. How did that start?
Speaker 2:Well, it actually started when I had to go to treatment myself. Okay Right, I was having some serious, serious issues with some substances, all right, all right, so I had to go and get some help, right. And so I started out at SASE, you know, substance Abuse Services Incorporated. Okay Right, it was on Madison and 21st at the time, if you don't mind like what's the era, Like what's the 70s, the 80s, what's this? This is the 90s. This is the 90s. Sassy started in the 70s. Okay, on Door Street under Jack Ford. Okay.
Speaker 2:The late Jack Ford, wonderful man of God. But when I was working there Jack was the CEO of the agency before he went on to be the state representative, before he was even a mayor, before he was even doing any of that work in Toledo. You know he had started SASE. And so when I'm there in the 90s right early 90s is when I started working. So how?
Speaker 1:long did it take you to with your bout with the substances?
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, I was in my early 20s when I actually started going to get some help, so I had actually started using early on in my life. Okay, so by the time I got to my 20s, I had did some things right.
Speaker 1:Right so.
Speaker 2:I was tired for real.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you want to say about a 10-year period, 20-year period? Oh, good Lord, I just try to give people a context. So when we get to where we're going, they can see that. So they can see where we're going.
Speaker 2:Okay, I started smoking marijuana when I was nine years old and I stopped everything when I was 23 years old. Okay, so, yeah, so, yeah. So that's like 14 years of just you know, one of the things is in the black community. Right, it was like normal.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because I'm smoking with family.
Speaker 1:Is that it?
Speaker 2:ain't like I'm smoking with strangers.
Speaker 1:You ain't smoking marijuana. You smoking reefers and doobies.
Speaker 2:Come on Too much. Yeah, it was reefer back then. You know what I'm saying. We was smoking some weed, you know? So again I just go visit a cousin right, an older cousin, older male cousin, and they was smoking weed. Yeah, right, and it was like I mean, they didn't even hesitate, they didn't even recognize that. Oh, they didn't even pay no attention to the fact that I was nine years old. Right, they was like here and I was like okay.
Speaker 1:I didn't know what I was doing. So what came to the point? The way you're like man, I need to get some help with somebody, you get in some trouble or you just was tired, or what you saw?
Speaker 2:you was walking down the street. You saw the building. One day you walked in. What was it? No, I had been through some things, I had lived some life, right. I have talked to you before about homelessness. So when I was 21 years old, I was living in Houston Texas and I was homeless in Houston Texas at 21 years old, Right? So the way I got back to Ohio, I had called my mom and I said listen, I'm down here doing dirtball bad, I need some help. And she said well, I ain't going to send you no money, but if you can get to the bus station, I have a ticket there waiting for you. That's how I got back to Ohio and my mother, you know again, had a bus ticket waiting for me.
Speaker 2:I came back here. I didn't stop using at that point and I had been going through a whole bunch of different stuff and my mother was actually saying you need a good woman, you need to go to church, you need to go to church and get you a good woman. So I did, I did, I started going to church and I met this woman and, oh man, that was the first time I actually gave my life to the Lord as an adult. Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:You know, I got saved again and, again, and again, but this time, you know, I was like I met this young lady, man, and my life was changing.
Speaker 1:Okay, right.
Speaker 2:But I was still addicted to stuff right. So this young lady and my mother convinced me to go to treatment for the first time. Yeah, so that's what happened. I was doing bad.
Speaker 1:Okay, and that was at Sassy, or was that another place?
Speaker 2:Actually, the first place was in Dayton, ohio. Okay, it's actually called Project Cure, you know, and the church that I was attending actually helped me go down there to treatment for the first time and I linked up with their sister church, you know so the sister church took care of me while I was down there in Dayton, and you know so it was a wonderful church. The church was called Tabernacle, okay, Okay, the church was actually called Tabernacle. That's what's up, right, and so I go there and they just helped me. Yeah, tabernacle right.
Speaker 2:And so I go there and they just helped me, right.
Speaker 1:And they did. I mean, they really did some good work with me. So while you were there, like, were you like man, this is something like with the services you were receiving, was something like going on in your head like other people need this, or I know so many people you know, because a lot of times when we, as soon as we get something, we'd be like we want to help somebody right away. As soon as we get something, we'd be like we want to help somebody right away. Yeah, I wish that was the case. Okay, tell me what happened.
Speaker 2:I didn't care about nobody. No, I was still only thinking about me. So I got in a fight when I was in treatment the first time and they kicked me out, and so then I came back. When I came back to Toledo, I started back using for a short period of time, and then that's when I went to Sassy, you know, and it was just one of those things where I was like I can't do this. I had already went down and dating and got some help, and then I come back here and I started doing it again. Right, because it was a mistake that a lot of people make. And what I had made, you know, because it was crack. Because it was crack, I was, you know, crack. I was a crack fiend. Okay, the word fiend means evil spirit, and so I was being controlled by this evil spirit, right, and so I come back to Toledo and I'm thinking, wow, as long as I'm not doing crack, I'll be okay, right, right, because when I was smoking weed or reflux, I was cool. Then.
Speaker 2:You know, what I'm saying. That's what I thought. It was cool, you know, when I was just smoking and drinking. You know that's the lie that I was telling myself. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know that was just this particular substance. You know what I'm saying. I didn't understand addictive thinking. I didn't understand. You know patterns. I didn't understand you know breaking cyclical patterns. I didn't know none of that. You know. I didn't know anything about the vicious cycle of addiction. I didn't know any of that. Back to smoking weed, and the weed led me right back to crack okay, so so that was after sassy, even, or no?
Speaker 2:this was before sassy, okay, so I just again, when I came back from project cure and I just started back to smoking weed, okay you know. And so when I went to sassy it was like crack cocaine that brought me to my knees, you know, really, you know, I didn't humble myself, so I was humiliated yeah right and I was doing and I was living a life that I didn't want to live right yeah and so I had a friend uh, giving a shout out to frank, frank johnson, you know um.
Speaker 2:He said, if you can get here on this day, we got a bed for you. So I did six months inpatient treatment at sassy, you know, when they had a residential treatment facility for for me and they had one for men and women. Okay, I went in for six months. Did you you have children at the time? No, I didn't have no children. Praise God, I didn't have no children at the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:I would just ruin their lives.
Speaker 1:So you did the six months residential. Right. And then in that process, like you started, did you learn about the addictive behavior and the mental health component?
Speaker 2:then, no, I didn't learn about the mental health component, then See, because I know, back when I was coming up, crack was more seen as criminal.
Speaker 1:They didn't really marry the addictiveness or the behavior or the mentality or the trauma that led to using substances. Back then it was just more so. Like you said, you're a crack fiend, you just need to get off it, leave it alone, right and that? So how, like when, did you see the shift between just treatment and then the mental health component, kind of understanding that part of it Was that after you began in counseling, it was when I started working in an agency.
Speaker 2:So I actually started at Sassy right, and I started at Sassy it was a methadone clinic right, and so everybody that was on methadone had to come and they had to leave a urine screen. So I was the guy that was collecting urine screens for the men. So that's how I actually started in the field of substance abuse. You know, watching folks go urinate in a cup.
Speaker 1:So tell me this. So like what was it? Was it the people at Sassy when you went there? And it was like you know, Carter man, you can help people. What was it like?
Speaker 2:It was another agency. The agency no longer exists so I ain't even going to mention the name, but it was at that agency that every day I went to work literally every day I went to work. Somebody asked me had I registered for school? The majority of people at that agency was in school. It was at the University of Toledo and they was asking me every day did you register? Did you register? Did you register? No, I'm serious, it was a broken record. I went and registered for school, just so they leave you alone.
Speaker 2:Man, so they can just leave me alone, man. But while I was working at that agency, it was people that was on medications for mental health that I didn't know anything about. So they was for bipolar or depression or anxiety disorder, and I didn't know anything about what they were doing. All I was doing was monitoring and having them sign in the book that they took their medication. So I'm just watching them take their medication, watching them document that they taking it, and that was it right. But I didn't know what was going on, right, I was really lost, okay. So when they was telling me to go back to school, the only thing that came to my mind was mental health. So I took up mental health technology at scott park campus and started in in march of.
