[Music] hi I'm Pam Bailey welcome to uh voices unlocked a podcast produced by more than our crimes a nonprofit that's dedicated to Bringing voices inside federal prison out to the world so their Humanity can be seen and heard um and today we have u a couple of new voices two in the podcast studio and one of them is Conrad Stewart who recently was uh released from federal prison himself and I'd like to before we go on have Conrad introduce himself a little bit hello my name Michael Conrad Stewart
I did 26 years incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons um I was released February 22nd uh February 7th excuse me 2022 from an I I was a ey recipient um and I'm just glad to be here be able to give him my voice through the conversation well I S of want to explain uh so K just mentioned IRA and you know more than our crimes is dedicated to advocating for Second Chances uh an opportunity for people who have been in prison for a long time to show that they've that they're rehabilitated and ar
e ready to return to their communities and families and Ira um is actually a DC law that is an example of how to do that uh basically what iris says is the incarceration reduction Amendment act and it says that if you been in prison for at least 15 years and you went in under the age of 25 you have the opportunity to go before a judge and demonstrate how you've changed and developed and you can return home and this is the kind of law that we want to advocate for everywhere in fact we'd also like
to change the age requirement because really anybody who has committed a crime you know 15 20 25 years before has changed and developed and we believe has the right to Hope um but what's sort of making that uh the advocacy for Second Chances a little bit difficult right now is that in DC and a lot of other cities across the country uh crime including violent crime is spiking and has spiked really since the pandemic and so you have a lot of people who are very afraid rightfully so I I understand
it on my own block and DC for instance there was a carjacking literally almost in front of my apartment building so people are afraid and that makes it harder to have conversations about why people who committed crimes deserve the opportunity for a second chance and we have another um new voice in the podcast studio today and that's Nana dufier and she actually is founder of sound easy which is the producer for voices unlocked but she also has an interesting personal story that um will give her
I think she'll play a very valuable role in this in this conversation today about um how to bridge The Divide between um two types of hurt people Those who commit crimes and those who are impacted by them n you want to introduce yourself yeah so I'm Nana dufier Pam thank you for saying my name so uh eloquently and gracefully um my Ghan name I am as Pam mentioned uh founder of sound easy I am a yogi I am a raiki I am an energy healer I am someone who believes in Justice and um human right rights
and civil rights and um goodness and Welfare for all uh that's very important to me um and my story is one of uh being a widow essentially my husband um as as you know Pam and Conrad was murdered in 2006 uh he was a wonderful man his name was L ja he was driving a taxi cab he was a taxi C taxi cab driver at the time an immigrant 28 years old uh from Mali in West Africa a uh very kind and gentle soul and someone who was really in this country just to make it like all of us some of us have been h
ere uh who were born here and who have you know generations of history in this country and others who are more recent um Americans or immigrants and he was on the on the road to becoming an American to live a dream a dream which involved um freedom for him because he came from quite a well-to-do family in Mali but a family that um had a lot of rules and regulations around uh your future uh very conservative very very very conservative family um uh your wife and your husband are chosen for you yo
ur career path typically is chosen for you you wind up um in his case working Within in the family business the family structure which was um natural gas for him and he left what would have been a comfortable life to come to the United States to actually wind up living a very difficult life he toiled as um an undocumented immigrant um as a very young man at the time when he came here I think he was still a teenager um in his early teens but he was able to come uh on a university uh Visa he he wa
s accepted to um Cal State California State University and he um very quickly learned from his father that he was going to have to pay back every red scent that his father invested in him coming to the United States and that hurt him so badly um and it really set him on a rampage really it really drove him him to hurry up and pay his dad back he did not want to owe his father and so he he left school as a result and he started working and that was one of the choices that he made that um I won't
say it was a good choice or was a bad choice but it was definitely a turning point yeah in his in his uh life here that's where he started to struggle um just to make ends meet and you know a lot of people are familiar with the life of an an Indo ented person in some ways may be similar to a life of a formally incarcerated person right where you're running up against a lot of barriers a lot of legal barriers um job applications documentation all that kind of stuff so he's doing a lot of odd jobs
