Speaker 1: 0:31

Welcome back to that's Delivered. I'm your host, truckin' Ray, and today's guest. His story is going to stay with you long after this episode ends. Her name is Janie Burt. She's a mom, a scholar, an author and a fierce advocate for criminal justice reform. But years ago she was 95 pounds addicted to heroin, crack and in and out of prison, stuck in a cycle that she thought she never would escape. Today she's the founder of OUT Overhaul, Unrelentingly Transfiguration, helping other justice-involved individuals rewrite their story. This episode is for anyone who's ever felt stuck, for anyone who's tried to change but got knocked down, for anyone who needs to hear. It's not too late, jenny. Welcome to the show. Jenny, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show. I'm so excited to tell your story and let everyone know how are you doing today. I'm good. I'm good. How are you? You so much for taking the time to be on the show. I'm so excited to tell your story and let everyone know how are you doing today.

Speaker 2: 1:27

I'm good. I'm good, how are you? Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:31

I'm doing well, staying busy, as always, like you yourself. You know that one is a challenge. Yeah, just so people know who you are, just kind of start from the beginning from prison to purpose the beginning. You know, beginning, uh, from prison to purpose the beginning. You know, um, it didn't always start like that. I'm sure there was a story you'd like to share. Uh, deep within the human, uh, you know, the body, there's many things that can come from, from challenges, from struggles, and we've all hit rock bottom. But what do we do? Uh, what's next? You know, you know, I just wanted to see how do we uh pick ourselves up to where you are, like you're saying you're a Truman Scholar. There's many things that happen. Want to tell us about it.

Speaker 2: 2:13

Sure, yeah, I mean, that's a lot of stuff. In the beginning, I was born and raised into an addict. Family Didn't realize it, despite my intentions to do something very different. I was academically excelling at a very young age, but my environment overrode all of the things that I expected that I was going to do in my life and it led me to a life I really never imagined I would participate in, which I became the best at what I could do in that life and it awarded me a significant felony history and multiple times in prison. So I failed myself and all of my dreams.

Speaker 2: 2:55

However, I would argue that none of it was really a failure. It equipped me to do some really intentional work in the world that we're in today and, as anybody knows, our entire country is immersed in addiction and destruction and social services and homelessness and insanity and my life experience really equipped me to address a lot of those problems from a lived experience perspective. And part of the thing with the education is I knew that I was really interested in doing more than just working on the firing lines with individuals. I believe that solutions which were not taking place and still really aren't taking place needed to be enacted on a policy level from a person with lived experience, and so that's really the journey that I embarked on, and so, as a woman in my mid-40s, I made the decision to go to school.

Speaker 2: 3:53

I graduated with my bachelor's degree as a Martin Honors Scholar and a Truman Scholar at the University of Washington back in 2021. I was slated to go to the fourth top to number four in the country policy school, which was the Evans School for Public Policy and Governance, but I deferred my master's degree because I was recruited by a company down in San Diego, where I gained a little more information, and then I realized that I didn't want to work for anybody else. I didn't want to push anybody else's agenda, because every time I functioned under somebody else's agenda, I felt like I was killing my people. So here we are today, a whole lot of years later, and um, and I'm doing some really intentional stuff, but none of it's been without challenge, but my life prepared me for that. Nice. In a nutshell, that's the elevator pitch.

Speaker 1: 4:49

Yeah, that's quite accomplishments that you had and, like you say, academically, many people don't know the pressures of that If you're excelling at something and you don't know how your body responds to that until you're in those situations.

Speaker 2: 5:12

True, true, true. Well, and you know the thing is is, um, so over the course of my life I've experienced all kinds of stuff. You know if you could imagine sort of the life of a major addict, and you've seen my side by sides, and so you know, and I say it costs a lot of money to look the way that I did in that red jumpsuit, and there's a whole lot of stuff that's involved with getting to a place where you know you go from looking like a normal human being to looking like a 90-year-old Auschwitz victim, and you know there's a lifestyle that's involved with all of that, and a lot of it requires victimizing other people. It requires abandoning the people that care about you most, other people. It requires abandoning the people that care about you most, and it requires you know alternative sort of methods to get the money that's necessary to maintain that high, because once you're in a relationship, an intimate relationship with drugs, it's almost impossible to walk away from that sometimes.

Speaker 2: 5:59

And so, um, you know my life, um, I people would consider it traumatic. I don't like the word trauma. I think it's highly overused, like I don't like the word healing. I think that's highly overused as well. I think a lot of people fall into the sort of sticky, gooey, comfortable place of those words and I don't have a lot of time for it. Long time and I don't have a lot of time for it. But um, I, I really believe that the insanity and the violence that occurred in my life over a long period of time prepared me to do really hard things, and so my life is not easy today. It is not easy, it's a wonderful life and but it requires really really hard work every single day and and I believe that I've been training to continue to do that work the past 52 years- yeah, speaking of hard work, I'm just kind of zero in on some of the past experiences.

Speaker 1: 6:54

you know weighing 95 pounds and you're looking at the side-by-side picture. That does bring a lot of thoughts to me. What goes through your mind? What keeps you going, being stuck in a cycle where you want to get out of it? Um, what kept you going in those moments instead of just giving up?

Speaker 2: 7:12

Yeah, well, it's interesting. Um, I wanted to give up a lot of times. Um, I have had been shot, I've been stabbed, uh, I've attempted suicide multiple times and my higher power did not see fit to let me go because I was tired of the hard. So I got to a place where I realized that I wasn't going to make it out easy, like I really considered other people dead when they got the opportunity to pass, and so I had to figure out how to get busy living. But in the times where I couldn't pull myself out of it, a lot of the times, I'll be honest with you, and I think sometimes drugs actually saved my life.

Speaker 2: 7:53

I've been pondering that quite a bit lately, because the drive to maintain the drug induced relationship kept me going. Um, when I was coming down and I wanted to die, the idea of potentially being able to parent my kids kept me going. Um, but there were also times where, um, I felt like such a failure to my children that I felt like the world and my children would be better off without me. However, like I said, I was not successful, and obviously because here I am sitting today. But today I recognize all of it as benefit because I really learned a lot of things about humanity, about service, about intention, about hard work, about what we're capable of as a species, about how our messaging has an impact on what we think our capabilities are and how much effort we put in to manifest the life that we want. So, yeah, and I teach people about that today, so inside of prisons, which is one of my favorite environments to be in.

Speaker 1: 9:05

Really. Tell us about that. I mean, you know prison life, you said, saved your life, I think in one of your interviews and so many of whom face their own struggles somehow can take rock bottom as a indication that you know you can rebuild. I mean, that's what foundations are. I mean they're the strongest part of the building.

Speaker 2: 9:25

And we can have our foundation can be as deep or as shallow as we choose, right, and then. So I like the question. It's really great, it's very um, there's a lot of depth to that question and so, and it can go in so many ways, right, but rock bottom can stop when we're ready to quit digging, so, so I think that's one of the key things, and sometimes that feels impossible, right, to be able to even consider creating a foundation. But our foundation actually does exactly what you're talking about it. It starts where our rock bottom stops, and, um, and when we take a look at, um, the things that we did and this is some of what I teach inside the prisons today when we take a look at the things that we did to navigate our life, to meet our needs because that's all we're really doing as a species, regardless of what kind of choices we're making we're meeting a need that we've decided or that we believe that we have, and we have learned a set of skills that help us to navigate that until they don't serve us anymore, and that's when the shift sort of starts to take place, right, when the pain to remain becomes greater than the pain to change, movement starts to happen and so and sometimes we will revert back to patterns, right Familiarity as opposed to comfort zones, and because I believe that things rot in comfort zones after a while we can lay around. It's kind of like, I think, of an avocado If I leave an avocado on my shelf, if it's super hard when I buy it, if I leave it on the shelf for seven days, it's going to start wilting and rotting and molding and it's going to be pretty gross and that's kind of what happens. And it's going to be pretty gross. And that's kind of what happens when we want to wallow around in comfort zones, right.