Speaker 1:All right, and so that process led you to when you graduated from University of Toledo. What was next for?
Speaker 2:you Well, when I was at the University of Toledo, I had to do a year internship and I did my internship as Zeph. Okay.
Speaker 2:Right, and so it was just opening my eyes to the dual population people that had substance abuse as well as mental health. So this is me starting learning about treatment and treating both, because a lot of people was wondering which came first, the chicken or the egg and it was like it didn't matter if it was mental health or if it was substance abuse that came first, it was just about let's treat both of them simultaneously. So I was working at Zeph and I was really learning about okay, we need you to stop using substance, of course, right, but we need to be treating your mental health at the same time. Yeah, so we was. You know, again, that was a dual recovery program.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because the substances you know, just working with a lot of young people that you know have addiction issues, a lot of times the substances are kind of like self-medication exactly and then they like they familiar with how they've been medicating they self and they know how that feels. So now when you try to get them to get off of that quote-unquote medication and get on something more um, structured, they don't like the, the differences of how it feels right because it's still today, you know, especially with the legalizing of marijuana.
Speaker 2:If we just take this whole full circle with the legalizing medication of marijuana, if we just take this whole full circle with the legalizing of marijuana, it really does help people because marijuana is a sedative. Yeah. So it calms people down, it makes people chill. If you ever know anybody that smoke weed, they usually cool For sure Now that paranoia will kick in, but for the most part they cool, they chill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's what a lot of young people don't understand. Like, depending on their different body chemistries, somebody might be chill but then somebody in my body chemistry might make them like severely paranoid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, severely paranoid. I've seen that. You know, I've worked with people again that had severe mental illness, that was taking marijuana. So when they were smoking marijuana and they had schizophrenia, that's what they were diagnosed with schizophrenia they got real paranoid, yeah Right, and they would go into hiding. I mean literally, you know people. It would take days for their family to find them.
Speaker 1:Right, and somebody might think they must be on something else, because people on weed don't act like that. But then you come to find out that whatever that they're, but like you said they're diagnosed with their body makeup. Oh yeah, it just causes them to react in a way that, yeah, yeah you know the average guy just hanging out, don't get that effect most definitely, most definitely.
Speaker 2:I mean this, this, this young man in particular, uh, I mean, his life ended tragically, you know, because of the paranoia. Yeah right, so again family member was giving him marijuana, thinking it was helping him, and it really led to his death, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's what it really did. That's sad, yeah, but tell me this so now you're working, you're kind of coming through, you know your mental health education, you're practicing as far as like in the different agencies and whatnot. And what are you seeing, as far as you know, you're seeing different communities, but what are you seeing like as far as like the African-American community at that time?
Speaker 2:At that time I was seeing. One of the things is, when we talk about diagnosing, I've been able to diagnose people for 20 years. This is actually my 20th year, so in 2004, I became a licensed social worker, where I was diagnosing people. Prior to that, I was just seeing a whole lot. Okay, I would talk to a psychiatrist or a therapist and they would tell me what it was, but as I continued in education and getting licensed and everything I came to find out and see for myself.
Speaker 2:But so what I was seeing, and what even research shows, is that a lot of black people were being misdiagnosed, right. So you have a lot, especially African-American males, that is actually diagnosed with schizophrenia, but it may be bipolar disorder, right, or maybe trauma I mean, you mentioned it earlier so they actually could be dealing with something like PTSD or something like that. A lot of things, a lot of things, yeah, but yeah, ptsd is because it's post-traumatic stress disorder, right, but some of them may just have the symptoms and not have the whole full diagnosis. You got me into this whole conversation, come on.
Speaker 1:Come on, you're going to help somebody.
Speaker 2:You know.
Speaker 2:So you may have the symptoms, but not the disorder, and a disorder is, it affects your daily living activities, right?
Speaker 2:So when we talk about disorder, you can really see that a person's life has been disshambled and it's affecting them family life, it's affecting them socially, it may be affecting them in school, it may be affecting them in work, right, and so you can see how the disorder is affecting them in all these different areas. I know people that can't I mean literally cannot go to work because their disorder is out of order, they're not stable on their medication or they may never have been treated for their trauma. And so now you're taking medications, but the traumatic memories and the thoughts and the flashbacks and all these things and and being triggered by this, that and another, you know it hasn't been addressed, right and so, because it's left unaddressed, right and so, even as far as in the african-american community, when, when people talk, when we talk about racism and we say it the way that it's happening, people just, oh, they just trim it all. Everything, everything is about race, right? Well, you know, a Cornel West, dr West wrote a book called, you know, race matters. Right.
Speaker 2:And he was really pointing out that race does matter in every situation, right, right. And so we have a bunch of our people that have been for for centuries, that have been locked and loaded and trauma that has gone untreated. Right, been locked and loaded and trauma that has gone untreated. Right, and when we just talk about just generation and generation and generation.
Speaker 1:So how do you so like when you, when you broached that conversation about race and trauma and generations, like how do you unpack that to somebody that feels like it don't exist?
Speaker 2:Well, with our people, people, it's really about just let's, let's get honest, let's talk about what's really going on in your life, right, right. And if we can see, and they can see and just recognize what's really been going on in their life and just the pattern, right, right. So you're gonna try to tell me you just lost that job, for no reason at all, you know. You're gonna try to tell me that the way those people treated you in that store, there was nothing about it. Right.
Speaker 2:I remember attending a wedding and I have a tuxedo on A tuxedo. Okay, I just want to make sure you hear me.
Speaker 2:I got a tuxedo on and I go into a store and the security guard immediately started following me. Yeah, and the security guard immediately started following me and I'm sitting there and then I'm seeing people come in that's nowhere, nearly dressed, as I have a tuxedo on. I keep saying I have a tuxedo on and this dude is following me. Then I literally stopped and said dude, why are you following me? Right, why are you following me? I said you see these people that's coming in Because you can see the mirrors. I said look at these people that's coming in Because you can see the mirrors. I said look at the people that's coming in the store and you're following me. I said you see how I'm dressed, you know what I'm saying, but I'm a young black man at this time. Right.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean, this was several decades ago, but it was still that whole thing of why are you following me in the store? And then you tell people that and they're like, oh man, get out of here, man, Right. Right, let's go to George Floyd, for instance, right? So when the whole George Floyd incident went down and I was on Facebook and I was just sharing stuff with people, the thing that they didn't recognize I had to tell people that happened to me. You know what I'm saying. I was chased by the police. I was in our own community, A car come racing up the street in the dark, right, and I take off running because there's a car just coming up the road. So when I'm already running and my adrenaline is going, they're going to say police, stop, police, I'm already running, You're already running.
Speaker 2:My adrenaline is going right. I don't know that you're actually the police because I ain't looking behind me saying who's coming. So, anyways, when the police finally tackle me and necktie me, this cop was on my neck.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you just like man People don't understand man. I'm talking about having a straight up flashback.
Speaker 2:But when I was on Facebook and I was saying it and I'm talking about my trauma and everything, and people was like, and I'm talking about my trauma and everything, and people was like, what is wrong with him? I was literally reliving that incident over and over again, because I if another police officer was not there for me because he told me you can get up off him. Now we got him cuffed, got him. Yeah, he got him cuffed. Get up off of it. Right? You know what I'm saying? So if this dude don't tell this grown man to get his knee off my neck, is he getting off of me? You know what I'm saying? So people don't even understand that this happens like all the time with us.