and just trying to find a way and trying to find a community um that would accept him and that would help to facilitate his journey and um one thing about him he was a devout Muslim through and through he was a gentle man of peace and so anyway long story short he wound up driving a taxi we met in two late 2004 and um it was pretty much love at first sight we met we met on Christmas day in a club we were both in a club on Christmas day uh that's another story and um we dated for about a year an
d a half we moved into together in uh February of 2006 we got married in April of 2006 and on May 31st 2006 he was murdered so it was a very um needless to say turbulent devastating event in my life my family's life his family's life was this like a random act of violence this was a random act of violence know the person this was a random act of violence he did not know the person um it was a 15-year-old young man Boy Child that killed him in a robbery the young man who was apprehended uh in the
aftermath of this on the same day was uh captured uh he was um brought in and eventually there was a um plea deal that that came up in most cases that happens yeah they convinced him to plead he had just been released from a juvenile um detention for a a breaking in entering and um maybe a not more than a month prior to this happening and so that was taken into consideration and he wound up being charged as an adult although he was 15 years old when when he did this and then he became 16 and we
were in the court system trying to figure out what's going to happen to this person who killed my husband and so Through The Plea he was um given 34 years um of a sentence for his actions and the uh assistant DA told me that more more than likely he'd do about 17 if all goes well for him right it's looking like maybe 17 is what he'll do and then he'll be out here we are at year 17 I haven't heard anything but I also haven't followed up I haven't followed up I've been very much um living my life
and uh working through my own trauma as a result of this and and on a course of healing this is why I'm such a dedicated Yogi and I've become a raiki and healing and uh self-discovery and um Ascension of my own spirit and of my own course in life has really been my focus not on the young person who killed my husband carrying through my husband my husband's Legacy and you know um just everything I do everything I say every action I take I still feel like I'm married to him even though he's not h
ere because I don't believe that we die in the soul of the soul I think we just die of the Flesh and so I still very feel very much attached to him very much a part of him and much of what I do is of the consciousness that he's aware of of things he's near me he's by me um I want to make sure that his life was not cut short at the age of 28 in vain and I want to make sure that the way I carry myself especially for those who knew him and who know me and know us and uh associate us with one anothe
r that I conduct myself and I carry myself and I uh I involve myself in things that he would would have done or he would would be proud of I represent him in this life still so it seems to me that uh so this is our challenge really if we look at the moment in time that we're at you know where we have uh on the one hand Rising crime which is a major concern and we have a a culture that has resulted in mass incarceration you know large numbers of people who are serving long periods of time in pris
on are predominantly black you know so you you have these two opposing wrongs you know and uh one of the posts one of the um blog posts that more than our crime is published and we talked about one of our previous episodes is that hurt people hurt people so very often and we we as a society don't ask too much about the why behind this 15-year-old for instance you know how did he get to that point and often if you um if you really delve into their stories and we were just hearing earlier from con
about his you'll find that uh the person who commits the crime came from really damaged traumatic childhoods so it's like a hurt person is often the one who hurts another and I think our challenge is how do we build a bridge of of of understanding and healing between those two communities so we could address this together and I I that's what this episode is about and we're going to be hearing later from somebody still in prison who's grappling with these questions but um Conor I would I would l
ove to hear some of your thoughts when you're listening to Nana about how how do we bridge bridge because you're coming from two different sides here right and I um I just truly believe that when it comes to these particular hurt people hurt people this is a fact right I can't deny the fact that when I came up or when I was young I've got desensitized the violence very young um unfortunately I had watched my father shoot my mother at an early age so when you dealing with a young child mind and h
e's watching and he's seeing how the world work in his small mind of how okay this is how I solve my issues right if he see his mother and his father arguing say oh I so now violence become prevalent to this young child at a very especially me at a very young age so when you become desensitized then you take the humanity out of the equation but as I was listening um to the sister I was listening to her explain the situation the first thing that popped out to my mind is she saying how this young
