Breakfast of Choices
Everyone has stories of transformation. And some of them include moments, or years of intense adversity, a time when it felt like there was no hope. This podcast, "Breakfast of Choices," holds space for people to share their true, raw and unedited stories of overcoming extreme struggles, like addiction, mental illness, incarceration, domestic violence, suicide, emotional and physical abuse, toxic family structures, relationships, and more. Trauma comes in so many forms.
Every week, as a certified Peer Recovery Support Specialist, Recovery Coach, Life Transformation coach and your host, I will jump right into the lives of people who have faced these types of adversity and CHOSE to make choices to better themselves. We'll talk about everything they went through on their journey from Rock Bottom to Rock Solid.
Through hearing each guest's story of resilience, my hope is that we'll all be inspired to wake up every single day and make our own "Breakfast of Choices". More importantly, that we'll understand we have the POWER to do it.
When someone shares their story, it can be unbelievably healing. And it can be just what someone else needs to hear at that exact moment to simply keep moving forward. So I hope you can find "that one little thing that sticks," along with hope and encouragement to just keep taking it one day at a time.
And now let me be the first to welcome you to the "Breakfast of Choices" community, a non-judgemental zone where we learn from, lean on and celebrate one another. Because the opposite of addiction is "connection", and we are all in this together.
If you would like to tell your story, I sure would love to listen. Please email me at Breakfastofchoices@gmail.com.
Respects,
Jo Summers.
Breakfast of Choices
Overcoming Addiction and Incarceration: Finding Purpose and Redemption Behind Bars with Taylor Washburn
Today on Breakfast of Choices, I have Guest, Taylor Washburn, to share his powerful story of overcoming addiction and incarceration. Growing up, Taylor experienced a chaotic home life due to his parents' drug and alcohol abuse. As a child, he realized his family dynamics were very different from those of his friends and peers, leading him to keep secrets and defend his home life.
Unfortunately, Taylor ended up joining his parents' lifestyle in a misguided attempt to fit in and feel accepted. Taylor's transition to adolescence brought increased involvement in drug use and criminal activities. He describes the challenges of navigating the dangerous drug world and the emotional toll it took on his self-esteem and trust in others. Taylor's criminal behavior eventually landed him in juvenile detention and later, adult prison. However, it was during his final, lengthy prison sentence that Taylor experienced a profound transformation.
Through prayer and a willingness to change, Taylor found purpose in helping others, teaching classes, and tutoring his fellow inmates. This shift in mindset and behavior was life-changing. Since his release, Taylor has continued on a positive path, rebuilding relationships, finding joy in life, and looking for ways to contribute to prison reform and support others who have been incarcerated. Taylor's story is a testament to the power of hope, personal growth, and using one's experiences for good. I'm honored to have him share his journey and inspire others who may be struggling with addiction or facing seemingly insurmountable challenges. Together, we can break the cycle and create a brighter future.
From Rock Bottom to Rock Solid.
We all have them...every single day, we wake up, we have the chance to make new choices.
We have the power to make our own daily, "Breakfast of Choices"
Resources and ways to connect:
Facebook: Jo Summers
Instagram: @Summersjol
Facebook Support: Chance For Change Women’s circle
Website: Breakfastofchoices.com
Urbanedencmty.com (Oklahoma Addiction and Recovery Resources) Treatment, Sober Living, Meetings. Shout out to the founder, of this phenomenal website... Kristy Da Rosa!
National suicide prevention and crisis, hotline number 988
National domestic violence hotline:
800–799–7233
National hotline for substance abuse, and addiction:
844–289–0879
National mental health hotline:
866–903–3787
National child health and child abuse hotline:
800–422-4453 (1.800.4.A.CHILD)
CoDa.org
12. Step recovery program for codependency.
National Gambling Hotline 800-522-4700
Welcome to Breakfast of Choices, the weekly podcast that shares life stories of transformation. Each episode holds space for people to tell their true, raw and unedited story of overcoming intense adversity from addiction and incarceration, mental illness, physical and emotional abuse, domestic violence, toxic families, codependency and more. Trauma comes in so many forms. I'm your host, Jo Summers, and also someone who hit my lowest point before realizing that I could wake up every day and make a better choice, even if it was a small one. So let's dive into this week's story together to learn from and find hope through someone's journey from rock bottom to rock solid, Because I really do believe you have a new chance every day to wake up and make a change, to create your own. Breakfast of Choices. Good morning, Welcome to Breakfast of Choices. Stories of life transformation from rock bottom to rock solid.
Speaker 2:Today I have my guest, taylor Washburn, on the show with me. Taylor is a childhood friend of a friend of mine, who they recently touched base again and I got to meet Taylor I think it was just last weekend. Taylor's going to share his story today of growing up in a chaotic home with drug and alcohol abuse. We're going to talk about the challenges of navigating really a dysfunctional family and the impact it has on your perception of normalcy. Taylor's going to describe how he got involved in drugs and the lifestyle that came with it, including selling and manufacturing. He shares the consequences he faced, including multiple arrests and time spent in juvenile facilities and prison. We're going to talk about the importance of understanding just the long-term consequences of your actions, especially as a teenager. A lot of times as a teenager, we think that what we do is not going to have any effect because we're under 18, and that's sincerely just not the case. Taylor's going to reflect on his time in prison and the choices he made that led him there. We're going to discuss the challenges he faced while incarcerated, the mindset that kept him repeating the same patterns, and after his release he realized the importance of changing his mindset and taking responsibility for his actions. He now lives a life focused on helping others and making a positive impact. Taylor is really going to emphasize the need for we're going to talk a lot about it actually prison reform and the importance of addressing the underlying causes of addiction and criminal behavior. We're going to share a journey of personal growth and the transformation he experienced when he turned his pain into purpose. And thank you for listening today and I hope you hear that one little thing, that stick. And if anyone out there may be struggling, please, please, reach out. You can always reach out to me directly and I'm here to point you in the direction for resources and just peer support on recovery. And thank you again so much for listening.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go ahead and just let Taylor share his story this morning. Hi, taylor, how are you Morning? Very well you. I am doing great this morning. Yes, I'm glad and I am super excited you agreed to do this with me today. I appreciate it. It's a lot when you share your story. To do this with me today, I appreciate it. I know it's a lot when you share your story. It can be so very helpful for others, healing and just anyone who may be struggling knows they're not alone. There's always a way to get from rock bottom to rock solid. There's always hope. So I appreciate you being able to offer that today and just kind of share what you've been through. Well, it's my pleasure, thank you. So I today, and just kind of share what you've been through Well, it's my pleasure, thank you. So I'll let you kind of go ahead and get started Growing up. You know how it was for you growing up, family-wise and kind of what you had to go through.
Speaker 3:Growing up family-wise, my real dad was never really present. Dad came into this family about three years old, so it was always my mom, and my stepdad came into this thing at about three years old, so it was always my mom and my stepdad, and I won't just say that they were good parents, which they were as far as what they wanted to teach me about being a person, but as far as safe, good home that was drug and alcohol free, not at all. It was quite the opposite. It was a lot of chaos all the time.
Speaker 2:That kind of happens in a drug and alcohol home, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:Oh, it always comes with the territory.
Speaker 2:The chaos just seems to follow, no matter how hard everybody tries right.