Speaker 1:So then, when you started talking about it, you felt like people were oh man, what's wrong with Carter? Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I've actually done counsel white police officers in Ford County and Williams County, henry County, wood and Fulton County. I've counseled police officers on diversity and I tell that story to them and you can see the look on their face Right, like just in shock, and they feel bad too. You can see the white guilt on them. Yeah, I'm serious, they're like, oh man, even though it wasn't them, right, they know it was a fellow officer, you know, and so they feel that and they're like, yeah, you know, but they like hearing me talk to them, they keep inviting me back. Yeah, they keep inviting me back.
Speaker 1:So so we fast forward. We talk about what you were seeing and the misdiagnosis of African-American males, and is that what led you to go to get your master's and start studying?
Speaker 2:Again, people. God had good people around me that were just constantly speaking into my life. It actually was a woman named Jamila who was Muslim. I practiced Islam at one time. That's a whole nother story, okay. But this woman, she literally spoke into my life and said you're gonna go to the University of Michigan. Yeah, I mean, she prophesied that I would go to the University of Michigan that's you know, you know people don't.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's part of your story that I think that you know, you kind of I don't want to say you don't amp it up, but you know, for those that don't know, like University of Michigan, as far as their academics man, it's like going to almost like a public Ivy League school you know, I mean and for you to be going through.
Speaker 1:you know living as much life as you lived before you went there, and you know, like you said, to be addicted to substances, to be homeless, to be at that time you was a single father.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, and then you know I ain't going to tell all your stories.
Speaker 1:But you know, at that time you was a single father, had two young sons and now you was going to get your master's in social work. Yes, sir, from the University of Michigan. Yes, sir, from the University of Michigan.
Speaker 2:Yes sir.
Speaker 1:Man, you speak on that a little bit, yes, sir.
Speaker 2:So again, this woman is talking into my life and she's speaking into my life. And then years go by, I'm working again in the mental health field, I'm just working, and the woman I'm married to today, she said, hey, we're going to go to an open house at the University of Michigan. Man, I wasn't even thinking about the University of Michigan, but when she said that, that word came back to me. Somebody said I was going to go to the University of Michigan, and so I said, well, maybe me going to visit, is me going to?
Speaker 1:the.
Speaker 2:University of Michigan, because I'm literally going to the University of Michigan right. See, you got to understand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to visit, right, because you got to understand. The same year I was born, my uncle got a full ride scholarship to play football at Ohio State. So all I knew was Ohio State, that's all I knew was Buckeye. So somebody said I'm going to Michigan, I'm like man, you better get out of here, you ain't going to Michigan. So when that word was spoken to me Michigan it came back to me oh wow, university of Michigan. So I go and I start the process. Right, I'm married at the time. My wife is doing wrong which I don't know she's doing wrong, and I start this process.
Speaker 2:My whole life get derailed, right, my whole life get derailed, and I literally go from being married, a two-income household and one day, to becoming a single parent, one-income household. And I had to deal with that trauma of being a single parent of just one day. My whole world was just shattered. I'm living a life, married with two small children, and it just changed in an instant. And so I just stopped the process of going to the University of Michigan. I stopped the application process, all that, and then the window opened up again, the opportunity opened up again, and I went to the same woman who had spoken her word over me and I said do you think this is a good time for me to apply again? She said because she knew what was going on. She said, yeah, I think the timing is right.
Speaker 1:It was like remember we had spoke before. It was like so many challenges that you had to overcome in your master's program as far as, like you know, tragedy in your family and different things.
Speaker 2:Man, yes, sir, ooh program as far as, like you know, tragedy in your family and different things man like, is that? Ooh, is that so like my first semester after, after getting accepted to the university of mission? I'm talking I had people just walk with me and talk me through that process and and getting there and and so my first semester in grad school, my, my grandson dies right. So my oldest child loses her first child and my grandson I actually was there in the delivery room I cut his umbilical cord, right. So I'm at school when this anyway, she called me and going to tell me and I got to get from school back to Toledo, I'm in.
Speaker 2:Ann Arbor. I got to get to the because you just told me my grandson is dead, Instead of telling me to get home you're going to tell me this, so I have to deal with this.
Speaker 2:And I literally had to go into the student services and tell them what was going on with me to get me right. So I can't get home, man. I couldn't get home because I was just walking through the school social work. I get home because I was just walking through the school social work. I was in a shop, I was just walking in the school, just walking through the. I'm telling you, I'm just walking through the school, man, and then something just snapped I know it was God. He said go talk to somebody in student services. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I did. Her name was Michelle. I said Michelle, I need to talk to you. She said come on in, sit down. So I cried as long as I needed to cry. How about this? I cried until I couldn't cry no more. And then I got. She said you okay? I said yeah, I'm good now. Came home you know what I'm saying Found. My daughter did that. We had to go through that whole process and it was rough.
Speaker 2:I mean it really was. Again, like I said, it was my first semester and if that wasn lost, my aunt, my mother's sister, who every time I went to Lima I'm originally from Lima, ohio Whenever I would go back to Lima I would go to see my aunt, but when she died, because my grandson died, I buried all that. I'm serious. I just put it to the side because I had to finish this semester. I had to finish that first semester because that first semester was actually a probationary period for me. Okay, real quick. The first semester was actually a probationary period for me. Right, okay, real quick.
Speaker 2:University of Michigan has a non-baccalaureate program that they had at that time for over 30 years. But the way you could get in there is that you had not, you couldn't have already started on your bachelor's degree, right, you had to have an associate's degree and you already had to have worked in the field and you had to have extenuating circumstances. My extenuating circumstance was that I was a single parent, I had already worked in the field, I had, I had a degree that that qualified me for this, and that's why that woman was saying that to it, because that's the same way that she went. Okay, okay, so they only accept seven students a year. So I was one of the seven. Okay, all right, seven a year, seven a year through that program. So I was one of the seven. But again, they walked me through to get there. But that first semester again was a probationary period. I had to make it through that first semester, right, just to show that I could be in grad school. I had to show them.
Speaker 2:And so when my grandson dies I'm like I gotta show them. I can't, I can't. I didn't come to the university of michigan not to complete right, right. And so I just buried it, I just I just stuffed it the side. But when my aunt died, all of it came down. I'm talking about the flood man, the floodgates opened man.
Speaker 2:And I remember, because I'm doing my internship at Unison. I worked at Unison too, in the dual recovery program. But I'm doing my internship at Unison and this woman of God who was actually training me in art therapy, I find out by my aunt, and so she says to me sit down. She's doing her therapy thing with me, right, sit down, let me talk to you. And I say to her I said I can't sit down. I said because if I sit down. I don't know when I'm going to get up. And I got to get my sons. I can't afford to break down right now. You can tell I'm feeling it right now, for sure, because I was like I can't do this. I know what you're trying to do, right, carol? I know what you're trying to do. I can't. I got to get my sons Because if I sit down, you may think you may be able to put me back together. But I don't know that for sure, right? So I can't let you do what you want to do for me. I can't. And so I just cut it off and I left her office. I couldn't sit down and I had to go get my sons. Man, I just kept it moving. You know, I just did, I just kept it moving, right, and you know'm. So I'm good. No, for real, I'm good because I put it back together right.
Speaker 2:The next semester, my sister took her life, my sister that was 16 months older than me. This is my third semester. I walked through a fog that third semester. Still to today, over 20 years later, I still do not know how I got through that third semester. Man, I don't know. I know it was all god. But I'm trying to tell me it was a fog. I don't remember going to class. See this trauma. People don't realize how trauma can have you. I don't remember driving to school. I don't remember taking any exams. I don't remember doing any assignments I'm talking about for 16 weeks. I do not remember how I did it. I know God carried me through that whole thing. You know what I'm saying. You know how they got that poem.
Speaker 1:You know the two the full person is saying.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying you don't see one, the guy was carrying you. I know God carried me through that, but still today, I'm being honest, I don't know how I made it through. You know, and people, you know people go to trying to rationalize and trying to make sense out of stuff. Well, you can't make sense out of something that don't make no sense.
Speaker 1:No, you're absolutely right, absolutely right.