Speaker 2: 11:06

So what incarceration did for me? In 2012, I was arrested for the last time and that's what I was talking about with, like you know, not really knowing how to stop myself. There was always this underlying message internally, especially when the drugs wore off, that I wanted something different, but that pull would be so intense, right? So when I was arrested the last time on December 5th of 2012, I knew that that was my opportunity. I knew that that is where I could stop digging. I needed a little bit of help personally to remove myself from the destructive path. I was unable to do it on my own. I didn't come from family where people I had, a portion of the family that was flourishing, where I had supports, and so which is I am not a victim. I'm just saying like that resource wasn't available to me, and so a resource had to be available in order for me to remove myself, and that's what incarceration did. Now, incarceration didn't have a multitude of intentional tools associated with it, but it did have the tool of a timeout, and at the time I was arrested, our jail systems didn't have drugs like methadone and suboxone, which was a huge benefit, because I needed clarity, right, and so I'm a believer. I haven't always been a believer. I became a believer because I can't not deny God's presence in my life, and so it was during that time that the drugs were removed and I became clear enough to hear the message that was necessary for me to maintain that action, and so I was incarcerated long enough.

Speaker 2: 12:50

I was looking at a fourth sentence, and that's when I started to develop this process. I started to take a look at my thinking, I started to take a look at the things that were manifesting in my life, and I started to take a look at what I wanted my life to look like, and I knew that I needed to dismantle the messaging, and so I had to figure out where that came from. Was it coming from me? When did I decide to say these things to myself? Can I not turn my messaging around in the exact same way that it got to where it's at right, by telling myself things that I didn't necessarily believe that were true? And that's really what I did. I started making lists and I started telling myself, looking in the mirror, telling myself who I was, and though I felt like a liar for a long time, after a period of time I started to believe that I was a worthy human being and I started to you know, read and absorb all of the things that I could that were going to help me to sort of piece together a process that was going to be beneficial for me, and it so happened that I ended up not having to go to prison for the fourth time.

Speaker 2: 13:53

There was a program that was the founder was connected with me and he helped me with the legal defense, and I got a drug court process, which enabled me to have a one-dimensional focus on one of my largest problems, which was my relationship with drugs, what you know. And so what I wanted really was to be able to navigate life with guardrails on outside. That's there's that added level of accountability, right. And so I remained in jail for more than six months and then I was released into the community with that one dimension and I was able to be housed. So there was a second dimension Then. Then I started to try to connect with processes to help me navigate the emotional and the life baggage that I had developed over time, you know. And then I went to work in social services I went to work on re and then I went to work in social services and, as I was repairing some of the damage and building the foundation and learning that I am not defective and understanding that the things that had happened in my life were necessary and that the skills that I built were organic and I wasn't a bad person, but I learned some things that weren't serving me I started to continue to develop that process, right. So, yeah, I mean, that's what incarceration did for me.

Speaker 2: 15:21

Incarceration gave me that space to really assess, dissect, dismantle and begin to rebuild who I am, and do it based on who I wanted to become and how I figured that out, because a lot of my role models in my life which doesn't make them bad or good, it just means that they were building their plane, as they flew it with whatever information they had. It just means that they didn't necessarily possess all the qualities that I wanted to possess for myself. And so I started to sort of ponder the people in my life who possess qualities that I admired, and why, and I started to stop focusing on what I wasn't getting from people and I think that we all do this. Right. It's like I want this from this person and they're not giving it to me and my life is over because of it. Right, like I didn't get the love I wanted from my mom. Well, my mom wasn't capable of giving me the things that I perceived, usually because I saw it on a television show or something.

Speaker 2: 16:22

My mom was my mom, and the quicker that I was able to identify where I actually got that from and how to put myself in a place where I was surrounding myself with people that were providing the kind of emotional support or physical support or educational support that I was seeking, then it enabled me to put myself in places where I was learning to level up Because as I put myself around these people that had these characteristics and qualities, I didn't have to judge the people that didn't have them anymore. It gave me the opportunity to go and be mentored, whether it was an intentional mentorship or whether it was sort of an environmental mentorship, right when I'm just learning to show up in the way that the people that I really admired and that's really what incarceration and separation and my beginning process did for me. Sorry, I can be a little wordy, but the way you asked the question made me really think about it a little more dynamically than normal.

Speaker 1: 17:27

Nice. Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean the real rebuilding process is huge. Yeah, I mean I just wanted to get your viewpoint on one thing. You know a lot of people that deal with struggles. They avoid the mindset of being a victim. Why do you think that's so important?

Speaker 2: 17:44

Avoiding the mindset of being a victim. Well, I think it. I think it validates our ego when we have folks that say, oh you poor thing. And then it kind of solidifies that part of us that wants to be inactive, right, the part of us that wants our mommy and just wants to be on the couch, and the part of us that wants our mommy and just wants to be on the couch and be taken care of, um, cause, I don't know about you, but I still one things are rough. I, emotionally, I still want my mom and, though my mom never really did a great job as being that nurturing mom, um, that's the first place my brain goes, and I'm 52 years old. So you know, I think that, um, that it's a danger zone to seek validation with victimization, because it puts us in a place where we're holding somebody else responsible and not looking at ourselves and how we can move up and out of it. Right, I teach inside of prisons, by the way. Look, I'm going to show you the back of my shirt really quick.

Speaker 1: 18:48

I don't know, yeah wow there's no victims, uh, so um I didn't even know you wore that shirt yeah, so this is overhauled through unrelenting transfiguration.

Speaker 2: 19:01

It's the out program and it's based on and I wasn't where, I didn't even think about it until you asked me the question but, um, when I present as a victim, when everything is everybody else's fault and I don't accept responsibility for my part in my life and that doesn't mean that there weren't contributing factors that I had no control over However, the things that I choose to do as a result of my emotional state, or the messaging that I'm saying to myself, because our emotions are directly connected to our thought processes, to our messages, and so if I'm confirming that life is bad and that I should destroy myself, because that's ultimately what we're doing when we're using drugs, right, or I'm going to destroy myself over this you just watch right and like who's benefiting from that? I'm harming everybody else in the process that loves and cares about me. I'm harming people in the community, um, and I'm perpetuating more problems. I'm piling more problems onto the very thing that I'm trying to escape, and then it still becomes everybody else's problem. But everybody else is living well, I'm not. So when I'm standing in a victim state, I'm not progressing, I'm not moving toward my goal. I'm probably losing sight of my goal. I'm like a leaf that's fallen from a tree and I moved to wherever the wind takes me. And so, you know, there is no manifesting, there is no um ownership, there is no authority, there's no agency in my own life.

