Welcome to Inside Job with Cleve Bell, a show biofenders, four offenders, a podcast all about adding value to others, guiding returning citizens and their families and engaging with returning citizen policy makers.
Forget your past, forgive yourself, and begin again right now.
And now your host, Cleve Bell.
Welcome to Inside Job, I'm your host, Cleve Bell.
I have created this podcast to give you some helpful tips on how to succeed after incarceration and to help you start your re-injure process from scratch.
I know from experience how easy it is to get overwhelmed with the barriers that you face, especially being a returning citizen.
So today, I'd like to start off by telling you just a little about who I am and what it is that makes me do what I do.
I'm the oldest of six kids. I had four sisters and a brother.
You know, I look back now. I did not do a very good job of being a role model, being the oldest.
And even today, I look back and think of some of the things that I could have done, should have done, would have done.
And of course, the reason I guess I find myself doing this sometimes is because now some of those relationships that I took for granted, you know, really taking care of a little better than I did.
And so I think it's safe to say that I do have regrets, things that I didn't do, things that I did in the way I did them.
Nevertheless, that was part of my learning experience.
I grew up in a small town, Georgia. Thomasville is 36 miles north of Tallahassee.
Some of the highlights of growing up in Thomasville was when I used to go live with my aunt in Tallahassee for the summer.
That was always a great time.
Tallahassee was a college town. It was also where all of the politicians were.
And so it was always a buzz in Tallahassee. So we always enjoyed going there. And I'd go and live with my aunt for the summer for two weeks myself and my two sisters.
And that was always a fun time. It gave us a chance to get out of Thomasville because for me, Thomasville was so oppressive.
But it was also a time to get to play with my cousins and to get to know relatives that lived in Tallahassee that I didn't know.
Thomasville was surrounded by a lot of plantations. And so there was a lot of that kind of work. And I remember growing up as a kid.
One of the good jobs to have was being able to work on the plantation because it was a seasonal job, you know, during the winter.
When they came down for quail hunting and those kind of things you'd work. And in the summer, when they would go back north, that you were given the responsibility of keeping up the house until the next season started.
And so that was always kind of a neat job being on the plantations and in those kind of environments was really, it was took a little bit getting used to.
And of course, that was my first encounter with racism at the time who really didn't know it was racism. It was just the way everybody lived.
But I remember as a young kid having and growing up in the city, you know, it was kind of one of those experience where you were never free to be yourself.
You know, you were always having to kind of watch your steps. There was certain neighborhoods you couldn't walk in and there were certain times of night.
It wasn't safe to be out and certain music you couldn't listen to and certain churches you couldn't attend. And so growing up as a kid, I guess a lot of part of my life just trying to figure out what was safe.
And nothing was ever really safe. Everything was always kind of off-limits. That was a term they used. Everything was off-limits.
For example, traveling on the bus, things like that. They were colored restrooms and colored water fountains. And I remember growing up at the courthouse there in Thomasville.
They had two big water fountains one for the wonder black folks drank from what's in the basement. But the ones that were on the outside had a sign on it that said white only.
I remember how some of my friends and I couldn't believe that it was just water. And at night time we'd go up and sneak a drink out of it just to find out that it was water finding ourselves to be a little disappointed because we thought it had to be something.
It had to be watered water because we were told you couldn't drink it. One of the highlights in Thomasville for me was working with my grandfather.
Well, I said it was a highlight. It was a highlight now that I looked back. It wasn't a highlight at the time. I was doing it simply because I didn't want to be there. I wanted to be with my friends. I wanted to be out having fun.
My grandfather and a grocery store in Thomasville and one of the requirements was that on Saturdays instead of going out or going to the movie, he was requiring me along with my mom that I would come up on Saturday and stay overnight with him on Saturday night and come back home on Sunday in time for church.
You know, at the time, I absolutely hated it. But when I looked back today, I would say 90% of the things that have helped me to be successful in business and in the journey that I have pursued has been the results of my grandfather. I learned customer service, I learned marketing, public relations. Of course, we didn't call it that in those days.
But those were the kind of things that I learned as a result of working for my grandfather. So it was a good experience. I'd looked back at it now and I wish my granddad was around to see that what he had given and put into my life really did work. And that it was all good. You can imagine being a kid giving him an awful time when he would ask me to do things.
My mom and my dad separated when I was young. In fact, when I looked back at my life, one of the things that is pretty evident is that I was a lost young man. In fact, I was looking for purpose and looking for a way to put my life together and we're not doing very well at it.