Speaker 2:You know, and I'm the one that lived it, so how you going to tell me I lived it? You know what I'm saying. I survived all that time. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then, just to finish off my last semester, I lost my uncle and it was just, and so when I graduate from the University of Michigan, it's the number one social work program, 10 years in a row. When I graduated, it was 10 years in a row Number one program in the nation. I just want to make that emphasis on it. So I survived a program that's that prestigious, dealing with all this trauma, right? If you don't believe in a God, I don't know. I don't know what it's going to take. I'm just done. Told you what happened. So if you don't believe that God brought me through, then who did? Because it wasn't me.
Speaker 1:Because you had a mental whereabouts to get through that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Come on, man, you know I mean and again, even as I was going through some of that, I'm dealing with past trauma. You know what I'm saying? Stuff is triggering. I'm dealing with present trauma but it's connected with past trauma. So I got compound trauma that I'm dealing with at the same time and I'm sitting up here and I was able man, I was a half a point from graduating with honors, a half a point with everything I just told y'all. Every semester I lost someone significant in my life and I was a half a point from graduating. I mean with graduating with honors.
Speaker 1:So at any point did you feel like you was forsaken? Mm-mm.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:So your faith just began to get stronger and stronger.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, oh yeah, god told me when I was in grad school. He says I'm going to do more with this master's degree than you realize. Oh man, I was in, I'm going through stuff. Man, I'm in there quoting scripture. Man, it was people that was coming to me that was Christian, that wasn't making their faith known. I'll be in class, man, I'll be preaching there. I didn't know I was preaching. I mean I mean prophesying, and people would come to me later and they'd be like man, you don't know how much you helped me and I'm like what? When you said da-da-da-da, I'm like, oh, okay, I'm just getting through here I'm trying to tell you.
Speaker 2:I said it's not by spirit, it's not by might, but it's by the spirit. It's not by power, it's not by my, but by the spirit of the Lord. Man, I'm in class, man, these people are pushing on me, and I mean they pushing in on me, man, they challenging me, and I just quoted that scripture, man, and everybody got quiet praise God oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So we got. I saw a picture you shared with me when I was at your office, you know, when you was in your cap and gown man University of michigan, you walk across the stage with your two small sons. Yeah, that was powerful man, oh yeah, it was four and five.
Speaker 2:You know, when I walked across the stage with my sons, it was, uh, being a being a father of a three-year-old and a two-year-old and not knowing how to be a single parent. You know, I didn't get married to be a single parent. I don't say that plenty of times I did not get married to be a single parent.
Speaker 2:You know, I didn't get married to be a single parent. I don't say that plenty of times. I did not get married to be a single parent. Yeah, you know, and when that happened it was like you do what you gotta do. Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:My father wasn't there, I know, before we was talking about me, I lived with my father. Uh, alcoholism yeah 54 years old, took his life. He couldn't stop drinking. Yeah, he just wouldn't stop, couldn't stop. He gets sick, hospital sick, hospital, hospital sick. Every time he drank he would have to be rushed to the hospital. He didn't make it to the hospital that day, you know what I'm saying he died a humiliating death too. You know what I'm saying. The way his wife found him, you know.
Speaker 1:So what was your first move after U of M?
Speaker 2:After U of M, I came back and what was my first job? My first job after graduating. Graduating, I was working at Connecting Point. I shouldn't have mentioned that agency, another agency that's no longer in existence a lot of people got they start there.
Speaker 2:I know a lot of people got they start there. You know the reason why I'm saying that is because there's a lot of I don't want to go too far into this, but there's been a lot of places that have mistreated me that's no longer in existence, so you're going to leave it at that. I'm going to say it just like that. It's touching out God's anointing and doing his prophets?
Speaker 1:no harm man, I'm just going to be like.
Speaker 2:I know places. No, I don't work at several places that's no longer in existence. I'm still here and they treat you bad, oh man.
Speaker 1:I'm laughing, but I know it ain't funny on the inside.
Speaker 2:Hey, but hear what I'm saying. Though they're no longer in existence, I'm still here. He's still here, I'm still here. I got an agency that's still here, by the grace of God. But every so often I rededicate my agency to God. God gave me the agency and every so often I say, god, this is your agency, it's yours. Man, the success or failure is on you. So whatever you want to do, I be telling you. Whatever you want to do, this is all you, it's all you. I keep giving it back to him.
Speaker 1:So you came through, you got. You know you worked at an agency. Yeah, I don't know if you could speak on it. When did? When did you get the? I don't know if I'm fast forwarding to. You can rewind, if you want to, when you had the vision of getting a place for fathers, you know that had no place to go with their children.
Speaker 2:And you want me to cry for real, don't you Listen? You know, marriage is rough, marriage is tough and a lot of people don't realize that. So it was one time my wife and I, we got into some disagreement.
Speaker 2:You know some heated discussions, some heated fellowship yeah and so she threw me out and I'm like well, I gotta take my sons with me, I ain't leaving with you. You know, I took my sons with me, you know what I'm saying. And so all of us is homeless, and so I'm reaching out for help. You know, I called Cherry Street because I knew the executive director, who was the executive director at the time. I called him, he said no, we ain't got nothing for you. And I'm calling these other places. I'm like nothing. I'm calling 411, 211, or whatever 11. I'm crying, I'm crying. I'm proud. I'm proud, I'm called Ottawa. Somebody help me, please help me. You know what I'm saying. You know, and it was like Nothing, man, there was literally Nothing for men With fathers, I mean with children. I'm sitting up like Is this?
Speaker 1:Really they had places For women with children. Oh, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they got Plenty of places For women. I'm sitting up here Like nothing for men. I mean literally nothing. You know, I remember when I was talking to people when I was a single parent, they said, oh, you act like you're doing something. I said I am doing something. What are you talking about? Why are you mad at me? Because I didn't want to be a single parent, right, and people would be hating on me for being a single parent, me for being a single parent, like you're bragging because you're a man. I'm like what are you talking about? I'm looking for some help. What are you tripping on? You know what I'm saying. I mean, that's the insanity of people, man. I'm sitting there like you mad at me, like I wanted to be in this position.
Speaker 1:Right. So when you saw that need, you didn't know that men could be in a similar situation and not have anywhere to turn.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, God gave me the vision. Then you know again I'm talking to, you know our friend, you know Apostle Ward, and I'm saying man, I got to create a place, man, I got to create a space for men. I said nobody else was doing it, so I'm somebody. I said somebody need to do it. I am somebody. So when God gave me the vision for the Father's house, that's what it was Out of John 14 and 2, my Father's house had many mansions or many rooms.
Speaker 2:So the Father's house was birthed in as far as a vision and then it became part of my ministry. You know time and place of refuge ministry, the 501c3 that, uh, you know again, god gave it to me yeah you know. I mean, he gave me the vision, you know for it and everything gave me the words. He gave me the mission statement and the vision statement yeah you know, uh, habakkuk, uh.
Speaker 2:Two, it actually says in one that you know that the prophet prophet said I'm going to stand on my watch and I'm going to see what God says to me. And then he said write the vision and make it plain, right? So God is the one that gave me the vision, because he spoke to me. He didn't just say write the vision, he told me what the vision was. You get what I'm saying. So I I had. That's how I got the vision. And even I'm saying the father's house. Again, that was. I know I was in a situation, but it was still. Guys gave me the name the father's house, right? Um?
Speaker 1:I think, like some of the most powerful, um like ministries or vocations come out from people that walk through similar situations. I don't think you have to, but I think when you have the experiential knowledge as well as you know the technical knowledge, when you bring that together, you can you help people. Like you know, I was separated from my mom, you know, for seven years and I tell the story a lot, you know, and so when I, when I take you know juvenile boys in and care for them, you know, I can empathize in a way where I know what it feels, like you know to be, feel unsafe or feel unsure about what the next steps are in life.
Speaker 1:So now, when I'm walking besides you, there's a certain comfort you could bring that just can't come from.