Speaker 3:That's right, no matter how much the appearance to the outside world may say otherwise. If you stick around a little longer, you'll see the behind closed doors of his look more going.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and you know that's a great point, because you never know someone is going through or what someone's family life is like, because it is behind closed doors, right? So we never know, and when we're young we tend to think it's all normal, right? Everybody goes through the things that we go through until we start getting a little older going. What the heck is that about things that we go through until we start getting a little older going? What the heck is that about? So when you say chaos in the home, what kind of chaos do you mean by that?
Speaker 3:oh, everything that comes with drugs and alcohol. There's always going to be some conflict somewhere. There's going to be obligations not being met. You're going to be fidgeting back feet while the drivers are drunk and chasing drugs, and it's going to be all types of crazy houses with people that you would never want to associate with if you weren't in that lifestyle. Right, police involvement, all these things that can disrupt a normal home.
Speaker 2:So when you were young, Taylor, did you think that was how everybody was doing things?
Speaker 3:Maybe in my early single years, but it doesn't take long to start seeing differences. All you got to do is go to a cousin's house or friend's house or church or anything like. It seems like their relationship, their way of speaking to each other, their way of doing things is completely right, right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And it starts, it gets our mind thinking right, like, are we doing it right? Are they doing it right, are we just different? It just starts that kind of loop in your head, right?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, and that questioning alone, because that comprehension is the understanding of truth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, I'll let you go ahead so.
Speaker 3:I grew up. You know, in the beginning you'll always think that things are normal because your perception, your only understanding of the world is mainly what happens in your home, with your parents. And then, when you start reaching a certain age where you start seeing those differences that aren't so subtle, you start dividing yourself from the rest of the world, that you're having these same experiences that can continue for an entire lifetime. You start learning the secrets about what goes on at home. You start realizing that everything is not open for discussion at school or church or wherever it is that you're going. You start keeping these things, start defending these things and helping them out, without even knowing that you're assisting and enabling it can roll over into adulthood as well.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Those things that we learn in our younger years is what we take with us, and we take them with us in so many different forms.
Speaker 3:Yes, it does. What I realized later in life, looking back at childhood, is that in order to have a relationship with my parents at all, it was either join them or separate from them completely was either join them or separate from them completely, and my choice, which was not the right one, is I wanted to be with my parents, so I started doing what my parents were doing in order to be involved and not be the kid that's told to go outside and play.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay, okay. So you just said you know what I want to be involved here, so I'm just going to be a part of it and that's what's going to make this work.
Speaker 3:Yes, unconsciously, looking back now I see in hindsight, I see that's what I would do.
Speaker 2:Yeah absolutely, and you know that causes us as kids. We learn later what that means. It's called codependency right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. It's not depending on someone. It's making ourselves people-pleased to be in the same space that others are in, whether we know it's right or wrong.
Speaker 3:Right. Or join them and get real good at it, or be left out.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. And that's how we learn to identify ourselves, too, right? So you chose to kind of just hey, we're going to participate, we're going to do what everybody else is doing. So kind of, tell me how that looked.
Speaker 3:It started with being the kid that's standing in a circle of joints. People pass through here and you pass it along so many times before you hit it yourself and then eventually they realize you've been hitting this joint all along and before long they're hitting it too. You hit it. You see that little bit of acceptance. As a kid, I'm standing here with the adult doing what the adults are doing Before long you're doing everything else they're doing too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and as a kid that's a really cool feeling because you're like I'm fitting in with the adults, I'm doing the cool shit, and that's a really good feeling as a kid. So, whether it's your parents have a little different spin or the older folks we associate ourselves with, it is like that. It's just a good feeling when you're a kid, right? Whatever that is about, it just is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, being involved, being accepted Absolutely. And as a kid with older people, you've always got a little bit more room to impress in order to say I'm not this kid, I can handle this 100%. Yeah, and you're beyond your own understanding at that point, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:You just do things to you. Just keep doing things, you don't yeah.
Speaker 3:Take off and handcuff, yeah as well, but there's no way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So keep sharing with me how that unfolds as you're getting older.
Speaker 3:Well, as you get older, you get more and more involved and then, before long, it becomes the scope of your entire world. You don't see that you're doing something that's totally antisocial and that seems like a very common thing within your group of people, but it's a very, very small minority of people in the world that are using drugs and committing crimes on a daily basis. It truly is, and you start thinking that all the world is that way, and then you can become critical and you can think this is all the world, this is all the people, and that's not the truth. You're blinded by this little microcosm that you've chosen for yourself.
Speaker 2:So did you stay living with your parents?
Speaker 3:Well, I think I was around 11 years old, I think at first time there was any kind of intervention done on behalf of kids living in a home. That was wild and reckless. No, I only jumped around from grandparents' homes to friends' homes and all kinds of things after about 11, 12 years old. All kinds of things after about 11, 12 years old.
Speaker 2:Because you had to, like the state said you had to get out of the woman, or because you chose that you need to do something different.
Speaker 3:My nanny, which is my mom, my grandma. I remember speaking to her when I was like 11 years old and I was thinking about my sister that was five years younger and I was already doing some of the things my parents were doing, but I was really realizing that it was outside of my ability to protect myself anyone else. It was getting wild. And I remember speaking to my nanny and passing her if we could come live there. I told her what was going on and she brought us there and that was a very good thing for us. But after about a year and a half of making brief contact with my parents, I started longing to be back with them. So eventually I left and went back to them, and that was full of weird. I left again soon after. Then I jumped around a lot after that.
Speaker 2:And so when you jumped around, you said you lived with friends sometimes. Did you find that your friends were in the same type of households, or did you find something really different?
Speaker 3:Some of them were the exact same type of household and that's why I was able to just walk in and suddenly be a part of that house. They didn't have many standards, but most of them, most of them was me seeking shelter, me seeking safety. So most of the places that I went, even if the friend was my age and their parents were not in bowl, we were still doing things privately.
Speaker 2:But in the home it was not that way figuring out, I've got to do this, that and this and that, to have shelter, to have food, clothes, things, and that's. That's a pretty young age to start fight or flight, right constant oh, absolutely yeah, it started before then.
Speaker 3:Like I remember that I was always waking myself up to an alarm for fifth grade. Get myself ready, get myself there those things I was already taking care. There's a lot of little small things in a home that a child usually doesn't take care of. I get my stuff, but once I left the home and that poor structure, well, as wrong as it may have been, yeah, I was decided upon myself, picked on myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean good for you that you were able to do that. A lot of kids are not. They just stay in it, right. They just stay and go through it and deal with it, and you were able to get out a whole new set of challenges, right, it's a catch-2.
Speaker 3:Either way, you go Well yeah, it was still a challenge for myself. I wouldn't give myself too much credit because I would have those same places that I could go to. I could stay there. I probably would have never had to leave. But by this stage I'm already making wrong decisions and not staying there because they won't condone my life.
Speaker 2:Of course right, because it's not what they know, it's what you knew. Well, I brought that to them. Right, right, no, I completely get that 100%.
Speaker 3:I was willing to escape it, but it was also still such a Well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was in you, it, so it feels such a Well, yeah, it was in you, it's how you grew up. You you hard to shake right.
Speaker 3:Right Plus being stubborn and hard-headed, being a teenager.
Speaker 2:No, can't believe that. So okay, so tell me that how that starts looking for you as a teenager.