Speaker 2: 20:33

And so, um, you know, and that's the beauty that I have in my life today is I'm not a victim, and a lot of things have happened to me. I promise you I could, I and that's one of the reasons I continue to sort of go back to, and my mom was, and they're building the plane while they fly it, because I think most people have good intentions, even those who are perpetuating poor intentions because of the things that they learned Right, and. And then we have this thing that we do too. We victimize ourselves and we victimize others when, when we decide that we're a bad person because of the things that we've done well, we've done them right, and then we try to hide from them and it's like you know what We've done them.

Speaker 2: 21:24

When I own them out loud A how free do you want to be? It helps the dark to be removed. It helps me to stop being afraid of things that have already happened and that have passed and I stopped placing myself like in this sort of pit where I say that I can't get out because shame on me. Well, it's not shame on me. I've done terrible things. Terrible things have happened to me and today I choose to live in the light. Today I choose to be transparent, I choose to be honest and I choose to use all of those things to help other people access that same amount of freedom.

Speaker 1: 22:09

That's beautifully said. I love your shirt. What do you think about anxiety People getting in? You know that kind of argument with yourself you got to push yourself or you actually you're afraid of something that's coming from within. What's your take on anxiety when you educate people, when it comes to redemption and things like that, because that's not going to go away. In this day in life that we live in, there's a lot of anxiety and people are like how do you escape or how do you deal with that.

Speaker 2: 22:38

Yeah, so I have a formula for anxiety. I have two children who struggle with anxiety. I am not a supporter of medication. There's no science behind medication. Uh, I think that everything we want is right on the other side of fear and anxiety.

Speaker 2: 22:57

Um, I am the kind of person that addresses fear head on. Um, and you know, I'll tell you, life has a lot of fearful things. I'm terrified of heights. I climb mountains, you want to know why? Because I'm terrified of heights and I started doing it in my mid forties. So, uh, I missed some summits. Because I'm terrified of rock climbing, so I had somebody teach me how to rock climb, and so still terrified of it. But I'll get up there and do what I got to do.

Speaker 2: 23:21

So, and, and in time we build muscle memory, in time we build a process to where we don't have to be anxious about those things anymore. We learn how to breathe, we learn how. The most important thing is understanding what's going on here, understanding what am I saying to myself. We typically perpetuate our anxiety. So what am I saying to myself? How can I change my messaging? How can I address the things? How can I get up and do that very thing that I'm afraid of, because the more I do it, the more the physiological reactions subside, and this is what I can tell you. So I have three children.

Speaker 2: 24:08

One of them passed away last July my son. He took his life and he was experiencing a significant amount of anxiety. He was experiencing delusional thinking. He was experiencing stuff that he had never experienced in his entire life, and part of it, I truly believe, was because of the medication the psychiatric system gave to him, and I think it changed his brain chemistry when he came home. He came home and lived with me for two weeks prior to taking his life. He had had multiple suicide attempts the year before. That I was not aware of until later, and my son was wicked smart, so when he communicated to you about his challenges, he was also solving a lot of his own problems at the same time.

Speaker 2: 24:57

So it's really hard to understand the level of need that he had without him communicating that, and so, um, I was working really hard on his messaging with him, and so it's almost like this is the interesting thing, because I've done a lot of work in my own life around this stuff, and he was struggling with things that I had only ever experienced when I was on drugs, and so, after he passed away, I, you know, questioned myself for a period of time. You know, is this all just superficial? Am I sharing things that are inaccurate, you know? Am I, you know, leading people astray? And you know, the answer is no. Like my son had his own demons, and I truly believe that the things that he struggled with were his. His choice to take his life was, um, his last autonomous decision to have control over things being super hard. It also made me feel like he must've been ready to do something really special that he was under attack internally so much. And I really think that about a lot of people, that folks that end up, you know, ending their life or that die young, uh, they were probably destined to do something phenomenal and they were under attack internally by something that we can't see.

Speaker 2: 26:28

But I truly believe in this process of messaging and I believe in it a hundred percent around anxiety, and I've watched this process have an impact, especially in my youngest daughter's life, who's about to be 19.

Speaker 2: 26:41

She struggled with anxiety, she struggled with her messaging, and over the last few years, I promise you too, man, god's got jokes putting a 15 year old and a menopausal woman together at the same time, like hormones, are crazy. Okay, I just want to say that she has given me all of the gray hair that's strewn throughout my hair, but this is what I can tell you. We went from 15 and crazy to almost 19 and responsible and together and changed her messaging and isn't struggling with anxiety, and you know it's happened over time, because I don't know about you if you have any kids, but I'll tell you teenagers don't want to listen to their parents because we don't know much of anything after about 15. But you know. So I really believe in this process of messaging and, sorry, I can talk a lot sometimes, but you're asking some good questions that I'm not always asked when I do interviews. So thanks.

Speaker 1: 27:40

No, I really admire you. I didn't know that there's so much depth to your story and yeah, I mean by myself personally. I have a 18 year old daughter.

Speaker 2: 27:51

Okay, so you understand.

Speaker 1: 27:53

Depression, anxiety, a lot of things that you mentioned I've I've had to deal with, but there was no, nothing successful. But I can only imagine the pain that you feel, and to be able to talk about it repeatedly, over and over to help people, um, I, I can't imagine. So, yeah, I'm, I'm, I applaud you, um, you're, you're moved up to books for me and you, I really admire your story and, um, so, yeah, so how old was he? He was 32. 32. So how old was he?

Speaker 2: 28:26

He was 32.

Speaker 1: 28:28

32. His name was. You got to learn to manage it. Some people say, well, when you're young, you don't know. But some people continue with this for years and you read about a story and say what happened? What happened?

Speaker 2: 28:42

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:43

It was a long struggle. It didn't happen overnight.

Speaker 2: 28:46

Yeah, that was the case for my son. Yeah, that was the case for my son. Charismatic, brilliant, charming, always upbeat, best attitude ever, self-taught, everything, genius, handsome, funny. And something shifted and he was. When he came home, he had stopped talking to me for a little over a year and it happens sometimes with kids and parents and when he had come home last year he had been I didn't understand the depth of the struggle that he had been going through until he was with us, you know, and I just really count it as a blessing that he came home, because I feel like God brought him home.

Speaker 1: 29:32

Yeah, absolutely, and you're going to help so many people. I know truck drivers are out there. They're dealing with things. You got to get back in the truck and you still got those problems with you. You got to put those aside and focus on driving and not harming anyone else on the road. There's a lot of accidents that happen and we can't really tell what happened because of the catastrophe from it. But if you were to say something to someone that's listening right now that's in a dark place, what would you tell them?

Speaker 2: 30:00

Yeah, well, especially if it's truckers that are out there. I mean, if you're in a dark place and truckers are by themselves a a lot of the times driving. I have a friend and usually I do a lot of driving across the country, and him and I have been friends since the nineties and he is a truck driver. He's a long distance truck driver and, um, and his son actually passed away and you know, and that's one of the ways that people deal with it. I know because I go out backpacking in mountains by myself, and so you know there's sometimes beauty in isolation. But if you're in a dark place, um, especially if you're somebody that tends to be by yourself, reach out, use your support system. We're so much stronger as a social group, um, you know, even if it's just one or two people, but I, but I also want to say, if you have a family member that's struggling with addiction, there there is possibility. And sometimes, if we haven't had that experience ourself, it feels like it's pointless, it feels like sometimes they're at a point of no return. But I can promise you, if you look at my side by sides, I was in the bottom of the pit and I came out of it and my life is good today and you know, and if you're over a certain age I mean I'm 52 and I'm building my own businesses right now and I'm definitely not wealthy but I'll tell you with consistency and showing up like you just build it. You know what you got to do and we can't there are no mental health days with life Like we've got to just keep showing up and sometimes we don't even know what we're capable of. But this is what I can tell you.