Speaker 2:You know, study no most definitely, most definitely, you know lived out experience, man. It's like, most definitely, you know lived out experience man. It's like when they talk about experience is the best teacher Now, there's plenty of different ways to learn, but once you experienced it, man, it's like, yeah, you know what I'm saying. A friend of mine used to say a year, you know, a year friend taught me. He says bought sense is better than told sense. I mean once you done paid for it. Now, once you done paid for it, it makes sense.
Speaker 2:And again that don't have to be for everybody's story, but I just know. For me I was at a friend of mine's Saturday. It was the 60th birthday and he asked me to open up in prayer, but he also preached. So it was his birthday and he preached too. It was Sunday right, it was Sunday, and the title of the message was there Was a Reason why you Went Through Hell.
Speaker 2:Okay, so he's talking about the three Hebrew boys. You know what I'm saying and you know when you read that story and all that they went through. You know it was after then that the name of God was proclaimed like never before. I mean, even King Nebuchadnezzar says if anybody even says anything negative about the three Hebrew boys' God, they will be torn from limb to limb. This man made a decree you better not talk about those boys' God. Yeah, there's going to be some repercussions and some consequences. You know what I'm saying, all right. So you know when he was saying that. You know there's a reason I'm like. I know there's a reason I'm still here man, I'm still here, so tell me.
Speaker 1:Like I know, you counseled hundreds of people thousands over the years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do you help them get past the bitterness of those experiences? Yeah, because I know for me, like I was angry man, like when I found out that the guy I was calling dad wasn't my biological father, when I was like in my teens, I was mad at my mom, I was mad at God, I was mad at my circumstances, god, I was mad at my circumstances. But it wasn't until, like, I was able to forgive, that I was able to move forward in my life and but that was a spiritual awakening for me. But, as far as like, in your, your profession, how do you help those people get past the bitterness?
Speaker 2:yeah it's really getting them to recognize what it's doing to them right, and asking the question so you're going to live with it this long, how much longer do you want to live? I'm just simplifying it yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, it's really just getting them to see. This is the situation you're in. How long do you want to stay here? Yeah, I mean because you came into counseling for a reason, right, right, and I believe you came into counseling to get some help, okay, so let me help you with that, right? And so that's what I do, right, I really just walk with people, meet them where they're at and let's take this journey. Even before we started talking, you know. So we go on a journey and that's why I be telling people let's do this together. I mean, I can help you. I promise you I can help you. I don't have people ask me can you help me with this? I say, yeah, I can, because I believe that God is going to give me. Whatever Anybody that sit in front of me, I know that God is going to give me what I need to help that person.
Speaker 1:I don't believe anybody coming to me by accident. So what you tell them? When you meet people that you know not ready, you just tell them no, you can't see everybody, you're right, I can't see everybody. You're right, I can't see everybody, everybody ain't my people.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Some folks don't get to come see me. Some folks see me one time. They see me one time and they say that's enough, I can't see that man, no more. You know what I'm saying? No, I've counseled. So when I was in ministry school, we didn't even get to that part. You know, I got the ministry school too.
Speaker 2:But when I was in ministry school and I was doing my internship at this church and one of the pastors, one of the associate pastors, needed some help, needed some counsel, right, and so he came to me for counsel and I said what Hold on? So I said let me go talk to your pastors, so I go to them. They said, oh yeah, we sent them to you. I said what I said well, let me call my pastor. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:So I called one of my pastors and I said they asked me to counsel this pastor at this church and he encouraged me and he said you know, he felt that God was stretching me, that on my measure, right, and that's what he said to me. And he said go and let God use you, right. And I was like, okay, and so it's just the things that I have faced. I know that God has just given me an opportunity to grow right and that's why I just look at it as an opportunity for me to grow. And I worked in an agency man. That the guy again I don't even mention the name of the agency, but he would always say to us when we get difficult cases right, he would say this is an opportunity to grow, opportunity to grow. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:And so whenever we would have these very challenging cases because we would always get you know somebody would fax us and say can y'all take this person in what they did? Fax you don't like fax.
Speaker 1:What was I supposed to facts? You don't like facts. Was it on dial up or what was it?
Speaker 2:I've been doing this for a minute, man. I've been doing this for a minute, man, you know what I'm saying. And so when they was sending that information and we'll look at the case, right, we'll see who the person is right and we'll have a team meeting and ask if we want to take this person or not. Okay, but the program director, he would, he would take everybody, man. I mean, he wouldn't turn nobody away, you could do it. He said yeah, there's an opportunity to grow. You know, and I've worked with man, but just better ask somebody, I don't work with some folk, you know. No, man, I don't work with some folk, you work with them. No, man, I don't work with some folks, man, some serious backgrounds. So even in 2008, when the heroin at the genesis of the heroin epidemic amongst white people, this new epidemic when it came, see, because in the 70s it was black people that was going through that and everything was criminalized.
Speaker 2:Right Like you talked about that earlier about crack, but that's the same way it was with heroin. It was criminalized when it came back around and I was seeing it for the first time in 2008. Okay.
Speaker 2:Right, this 19-year-old white boy out of Defiance, ohio, right, and it was just starting then. This monster was just starting to sweep the land at that time and it was like treatment, treatment, treatment, treatment, treatment, you know. And then they started all the Suboxone, they started all the medicated assistant treatment. You know, mat, you know they started all that, man. But I was there, man. I watched this thing grow, you know. I watched it become powerful, I watched it get crazy, man, you know. But I'm working with people that had cancer and they was given Oxycontin and became addicted to it, right, so they didn't go. They had cancer, they dealing with their pain, they wasn't running around looking for a fix.
Speaker 1:No, they wasn't looking for nothing.
Speaker 2:This was their treatment People that had their back broken, people that had some severe, severe illnesses, man injuries illnesses. Man, they was suffering from some serious stuff. Man, they was getting this potent. But you know, it was just an appeal, but it was heroin. An appeal, that's all it was. It was heroin.
Speaker 1:It was still some very potent. So when they couldn't afford the appeal, they go to the street.
Speaker 2:They go to the street, you know, so you know. But again, I watched it in the black community. You know, I watched it happen with us and it was just different. So when it came around this time they treated it differently. No, for real, I'm happy that they treated it differently. I'm glad they didn't continue criminalizing it. Yeah, man, because they could have definitely criminalized it, and then we just have a whole bunch of people and just like we got a whole bunch of people still in prison right now for selling marijuana.
Speaker 2:Yeah, might as well, let them out, huh. Yeah, they didn't legalize it. And then you still got guys in. You know you gave guys life sentences for selling weed. Yeah. Rifa. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to say we we talking about weed? I'm doing an Iverson soundbite. We we talking about weed? Right, right, okay. I'm sorry, let me stop.
Speaker 2:But it's serious though, man, we laughing about it, but it's like how you treat people that need treatment. These people need treatment. So, even when the movie came out Painkiller and they showed this in the movie it shows how this woman is being real harsh on her brother for selling weed man, it might have been crack, but it was a weed or crack, I can't remember in the movie, in the movie Painkiller. But she's like hard on her brother until she's seeing what they was doing, and then it changed her heart. So even when you were talking about forgiveness earlier, because she was real angry at her brother, but it changed her heart when she started seeing differently. And that's what usually changed people's heart when you start seeing from different eyes. Yeah, I'm looking at some different glasses, I'm gonna see things a little different. You know, let me have a change your perspective, I promise you. When you start seeing things differently, you start doing things differently, you start hearing differently. Then you start speaking differently too, start thinking differently. Okay, anyway, Start thinking differently.