youth was already taken into the custody of the juvenile detention center so I'm saying so the first thing po My Mind why wasn't he giv a proper guidance and protection then like even for me when I was in the um facility which is in DC um for youth is now New Beginnings but when I went down there I already knew in my mind that this wasn't a type of life I wanted to live I didn't want to have nobody telling me when to wake up when to go to sleep and you know and and how to live my life however I
didn't have the guidance I didn't have the education when I went to prison at the age of 18 I was a functional reiterate that doesn't mean that I was dumb or or I had a um you know innate ability to be evil or mean no that just mean I was underdeveloped and I didn't have the proper guidance to be a productive member of society or a citizen so what I understand now is that we have to go back to the root cause a lot of these crimes um and just having this healing process between the both uh ends o
f the spectrum um is very pivotal and I it's very critical and we should not only speak about but these are things we should start now trying to um develop policy around right and really get those who represent us which is a politicians get them to really listen um and that's another way we use our voice um through voting and things of that nature so for me I just see I just see the bridging of the Gap is the communication right the understanding the humanity behind the tragedy and for me it jus
t took um years of a lot of self-correction self-analysis and self um development and but this was only possible because I had reached that level where I stopped giving onus to my to my actions to others I took on this of and say hey I'm a functionally illiterate so that mean I need to educate myself that mean I need to I be I need to be in Halls where U knowledge is being dissimilated where I can evolve and grow as a human being so you know I understand the emotions of when a tragedy happened h
ow this notion of Revenge and you know this this Fury and this anger it it it it you know it takes over the individual however you got to get back to the root because now as we seeing now it's a cycle I came in in 96 it was the same crime wave so here it is now what 2022 we faced with the same so whatever we doing is not working right the dragoran sentences and sentencing people the 20 30 years this is not stopping the damage that of these young adolescents that find themselves in terrible situa
tions at a young age well so recently through a um a member of the more than our crimes Network um his name is Ricardo Davis he's currently serving a time in a federal prison in in New Jersey called FCI fton and he told me about a class uh that he is taking that he took in prison and now is teaching because he found it so helpful uh called Vic impact and I I actually hadn't been aware until he told me about this that um that there there's there's prisoners inside who are have gotten to the point
like you did of grappling with the impact of what they've done uh what the crime they committed on not only their own family but families like yours and the whole Community um and and by the way I should make a point here is that he's teaching the class this is not prison staff very often you'll hear that the prisoners come together and and teach the classes that they need if they're not they're not getting it from from the prison itself so I I interviewed uh Ricardo a little bit about um what
what does it take to get to the point that you're ready for that kind of a class because you often aren't when you first go into prison now uh before we listen to this first uh sound bite from him I want you to understand he mentions at one point the first prison he was in and he mentions it's called Lorton well Lorton was the um it was prison for DC residents a long time ago back in like the 80s it closed down in 2000 yeah so it was it was it's closed so now DC residents are sent into the feder
al system far from home but what you need to know is that Lon was extremely violent um so when when you when he talks about Lorton and that you'll understand that context so let's let's listen to what he has to say when you first come in you you making all type of excuses and modifying a lot of stuff that you did when you was out because you you basically blaming everybody else for why you was in or for what you did that would have happened to them if they would have just gave the money up or if
they would have only got out the way or they were trying to play Hero they wouldn't have got hurt if they wouldn't have got in my way and just let me go you blaming everybody else when you first come in you still not at the point where you ready to accept responsibility for your own actions my first 11 years I was just still concentrating on doing drugs and didn't care nothing about myself and uh really just was looking for any type of trouble I wanted because I didn't care nothing about myself
but when they closed lording down we was locked down a lot I got to reflect and look at myself this call is from a federal prison look inside internally at myself and start asking questions you know what I'm saying and why did I do this and I was raised up in southeast Washington I know right for wrong I know I did wrong so that's when I came across the victim impact so um Conor we just heard Ricardo talking about this Victim Impact class I'm curious when you were in prison did you have classes
like that and did you participate and if not did you even hear was that even a discussion about uh and and and I I'm sort of curious add on to that what would you think about bringing people like Nana inside to be part of those kinds of discussions or classes wow well fortunately for me I did take the victims Empire class it's a class that's recommended um by your counselor um your counselor do somewhat facilitate the class because it's something that the Bop um does require in certain instance