Speaker 2: 31:40

On a mountain, we had a guy that my very first climb and I'm again Fred Heights. Okay, they got me to the top of this mountain, my very first climb, and I was petrified. One of our guys broke his tibia on the way down and we were on that on our feet for 24 hours with one headlamp, amongst five people. I was four guys that I didn't know, didn't know if they would help save my life if something happened, but we made it off the mountain and there were things that I did that I certainly never thought I was capable of, and that's when my excuses were gone.

Speaker 2: 32:13

And I'm going to tell you I have not been equipped with superpowers that other people don't have.

Speaker 2: 32:18

I've made it to every achievement in my life, one step at a time, one step at a time, and I've been having to make adjustments in so many areas of my life along the way. You cannot imagine that 40 years of insanity do not come with a Penske truck full of baggage right, and that baggage has had to be dealt with and worked at one thing at a time. Whatever, the most blaring problem is that's the one that gets addressed Whether it's smoking cigarettes, eating sugar, cussing out my husband being a psychotic mom, trying to deal with my hormones, like in the behavioral step close to the family, those are the hardest things. So I know this is a really long message for people but, like I just want people to understand that there are a variation of things that can occur in our life and we get through them the same way we got through the last hard thing. We might have to morph some of our decisions a little bit, but you can do anything if you choose it. You just have to tell yourself that you can.

Speaker 1: 33:22

That's perfect, and learning is something that anyone at any age can do. We don't want to limit ourselves just because I'm a trucker, or I work in this dead-end job, or I'm a late bloomer or I'm a parent, single mom, single dad. I'm bogged down with all this. We can still keep learning. I think you've done that right From prison into college. Did I get that right? Yes, take that leap.

Speaker 2: 33:52

Yeah, well, um, so this is the thing I got out of incarceration and I started working in social services and, and I really realized that the problems with our system, um, I realized that it was people that weren't like me that were making decisions for people like me, and I felt like I was killing my friends. I was, I felt like I was contributing to the destructive cycles of their life and that they were coming to me as a service provider for help and I was limited to the kind of help I was able to give, based on funders and uh contracts and things like that. And, um, I knew that I needed to do something on a much larger scale, but I also knew that somebody with 17 felony convictions probably wasn't just going to hop onto a policy stage and be able to, you know, start telling people what needed to change. And, uh, and I excelled. I, you know, I sort of reverted back to that education loving kid that I was when I was young and I started winning um competitions, like scholarship competitions. I started excelling in my classes and uh, and I started. Then I applied to, I was being recruited by schools like Yale, columbia, cornell, um, loyola a bunch of really, I guess, impressive schools, but I chose to stay in Washington State and go to the University of Washington and that's when I applied for the Martin Honors Scholarship, which I got.

Speaker 2: 35:25

And then I applied for the Truman Scholarship. And for anybody that doesn't know, I didn't know either what that meant I just they said, oh, $30,000 for grad school. I was like, oh yeah, maybe I'll try for that. So it was like a seven week process, I think, applying for that scholarship, and I had to do it with an advisor. I did all the work, but she would tell me where things needed to be edited or changed. And lo and behold, I won and I was quite surprised. There were 600 and something applicants for that scholarship in 2020, which is the year that I won and when I realized what it was, it was the most prestigious public service scholarship in the country and there is a very small network I believe it's a little over 3,000 Truman Scholars. A lot of them are all in public service. They're all in levels of government and other sort of public service spaces. There are a lot of folks that are in politics that are Truman Scholars and I became part of that family. Mind you, I haven't used my Truman Scholarship money yet because I backed out of the master's degree program, but it will be available to me until they stop deferring it if I choose to go back to school. So, yeah, it was kind of cool.

Speaker 2: 36:51

I thought it was a little bit interesting. I went and I interviewed, uh, with a panel in person. Um, it was funny because I was the oldest person there and I was 48 at the time. And um, I remember telling them you know, I think you guys have the wrong person, like these young people could do so much more in their lifetime than I ever will. And they said to me we, we know who exactly. You're not the wrong person, we know exactly who you are. But it was really funny because the panel of people that were interviewing us that the first guy opened it up with a question about a journalist. And I actually have a connection with a journalist because I've done some different shows with them, and so they were trying to throw me off. And that's what they want to see how you're going to respond to something that you maybe don't know the answer to which I my ego isn't attached to any of those things, and so it was just kind of perfect because I have a lot of experience dealing with panel stuff, but it was fun. Education was fun, it was exciting, I was able to network, but I ended up on the front page of a lot of stuff. Sorry, I see I go into these long tangents on stories, but I ended up on the front page of the political science department and the front page of UW and on the front page of one of the magazines and um, and that's just kind of where it blew up. And then I was doing some other stuff and uh, and yeah, I, you know, and then I entered into this complete other space.

Speaker 2: 38:16

Interesting thing about it, though, is this is when I was incarcerated in prison in 2009, there was a man he brought a church service in and he prayed over me and prophesied, and he said you're going to make prisons a better place to live and you're going to do it from the outside. Now I use drugs. After that happened, I got out. Things didn't go, you know, however, but as I realized that I was on that path and that it wasn't my path, but it was the path that I was supposed to be on, and I started to intentionally pray for things If this is where you want me, you better make a way. Things started happening. It was kind of wild. So, and just a little disclaimer and today I'm inside of prisons teaching a process, the very process that I talked about through my incarceration. I turned that into a curriculum and now, now I have a very full scale program that's inside of one of the institutions here in Washington State.

Speaker 1: 39:15

Awesome, that's a Monday.

Speaker 2: 39:17

Yeah, on Mondays, yep All day Monday.

Speaker 1: 39:20

Walk us through that.

Speaker 2: 39:21

Yeah, so so you know I pushed. I'm a pusher, I don't always take no for an answer if I feel like I'm supposed to be somewhere. So I ended up pitching to the Department of Corrections and you know, through a process I ended up in a prison called OCC, which is Olympic Correction Center. It's in Forks, washington. It's a very remote institution. They do DNR, department of Natural Resources, so they're firefighters, they're tree planters, they do chainsaw work all through the prisons and I currently have a student base of about 37 or 38, I think I've been teaching.

Speaker 2: 40:00

My process it's called the OUT Program. That's a 10-month old curriculum is on assessing deficit, dissecting, dismantling and rebuilding, developing the life that we dreamt of or that we are, you know, trying to manifest. Taking a look at the things in our life, our qualities, our behaviors, how we ended up participating with those behavior patterns, qualities, our behaviors, how we ended up participating with those behavior patterns. That those behavior patterns don't make us bad, they just are the things that we learned that aren't serving us in the way that we want to be served. That we are 100% the author of our story. That if, in fact, we want a different ending, we have to do different things. If you want something different, you got to do something different that the people that contributed to the circumstances of our lives if they knew better, they do better right, they were building their plane as they fly it. So we're going to go ahead and relinquish them from responsibility of our choices, because that's one of the things that we do as people, and I work with men, and I like working with men, because men are often, you know, addressed with superficial or external components job, training and things like that. We don't look at them as humans, we don't recognize that they've been harmed and hurt, that they've harmed and hurt themselves, that they don't feel good about the way they've shown up as partners, as sons, as brothers, as uncles and as dads. And so we really work on what does that look like? What does respect look like? Not the respect that we experience on our prison yard, but the respect that we give and get from our grandmother, that kind of respect. And how do we show up and manifest these things? And we work really hard to do that. And then, in the process of, while they're rebuilding their internals, while we're tearing apart, we're overhauling our engine. That's what we're doing. We're overhauling it unrelentingly, we're doing it without ceasing. We're doing it and I tell you, one of the things with men is they don't want to look at themselves, and that's okay.