But I remember when my mom and dad were still married, my dad was one of those guys that kind of enjoyed seeing other women. My mom apparently got the word that my dad was running around. And the next thing I know, you know, they're getting in one of these verbal confrontations that often happen when I was young.
And on one occasion, the two of them got to wrestling. I don't know who brought out the shotgun, whether it was my mom or my dad. But I remember them tussling over the shotgun and as a result of that, they in the struggle blew a hole up through the roof of the house.
And I remember how horrible the feelings were from that kind of experience as a young kid and not knowing exactly what to do.
And I remember the time when he used to take me into car. I was a real small Todd, but I still remember him picking up his girlfriend and having me in the middle of the middle seat. And I remember how awkward I felt. Of course, I was too small to really know what to do or what to say, but other than I felt uncomfortable.
I look back at it now and think to myself, that was kind of a tough thing to be faced with as a young kid. All I knew is that I wasn't comfortable because it had something to do with my mom that my mother wasn't there. And I was very uncomfortable.
I began to kind of connect with my mom and found myself in one of those relationships where it was me against me trying to be a referee between my mom and my dad.
So you can imagine being young probably five or six years old trying to run referee between two adults.
My dad would get angry and my mom would get angry and my dad would move into a separate room and he would barricade his room door so that mom couldn't get in and she'd barricade her door so that he couldn't get in.
So meanwhile, here I was in the middle of all of these kind of actions. And so I think as a young kid, not knowing at the time exactly what I was going to be confronted with my dad.
He left Tomasville when he was younger because he was he got into trouble. He used to work at the train station there in Tomasville and some gentleman hit him.
They got into a fight and as a result of it, I think from what I've been told, the gentleman that hit my dad got the best of my dad and some of my dad.
and walked away from it, but came back maybe a week or two later
and seriously hurt that person, I don't think he died,
but he was seriously hurt and as a result of that,
my dad left Thomasville and moved to Miami.
And it was there that it became a real challenge.
You know, wanting a dad was always kind of a big deal for me.
In fact, as I grew older, I always felt that
not having a dad was a very tough experience
and not having somebody to protect me
and not having somebody to lead and guide me
and to help me to learn what life was all about.
You know, for the most part, I had to figure out life for myself
and that was a very good because I was very limited.
Of course, when you look back, being a young kid,
what can you learn?
You can only learn so much.
That's all part of life, but my dad was a good guy.
When I moved to Miami and as I had grown older like,
I got to know my dad and over the years,
we developed a great relationship.
I remember one occasion my dad had gotten extremely ill
and he was in the end and out of the hospital
and so we went over, did all that I could
and I was there for him and I remember one day,
I went and visited him at the hospital
and he said to me, "I really appreciate what you've done, boy."
And, you know, he's the call me boy.
I was afraid to tell him what my real name was.
It was always boy, this is boy that.
But I remember him saying he was how grateful he was
that I had been there for him.
And of course, me trying to identify, you know, with my dad,
I said, "Well, dad, that's what friends are for."
And my dad says, "I'm not your friend, I'm your daddy."
And I thought, "Well, so much for bonding."
(laughs)
But again, it was one of those learning experiences.
The most tragic thing that happened to me
in one of the reasons I always felt I needed the dad
is when I was a young kid, probably eight, nine years old,
I was sexually molested by the grandson of the babysitter.
You know, he had a bunch of toys.
One of the occasions, he implied that I could play
with those toys, providing I did the following.
And of course, being a young kid,
I didn't have any understanding of what was going on
until after that happened.
I have to tell you, it plagued me for probably 20 years
of my life.
I spent most of my life trying to figure out my own sexuality
because of the experience that I had.
I think the thing that really got the best of me
is that I spent a great number of years wondering,
what was it that I did?
What was it that I said?
What gave him the impression that I was interested
in that kind of an event?
It's one of those things that if you get caught up
in your own traffic, life can be extremely difficult.
And so I spent many years.
In fact, I think that some of that could be contributed
to my drugs and alcohol that I wind up
becoming addicted to was I was always
trying to crush feelings.
I was always trying to learn how to live with myself
and feel decent about myself.
But I always felt if my dad had been there,
I would not have had to experience those kind of things.
And when I was in school, I enjoyed school for the most part.
I can't say that I was a great student
because I didn't apply myself.
I love music and I love drama and art.
And so those were always things that I could do
that got me across the finish lines.
I spent a lot of time learning how to do that
and being in groups and being on having fun.
I was in a couple of singing groups when I was in school
and never forget we were there for the talent show.