Speaker 3:As a teenager I was making decisions that were beyond my true ability, but I was trying to wrestle everything at the state.
Speaker 3:I was trying to support myself by selling drugs while being a consumer, which usually doesn't ever work out very well. I started to realize that the fun and recreation that you have in drugs and alcohol as a child, eventually that wears off and you start seeing the dirt and grit, nastiness and scandalousness of the people. And so you're a 13, 14, 15-year-old kid. Selling to most people that were his wife he's not into my age creates all kinds of complications and they want to treat you like a foolish kid and we're so wrapped up in their own addictions that they become scandalous. And then they have freedom on the line and they start handing away other people to get well, they just want to push you around because you're a kid too, and then you start getting tougher with what you do head before long you're a hard and callous and angry. You think that everyone is scandalous and usually with drugs and alcohol in their system, usually somewhere they are are.
Speaker 2:I feel like you're talking to me right now, taylor, because that was my whole existence of growing up, not with my parents, the life that I chose, honestly, I chose it for both. I wasn't born into it. I didn't grow up that way. I chose that lifestyle somehow, some way, but it was exactly that from about 11 years old on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Regardless of childhood, the theme and what scene is consistent. It is very no matter where you come from. Once you get in, the scene was consistent.
Speaker 2:I just chose to go a different direction. You grew up in it, so there was no choice in that matter for you as a child. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:That is too hard.
Speaker 3:We basically, as humans, only know what is right and what is wrong, instinctively yes what we are given as an example we will imitate as children, absolutely, especially if it comes from your authority thing. But I know those moments, even as a 10, 11 year old kid, when I was grabbing that joint, going to get it. Yep, there was something in my conscience which I later realized was spirit, and it was tingling. It was telling me you're making a bad decision here. As that joint was going to my lip, I knew something was off. Sure, used to do it anyway. You'll fail every time, every time you deny that you do it, you'll fail, and it is about choices.
Speaker 2:It truly is. But just to be fair, I think it is harder when you grow up into it.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely, Absolutely. Those are behaviors. It's hard to shed them and not present them in everything that you do. If that's all you really.
Speaker 2:Right, Absolutely. And you have to be very strong, Like I feel like you were very strong to say you know what, I don't want to live in that and I need to go take care of me. That's being very. That really is knowing what is right and what is wrong and trying to do the right thing. And that's huge, Taylor, really that's huge.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you. Thank you, it was an understanding.
Speaker 2:Yep, understand that too. Understand that too, thank you. Thank you, it was an understanding. It's not recreational fun behavior anymore. Now we're in it, right.
Speaker 3:Yes, Once you're in the mix, it definitely wears off. That's what I was saying. You start seeing who the people are. You start seeing how corrupted their thinking is, behaviors, how it is thought they sell everything that is good in them to be choosing whatever it is that they desire most. And it makes it very difficult to navigate that world when all those people are pointing the wrong direction and they don't do it. It's not fair to the kid. As an adult later on it does not get more fair, but it seems to have more. You have more obligations as adults.
Speaker 2:And you also have more consequences. As an adult, the consequences become greater, they're more severe, absolutely. So you tell me, tell me a little bit about what you started doing yourself, some of the things that were doing, the drug and alcohol and arena that you started doing.
Speaker 3:It was insane. I mean, I was often trying to support myself by selling drugs while using them, but at the same time I was not relying on my parents for financial assistance I've had some from grandparents and other people over the years, most definitely but I was just trying to stay afloat in that world and I was trying to be independent as I could be. I was using marijuana, every hallucinogen you can think of cocaine, other things here and there.
Speaker 2:And does that start the manufacturing process as well?
Speaker 3:The manufacturing process started. There was a family business, if you want to say it that way. It was like Everett Fisk Feeder, and it was a way to guarantee that you know the best product. If you did it exactly, a lot more money can be made of that, and along with it came a lot more risk. We speak about it openly now, but back then it was slow pull. You didn't talk about manufacturing. You didn't talk about who did it or where. Now we speak about it loose, right, right, because it's in the fallacy program. So that's a good thing, that's good, yeah, that's very good.
Speaker 3:What are some of the consequences that that caused for you? That's when it really became work. That's when everything that we were doing all the time was highly illegal and we knew the consequences were heavy. We knew that law authorities all around the area that was their main focus was manufacturing and methamphetamine in Oklahoma, and so they were out for anyone and everyone that they could get. Many of them were involved, and then most of the people that are doing the best and getting caught for little, small amounts. They're too scared that they don't get to be there tomorrow getting high if they're in jail. So they would rather say, hey, he manufactures nuts. I will help you out in catching him to do it if you let me out of this trouble.
Speaker 3:That was always a very serious conflict for me, then it's something I knew I could never do. No matter how in trouble I may have been, it wasn't worth it for me to give up someone else. But it's not the case for everyone else, absolutely it's not. So then you're working to avoid the authorities. You're working to avoid the people who want to knock on your window at three in the morning trying to buy something because they have no scruples. Then you're trying to make sure your parents have stepped up, because before long you get in skinny, your mind's not working right, they're not eating right, you're not sleeping. It starts to become obvious if you don't work at it very hard. So you're fighting to your own appearance and presentation, fighting the authorities, fighting all the tweakers that won't leave you alone. That's what I went completely out of it.
Speaker 2:And completely, 100% out of it. I feel that and you no longer trust anybody. And that becomes so well for me anyway. That becomes so very difficult because you no longer trust anybody. That is a very hard place to be. If that is your lifestyle, you're in it and you start questioning yourself what kind of person am I? This is my surroundings, what I have done, what I have chosen for myself and what the hell Like what kind of person have I become?
Speaker 3:Absolutely the questioning of myself and how far down I have come. Many times, many times, I find myself in a situation where I'm driving a car that's dirtier than it should be, seeing myself 30 pounds skinnier than I should be. There's many moments you go in houses where these kids are denied everything. They're sleeping in their own piss and there's no food in the cabinets. The parents always say bye and I'm sitting there thinking I'm involved in this, I'm contributing to this. These people are high because I showed up and took their last few dollars and those morals in me never left and I was fortunate. There are a couple lifelong friends right now, who they are, that I always could trust, even though we were in that lifestyle, and I still trust today that they were not, of course, and that shred of hope that others were like us out there often kept me going falsely when I should have been realizing that it was an anomaly and that most of these people involved in these things are not that way.
Speaker 3:I don't know. There's conflict of interest. So many times in my life where I was questioning what I was doing in those homes. I don't know how many times I made those people go to a grocery store with me and I bought groceries and brought them back so the kids would have them or help them clean their house. I've she'd talk to them I don't know how many times and change the diapers that were full of kids, that were not mine, and these things get tired. They get left to the wayside because they're just concerned about the drug and that's that's.
Speaker 2:It's really hard to watch that. Well, very hard to watch that and then to question yourself that you're a part of that in some way is hard, that hurts your soul, that breaks your soul, but you're still doing it because that is your way of life and that is your survival. And it's just a rough place to be. It really is, especially if you do have morals and scruples. It doesn't mean that we were bad humans.
Speaker 3:It means we were in a bad situation I don't believe that I was there at my core. A bad person or ever will be yeah, but eventually you stay there long enough and it's going to seep into you and then eventually you're going to just slayer sure, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So tell me how it kind of shaped itself for you. Obviously you did that for how long. How long were you in it to win it, so to speak?