Speaker 2: 42:04

And you know, when I do little things where it's just like, is it easier to punch somebody in the face or is it easier to say I'm afraid? Because, you know, I lived like a man for a long time and it was a lot easier for me to punch somebody in the face than it was for me to look within. And everything that we're afraid of, that we try to go around or we try to go over, those are the things that we have to go through and then they become a non-stimulus in our lives. Right, the things that we're afraid of and the hard things. Those are the things that when we learn how to face that, when we learn how to climb those rocks, when we learn how to become one and hug the earth and understand that they only have the power that we give them, then we can utilize that power to serve other people and then we really find the true authenticity of ourselves.

Speaker 2: 42:53

And so inside the prison, we go through this process. We're doing this stuff every week. I pinpoint stuff, I pull stuff out. They. Let me scold them like I'm their mom. We do service projects together. We um the out program in particular. Our guys come back as alumni. They stay inside when they get out. We help them transition to relationships with employment, with housing, with all of the things. But we don't give things out. We're not a handout program. We're a handout program.

Speaker 2: 43:23

People ask me what are you going to do for me? I'm not going to do anything for you. What are you going to work for? And that's what we do. And when they want me to carry them around my backpack, I say, hey, check it out. I said I put my own husband in prison. Okay, I am not carrying you in my backpack, you're going to figure it out and I'm going to show you how I did it. And that's what we do.

Speaker 2: 43:42

So we have lived experience. We don't have college educated Ain't never been there, Folks coming in and teaching none of this stuff. If you ain't been there, if you haven't been to hell, you don't know how to navigate your way out of it. So I bring them back in and that's what we do. Uh, and and, like I said, I have relationships with service providers such as not social service providers, but employers, union halls, educators, housing, transitional housing programs, attorneys, all kinds of different things, anything that you need to make sure that you're going to hit the ground running only, though, after you've done the work in your own life.

Speaker 2: 44:23

Then that's, and that's what we do. So we become the village. We maintain contact. When they get out, we have community alumni meetings. They come back and they, they make sure that they're of service in a lot of ways, and a lot of my guys that are getting out they're thriving, they're thriving, and so that's kind of what I'm doing in there. Uh, it's kind of a beautiful thing. So if you ever come to Washington, you let me know and I'll drag you into prison on a Monday. I think you'd love it to Washington.

Speaker 1: 44:49

You let me know and I'll drag you into prison on a Monday. I think you'd love it. Wow, yeah, I would. I would love that. What part of Washington, what city.

Speaker 2: 45:01

I'm in Olympia currently. I'm from Tacoma, I lived in Seattle for 21 years and I had to get the heck out of Seattle and so now I have a place. My husband and all our kids have a place in rural lacey, so not quite in the city but close enough that we can drive to it really fast yeah, I've been to tacoma um, okay, that's where I'm from, more than right to salem.

Speaker 1: 45:21

I got a good friend out there too okay yeah, my wife's been out there, beautiful country in salem oregon, and yeah, how far away is that from?

Speaker 2: 45:28

Tacoma Salem. It's probably, I don't know, three hours or something, maybe two and a half three hours, about three hours, all right.

Speaker 1: 45:39

Well, we'll see what we can do to make it work, man that sounds exciting.

Speaker 2: 45:42

Yeah, you let me know ahead of time. I would love to make it happen.

Speaker 1: 45:45

That'd be amazing. And the things that you're doing and you're not afraid of doing, I mean that's that speaks volumes. What would you say to individuals that probably want to go back to school, change their life? Maybe they're truck driving and they say, man, this is not what I wanted to do, but this is what I'm, this is what I'm doing right now. What would you say if they maybe a little hesitant?

Speaker 2: 46:06

You're never too old. You know, I met an 86 year old woman I think she was 86 that was finishing her PhD. So, uh, you know, education is fantastic, um, for anybody that wants to, you know, go back to college now. I've just want to encourage you to critically think. Um, there's a lot of information out there these days that's being taught. I we have to be able to use information in a way to critically think, right, not to be indoctrinated with opinions, and that's happening more and more on our college campuses. However, I do want to say that education was a fantastic opportunity for me to learn how other people think, to become a better writer, to network with educators who do have the ability to academically narrate our society.

Speaker 2: 46:52

I want people to understand, more than anything, though, the value of your real life experience, because it took me a long time to understand that value, because, because people had a different vocabulary than me, because they didn't come from the ghetto, because I'm from the hilltop and the east side in Tacoma I don't know if you know anything about that, but it's the projects and everybody's on welfare so everybody in certain settings for a long time helped me to create narratives that caused me to be insecure. Your life experience has so much value and there's nobody that can tell you more about your life experience than you can. And when you look at the world, whether you want to go back to school or not, recognize where you come from, what that's like, and always be honest with yourself, no matter what it is that you choose to do. If you want to become an entrepreneur and you're terrified, just do it. Find time, make it happen. If you want to go to school, just do it. Sign up, take one class, just start right, like that's. All you have to do is start. And for me, I had talked to a person who encouraged me. I got on, I looked at financial aid, I looked at the stuff and then, within a couple of weeks, I was signed up to start school because I had immobility issues.

Speaker 2: 48:15

I was single, parenting. Husband was locked up, my son was locked up. My oldest daughter was doing her thing. Me and my youngest daughter were living in Seattle and we were not thriving financially and I was afraid to move because I was making just enough to pay our bills. She was being bullied on campus. I was trying to not have her um start fighting. So my kid, my youngest kid is mixed, she's black and white and she was going to an international school and she wasn't quite dark enough and she was probably too light and so she didn't. I don't know if anybody's been to schools where there's a massive mixed race. I went to schools like that and I'll tell you, a lot of my light skinned friends got heat. She was getting heat and she's also real sassy, so I didn't want her to fight, so I was on the school campus.

Speaker 2: 49:04

I'm trying to do social services as an employee, as employment, so I was afraid to move. I challenged myself. I didn't think I had enough value to apply for other kind of jobs, but I also didn't want to end up in a dead-end job because I was in my mid-40s and I made the decision to go to school. I just did it and I continued to work at the same time. I just took a couple of classes.

Speaker 2: 49:26

You can do it.

Speaker 2: 49:27

If I can do it and graduate at 48 and maybe going to go back for my master's degree someday and I'm 52, you can do it.

Speaker 2: 49:34

You can do it and if we use it the right way, because I was being indoctrinated for a period of time, I was buying into the hype, even though the hype didn't align with where I come from and I come from predominantly black and Asian neighborhoods and so I was like, oh, this isn't lining up. And that's when I started to really understand the value of my own lived experience and that my voice really had power when it comes to advocating for the betterment of people and not the separation and lack of unity. So that's why I say allow your lived experience to guide you and recognize the fortitude and strength that it took for you to get to where you're at today, because it did. We all have to put forth effort and energy to get where we're at, and that's the same effort and energy that you're going to use to succeed, because nobody the comfort zone. We're rotting comfort zones and they're usually never comfortable. They're just familiarity zones.