s I took the class um very impactful um I took it when I was in Big Sandy in Kentucky uh what's that Isa is a Kentucky pardon me in Kentucky um in 2016 and and the class was very impactful for many reasons because the environment first and foremost I was in was very hostile environment so to come out of that and then come into a class of ease and be able to um listen to stories listen to stories of individual who was impacted by crime um to me it made me do a lot of self um uh self analization y
ou know sort of because I I do it a lot and the class the class is get towards you understanding the impact and the domino effect of your crime um so quite naturally for me um I took it to hot I took it personally personal because um at no time doing um during this tragedy in my life where my heart wasn't heavy right so to understand now um the mother you affected the father you affected the daughter sister and you see now the impact of it it kind of make you pause and ask yourself um who am I u
m so the way it's set up is very um very good um and like I said it's a requirement in certain instance they won't even let you uh transfer without this um what do you think I mean because the classes obviously are sort of just prisoners talking amongst each what would you think about um I actually had another prisoner suggest this to me and I thought it was an interesting concept of having people like Nana go into prison to be part of a class I know that would be sort of radical but no actually
that's what's needed right um because when you bring we talking about Bridging the Gap that's how you bridge the gap we got to hear the anger um you got to hear the emotions right this this is this is how change take place right you know it's the saying if you can't change shame a man then he won't change but if you want to change a man shame a man so out of this shame that I felt I was changed tremendously so imagine um the ones that I harmed right coming to me setting me down showing me how I
affected their life and this is why I move um in the circles I move in now for Effective change because now I got to be part of the solution and this is how this occur from dialogue between both ends of the spectrum and really because they do have a vide tapes and they got a course it's actually a curriculum that they have that they use in the victim's Empire class however there's nothing like the real thing what do you think about Nana I mean I would think that maybe that would be hard I mean
it's obviously not the person who did committed the crime against you you have a direct or indirect but still it's yes so how would that be too much to ask of somebody who was had been victimized oh I have a lot to say about this um I have a couple questions too uh for you Conrad about it but um I think it it really just depends on the person so I can talk about it generally and then I'll speak about well I'll talk about myself and then I'll speak about it generally because I I think those are t
wo different um convers Sation for me as an individual it's not my calling to go in prisons and at least not now not as I sit here right now the reason why is manifold I'm very busy producing media and um working in marketing I am very much on a path of healing myself still right the healing journey is continuous and just need what I need to heal right and as I mentioned to you uh last weekend when we were in the spokesperson training for me it is important for my healing not to be defined by th
is moment in time this event that happened outside of my husband's control outside of my own control for it to hijack my life right I want for my life to continue on and I've worked really hard to continue on and not to be dragged back into Baltimore courtrooms and you know let's just face it nobody wants to be in prison myself included right when we were just in the sociology Department building like with the fluorescent lights and all of that I didn't feel comfortable I like to be in green spa
ces I like to have light I like to have natural light so like why would I want to be in that space like I'm speaking honestly like do I really want to disrupt the the the Majesty that I'm trying to create from my life the holistic way that I want to live my life you know being around friends and family laughter and go into spaces that nobody wants to be in I don't even know if the correctional officers even want to be there so that's part of it I don't know that it's my calling because I'm also
very very empathic and it's very difficult for me to not take on other people's traumas and to internalize them and for them to become a part of me me I don't watch the news I don't watch um violent television shows I don't watch anything that has to do with sexual trauma because I internalize it and it trauma it re-traumatized me for all the things I've been through in my life I I have to be very very very um careful about what I um surround myself with and what I expose myself to and I imagine
that other people who have been inct who've been impacted especially by violent crimes whether directly or indirectly I would say for me it's indirect I'm not the one who was killed but it's still you know it's close enough um might be in a similar situation where that's the tug of war now my sister who's a slightly more removed my sister sewa whom you met last weekend she's different she's a little bit more removed from it she's not empathic like myself she's very much um a caring person and a