Speaker 3:Oh God, let's correct it from everywhere, from 11 to 28 years old, back and forth, in and out, round and round, led me to several juvenile facilities and then, later on, led me to spending quite a bit of time in prison.
Speaker 2:So, after juvenile facilities, which is no fun, not a fun place to be at all being locked up at all is not a fun place to be but juvenile facilities when you're living the lifestyle that you were living with the older folks and then you're going into the juvenile facilities with the younger folks, it's kind of a weird thing in itself, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3:It is. It is Used to, being used to dealing with an adult as a kid and going around nothing but kids, and that's when you start seeing that your life might have been this way or that way. At home you start hearing a lot of other stories from other people that their lives were the same and many often were the worst circumstances, many of them abused, physically, sexually, every kind of way that you can think of. Yeah, it was quite the transition for me. I definitely would have preferred, I think at that age, outside of safety, being guarded. I would have rather been with adults.
Speaker 2:And it is a very different avenue when you're now with other teams. It's just, it's interesting. But, like you said, you do start seeing really what other people went through poor level and it's just an interesting dynamic. So you get out of the juvenile facilities and what happens? What do you continue or not continue doing?
Speaker 3:I continue going for gusto on the drug world. I sit there and I plot my fate about how I'm going to do it differently next time, what mistakes I've learned from and how I can do it better next time. And this time I'm going to win. That's a lie. Seeking the old, familiar, the comfortable, the what you always know, over trying to forge something new. Right, right, it's a family. Every time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so you get out and you're in it to win it again, doing your thing there's doing seeing, knowing and manufacturing, running all of the things right.
Speaker 3:Digging a giant hole.
Speaker 2:So how does that manifest itself into now going into prison?
Speaker 3:Well, eventually, if you are selling drugs, using drugs on a consistent basis, there are some people you know of for 40 seconds and they never have a problem. But most people eventually are going to have a problem because you're having to deal with other people. You can be the most honest, most moralistic drug dealer in the world, even though that sounds like a misnomer. Your quality can always be correct, your weight can always be correct, you can go up on time, whereas most others do not, and it doesn't matter. Eventually, those people that you deal with are going to have some problems somewhere else. It's going to bleed over into whatever slow little business you're trying to run, and that usually became my biggest issue. I never got both the four drugs, but I definitely was in my speed chase to get rid of drugs, so they didn't get it. I ran roadblocks another time to get rid of drugs, so they wouldn't get it. The other charges were around drugs and people and they're me trying to deal with it myself and all it does is bring consequences.
Speaker 2:Bigger ones, they start getting larger and larger and larger. They compound. They do Absolutely Tell me what it looks like, tell me what happened.
Speaker 3:What happened when?
Speaker 2:First, time to prison? Tell me first time. Yeah, let's start there.
Speaker 3:First time to prison I texas to pick up pharmaceutical aloe vera drink 10 gallons. On the way back I tried to use a restroom when I had 35. I knew that I was back in oklahoma well, 19 years old and I tried to use a restroom at a gas station at like two, three in the morning. She told me it was out of service. I offered her a 20 bill to use the staff restroom that I saw behind the counter. She wouldn't let me use it. I was in the morning. She told me I was out of service. I offered her a $20 bill to use the staff restroom that I saw behind the counter. She wouldn't let me use it.
Speaker 3:I was in the middle of the woods. So I walked down behind the store out into the woods and I'm out there peeing in the woods when someone comes up and grabs my shoulder. I just instinct elbowed back and caught him right through the mouth and Ended up being an off-duty highway patrolman and he was trying to detain me there at the store and I took off and then they sent roadblocks for me. But I ran the roadblocks down, rid of the chemicals, and then later, oh, they got me and that was my first result.
Speaker 2:So he just came up behind you and put his hands on you. He didn't say anything, no, behind you and put his hands on you.
Speaker 3:He didn't say anything. No, it's like 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. I had to walk about 120 yards behind the store. It was all mowed until I come to the tree line. I was at the tree line theater middle of the night. Someone comes up, grabs my shoulder. I just watched Absolutely Everybody's like I'm an off-duty highway patrolman.
Speaker 3:I had been drinking a little bit of beer. I think he smelled it. Back then we didn't have a six-point beer here so I was bringing it back I don't know how many chances are six-point here for people and I drank a couple and that gave him enough Outside of me elbowing him. That gave him enough. He was telling the lady in the store he was off duty. He was telling her to call the police. He thought that I was drunk, drunk, I needed to stay. I'm thinking about the 10 gallons in my car. I told him I'm about staying here. I promise you I'm not staying here. And so I didn't get a. I didn't get a trafficking of illegal chemicals and drugs, anything, um, but I definitely got right into police roadblock, which was enough to fit me. To prove that. Let me look to my juvenile record.
Speaker 2:Okay and so how long was the first time, how long were you there?
Speaker 3:the first because I was 19 years old. They gave me a 120-day RID center which is for youthful offenders to go to, but because of my juvenile charges they included those in my security points and so when Lexington a central reception views what facility I can go to, I have too many points to qualify to go to RID because it's at a minimum facility. So I went to Granite behind the walls for my 120th and at the time I think Granite was probably the toughest prison in the state for me. It was going down there. So I went down 120 days of fast-setting, patient on how to do it well and to not have any fear of having to do it again. So I left and did everything the same.
Speaker 2:So continued the lifestyle, doing everything the same, still running, still manufacturing, still going across state lines. And that's where it starts getting really tricky. You know, it's always two or three in the morning, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, why do we choose those hours?
Speaker 2:I don't know. It's like I don't know why that is. I think probably things in the morning right. Yeah, why do we choose those hours? I don't know. It's like I don't know why that is. I think probably things in the daylight might work out better.
Speaker 3:We're trying to conceal our actions in the dark.
Speaker 2:Yes, but it doesn't you know what I mean when I say things in the daylight.
Speaker 3:Absolutely not. It makes me stand out when I'm driving down the street at 3 am, I think a police officer is more likely to look at me than if it was creepy.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, and I don't know what the sort of thinking. Yeah, it truly is, and I can laugh about it. Now. Why is it always territory in the morning.
Speaker 3:Well, for best interest might as well the little bar sit down at 2 o'clock. Police get active.
Speaker 2:Yes, no reason to be Any part of that. I want no part of that anymore.
Speaker 3:No no.
Speaker 2:So okay, so you are doing the same thing. Obviously something happens again, right, because we continue the same lifestyle and now we have that. And that, I think, is something people don't understand, and maybe juveniles especially don't understand that what you do as a juvenile, even though you think it doesn't matter absolutely 100%, will follow you, absolutely. The funny thing in school they talked about your permanent record, right, and you laughed about it. We used to laugh about your permanent record, but as a juvenile offender it now is a permanent record.
Speaker 3:So it's most definitely accessible. It can be used against you, and so the thing that can be used against you at a point system to some purity level yes you go to as an inmate, it will disqualify, and you disqualify you from enhanced credits, which is it for days that you get?
Speaker 3:yeah, you qualify. I have an assault with a deadly weapon when I was 14 years old by a 37 year old man. When I'm 19 years old, I go to men's prison and they're telling me that I can't receive enhanced credits because I've had a violent charge in my history even though I was 14 years old. So I've never received a man's credit serum in prison because of my juvenile charge.