Speaker 1: 50:35

Right, hiding from the fear. You don't want to be uncomfortable, and then that leads to the anxiety man. You know that. Yeah, that's a huge thing. If you're a human, you're going to be attacked for trying to enjoy life 100%, especially with our current day and age on social media.

Speaker 2: 50:54

Oh my gosh, everybody has an opinion about what you should be doing. Yeah, they're busy sitting on their couch behind their keyboard, so just throwing that out there.

Speaker 1: 51:03

Yeah, girls, take a huge, you know, for social media. I'm going to be this way, thinking they got to be that way or they got to look this way. Yeah, my daughter's mixed and so, yeah, I understand the struggle.

Speaker 2: 51:15

You know the struggle.

Speaker 1: 51:16

Yeah, I was like I said what? But then I realized, yeah, I don't know nothing.

Speaker 2: 51:23

I thought I knew something. It's a different day and time. Well, you know, that's the interesting thing about that we actually do know some stuff. And if we took out some of these devices, my daughter yeah, she's just coming out of all of the insanity and I'll tell you I'm like whew, that was a close call and maybe we're not out of the water yet, but I'll tell you, life is definitely good, yeah.

Speaker 1: 51:46

Man, wow, that's huge Bringing people together. I think it's going to be monumental Making that out. You know, out from all these things, I mean being in and going in on Mondays, right, Going into the prison, and there's. You said no cell phones, right, you can't use the technology.

Speaker 2: 52:04

Well, and if you have AT&T, which I do, there's no service out there anyway. So yeah, you can't bring your cell phone in the prison.

Speaker 1: 52:11

So does that make things better?

Speaker 2: 52:14

Oh yeah, 100%. Well, for me, when I'm inside, my focus is just the guys. So I drive two and a half hours to get out there. So I commit an entire day. So I usually get out there no later than 10. And then, well it depends, sometimes I'll get out there around noon. My first class starts at 1.30 most days, but I do alumni support and sometimes I come in and do one-on-one.

Speaker 2: 52:35

So yesterday I got to the prison at about 8.25, 8.20, 8.25, and I didn't leave. So I was there a full, entire 12 hours, and then we have another five hours of driving on top of that. So my days are committed to these guys and you know I get the opportunity to show them. So I was at the prison within two weeks after my son passed. I recently lost my contract Everybody lost their contract with the reentry department of the Department of Corrections and so, which means a significant amount of my paycheck has now been cut and I'm my own boss, so I don't get to complain, or you know, I mean I could, I suppose, complain, but you just got to pivot and move, you got to stick and move, right. So it's like, okay, well, where's that money going to come from? Cause I'm now responsible to pay other people's paycheck, so, um. So the guys are aware that I have all these things and so I run a couple of businesses it's not just one, um, but out is, you know, it's by far one of the most impactful businesses I've run. I mean, I have a host of docu-series as well, but which is important work. But this is different because I'm committing to lives, week after week, to help them walk through and telling them that it is possible, right. So now I have a responsibility than when I feel like my life is hard. I got to keep showing up, cause if I want them to show up, I've got to show up. So the guys, you know, the other day they're like, oh, we didn't think you'd come. I'm like, well, you're tripping and I'm like I'm coming. So you know, and so I get to show them, and that eliminates their excuses, because we have no victims here. We have no victims because life's gonna keep on happening. You know, if we're climbing mountains together and somebody dies on our trip and our car is 55 miles away, well what? We're all just going to stop and freeze in the snow. You got to keep moving. You got to keep moving. We'll figure something out. We'll bring the person that passed. You know we're going to drag them, we're going to rope them up and we're going to bring them with us. But we got to keep moving, otherwise we're all going to end up like that, and that is life. That is life.

Speaker 2: 54:45

We can't take a mental health day just because things are hard. I mean you can, but what are you going to get? You know your 40 hours a week and your paycheck and your little, you know, pension or whatever it's like. If you want more, if that's what's good enough for you, then that's fine. But if there are things that you want, you got no choice but to get up and get them. And if you lose that job, that's got the pension associated with. Well, what are you going to do? Lay down and take a mental health day? Well, no, you got to stick and move. You got to stick and move. You got a family. You got bills. You got stuff. Well, they're not going to pay themselves. You, we can wallow around in victimhood and talk about how it's everybody else's fault, or we can get up and we can handle it what's that?

Speaker 1: 55:27

what's the stick and move? Is that for hiking, like your stick that you walk with, or well, that's what the guy said yesterday.

Speaker 2: 55:31

I just say pivot. I just gotta pick it pivot.

Speaker 1: 55:34

You know you gotta pick that up, stick and move stick and move.

Speaker 2: 55:38

You know what I mean. It's like oh, here we go, okay, I way. Oh, what's over here? Who do I get to meet over here? And I'll tell you cause I'm going to and this is where that I look at all of it Cause if I ran out of dope, I promise you I wasn't going to lay down and cry about it. I was going to get up, I was going to find some hustle, I was going to go out and talk to my folks. If John up the street doesn't have dope, then I'm going to go to Raul down the other way. You know what I'm saying. I'm in it, look, and if I don't got a car, I'm probably going to hitchhike. I might steal a car, take the bus, get a cab. So you know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 56:15

That's awesome. I get what you're saying. Take that same mentality and the good you can do with it. Yeah, it's real hustlers out there. They don't know how much, how much of a hustlers they are when they were looking for that dope. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 56:30

I mean, and that's just the bottom line, that's how I look at everything. So you know, and it's funny too, like if I'm having conversation with judges or in certain environments, and I will use dope house analogy all day.

Speaker 1: 56:41

So, and I will use dope house analogy all day, so anyway, they know a hundred percent. We watch it every day, like when we're driving, if I'm driving late at night and I'm like that's the same guy, yeah, it's pouring down Right, yeah. Yeah, I'm complaining, I got my raincoat on and everything Right. Also, you've consulted with departments across different states, what's something that most people don't understand about incarceration and reentry.

Speaker 2: 57:17

Talking to those departments, oh yeah, well, I think what we have right now is we sort of have a shift with institutions that have deemed their own institutions as bad. You know there are a lot of the going narratives I talk about the academic narratives, the indoctrination, and you know we have academic narratives being pushed that you know incarceration is bad. Now I want to say that incarceration is not equal across all states. In the South, we still have a lot of problematic stuff that you know occurs within the prison systems there, and we've got violence in certain prison systems. But this is what I can tell you is that prison has to be more intentional. And even in some of those prison systems, though, you will have people and that's who we don't listen to. We don't listen to the people who say it saved my life, cause I can tell you right now if I wouldn't have been incarcerated and that's what's happening sort of across the nation right now it's like, oh, we need to incarcerate less. It's like, no, we need to incarcerate with intention. We have a one dimensional tool that is used in effectively and we're not bringing lived experience into the space. Right, and so and that's really a lot of my consulting stuff is always about lived experience how to bring lived experience into the realm of poverty, how to bring lived experience into the realm of incarceration, how to bring lived experience into the realm of social services.

Speaker 2: 58:37

Are we serving people with intention? Are we focused on human flourishing? Are we looking at deficit areas and actually quantifying outcomes that are directly connected to the deficit areas? Because if you come in and you have five deficit areas that are major contributing factors to repeated engagement with whatever institution or system, whether it's the welfare system, whether it's, you know, homeless industrial complex, whether it's a prison system, and none of those things are looked at and none of those things are addressed. And often they're definitely documented in some circumstances, but there's no intentional addressing of those things and I and I try to give the system grace by saying, um, if you knew better, you'd do better. If you haven't been to hell, you don't know how to navigate your way out of it. So that's where the lived experience piece is so necessary, because it's like, okay, we come in and we address those things in said way.