Douglas used to have a talent show once or twice a year
and I remember enjoying being up in front of the audiences
and enjoying their response that I got in some ways
that almost became an addiction
because then once I realized that I had the ability
to do that, I then began to live on that
because that was the one thing that seemed to make life
worth meaning for me, a worth living.
It was a good experience and I was doing fine
until probably round 14 was when I started drinking.
We used to drink a brew we called it home brew
and it was homemade.
It was made out of a yeast and corn and you name it.
It was 35 cent a quart.
You could get a whole quart or 35 cent.
You know, you think about it today if you drank that stuff
and probably would kill you.
After a while, I began to become a very angry young man
and I think that I became a product of my environment
and I didn't feel comfortable with a lot of things
and seemed like life was all about what I couldn't do.
I couldn't do, I couldn't move, I couldn't be
and so that was always kind of a bond of contentious for me.
I found that in many cases, I was trying to learn how to be
because I was the oldest.
I was trying to be, quote unquote,
demanded a house because my mom was a single mom
with three or four kids and so I had an awful time
trying to adjust and to be things that I really couldn't be.
During that time also, when I was 16,
I came down with a terrible liver disease.
I have no idea what happened, but I was bedridden for a year.
So it really was a close call to death.
I just didn't realize it at the time and I don't know
if I get how the community rallied around my mom and myself
because I couldn't walk in there.
We're men in the neighborhood who would come
and help me to take a bath and help me to take a shower
and help mom with me and that was the value of having a community.
And I think one of the things that I bring with me
at Riverside houses, the background experience
and the fact that communities do make a difference.
You've heard the fact that it takes a village to raise a child.
Well, I think a good village can do that
and at least that's been my experience in Thomasville now.
As I said, there was some weeds in those communities as well.
But for the most part, people cared about each other.
When I found my stuff in that situation
and being bedridden for a year,
it really gave me a chance to do some thinking.
But as usual, when you're in a tough position,
you take a lot of things under consideration.
You make a lot of commitments to do better
to live your life differently.
And of course, like any other, after I finally was able
to get out of bed, I was often back to the wild, wild west
who was the way I would describe it.
And it was right after then that I was with a friend of mine
who was home from military leave
and he and I had gone out to a nightclub together.
And on our way back, of course, we had been drinking.
He ran into a tree, cracked my leg, cracked my spinal cord.
That's what it was.
I had to wear a brace for another year.
When I think about it, it was just one accident
after the other, you know, started off with.
Word has it they had declared a national holiday
celebrating the day I left Thomasville
because I think I was kind of a little too hard to handle
and created a lot of drama in town.
That isn't to say that there wasn't reason for it,
but nevertheless, it was that kind of experience.
Well, I moved to Miami when I was young kid,
maybe 16 or 17.
And of course, you can imagine coming from a small town
to a big city.
It was like being caught up in a whirlwind
and not knowing exactly what to do
and how to go about doing it.
But I spent a lot of time just trying to get to know
a little about myself.
You know, just it was never home.
It was always looking for a purpose in life.
When I think about it, it was just one accident
after the other, you know, started off with the car accident
and the sexual molestation.
And, you know, you just name it.
Everything started piling up on me.
And the more it did, the more I drank.
And the more I drank, the worse I got.
Finally, as I said, it led me to a place that I liked to call the Institute of High
Learning.
It was there in the day, County Jail in 1969.
I had a chance to try and do some things and make a difference in life and it was a
young guy that came in by the name of Jerry.
The word was that this guy Jerry was in jail and that he was a former drug addict and
of course at that point, I had known him, no people who had been successful at kicking
drug or alcohol.
I met Jerry and probably about 50 or 60 of us that used to go down to this meeting every
Tuesday and once we got there, Jerry would get up and tell his story about how he was
able to overcome his drug addiction and how life was made different for him and it was
really impressive, you know.
But he came and he talked to us guys and I remember he used to take guys into a small
room adjacent to the chapel there and whenever they would come out, they'd come out with
tears on their eyes and I thought to myself, what in the world are they doing in there?
I've never seen that kind of reaction especially among folks that were in prison.
We were all pretty hardcore drug addicts.
So I thought to myself, well, I don't really know what he's doing but it's seen of interest
and so the next time there's an opening in that room, I think I'll go in there and see
after about three or four weeks, I finally went into the room and when I got there, Jerry
was sharing about his life, how he had been able to overcome drug addiction in New York
and he asked me, how would I like to make a commitment in my life to Christ?
And I thought, well, to think what I was bogging him for, I came because I really, I did
suggest to him but I came because I really thought you had some drugs in here but you know,
being from the street, the one thing that kind of registers in your mind is everybody
has a game so let me let him run his and maybe at the end, if I pay attention then maybe
he'll pull out the boat, the dope bag or whatever it is that he's doing and of course that
never happened but instead I did leave the room and left it completely different than
I came into the room.