Speaker 1:Okay anyway. No, no, that's powerful man. I mean, like I say, you know you had an opportunity to walk through different eras of substance abuse treatment and even the way that we deal with trauma now. I mean trauma is like that word has been normalized really only in the last you know, 15, 10, 15 years. As far as like opening the community Because I know just from being in the field of work I work with juveniles we used to be about behavior modification If I could just get you to do what I want you to do, if I get you to assimilate, then it don't really matter what's going on inside of you, as long as you can sit in this class and do this work and at 2, 33 o'clock leave and go home and don't wind up in juvenile justice. I don't care that it's getting overstated, but when you have these generations of just built up stuff, it's going to take a while to peel all those layers back and really get people to normalize treatment and not behavior management.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, well, definitely, you know when I actually started asking questions about trauma when I was an undergrad, right? Because, well, we didn't even talk about it. You know some of the stuff that I experienced, but I had lost all my hair when I was 11 years old. Okay, right, and so I'm taking this class, abnormal Psych at the University of Toledo, and I go to my professor one day after class because I'm listening to him talking about the brain. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Right and how you know something can go wrong in the brain, how it can cause this and the third to happen. And so I just went to him and I said hey, doc, is it possible? Dr John Luton giving a shout out to Dr Luton.
Speaker 1:I said is it?
Speaker 2:possible that trauma caused my hair loss and he said, yeah, very possible.
Speaker 2:Because I'm listening to him talking about the brain, right, right, and I'm, and I'm in this class and I'm learning stuff, right, and I'm sitting up here like man. That's how I lost my hair. I'm literally sitting in class, so it was like I didn't bring it up in the classroom. That's why I went to him afterwards and just asked him, right, because I knew that I was hearing something and I was seeing something that wasn't being talked about. We weren't even talking about it in class, right, but I know I heard something. Something clicked because it had happened to me right.
Speaker 1:So you remember that time, when it did happen, like were you yeah, the trauma that led to my hair loss. Yeah, I remember okay, you ain't got to go with it, dude, you ain't got to go with it, dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I remember it very well, you know, and I remember telling one of my cousins because I blame my mom for it and telling one of my cousins, and then she went to my mom and told her right, and you know, my mom, you know we sat down, we talked about it and everything you know. So watch this, my mother was a wonderful seamstress, right, and she started making me clothes, man. So we talking about Joseph the coat of many colors. My mother made me all types of outfits. I was the only one of her children that she was making these outfits for right. So I was going to school, man, and stuff you couldn't buy. You was fly. Oh man, Watch out now, watch out now. And my mother was making me all kinds of things right to wear right, and it was her way of making them. She knew what she did.
Speaker 2:I mean she knew what she did. I mean, you can't get away from, you know, you recognizing what happened right, and so by her acknowledging it, by her way of helping me through that process, you know what I'm saying. She was making me these clothes, man.
Speaker 1:And you know and it helped me. So when you lost your hair, did they take you to doctors and all that type of stuff? Yeah, they did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they did. You know, listen, I went to UTMC when it was MCO, to UTMC when it was MCO, when it was not even where they at now it was folks like me. They did all the experiments on the lid to that big old hospital. They had no I'm serious no.
Speaker 2:I'm serious man, trust and believe bro. I was seeing them weekly and they was running all types of tests on me. I mean I was literally their guinea pig because they had never seen it before. They was seeing something. They, yeah, I mean I was literally their guinea pig because they had never seen it before. You know what I'm saying. They was living, they was seeing something they ain't never seen before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they didn't know what to do. But when I say they didn't know what to do, they didn't know what to do. When I first went to treatment when I was talking about in Dayton Ohio, when I went there, it was a program that was on TV. They had been 12 years at that and they still didn't have an answer. Twelve years later, you still don't have an answer. Are you serious? You still don't have an answer for this? It's a dermatologist here named Dr Hope Mitchell. She was doing a podcast recently and she was talking about you know, alopecia is the name for it. That's the Latin word for the hair loss. She was doing a show where they was really talking about women's hair loss. Man, it was 20 years. They had stopped doing research on why women was losing their hair. So she's talking about this as a dermatologist. She said nobody's done any research in 20 years.
Speaker 1:They just said, this is how it is.
Speaker 2:Just letting women just lose their hair. People just stopped trying to figure out the answer. This is in women, right, but for me I'm like they didn't have an answer. Man, 12 years later I'm watching it on TV, they're talking about it on TV and they still didn't have an answer. So when they was doing all this experiment on me because they didn't have an answer, man, they didn't have a clue, bro. And they just doing all kinds of tests, man, they put me on all kinds of medications. Man, got me big and skinny and patches of hair, no hair, until I just got to the point at 11 years old you should leave it alone, man. I told my mom. I said I ain't going back to those people. I said I'm done. It was not my mother's decision, it was my decision and I stopped.
Speaker 2:I'm like y'all ain't doing no more experiment. Y'all ain't doing no more experiment. Y'all ain't taking no more blood from me. I'm watching people spill my blood and then they want more blood. I'm like, at 11 years old, I said no, you ain't getting no more of my blood. Man, get that blood right there. Y'all bust me. I was getting weekly blood drones, man, they was just and they couldn't find veins. Well, let's try you on this. Let's try you on this. You don't even know what it's going to even do. Oh, here you go. Man, I'm breaking out, bruh, when I say I was a guinea pig. I'm telling you right now, I was a guinea pig. They used anything that they thought, well, let's just try it. Well, we got him here, so let's just try it on him. We don't have nobody else, we don't have no other specimen.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry that's all right we don't have nobody else, so we're talking about the trauma of my hair loss and then being re-traumatized by the medical community then you had to go to school.
Speaker 1:You know how we do bruh bruh, bruh, bruh.
Speaker 4:Every time you have a good joke, they're going to call you bald head, I had a teacher.
Speaker 2:So my sixth grade in elementary they let me wear a hat. But my seventh grade at Robinson Junior High nah, I'm in the auditorium, I come in the auditorium, my hat off. The whole auditorium is laughing at me, man what.
Speaker 2:Everybody is laughing at me except one friend of mine. I'm sitting there and I'm just crying and he tapped me on my shoulder. I look back. He said you see I ain't laughing. Give a shout out to LeVette. Yeah, he's my friend. I mean, we was boys man. He said you see I'm not laughing. And so it was that one person, man, that just helped me to get through that moment. Man, you know what I'm saying. But God had the ram in the bush. He had one just there for me, somebody to lean on.
Speaker 1:Man.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to tell you, man, this brother man helped me so much. Man I'm talking about it changed my whole life, man I'm serious, I believe it. It changed my whole life. I believe it, man. You know, just having somebody just there saying, man, look, I ain't like the rest of them.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, that's all you need, man, you don't need a whole crowd, you just need a friend.
Speaker 2:And so that's what I look at, even as far as when we were counseling, when people called me man, I'm that one person, I'm that one person that's going to treat you differently. I'm that one person that's going to talk to you differently. Man, I already know. Man, without a shadow of a doubt, I don't counsel like nobody.
Speaker 1:We just went through practically my whole story, told you we was going on a journey, man.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying. You know what I'm talking about Our whole life. You know what I'm saying. You know I already beat the ice. Man. You know what I'm saying? My mother doesn't even have a high school diploma. My mother just turned 81 on Sunday, man. My mother didn't even have her high school diploma. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know she got pregnant the first time having sex. You know what I'm saying and it's just. But look, I got a master's degree. I already beat the eyes by just getting a master's degree with a parent that don't even have a high school diploma. Right man? I've been beating the eyes for a minute here and I'm still beating them. Watch me. You know what I'm saying For sure. I'm just saying watch me, see, because you're going to say this is the lowest doing and it's marvelous in our sight. If you keep your eyes on me, you're going to see God. All right.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm trying to get you two riled up. You're too much man. I don't know why you messing with me, man. You got me over here in this seat, man.
Speaker 2:This seat is hot, this mic is hot. You got me over here telling all this stuff. It's all right, man, it's good for you, man. No, no, no. But it is healing though, man, and you know so. Even when we're talking to people about counseling, right doing this allows people to heal. It's the holding the stuff in that keeps people sick. You know, I'm saying so. We had this saying. You know, you're only as sick as the secrets that you keep. I like that, you know? Oh yeah, I got a few.