Speaker 2: 59:41

That way, these resources or supports that are on the back end are actually sustainable, right, and that's what the model of the OUT program is. It's like when we go in and we sort of readdress this God hole here in the middle and we teach an individual how to serve themselves effectively, how to trust themselves, how to respect themselves, how to embody integrity, how to, you know, not have to be held accountable by others, because you learn how to do it yourself, because you understand your deficits and your blind spots, that those other pieces the education, the employment, the housing, the services, those things are sustainable and that you're going to have an individual that actually values those things and uses. And that you're going to have an individual that actually values those things and uses them in the method in which they should be used, which is temporarily until they get their own right, where we're helping people move from down here to up here in independence, and then coming back and reaching in as a service structure and saying, hey, and I'm going to help.

Speaker 1: 1:00:43

Wow, I get it. I see the big picture of what it should be, but even if it's not, we should strive to make it that and that time out that you can get because life is moving too fast and you weren't able to manage it yourself. Now you can take that time in those spaces to have conversations that you weren't able to get or that you didn't think were important enough to give enough time to really meditate on and make it a part of your life. So, when you mentioned the indoctrination that some people speak about or that you're referring to, going to college, what take would you say for individuals that may get caught up in the hype or the sexy part of college? What would you say to those people?

Speaker 2: 1:01:25

I would say that, well, first of all, one of the things that we see with that indoctrination there are a lot of labels that have been placed on things, inmate being one BIPOC being I don't know about. Did anybody ask you if you wanted to be considered something called BIPOC? I'm just curious as a Black man.

Speaker 1: 1:01:44

No One more time.

Speaker 2: 1:01:46

BIPOC have you heard that?

Speaker 1: 1:01:48

No.

Speaker 2: 1:01:48

It's Black, indigenous, something, something, something. So that is over here on the West Coast and you're Eastern right, no you're Central.

Speaker 1: 1:01:57

Okay, I'm in Minnesota.

Speaker 2: 1:02:00

Okay. So West, on the West coast that is a new term that there was developed during the George Floyd era, when I was in a university of Washington, that all people of color are now considered BIPOC, and I actually have been kind of waiting to talk to, uh, you know, and I've got tons of black friends. I mean, I've got a black kid but and I just don't know why I haven't asked. But I think it's because you asked about the indoctrination. So there are labels that are placed on us people, people, okay, because that's what we are, we're people. There are labels that are placed on us that nobody ever asked us if it was appropriate. So like, for example, there are papers after papers after mandatory readings in college that refer to people in prison as inmates or offenders. I, I don't align with those labels, right, and? And so there are other narratives that go along with that that academics have made the decision to, you know, sort of place on as a societal narrative, you know, and BIPOC is another one, you know, and bipoc is another one. It's honestly, it's one of the most annoying. I'm like I really don't know any of my friends that yeah, uh, yeah, b-i-o-b-i-p-o-c, so anyways, yeah, no, yeah. So, uh, you're looking it up, anyways, when those kinds of things happen and you're like what the heck? That doesn't mean that it's the going narrative, right?

Speaker 2: 1:03:35

So I want people to question everything, question everything. Don't think that people in these siloed, sterile environments have all the answers. What they do have is, if you take a 30,000 step foot back, is they have a construct for critical thinking, even if they don't realize that that's what they're teaching. And so that's really how I want people to challenge that. Like, if you're going into this, especially young people, talk to the elders in your community. Talk to the elders that are connected with your parents. Um, don't just trust your educators, okay, because they're in it.

Speaker 2: 1:04:14

I mean, they're functioning within echo chambers, and what that means is that, um, it's a chamber of people that all think the same, that are consistently cyclically regurgitating information that they all agree with because they heard it in the last five classes, they heard it in the last chambers meeting, and these environments are then transitioned into our political structures, into our leadership structures in our communities.

Speaker 2: 1:04:41

So it's a common narrative that's taking place over and over again amongst people that consider themselves elite and educated, as though they know more about our lives than we do, and that's what I think people need to understand and that's why I needed to be inside of a policy space, which I currently have no desire to be as an elected official absolutely none because there's more autonomy for me to create change with what I'm doing than there is in a political position. But you know, these environments are often very removed from the people that they're intended to serve, and so I just want people when we look at, especially around homelessness and different things like that if they're telling you that certain measures are a benefit to the homeless, and you walk around and you see homelessness obviously downtown and you see people using drugs in your community question the messaging, use your eyes and your heart and your brain to question what people are telling you and just understand the constructs with which they use, and if you pay attention to that kind of message, over time you'll start to see.

Speaker 1: 1:05:55

So if you walked into an area and you saw an increase of homelessness, while you're trying to go get something to eat maybe a nice diner and you see an increase of homelessness and maybe the community looks a little more, you know, run down, like it's not kept up as much, what signals does that tell you right away when you start seeing a community that's going through that?

Speaker 2: 1:06:23

It tells me that there are policies that are being played out in that community that are ineffective and that there are probably tremendous financial resources in that area, especially if you see a large accumulation. You'll see this in cities like Seattle and San Francisco that are very wealthy cities and they're run down and they're degradated and they're inundated with destruction danger.

Speaker 1: 1:06:51

What would you say about the opiate problem with fentanyl, things like that? What's your take on that? Just curious to you know it's something that we are allowing to happen 100%, 100%.

Speaker 2: 1:07:04

It's feeding into some industries. It's feeding into some industries, so it is feeding into the homeless industrial complex and it's feeding into the pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies who everybody villainized for opiates, now are coming to the rescue with replacement drugs like methadone and suboxone. So, um, I truly believe that everything in the country is a business, so it's really not personal. If it makes money, it makes sense, and so if we're seeing an accumulation of these things, we are seeing money accumulation at its finest. We're we're looking at real capital gains.

Speaker 1: 1:07:41

Yeah, because they were saying how the ingredient or the I guess the main ingredient to make fentanyl is being pushed in from other countries. Um, maybe not that particular drug, but when it's being played out in your mind that you were, you were probably, um, a product of that abuse of the community that was available to you at that time. You can't really get high on air unless you're I mean, it was something that was there and it was available. People are allowing that to happen and that's kind of sad to watch. I hope that brings awareness to that can help people see that hey, we got to do something about this. We can in a small form. It may not be something that we can do today, but spreading that awareness, telling people, hey, it's not just the addict that's the problem, it's something else.

Speaker 2: 1:08:42

Yeah, well, it's a lot of things. When it comes to fentanyl in particular, I mean, we've had leadership politicians that have been in support of distributing these drugs, and I mean, with the methadone and Suboxone, it's literally the same exact thing. So there are financial kickbacks for a lot of this kind of stuff, you know. And then we have a treatment industry. Our entire treatment industry today is now medication-assisted treatment. So, yeah, it's really sad, and the interesting thing too is that we've seen a massive decrease in incarceration.