and somebody who wants change like myself but she doesn't have that Gene where everything causes her trauma she can watch Unsolved Mysteries on Christmas that I mean she does she likes to watch Unsolved Mysteries on Christmas and Thanksgiving and I'm like what you doing so so she's the one who can go into prisons and I really enjoyed working with the formally incarcerated last weekend I really enjoyed that because we weren't in the prison and that's a different kind of work that I think I can d
o now in general though I think that absolutely it's needed and I think people who have the capacity to be in those spaces should be because I do believe I I felt you Conrad when you said it's needed I felt the emotion behind you saying it's needed and so I just want to know if I would love for you to explain a little bit more why it's needed and the question the second question I have behind that is is it you know I'm assuming that for someone to even take that class and again Pam I think you P
am maybe Ricardo mentioned that people who are in that class who are teaching the class um are this same people who are in the class there's no outside facilitator coming in so if the the people who are in the class are learning from one another with no outside facilitation it makes me feel that you've already arrived to a certain place right you've already come to a place of perspective of understanding of self- transformation of course more work is needed always until the day we leave this pla
net but it's already telling me that you already made a lot of inroads on your own or through experiences or epiphanies or prayer or whatever it was so what is it that why is it that you then need someone like myself to come in what's the missing piece and then the other question I have is um if you can remember my questions is does does do does the class do the conversations and the workshopping that you do does it bring you back to the impact that it has on you not just on the so-called victim
s and I you know I hate that word victim but but does it also bring you back to how did this impact me because I'm a big believer and everything starts with you I say it's necessary because when you talk about closure and healing it goes both ways and with myself what I found out the more I was able to accept um all the negative um attributes or names that was given to me by the person that I harm or their family rather it it allowed me to show me how much I need to grow right and I knew and I l
ike I say I understand the uh the notion of the notion of uh Revenge right I I and I say I understand it because that's a natural reaction however I understand when we coming for healing purposes right and this is what the CL the victim impact really supposed to do is allow the individual to see with the harm that you cause and how it affect others so naturally after our own emotions right because we go through the same emotional it's just on a different Spectrum maybe sometimes it's in denial s
tate of denial or we know we like to play the Bame game like Ricardo said but at the end of the day when we go and close them doors and we log in at night we got to deal with ourselves so the reason why I say it's necessary and like I said they had vide tapes but there's nothing like that emotion like you say that raw emotion and energy right and um of the individual who actually been harm speaking it and you taking onus of that and understand okay this is closure for me too because that's not w
hat's happening to us when we get in incarcerated when we get incarcerated it's more harm right it's more damage well you know Ricardo actually addresses your question a little bit in the next sound bite um because I asked him you know how do you go about so in the previous interview he was talking about people initially are not ready for the victim impact class because they're still making excuses they're still deflecting they're still deflecting once they can get to the point of starting to re
alize okay wait a minute I need to look at my own responsibility in this um then they're ready for this class and that's why nobody I mean I he Ricardo I think said you know that he took him 11 years before he took the class um but what's interesting is so so you'll hear him talk about um trying to get the guys to realize all the Ripple effects of their crime and I have to tell you one of the reasons why more than our crimes exist is that people learn and relate through stories stories is what I
mean you can you can talk about statistics and it's leaves people cold but when we hear a story like yours a personal story you know with all the little details that make you real and human and we relate to you it's like your heart sort of stops and and then you're really listening and when you hear Ricardo talk about the types of Ripple effects he gets the guys to think about it would be much stronger if it wasn't just if it wasn't like the GU saying it to themselves but to hear to hear about
those Ripple effects through a story a personal Story by the person directly impacted would be much more effective but um so Ricardo is going to talk a little bit about how he how he tries to talk about Ripple effects in in the class the whole thing about Victim Impact is trying to get them to see how the rippled effect of their actions affects everybody once you can do that then we can start opening up a general conversation about how we affect them hurting the victim's family hurting your fami