Speaker 1:You know what?
Speaker 2:I'm saying I mean, over the years I done got all kinds of sayings right, you know, but that's just a fellowship that I was— Say that one more time, we're only we only as sick as the secrets that we keep.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know, and it's just really just about exposing stuff. You know what I'm saying here? It is in the book of Genesis, adam and Eve seeing, and they run into hiding. They go into hiding, right, because they're ashamed and they're naked. And God said who told you that? You know what I'm saying? But they went in here because they knew they did something wrong, right. And if God doesn't come looking for Adam, how long is he in hiding? I'm just saying Right.
Speaker 2:So when I started talking about Christian counseling and I'm in church, I bring up the example of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, right, so I get people to look at it a little different I said so here it is Cain kills Abel and then God banishes him. So in one act, adam and Eve lost two sons. Yeah, so how do you think they handled that? Because we don't talk about it, it's not written in scripture, but we don't think that way. You're going to try to tell me that these parents that just lost two sons with one act didn't go through something.
Speaker 2:They didn't have to deal with anything. They didn't have no feelings about this. Or they didn't have no feelings about God Telling your son so my son kills my other son, and then you send my son away and we don't even talk about that. When have you ever heard Somebody preach on that one? No, I ain't never heard it.
Speaker 2:I know we got D over here, but I'm just trying to tell you. I mean, his father is a great man of God, a great preacher, I'm pretty sure, because God gave it to me when he was talking about counseling, because we're dealing with trauma in the first family that we don't even talk about.
Speaker 1:Right out the gate.
Speaker 2:How do we just keep glossing over what happened to Adam and Eve and we don't talk about it and we don't say the trauma that happened? Their son killed their other son. We talk happened their son killed their other son.
Speaker 4:We talk about murder, the first murder written about, and we just like well uh well, uh, your own question really that's what we were talking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, yeah, yeah but what happened to the parents, though? I mean, this is what I'm talking about. What happened to them? So you're just telling me they was good. Okay, okay, yeah. Keep going with that one, because there's no way that any one of us will lose a child nevertheless. Two, and not feel some kind of way, no 100%.
Speaker 1:So when you and that's interesting, I know the context of what you're bringing that up, because in the African American churches counseling was frowned upon some years ago, I mean they're more open to it now. We have some great counseling programs through a lot of ministries, but there was a time where it was looked at as like secular or taboo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or just for white folk. I mean that's what we said. I mean I heard it we don't go to counseling. So even when people would ask me, did you go to counseling? I said I ain't crazy. Right. I just lost my hair. Right, right, right, right.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying, but it was insane for me not to go and get professional help. Man, it was very traumatic, man, the stuff that I had to deal with day in and day out. You know saying the stuff that I had to deal with. But even when I when my hair was, when I was losing my hair, right, I'm combing my hair. You know, you deal with your, with your beard. I'm combing my hair and as I'm combing my hair, whole chunks of hair is in the comb.
Speaker 2:Can you imagine seeing that man? You send a pair. You 11 years old actually, I was 10 at the time. I'm 10, 10 years old, I'm combing my hair and then the hair, I'm like what is this? So I go to my mama and I say Mom, look at this, so she don't believe me. You cut that hair out. So she takes the comb and she does it All my hair. It just comes up, man, it just comes out. I ain't talking about pulling my, she's just combing it and it all just come out Like this is wild. Nobody has seen nothing like that before, man, right, right, I mean, we ain't never seen nothing like that before have you ever heard of anything like that before.
Speaker 2:No, okay, I'm just making sure you know what I'm saying, even after all these years. You see what I'm saying, even after all these years. We talking about 40, 50 years, because I'm getting it started. When I was 10. It was 50 years. I just shared a story with you. You're like, I ain't never heard nothing like that, bro. And so just imagine living it Right. And so now my mother didn't go and give me no help. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. So when I first went into treatment and I had a good counselor, yeah, we delved into all that.
Speaker 1:So you got a chance to oh man Unpack some of that stuff. Rewind it back and just really.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, man man, I had to deal with that man, and even including as far as what I had to deal with at UTMC.
Speaker 2:Well, it was MCO at the time. Yeah, man, I'm telling you, man, they didn't care, they didn't care about this little black boy. All they want to know. Let us do research, Let us get some information. Maybe you know see, they weren't talking to me. Well, you know what you learn, you teaching us so we can help other people. They didn't present it like that. Maybe if they had presented it like that, it might have been a little different. I wouldn't mind being a trailblazer because I was a trailblazer, but I wasn't a mind. I might not have mind being a trailblazer at the time if they would have presented better, but all they was doing was just running me through tests, man, spilling my blood right in front of me, man, and talking about well, we got to do something. You better get up out of here. I told that woman. I remember telling her just clearly no Right.
Speaker 2:She probably thinking who is this? 11-year-old boy trying to tell me what to look for so you're protecting yourself at that point. I know what you're trying to say. I said, well, we better get away from me. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. So I was getting my voice dead. I didn't know I was getting a voice then, though no, I'm serious, the trauma brought me.
Speaker 1:It's all the things you had to go through. Oh, man, you speak up for yourself.
Speaker 2:Man, listen, I'm my strongest advocate. Ain't nobody going to speak up for me like I speak up for me? So you're going to let them know.
Speaker 1:You heard me, you heard me. If you hate me, I'm going to say out, I'm trying to tell you I'm a voice, not an echo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel Jacob just tripped me in and got away and not say something.
Speaker 2:I don't know man. I said stuff to people, man, that they were like. They looking at me, like are you really saying that to me? I'm like, yeah, but look where it started, at Right. I started doing it at 11. You think at 59, I'm about to turn 60, I'm going to stop saying it, right, you better go. I feel you. I mean, god gave me a voice. Man, if God didn't want me saying something, he had a chance to silence me and he actually okay.
Speaker 2:So here's a part of my story that let me just share this because it's a miracle of God. Right, twenty-three years old, I'm drunk on my mind. I get on a freight train. It's moving slow, right, I jump off the train. When it's freighting, I die. God brings me back. I continue using drugs because even when I got up and I went to the crack house and I told them what had just happened and I had just jumped off the train man, get out of here. But here hit this thing and they don't believe me. I don't even believe me, right? So I don't have a problem with them not believing me. I don't believe me that I just jumped off a freight train and I'm here to tell you the story and I'm not hurt. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Bruh. I'm not hurt at all. My glasses are all broken up, but I have like zero injuries, no broken bones, no scrapes, no cuts. I'm talking about no bruises, no, nothing. Years later, god tells me you know you died, and I knew exactly what he was talking about. So at 23 years old. I died and God brought me back. And you think?
Speaker 1:I'm going to be quiet you think I'm going to be quiet.
Speaker 2:And this was over 10 years ago when God told me this Right. So on my 50th birthday, I'm at a church, I go to a church. On my 50th birthday, I go to another church to fellowship with him. While I'm sitting there, the dude sitting across the table he never met me, he- said God said remember what he told you when you were 23.
Speaker 2:I'm like, I don't even know what God told me when I was 23. So I'm talking to Warwick, apostle Warwick, and I'm telling him. I said man, I don't even know what God even told me, and God speaks it to me. He said I told you to get up. All right, that's my next book.
Speaker 1:Okay, get up, that's all right.
Speaker 2:You know. So you want to give me this recording because some of this stuff is going to go in the book.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Might as well use it, it's coming out, it's coming out, it's coming out, man, it's coming out, man. I mean, before I turn 61, it will be published. I'm telling you right now, before I turn 61, it will be published.
Speaker 1:I want the first copy, man, oh you got it, man Sign. Yes, sir.
Speaker 2:Sign. I'll write this date 320. Right this day, 320. 320. Yeah, ephesians, 320. Now, unto him, who is able to do exceeding and abundant, far beyond what we can ask or think, according to the power that is working within us. Revelation is 320. He says I stand at the door and knock. If anybody hears me and open the door, I come in and sup with them and them with me. That's Jesus talking. He's standing at the door of the church, knocking, knocking he. He's standing at the door of the church, knock him, knock him. He's standing at the door of the church, knocking, saying let me in.