Speaker 2: 1:09:20

When a person's incarcerated and they don't have access to the drugs, it gives them the ability to get clear, you know. And so, instead of us implementing intentional services inside of these environments, we're just letting people kill themselves in the community. We're decriminalizing the drugs. We're, you know. And so, honestly, if the government wasn't complicit in the problem, I would argue that they would still utilize the criminal justice system as a tool, and that's what we fail to realize. It's nothing more than a tool. Right that we have control over how that tool works, we're literally throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and what we're experiencing because of it is exponential death.

Speaker 1: 1:10:14

We're focusing more on sending billions of dollars to other countries while we're walking over dead bodies in our own, as it said. So as a mom of three, you know you got a chance to speak on that and talk about your family, and how did being a mother feel you with recovery and purpose and inspire you to do the things you're at today for maybe a lot of women in trucking as well?

Speaker 2: 1:10:36

Yeah Well, I used for about 20 straight years over the failure of being a parent. Um, you know, after my kids were born, I continued to use and it spiraled because I felt like a failure and I allowed my messaging to dominate my life and convince me that I couldn't choose anything other than using drugs because I felt so shameful about failing my kids. So when I finally got clean at 40, um, I was determined to do everything in my power to be strong and stable. Um, I knew that there would be a potential that my kids wouldn't want anything to do with me. Uh, my youngest child did come. I've raised her for the last 10 plus years, um, thankfully. So she was my last chance at trying to get that right. Uh, I thought I'd failed around 15, which I talked a little bit about that but, um, but I did not. Seems that she's doing good and we're good, and she lives with me now. So both of my daughters live with me, both of my living children live with me. Um, but you know what I've done is a first. But you know what I've done is a first.

Speaker 2: 1:11:43

The thing that is most important to me on a daily basis is my recovery, that I get up and I do not put any kind of mood changing, mind altering substance into my body. I knew that if I could maintain that, that everything else would improve in the process. Over the last 12 and a half years because I have 12 and a half years clean I've had to do some counseling, I've had to do some real work on relationships and I've done it all because, even though I wanted to quit because I'm going to tell you, relationship building, strengthening and recovering is the hardest work I've ever done I'd rather go climb a rock wall with no anything on and I'm terrified of heights. I just want to say that. Then, to have to work on relationship stuff, because that's the hard stuff, that's the stuff where I feel like a failure, but I just keep showing up for it and I try to be accountable and I let my kids have their space, and sometimes I don't, sometimes I cuss them out, sometimes I am great, sometimes I can roll with it, uh, sometimes I'm hormonal, but you know, I just show up, I show up, uh, and I also have requirements for how I'm going to be treated and so, and those are boundaries that I have to maintain Right. So, and that's one of the been one of the best things that I've tried.

Speaker 2: 1:12:58

All kinds of things with my parenting. Parenting out of guilt never works, only ever makes the problem worse, makes the kid want more and be crappier. Um, but consequences the word no. Following through and being stern best thing I've ever done with my kids, best thing. And they show up based on how, how consistent I am. So the coming out has been hard and it's been beautiful. It's been beautiful and it's possible If I could. I was a piece of crap as a parent. I abandoned my first two kids to the state so, and now my relationships are good.

Speaker 1: 1:13:39

That took hard work.

Speaker 2: 1:13:41

Seriously, I'm still working on it every day.

Speaker 1: 1:13:44

Thank you. Great example. It shows that it's possible. I mean, I think, a lot of these communities that we're able to be a part of and also help other people to see that they're there, like faith groups, business support groups or, like you said, the work you're doing, also without OUT, so I think that's great. Um, um, so. So if you could go back and talk to your younger self, what was the first thing you would say? It's one of the questions I like to ask people when, when they get into the trucking industry or or any any field that they've gotten into for a while, and and um, now they look back and say, hey, you know, if I could talk to that younger version of myself.

Speaker 2: 1:14:25

What would you say? I would probably tell myself that I'm going to make it, that it's going to be really, really hard. I don't know if I'd try to change anything, because I'm where I'm supposed to be. You know, the self-centered part of me says that I would go and try to help my son differently, so that he is still here today, but I don't know if my mission would be where it's at right now if I hadn't experienced that. So I would tell myself that I will learn to value all of the hard things that felt unfair, and that all I have to do is keep on sticking with it, and then I have everything that it takes to make it.

Speaker 1: 1:15:18

I can just imagine those sessions in prison.

Speaker 2: 1:15:22

Yeah, they're good.

Speaker 1: 1:15:23

They're good.

Speaker 2: 1:15:24

They're good.

Speaker 1: 1:15:26

Nice. So yeah, so thank you so much for being a part of this journey. I want to take you away from all the many other things that you got going and I wish you the best, much success. Even when things get tight and hard, like I said, financially things can change in the blink of an eye. They will they keep pushing yeah?

Speaker 2: 1:15:45

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm grateful.

Speaker 1: 1:15:51

Yeah, and that brought us two together just to be able to talk. It's inspiring for me as well, so I can take this back to my family as well. So thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:16:04

Thank you, and let me know when you want to come to Washington, because I'll take you into that prison, okay.

Speaker 1: 1:16:07

I love it. Hey, that'd be good for a lot of people to see. You know it's, you know you got to such as big fear of something, but yet you can see where is there something better within that system. You don't have to go to the bad. I'm sure there's bad there. You don't have to go to there's bad everywhere. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:16:28

Well, honestly, I don't even know. I don't like to call things good or bad. I like to say things just are what they are. There are hard things and comfortable things everywhere we go, but it's what we make it. We choose what things are going to be like right, and I want to tell you, in Washington state prisons they're pretty chill for the most part, um, but you know, when we utilize that time and this is what I said to myself the last time I was locked up if you play your cards right, this is the last time you're ever going to have this kind of unadulterated time to work on yourself, and that's what I try to give to my guys. Use this time for what it is and let's walk out the man, the dad, the brother, the husband, the whatever that we intended to be in our home.

Speaker 1: 1:17:17

Wow, beautiful.

Speaker 2: 1:17:19

And then too, I think, you, you hold up, you host a show yourself I do people get a hold of you or listen to any more of your great stories and experiences and insights um, yeah, you can find me on social media, on facebook, instagram, uh, and linkedin as b, jenny burton, g-i-n-n-y, b-u-r-t-o-n. And you can find me on YouTube, modern America, with Jenny Burton. We tell the real life stories on the other side of policy, and I'm on X, but I don't really engage a lot there as Bromley Mai, so yeah, X is a is a wild place. Yeah, it's wild.

Speaker 1: 1:18:00

I don't do enough political stuff to qualify for X have been on a path or up a path, it's not just about that path. It's about the personal redemption that you can find within yourself to put this transforming purpose back to life. Transforming whole systems is something you do very well and we thank you for making that contribution to society and helping out so many individuals to better themselves and their families. So I want to champion you to keep going Before we go. I want to also what's one final piece of advice you want to leave with our listeners before trying to rebuild or reinvent or save themselves.

Speaker 2: 1:19:00

Yeah, you have what it takes. You do you have what it takes, but it doesn't matter if I tell you, you have to tell yourself, because everything that we tell ourself is the truth. Nice, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:19:14

All right. Well, thanks again, jenny Burton. We have her here on the show and her honesty and hope for today. If this conversation has moved, you share it with someone that needs it and hope for today. If this conversation has moved, you share it with someone that needs it, someone you love and your family. Continue to reach out to those individuals that may be out there in the truck alone. Give them a helping hand as well, because you never know who's listening or on the other end of the radio or the podcast app, so who might need an edge to make a good comeback story. So I'm your host, truckin' Ray, and that's Delivered.