Speaker 2:So that's very important, I think, for people to understand, because I do believe that a lot of teenagers think what they do as a teen doesn't matter.
Speaker 3:It most definitely matters If you want to keep living that lifestyle. Eventually it's going to cost you down the road again.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You know, you hear that little. You're not 18 yet. You're not 18 yet. Just wait till you're 18.
Speaker 3:That was the motivation behind most of my drug trafficking as a teenager was that it was going to be a slap on the wrist and save my parents a big trouble.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, which turns out not to be the case.
Speaker 3:No they stayed free. I went to jail.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I think that's huge, because I do want teenagers to understand that what you're doing now and what you're doing today can have a severe effect on your life and your lifestyle and what you do later.
Speaker 3:You can't comprehend the scope of that as a young child, as a teenager. They need to start understanding that later on in life it's still that way. Every single thing we do, every though comes out.
Speaker 2:It does. It's a snowball, it keeps going and keeps going, and if you're going to continue that lifestyle, I promise it all follows you.
Speaker 3:So does it.
Speaker 2:Including the people. You know what I mean. Including the people follows, it just all follows. So you end up you get arrested again After getting out of prison the first time. Yeah, how long in between.
Speaker 3:Oh, I was very old. By averages, I averaged about four months free every time before I would hit it back. It did not take me long. Well, I always hit the. I hit the ground running with full force. It's like I was never gone. It always accelerated past the point that I left.
Speaker 2:And do you think that's because you're sitting around thinking of better ways to do it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you start getting frustrated by failures and you start going bigger. It's also thinking that somehow you can change the way it all works by changing a few things about yourself. It's going to consume you eventually, no matter what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Four months goes by, you'll get caught again. For what?
Speaker 3:I'm. I had 10 pounds of marijuana on the backseat travel oil bag that I was partying and I'm doing what I wanted with, with all kinds of things that are, and I was trading the weed for some ecstasy, heading to norman to trade it. And then the solid black what was the drug? Tap work called to r black. What was it? I had a really fast vehicle at the time and I decided not to stop. Eventually, after about 45 minutes in the car being chased, channel 5's helicopter was over Me and Phil had done, and roughly 30 minutes later, after still running, I jumped out of the vehicle and ran for another three hours for the wood to the wood before they caught me oh, my goodness, was that?
Speaker 3:oh, regis, in my mind it was just fantastic, they didn't catch me with all those drugs. I beat them again, but it was still enough to go to perfect again yeah, and so was that vehicle in your name.
Speaker 2:It was so they knew it was your vehicle. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, at the time, the way that this solid black cop car whipped around on me, I knew that they were looking for me anywhere, so I didn't want it to matter. But I was also thinking, if they don't know that it's me, I don't know that they're actually seeing my town to a point. Then, eventually, we were all over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So then what was your charge that time?
Speaker 3:Illuding while endangering others, and, two-step, I crossed the line a few times, all the different agencies that were after me. It was a volunteer firefighter in camo, with his face camoed out, that caught me. He's the one that got me what everyone else couldn't. He was a. He was a steel pusher in the office.
Speaker 2:That's. That's interesting for sure. So that time you go in that time I got a package to this. Okay, and how much of that did you have to do? Because you didn't get good time credits.
Speaker 3:you're saying, well, I don't earn credits. I did not get the extra 15 about that people were getting for the heat. Because I was a little bit foolish. I went into prison and started seeing how you could have packages brought up, brought in. I started selling drugs there, also trying to make my lifestyle, my living quarters, more comfortable, I guess you could say. But I also just wanted to keep doing the same thing that I've always done before. I mean, it took me I'd say it was close to four years- Okay, so you did most of that time.
Speaker 3:Which, well foolish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, so you get out, and when you get out. So now you've done roughly quite a bit of time as you're pretty young, so when you get out. So when you get out, where are you going, what are you doing? What?
Speaker 3:I'm not taking people in places. I know that I was going back to the same place. I was going back to shawnee, which are holy rivet now will never live in again. Yeah, no, it was usually the the same places that I could go get whatever I wanted up front. I mean, when the manufacturing started slowing down, the ice was coming For Mextel and other people, we made an isolator Well, it was actually making it years ago. I'm using it as a substitute in our refrigerator, but the ice came real cheap and the Mexican connections and all that made it really easy, and so it was nothing for me to step out of prison, go to South Idaho, go to the city, get a pound fronted to me and then off again I went.
Speaker 2:So where do you live? Where do you live when you get out? I don't need names of people that you live with, just. Are you going to live with people, or are you getting your own place, or are you just here?
Speaker 3:and there, Well, four trips to prison, four times getting out. It was a little different every time. The first three times getting out it was a little different every time. The first three times getting it was mainly going with whoever had a place for me to go and then a week or two of doing what I did, and usually I had some other place. I wasn't there long, it was a jumping off point, Not going to places that I needed to be going. That would be conducive to a new lifestyle that would get me out of prison or drugs. Not at all. I was going to where people would approve of what I was choosing to do.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, and that was a conscious choice, obviously.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Totally on me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally conscious choice at that moment. Obviously, you knew your lifestyle, you knew the consequences, you knew what came of that, you knew what the people were like.
Speaker 2:So at this point, you're just choosing this lifestyle. Yeah, I'm thinking that I can mold them into the shape that I want to be in, do you? So? This is interesting because we keep doing the same things over and over. Right which is the definition of insanity and expecting a different result. Were you expecting a different result or were you just thinking I'm going to try to do it better, I'm going to win? Eventually? I'm going to friggin win. Like what is that? Yeah, well, eventually going to try to do it better, I'm going to win.
Speaker 3:Eventually, I'm going to frigging win. Like what is that in? Well, eventually going to win is ethical, you give yourself, but that hingling, that instinct, that spirit move that I was talking about earlier, it's always right there in the very center of telling me no, you're being foolish, no, this is going to end badly. Why are you choosing to do this? And tell yourself I know better than you do is it?
Speaker 2:is it ego? Is it pride? What is it that you just think? I want to win this, like I have to conquer it, I need to win this, and what is it you're really winning, like? What is it all prize?
Speaker 3:yeah what's the thing? Yeah, our perceptions are completely off about those things. I think it's all of that most definitely. There's some pride there. There's some. I've set out to do this. I've thought up until the times that I was in trouble for this. I was doing really well at it. I feel like I'm doing it better than they, I feel like you could lie on me, and then it's also familiar and comfortable. It's not wanting to strive for growth, to flex yourself in new areas. It's like I'm just going to go back to old area to do what I already know, but do it back right.
Speaker 2:There's no growth yeah, yeah, but at the time, yeah, at the time you think I'm gonna do it better.
Speaker 3:So I am growing right, I'm gonna do it, but I am from that point I will go on to live a good lifestyle once I decide I'm done and that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:There is no end game. There's no end game there. We're fooling ourselves. We're fooling ourselves to think that there's an end game because when you're in it, that's our person, yes, that's it. That's the end game. There's no other end game to that. People places and things stay the same. What do you expect? How do you expect the end to change, right?
Speaker 3:Or you're a beat-down old man living off disability and spending it all on drugs and just spiraling down until you see a lot of those things. That's a good point too. They're rare and we're lucky to even get to that.