Speaker 2:All right, we ain't about to preach on that right now. So we're going to mark this day, this day on 320,. We're going to mark this day, man, that's so real.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying, man. I'm thoroughly enjoying this journey. Like I said, we're going to go on a journey, man, that's so real. You know what I'm saying, man.
Speaker 2:I'm thoroughly enjoying this journey. Like I said, we was going to go on a journey, man, yeah man, I think that you definitely did not disappoint, and I learned so much about you today, man, and I appreciate you sitting down.
Speaker 1:But before we get out of here, I'd be remiss if I didn't emphasize what two cups is about. Man, I call it two cups one for the wake, one for the work. That first cup is what's waking you up in the morning, what's inspiring you, what you're dreaming about, what's your visions for the future. And then the work. That second cup is what do you envision on putting in place, just to carry out even the first small steps of that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, you know, I think I was telling you I woke up this morning I had to go into prayer, right? I think I've been waking me up three, four in the morning for years to pray right, and so I wake up, praying right and putting in the work. So the next thing, I want a building. I want a building that can house other counselors, that they can come in and do what they need to do. See, some people think about competition. Man, I'm not in competition with nobody.
Speaker 2:And you ain't in no competition with me, unless you just make yourself that way. Right.
Speaker 2:I mean, we have restaurants, different restaurants selling the same stuff on the same block. I know we can get in the same building and do our thing and nobody can stop us, and everybody will see people. Everybody will see people, because who's for you is for you. You know what I'm saying. So the work that I want to do, man, I'm literally right now. My company is a global company. I seen somebody in Hong Kong Monday. Yeah, okay. I got some folks set up.
Speaker 2:I just got somebody from Tanzania. I counseled somebody in Saudi Arabia last week. You know what I'm saying. I'm talking about the dude I just told you about man, the homeless dude. I'm talking about the crack fiend man. I'm counseling people in a whole nother countries man yeah. You get what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're counseling people right now. Man on this man yeah, you get what I'm saying. Yeah, and that's you're counseling people right now. Man on this show yeah, it's somebody hearing what you're talking about and our perspective stories. That's gleaning from it and just from what you were saying about all your different clients and stuff all over the country, all over the world, and that came from. That's what one thing people. You know all the horrible things that came out of the pandemic, but one of the things that kind of stayed on and remains after that is the normalization of being able to talk, you know, over the World Wide Web or streaming platforms.
Speaker 1:And that's allowing you to be able to have a voice and an influence and be able to help people all over the world.
Speaker 4:Yeah, man, that's beautiful. When you were telling me about that, I was like man.
Speaker 1:You could be in Toledo or in Ohio or wherever you are, and you could talk to somebody and help somebody global.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm seeing things right now and God has given me an opportunity to see what's happening in other parts of the world and how people are suffering just like we're doing here. So people think, oh well, over here they got to be doing da-da-da-da-da-da man, when I'm talking to those people in Hong Kong and a woman is talking to me about racism she's Filipino in Hong Kong and a woman is talking to me about racism, she's Filipino in Hong Kong and she's talking about racism. She's talking to me, a black man, about racism, and she ain't even blinking an eye. Like I wanted to say you don't know my story, you don't know how I sojourned here in America, because she's sitting up here talking about racism Like you don't understand. No, you don't understand you about racism like you don't understand?
Speaker 1:no, you don't understand.
Speaker 2:You don't understand the racism I'm feeling over here. I'm sitting up here like and I'm just listening to it and I'm saying yeah, I know it has to be tough.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir, so you say you want a building.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to build it, man. All right, I want to build in the house other counselors, man, because you know as much as we do things as far as streaming, you know, telehealth, you know. So I never stop seeing people face-to-face. I'm an essential worker. So even during a pandemic, I just stretched my office out, I just gave space. It's still straight. I mean, you've seen that I still got space in my office for people. They don't have to sit, like we, right on top of each other. And we good man we good.
Speaker 1:So that's going to be the next foot of work. That's going to be getting that acquiring that building. Yeah, I want the building man.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you, I just want to give other people a chance. Somebody gave me a chance, man. Somebody opened the door for me, right? Dr Linda Winnington Clark brought me to Toledo and taught me most of the stuff I know right now. Okay, as far as insurance, helping people all that.
Speaker 2:The business, yeah, the business man. She taught me the business man. I'm sitting up here like I just wanted to counsel you know what I'm saying. But my business literally started in a local church in Wauseon, ohio. Okay, a church opened their door, said we got some people for you to see. We got an people for you to see, we got an office for you to be in and we're going to pay you. So they gave me the patience, the place and the pay. Okay, the three Ps.
Speaker 3:I thought you were like that, that's fire, and that's fire, yeah.
Speaker 2:So when I came to Toledo, it was like Dr Linda gave me an opportunity right to come and start working with people. Okay. And the first person I saw in my practice here in Toledo was Muslim and he allowed this Christian to help him and I was able to help him. So it was like you know. And then I'm about whatever religion you practice. Yeah, I mean, I don't counsel Satanists. You know what?
Speaker 2:I'm saying yeah, I don't counsel people from the LBGTQ community knowing that I'm a Christian. I'm saying they know I'm a Christian, mm-hmm, you know what I'm saying. And so here's the thing where, outside the world, because I know I'm a marketplace minister. Mm-hmm. Right and the ministry that I do in practice and people don't even know the folks I come in contact with Right contact with People don't have no idea the people I come in contact with and you keep trying to limit me when God says there ain't no limits.
Speaker 1:No, You're going to leave nobody out. I'm trying to tell you my man God, yes, sir, no, I got you.
Speaker 2:I got you Germany, Ireland. I don't want to keep naming the places. I don't counsel people. You know what I'm saying and they be tripping me out. I'm trying to tell you it'd be tripping me out, man. People in the UK. I'm counseling black people in the UK that sounds funny, man, because you know they got the accent the accent man and they say hospital. They don't say the hospital. Hospital, yeah man.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that's what I want to do, man, I want to work. I'm you to help me start something. I said, okay, I'm going to help other businesses start in this city, by the grace of God. And they still. They didn't exist.
Speaker 4:Went on right down the street from there. Yeah, you know what I'm saying he was telling me about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm the one that scouted out the place that they in. I scouted that place out. You know what I'm saying. I went before them, looked at it, blah, blah, blah. I said, oh yeah, this is a good place for you. And they said, yeah, okay, and they in it.
Speaker 1:That's powerful man, I mean one thing I can do man to help you in your endeavors? You know? We're going to keep building and talking and just be. You know, let the ideas and things flow. You know I enjoy our time together. I know you kind of like the. You know my alter ego, in a sense man. You loud and boisterous. I'm a little more reserved, you know what I mean. But we making it work.
Speaker 2:We making it work Too much. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, man, but you know we going to, I like how we like. I said we are different. I like that, right, because we bring different aspects to the table. You know what I'm saying? So, even when we talk about two cups, we don't normally drink our coffee the same. You know what I'm saying? Right, but it still doesn't stop us from sitting down and having coffee together, exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly, that's all right. You like how I brought that around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I like that I like that man.
Speaker 1:But, you, man, we're going to get ready to get out of here. Man, we could do this all day.
Speaker 2:Yeah for real, I know you got some work to do.
Speaker 1:I got some work to do. But before we go, man, I just want to say to all my viewers and listeners man, just like, subscribe. Man, share the episode. Man, we're just trying to have high-quality caffeinated conversations. It's things that are said that only you can say to a person. So if something's shared in this platform that you think is beneficial, share it with somebody else. Man, we just look forward to just having more and more quality caffeinated conversation. If there's anything that you would like us to touch on, or somebody especially you would like to see, send us a message, send us an invite. If you would like to be on the show, message us. And until next time, two cups.