It was one of those things that was the beginning of my life changing and in fact that's the
reason the title of the podcast is Inside Job because all of the work that I've done
over the last 40 years have been the result of an inside job of coming to grips with who
I was and coming to the place where I was able to accept myself and love myself as a
person, not comparing myself with others but just to me a fact that I am somebody and that
I'm worth the investment that it takes to get my life together with the help of others.
I don't think without that encounter at the day kind of jail, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't
be here today because the life I was living, you know, I had OED twice, I got in the car
accident and almost got killed and I had a fellow polar gun on me and put it up to my
head and I walked away from that, I've been at the point of death at least four or five
times in my young life.
I found that after that encounter with Jerry there at the jail that I really did yearn
to be something different and to do something different and so that was all part of my
inside journey for which I tried to now continue to find ways to tell that story.
Along with Jerry my younger brother who at the time was living at home with mom and on
one of occasion I got an envelope in the mail and it was from my brother and I looked inside
of it and it had eight one dollar bills in it and I thought oh my gosh what was it that
possessed him to send his eight dollars to me you know it really was kind of one of those
things that God used to kind of melt my heart because at that point I was so cold and so
hard that nothing could move me but that moved me that kind of that kind of brought me to
a point of awareness that there is something about humanity and that there is something
about relationships and loving others and so it was with that I was just extra treming
you know I had already come to that point of awareness and now here was this my brother
sending me this money and this was all just just all working out and so after this chapel
service as I go back up and tell everybody in that jail say oh five before where I was
in the day kind of jail telling them about what had happened I have earlier to me in terms
of that prayer and how I had felt like I was a renewed person I just stood up in the
sale and I just began to tell people what had happened and as I tell them I could see
for me what I would call a confirmation because I'd see tears in their eyes or I'd see
a kind face or a noggin head of folks who really understood and for me it was a confirmation
that what had happened earlier was actually real for the first time I really felt at home
I felt okay to be who I was I no longer was looking to be somebody else and that David
Jerry made a world of difference I remember looking out of the jail one to one day and
for the first time I looked up and I saw blue skies and I thought to myself wow how beautiful
that and what dawned on me is that you know I had been looking down all my life oh at
least a lot of my life in terms of my recovery I never realized that the sky was as blue
in the world was as beautiful as the world it just kind of shows you you know how you you
can get in confidence in in your trauma and how sometimes can work against you I became
a trustee while I was there in jail and that was the best for me I've never been afraid
of work I worked all my life I worked hard work the other bother me is for me it was just
not being able to keep a job and it wasn't because I couldn't do the work it was because
I got bored and I didn't know what to do with my board and I'd get with the job and I'd
learn it once I learned that I was finished with it didn't realize that you had to have
some stability all you had to be able to kind of stay with the job I was in the laundry
for a while and I did laundry I worked in the kitchen for a while and finally I was put
on a work release work release means that I go out every day from nine to five I work
in the community and I come back to the stockade at night and so that's what I did for the
remaining of the year that I had been sentenced there but it was there that I began to learn
some of the value of working for what you earned I worked towards reentry and some of the
things that I did for the reentry portion I was that I came to the conclusion that the
only person that I had a hundred percent control over was me and that if I was going to
get anywhere I was going to have to start with me part of this journey that we're on starts
when one can accept the place in which they find themselves not spending so much time trying
to figure out how you got there but maybe dealing with the fact that I'm now here and
is there somewhere else I'd rather be and if it is how would I get there for me one of
the things I did is I took a Billy Graham corresponding course of the Bible I think
it was a 16 week Bible study course and it was one of the greatest experiences that I
had had of course by now you probably think everything I've done was a great experience
but this really this really was in the sense that for the first time I was able to to
hang together a thought and at the same time as I would be studying this Bible I was able
to share with other guys and to sail it appeared that my sharing made a difference in their
lives as well and it was there that I began to see that hey there isn't God given gifts
that has been given to all of us and unfortunately if you were like me you never had the time
nor took the time to develop those gifts and abilities for me instead I was always looking
out trying to find it somewhere else you know that it was saying the grass looks green on the other side
not really realizing what I had because I was always looking at what somebody else had as opposed
to looking at what perhaps I had myself and so it was there that I started working on reentry.
The one thing that I wanted to do as a part of my re-entry from the day kind of jail
was I wanted to put in place something that would give me the assurance that I wouldn't
return again because that was one of the toughest experiences for me.