Speaker 2:Any way you look at that, it's not a good place to be right. No, it's gross, it's definitely. It's embarrassing it, but in it, but it. But it's fact, it's factual and it's it's what happens sometimes. And it's not who we are. It's a situation that we put ourselves in, but it's not who we are right, it's it's who we are as long as we choose to be there fine, yeah, at the time. But you you've said it many times throughout us talking You've said in my soul, in my gut, I knew.
Speaker 3:Let me clarify. Let me clarify what it really is is Holy Spirit. In my opinion, that's the way it's been in my life. People want to call it conscience, or they want to call it instinct, or they want to call it the universe, and those things work, but for me it's Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:So when you were in prison, were you doing anything to change your mindset? Were you doing anything growth-wise? Were you taking any classes? Were you participating in any church activities? Were you doing any of those things?
Speaker 3:The first three times I would toy with it, but I was not committed. Okay, okay, my last time in prison. My last time in prison was the longest sentence. I ended up on the 25-year sentence. I went in angry and mad about it, pressed and in the first couple of years used drugs and then I found myself in a situation that landed me in a maximum security facility and I was told that I would. So I just I was about a year and a half away from getting out of time when I got in that trouble and when I got there they told me that because of the type of misconduct that I had which was battery-owned, so I put injury that would never fall off of me for that incarceration that I would never get past level two, so I would never really get all the good days I was getting. Before I extended my sentence from a year and a half to five years and they told me that with that type of misconduct I could not leave that facility. I would sit every day in that maximum security for the next five years, day for day.
Speaker 3:When I get that point, I was just frustrated by everything. I was out of energy. I was realizing that I continued to repeat the same patterns and dug my hole deeper every time and I got really depressed I'm about to say I don't know that at myself and started praying to god, which I hadn't done much of until then, and I realized that everything that I tried to do to control situations were supposed to be the way that I wanted to mold them, to manhandle them. All those efforts were in vain and the prayer was I cannot do this. I realized that no matter what I do in my own ability and effort, I'm not succeeding. I braided a rope, I put it on the vent on the ceiling. I was practicing my jump from the top bunk because I wanted my neck to step quickly rather than be strangled slowly, and I prayed that prayer and I cried and I think that I was so distraught that I fell asleep Because I woke up to the case manager the very next morning beating on my door, came up there, made a special trip to let me know that policy that MDLC had been the same for nearly 30 years had just toned due to overpopulation and the prisons, and that no longer with my type of misconduct would I be held to level two but I could work my way back up to the highest level, which was four, I would get all my days back.
Speaker 3:And now they were going to be giving what they called good for the men. They were going to give them an extra 15 days a month if they looked, 30 days or longer without a misconduct. So, and he also told me he's like you cannot leave this facility with this misconduct. This facility has a medium security facility attached to it, and he said I want you to sign your packet right now.
Speaker 3:It was the very next morning I ended up being able to get my days back. Not only was I getting the same amount of days per month back, that I had before, but I was getting an extra 15 that I had never received before, and I was not going to spend my time a couple of five years in the maximum security facility. And so it was two weeks later, five years in the maximum security facility, and so it was two weeks later I was at a medium security facility, and that changed my life. I knew that, my heart, my spirit, my prayer, that being that close to suicide.
Speaker 3:The very next morning everything changed completely, and so when I went to that medium security facility, I took every single class that they had available to me, and then I started teaching these classes for the case managers so that they wouldn't have to do it. And while I'm doing all this, I'm also tutoring in Bowtech. I'm tutoring GED guys which I've done for years and working in the library which was the best college facility by far and helping people get college grants to go to college, and it was available to them. I was helping them get and I was able to do a lot of good, a lot of good for a lot of people in prison. Before I got A lot of good, a lot of good, a lot of people were in prison before I got.
Speaker 2:How did that feel to go from? For a minute you were hopeless, right. For a minute you lost hope. And then you did. You did step one without even probably knowing you were due step one. You admitted you're powerless, right, that's really step one. Our lives have become unmanageable and you're asking for help now. Ok, right, and it changed for you. And so when you change that in your spirit and you go from being the person that is in it to win it to the person that, hey, you know what? I'm not going to continue this. I need some help and I'm going to start helping others, what does that shift feel like for you?
Speaker 3:some help and I'm going to start helping others. What does that shift feel like for you? That shift, it's the shift that can take you from being self-consumed to realizing that by helping others, you really get the things that you want. Every time that I was focused on myself and wanting things my way, I usually didn't get it, but when I started to reach out to other people, I started seeing that there was rewarding to help them, and they helped me in numerous places that I could have never self-developed Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So that just that you know and that's actually the last step is actually to you know, carry the messages, practice the principles and start acts of service right, start helping others and you started doing that and you see the benefits of what that does for you. When you're so, when you're consumed with helping others instead of consumed with yourself, being in it to win it, it changes the whole perspective. It just changes things in such a way your whole spirit shifts.
Speaker 3:Yes, it does, yes, it does, it can drive you.
Speaker 3:Over the years people will give me classes, and even to gray gray old streets. I have people look to me that I don't recognize them. I don't know their name, but they're like, hey, you're that guy that helped me get my GEDs, or hey, I remember you used to teach thinking for a 10th class. You said this one thing always stuck with me, it helped me and those things are so rewarding. Oh, I love that. I don't even recall doing Somewhere. Somehow I made some impression on them and that makes it all worthwhile. It really does.
Speaker 2:Absolutely does. You did that. One little thing that sticks and sometimes that's all that people need is the one little thing that sticks, and you don't always know what that's going to be, right.
Speaker 3:For the 2,000 of them that came through the class that I had to get on to. Constantly they had seemed to have no concern whatsoever. That one person that comes up to you is like. All of that is worth it.
Speaker 2:Totally, totally so. Your last charge, you said your sentence was 25 years, mm-hmm. And what was that charge? What was that?
Speaker 3:Two assaults with a dangerous slip.
Speaker 2:Okay, was that assault on an officer or was that assault on a person?
Speaker 3:no-transcript there was a time I thought otherwise, but now I know that it was.
Speaker 2:It was all too different okay, and that's just kind of the consequences of the world that you're living in yes, I was pushing way too hard and I was trying to control too many things.
Speaker 3:That, yeah, I was. I dealt too harshly with situation well, because you're the.
Speaker 2:You're the one that thinks, you're the only one that can control anything right. I'm the only one. Make this happen the way I need it to happen.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Because that's just where you're at at the time. So you have that sentence. Things turn around a little bit for you because when you're it's something else people don't understand. When you're in prison and you have a sentence that may be lifetime or that may be the possibility of no parole, and somebody comes in and starts telling you this is going to be your life and you don't have any chance for change and you don't have any chance for hope and you don't have anything to look forward to, that's not a real good mind frame. To put somebody in right, oh, no, no, and that needs to not happen anymore. That that needs to not be the way that we deal with society. We all can change, we all can grow and we all need to have some empathy and some sympathy for what people went through in their lives, because you don't know what you don't know and you don't know someone unless you've walked in their shoes. And pretending that you do, or assuming that you do, is just it's judgmental, it's egotistical, it's completely it's very judgmental.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to get on my soapbox, but It'll break down the way that you could have had to relate to them.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, and so you know part of this. You and I have been talking a little bit about prison reform, prison fellowship, going back inside, trying to change some things, trying to do some things differently, because we know what those type of things being said to someone can do with your mind. And if you have no hope and you lose hope, whether you're locked up or not locked up, that's when things spiral. That is when the spiral happens and you start. Your mind starts telling yourself. Whether you're telling yourself or start. Your mind starts telling yourself, whether you're telling yourself or not. Your subconscious starts saying what do I have to lose? What do I have to lose? Who cares what I do? I have nothing to lose. That is definitely not somewhere you want a criminal to be. No, they're at their most dangerous zone, freaking lootly, and so I think the understanding of that is lost. I think we're trying, we try so hard to fight addiction, but we're not trying to fight what causes addiction, but it always seems to work.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, and I think just maybe you know I'm doing that trauma reboot, recovery, and I think reboot is an excellent choice of words to use for that Rebooting the system of changing our thought, because let's be freaking real, how long has the war on drugs been?
Speaker 3:We're not going to change it right, the war on drugs, we're not changing that Just because you mentioned the drugs funded the war Exactly, and that's what the war on drugs Exactly so.
Speaker 2:That's, let's be clear, that's not going to shift. So what if we just take a minute to say what is causing that, that people want to be so addicted and so numb and so messed that they don't want to deal with life? How about if we try to go backwards and start at the beginning and start there and that's why I have you share your childhood and kind of what? What shapes us is what shapes us Right and kind of what shapes us is what shapes us right. That's true and sometimes and I cried it, you know I said you don't have a choice.
Speaker 2:Like you said, we always have a choice, but when you're a child and you're a small child, you don't even know any better. You don't know any difference. You don't know any better. You think everybody's lives is like that. Somebody that's being abused, whether it's sexually, mentally, physically, whatever it may be. They think that that's how the world lives. So they don't really know at that young, young age. So if we're going backwards and trying to heal some of that, we might have a choice at chipping away addiction.
Speaker 3:I firmly agree the cause behind the result is more important than the result Usually, unless it's one of those rare occasions where it turns out to be some miracle result. But I know that it's a little controversial, but I'm a firm believer that, yes, your childhood you do not have much control or power and you're shook by what's around you. That has been taught. There is a certain age that's different for everyone else. In their level of maturity, though, that you get to choice for them, and then, from that point on, it is their responsibility. I too often hear people looking back and not giving reasons and giving excuses Absolutely. I could list all kinds of excuses, reasons, whatever you want to say. I know that point where the team started to occur, and I consciously denied it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So and that's where the choice starts right, the responsibility. The whole premise of the podcast is breakfast of choices. We wake up every single day with a chance to make a change, every single one of us. Yes, ma'am, I'm not saying that some people's circumstances aren't harsher than others. Please, everyone understand, I'm not being judgmental. I'm not saying that things can't be harder for others than some, and that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying there comes a time in your life where you start making those choices and you know when that time is. Everybody does that, you can that. The lead's up and song right the road. You can choose the path and take the one, you go down right, and we make that choice and we can go right, we can go left right, and that's what we're trying to change and that's what we're trying to say.
Speaker 2:We all do things in our lives, whether we admit, don't admit. We all have skeletons in our closet. We all have things in our lives that we're not proud of, we're not happy about, we wish maybe didn't happen or we could change. But it is what shapes us, it is what makes us who we are. So, you know, instead of changing it, let's just do better. Right, when we know better, we do better. Right, let's not fall back on the excuses for your life or child. Right, we can all do better if we want to, we can. And there's many things out there that we can use, many tools that we can use to heal ourselves, to help heal ourselves, to change ourselves, to change our direction, change our playground, to change our places, to change our things.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying it's easy. It's not always easy, but it's possible. Right, we can do hard things. It's not always easy, but it's possible. Right, we can do hard things, it's possible. So you do your. What I'm assuming is your last sentence. I shouldn't assume, but that longest sentence, I believe, was your last sentence In my first statement. Yes, ma'am, okay, I'll speak it into existence with you. My line there you go, okay. So when you got out that time, obviously your mindset was different. You changed some things. You started looking within and saying, hey, I'm not in anything to win it, there's no end game to what I was doing. What's my new game going to look like? What am I going to do when I get out? So what does that look like?
Speaker 3:That is Lord. I turn it all over to you. I'm following your path you show me Most definitely not perfect. You'll still hear me shake passwords here and you'll see me drink alcohol from time to time. But what it is, it's a relationship with God, it's an understanding of how that spirit works and moves through me, where it can put me in the right place to say the right things to the right people, to where I'm producing good. And whereas I was coming in and I was tainting everyone's world with drugs that I would bring them, or my mindset, behavior, my attitude, my aggressiveness all those things aren't present anymore in my interactions without a reform. That's a relief. It makes my life easier and hopefully it'll extend the lives of those around me. It's your turn, 100% 100%.
Speaker 2:So you got out. Did you have to go to a halfway house or anything like that, or were you able to get right out?
Speaker 3:I went to a sober living place Okay, in my opinion, I went to the best one in the state, the Mandrill Bronson, and he's an absolute saint If any man in this world has been, and I did really well there. My wife was correct. Eventually I did not finish my minimum of one year that they recommend. After about four months I ran into a lifelong one-and-all girlfriend and decided to go stay with her. It complicated things a little bit.
Speaker 2:I could stay where I was, but since leaving her life had been much better, so after you did that, you left her did you get a place of your own?
Speaker 3:I did. I had a place in oklahoma city.
Speaker 2:A friend of mine had an apartment available immediately and she yeah so once you got off on your own, like truly on your own, right you weren't staying with anyone, you were wrapped up in anybody else's games, right? You were truly staying on your own. How did that affect you? How does that change your mindset? In having that time to be, you know people say you're in prison, you have so much time I'm not even going to go into that, but your mindset is very different. So when you get out and you're truly alone, and now you're thinking through your life and you have an apartment and a space of all your own and you can breathe, what does that feel like?
Speaker 3:That's total release. That's freedom. You start feeling it too. You're like I can make any decision I want about my life and that's the way it will go. Well, there's no one else making the decision for me. Half my attention is not being devoted to. Is this person that's here with me happy? You can start looking at what makes you happy. It also gives you a lot of time for reflecting. There's fear and doubt that will creep in in those moments too, like here you are sitting all alone. Is this your life forever now?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And eventually you start seeing that you can fake your belly, you can show your tomorrow and you start doing things about it because you're not sitting all the time focusing on someone else, about an advocate for single people who seem single. But you can be very single as long as it takes to make you available, to truly be a partner in our lives. 100%, 100%, 100%. I think that God intends for man and woman to come together and not be apart. Let's say, if they wish to come together, eventually be as one. But you should be one individual in communication with him for as long as it takes to make you available to someone else in the way that you should be.
Speaker 2:So my thought on that is you have to learn to first love yourself. So once you can't love someone else, you can't give love, you can't receive love correctly until you learn to love yourself first.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:However long that takes is what it takes, right. However, you have to get through whatever you got to get through. That's how long it takes, and it's different for everybody. It's different for everybody. Some people need more time alone. Some people need more space. Some people need whatever it is they need. Right, and it's okay because everybody's different. What is it like for you now?