One of the things that it did for me is it caused me to realize how much I value freedom.
You know, sometimes you don't value something until you lose it.
And that was what happened with me.
I didn't realize what freedom really was until I was incarcerated.
And so I wanted to make sure that I'd never allowed myself to get into that situation again.
And of course having this newfound faith in God was the exact thing that I needed.
I realized that I needed to feel better about myself.
And the only one that could make me feel better about myself was my relationship with God
because it was like God accepted me for who I was.
He loved me for the way I was and for who I was and for where I was.
And that made a world of difference to me.
And I found myself really growing from that to the point of where I was able to get out
and go back into my own neighborhood and begin to tell some of the young folks
that I had grown up with about this newfound faith and how it made a difference.
And little by little some of my old friends heard the message
and they too became followers of God and made a difference in their lives.
And it's like I became accustomed to it.
It became something I enjoyed.
But I remember looking back and thinking to myself,
"Boy, as I grow older, what a price I had paid for growing up in a dysfunctional household."
But by the way, I'm pretty sure that isn't new in our world today.
A lot of folks grow up in dysfunctionality.
The key to it, I guess, is to try and do things in a way that you minimize the damage.
At least that was what I grew up believing is that you try to minimize the damage.
You try to do things so that you didn't hurt anybody anymore than absolutely necessary.
And so you try to walk a careful line and maintain it.
As I like to say in the AA Group, I am now celebrating 18,600 days of recovery.
One of the reasons I say that is because it's really one day at a time.
Every day I get up with the idea that here's a new day.
And I'm going to do the very best I can today.
And not spending a lot of time worrying about what I didn't accomplish,
nor spending too much time on sweating what I am going to accomplish,
but to be the very best I can be today.
And I remember that in the sale, we have what you call a houseman.
Most housemen were housemen because they were physically capable and violent.
I wasn't physical nor violent in that sense,
but I did have the ability to converse with people in a rational way.
And as a result of that, I became the houseman in my sale.
And what I did is I organized the whole sale block.
For example, they used to put extra trays in the lunch area, and in the old days,
the houseman got all of the trays.
But when I became houseman, what I did is I connected the food trays
to do this, having to do it, keeping the sale clean.
For example, for those who cleaned the bathroom, got the extra tray in the morning
and those who swept up the dining room, got the lunch schedule.
And we saw we pretty organized.
In fact, I think that was the beginning of a Riverside house.
I didn't know it at the time, but it got to be where when it was time for guys to be released from jail,
they really did not want to leave because we had to develop such a tight community in that jail sale.
And it was all because of what had happened earlier when I talked about my first encounter with Jerry
and having that prayer time and having that conversion of faith for myself.
What I'd like to do over the folks who have a future is find a way to give back what has been given to me.
I have been given an awful lot.
By God and a lot of people, it's important for me to let it be known that
I'm here because there is a village of folks who care about people.
I've never met a person that wasn't willing to give another person a glass of water.
I think sometimes the challenge is how do you do it?
And sometimes working with people who come out of my kind of background are not easy to work with.
And it isn't because they don't want better.
Isn't it because they can't do better? It's because they don't know better.
At least that was my problem.
I simply didn't know better.
If I had known better, I could have done better as I looked back over my life.
It really was that complicated.
It's just that I didn't know.
And of course my mother didn't know.
And of course her mother didn't know.
And of course her mother didn't know either.
And so here we are living in a world where none of us really knew another way other than the way we were living.
That was a great learning experience for me.
[music]
[gun shots]
[music]
Being released, I never forget when I finally was released from jail.
It was one of those things where I had a check in my pocket for $3,800.
I got down to the bank, downtown Miami, I cashed my check.
And they gave me $3,800 in cash.
I found myself sitting there thinking, "Oh my gosh, what if somebody knows I got all this money, they're going to rob me?"
And of course that was my fear because that's what I did with others.
And so I remember going and getting my check and going down to my mom's house and living with my mom for a season.
And I thought that I was finally able to get my own place and get a job.
And you know the journey has continued on.
And so I'm hoping with our time together I'll be able to share with you some of the things that I've learned.
And I've learned a lot.
Thanks so much for listening to the Inside Job podcast on life after prison.
To learn more about our work here at Riverside House, please go to the insidejobpodcast.info.
If you haven't subscribed yet, do so, share with the friend, and leave us a comment, thanks for being with us today.
You've been listening to Inside Job with Cleve Bell.
Join us next time for more insights on guiding returning citizens and their families, adding value to the lives of others, and engaging with returning citizen policy makers.
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