Speaker 3:for me now I enjoy, I love life. I'm rekindling relationships from building. Where you tear down beautiful, I'm building her down. I love that I burned bridges but I thought would never be erected again they and they're better than they've ever been. That's right. There are some people that you can never change their perspective on life. No matter what you do you just have to accept that that's not your fault any longer?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's okay, go on Me. I'm blessed everywhere, that I go all the time. I'm not going to say that life is simple or easy. There are still complications in life, but I'm not adding to them at all. I'm not causing them to calm down due to my actions. Any problems that come to me now, that's just life and it's me having to deal with it.
Speaker 3:I see the blessings in big ways and I see the blessings in a full way, but small ways are just unavailable now. Whereas people may have yearned to be able to seek to me or have me come running to their rescue, or maybe just come and sit with them, or maybe go to a football game or whatever we do, I have that ability and freedom now and I see how my presence and my availability enhances the lives of others. Conversely, there were times when certain people didn't want me near their home. They had no need to speak to me because I'd offended them or done something wrong in some way. Now I get to be a blessing to others and it's because of the way that I'm living, unfortunately. I'm blessed and I love Ray Tums. I'm driving down the road and I start thinking about how good things are and I start thinking I did this and I should be proud of myself. And I have to strip myself out and say Lord, thank you, you provided this to me. I chose correctly, you provided.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. That's so true. We have to be grateful every single day and live in that gratitude and realize that things could be completely different.
Speaker 3:Understand that your ability. If you have a mindset like mine, that your abilities are God-given and that there is one source, then you better give credit back to that source or you're going to lack the humility you need to go to the next level.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. You're obviously very well-spoken, very articulate, very intelligent. That comes off. If anybody meets you, hears you speak, that comes off.
Speaker 3:I think that's even video, to say the most.
Speaker 2:But looking back, you were using all those God given blessings and abilities for evil instead of for good right.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And a lot of people do that. And what people, the average person, doesn't realize is just because you're in that lifestyle doesn't mean you don't have all those God-given abilities. You're just using them. We all have the choice, right. We have the choice of good, evil, good, bad, devil, angel, whatever you want to call it. We all have that choice and sometimes we just use them incorrectly. Once we can figure out how to make that turn and make that step and change that mindset and use those abilities for good, it's amazing what can happen Absolutely freaking amazing.
Speaker 3:It is. If you have the slightest bit of intelligence, you have charisma, if you're able to relate to people, if you have a sense of humor, if your appearance is good, you can pass as a non-drug addict, while you're a drug addict for a very long time and my appearance was always good, you know, and I could speak well, so I could fool people. And then you become a master manipulator.
Speaker 3:I was going to say you're presenting an image that is not the truth, and you get good at that too, and one thing is that everything that I'm doing now is we're all on the surface. The truth and genuine doesn't blow up in my face, because it's true a lot, yeah that certainly changes.
Speaker 2:It makes living a little bit easier because you're genuine, you're, you're living authentically for real and you don't have to cover any track. You don't have to do any of those things anymore and there's a freedom to that in itself absolutely no falsives that are going to creep up and reveal you right, which is which is lovely it's it's lovely living out loud yeah, that feels good when you wake up in the morning, right, so we never talked about how did you do in school?
Speaker 2:I always did really well in school you were probably a lot like I was. You could go and you could pass a test and not not even go the next day and be fine.
Speaker 3:You go the next week and you pass a test and you're like, I got this it was, it was, it was for me, yeah, yeah, yeah, I would finish for of the lily they usually put it on. I think it's second or third grade, but finishing a text of the lily and going and getting a dictionary off to the field and reading the dictionary and getting it from the people, I got sent to the principal's office because I was reading a dictionary during test times. Oh wow, and all the little upsets, like you know, if it's a test time, how do you score. So he went and got a dictionary and set that down while quietly reading, but we were told to discourage the other kids by and I'll just say it more quietly oh wow, reading the dictionary and discourage it. Yeah, and that was a challenge. But before long my part of the work was done in the right place, involved in drugs and all the church people around. Yeah, 100% 100%.
Speaker 2:That's why I wanted to kind of go back and revisit that, because obviously you're very intelligent. The schoolwork wasn't an issue. We do that to ourselves, we decide that it's not worth our time. Right, we go a different direction. You know, again, all of that does follow you right. Our the stuff that we do in our teen years, it all does add up. Even even when we can't see that when we're teens, it all does for us because, because, of how I was living and choices that I was making.
Speaker 3:I turned my education into the fourth yearfair portion. So I was seeing, because I was trying to circumvent any kind of legal interactions or problems at school because of the cost of doing something legal, and so they had the kind of patient to be and try to discipline me more, and I found out the fact that their first goal was to be able to educate complicating the job by making it a very authoritarian thing to do. Well, we don educate complicating the job by making them need to be in voluntary time. Well, we don't. We don't make it to their job because you're here.
Speaker 2:You saying that, is you really looking back and taking accountability for your actions? That's huge. And realizing that I had a big part, that I played in that and how I looked at it, that's huge. Back then, they're all out to kick shit, I do.
Speaker 3:good, fine, do that. They don't want to educate me and I wasn't like I didn't do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you didn't get educated, is really what the truth was. Well, I was, you're right. Well, yeah, you were educated, just in a different direction. Gosh Taylor, I really appreciate you doing this with me today. You have a lot of great words of wisdom. You've been through a lot. You don't come off. Let me try to choose my words a little bit better here. Again, you're very intelligent, very articulate and you're just living in a genuine way. Now You're still the same person. You're still the same person. You're just using all of those things for good. That's really the difference. You have changed your mindset and changed your growth to use all of those same things that you've always done, but you're using it now for good.
Speaker 3:I really agree.
Speaker 2:And that's beautiful. That's beautiful. You turned your pain into purpose. Love that and I you know I haven't talked about this a whole lot yet on the podcast about the nonprofit being created, and thank you for agreeing to be involved in that with me. My pleasure Looking forward to it, I am too, and the whole fellowship and all of that. I'm going to see what I can do to get you kind of involved in that as well. If you still want to do that, oh, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Like I said, my pleasure no-transcript. They can be supposed to love you directly sometimes, hopefully sometimes later to be loved and they can go. You're really good yeah.
Speaker 2:And you mean well, coming in with an agenda. You're confident. Yes, true, true, genuine wanting. It's a calling that can't be denied. Absolutely Calling on wanting to change the trajectory of people's lives.
Speaker 3:You put my hand in the plow, you know.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love that so much. Well, thank you so much for sharing today, and I'm glad to see that things are going in the right direction for you. You seem to be happy, you seem to enjoy life, and that's really good to see. It came very locally.
Speaker 3:It's an honor to be there. I appreciate you providing support for it to be followed.
Speaker 2:I hope that it has someone like us here. The one little thing that sticks today I truly do let's not reach out. So anyone out there is struggling, please reach out. Always reach out to myself, Reach out. I have all of the numbers listed on the notes. There's NA, there's AA, there's suicide awareness, there's domestic violence crisis line All of those numbers are listed. So if anybody does need to talk about anything, please reach and we're here, Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Joan.
Speaker 1:I am so grateful that you joined me for this week's episode of Breakfast of Choices. If you're enjoying this podcast, please subscribe, give it five stars and share it to help others find hope and encouragement. The opposite of addiction is connection, and we are all in this together. Telling your transformational story can also be an incredible form of healing, so if you would like to share it, I would love to hear it. You can also follow me on social media. I'm your host, jo Summers, and I can't wait to bring you another story next week. Stay with me for more Transformational Thursdays.