ly hurting Society emotionally physically financially getting them to see that when you throw that rock in the pond that ripple effect it hits everybody well if I can get a brother to see that if you burn the store down and that's the store that your mother got to go to to get her medicine every morning maybe you would be reluctant to burn that store and that's the basis of Victim Impact show some how you affect everybody because a lot of us don't look at it and see that we affect not only ourse
lves but the community the school the corner store we affect everybody even if I steal your car I'm affecting the the brother trying to get up and go to work in the morning cuz he has five kids he got to pay his bills now he got to spend more money because guess what he got to take the bus and maybe in the subway also as how the victim impact class has helped him personally and I think he was quite eloquent about that let's take a listen well it really helped me far as me internalizing my whole
life and my actions and deeds and put me on the path to write my wrongs and see things from other people's point of view and so these when I was a little kid all we used to do is throw rocks at buses cars and stuff and I used to hide my hands like I ain't did it and it carried on through life because I was quick to throw a rock and hi my hand and that equates to not taking your responsibility so throughout the time that I took Victim Impact I learned to accept my responsibility for my actions an
d then I begin to build my character again because it takes a lifetime to build a character but only a moment to destroy it and I destroyed my character and uh it's been a long journey but I I forgiven myself and I hope one day people who out hurt especially my family can forgive me so Ricardo um talked to me about something I hadn't really thought of before and that is none of this reflection on on your impact and taking responsibility can be possible without first forgiving yourself and learni
ng to love yourself and I hadn't that I really had not considered that and I'm curious um kind of what you think about that that and and and is that a necessary first step and what does that process look like um for me personally forgiving myself um it took time I think the process went to giving yourself purpose but for me uh my heart was heavy like I don't you know nothing happens in the vacuum right so during this tragic uh point in my life I had to really like dig deep and and try to underst
and that man like this is not who I am um regardless of the all the negative names they try to attribute to me because of the crime I always understood that I was better than that so I think the love process the love of of yourself com in by actually doing something about yourself right and what I mean by doing something about yourself meaning I told you I came in I was a functional illiterate so education was a priority on my mind um I Define Myself by my own by my own names right through the o
wn acronyms that I gave myself you know what I'm saying the Shand you know look but through it all forgiveness is a it's a journey you know it doesn't happen because you got to live with that for the rest of your life and I told myself that so by me living with this tragedy for the rest of my life I do the work of trying to stop others from having to feel the same pain because I think the notion is that we don't hurt or we are not suffering from our crimes outside of the physical um confinement
but we we're suffering you know emotionally mentally like any other person would suffer during a tragedy so now that it also made me think about since they're working on on trying to recognize the impact they have on other people what does forgiveness look like I mean I mean do you feel like you could forgive you can you have or you could the person who took away your husband and what does that mean really forgiveness I think it it is possible to forgive um I don't think I ever needed to forgive
the young man who killed lassana because I never ever hated him but that's just me I never hated him I never put much energy toward him in the beginning I did what I felt was necessary because it was a murder case right and we were called by the Ada to come in and so I was going through the motions of the process that was put before me and I was young too I was 26 years old so it took some time of just navigating it to understand that I don't necessarily have to participate in this process it's
not a requirement I can I have a choice in the matter of participating in the entire process including the Forgiveness process right and I think for me because I um because of the kind of person that I am like I said it's just a little bit my nature and also some great advice that I received from a colleague who's like a second mom to me who um was near who was with me at work uh prior to I think the day prior to me having to go to one of the Court hearings in the aftermath of all this and she
said she she saw my nervousness and and she was asking me what I was nervous about and I was nervous about um internalizing because of how I am and um seeing this person for the first time the the perpetrator for lack of a better word at for the first time and never being able to forget their face and she just said don't don't look at him just don't look at him and that's the best advice I ever received from anyone around this was not to look at him and it wasn't just because I don't know what h
e looks like I literally don't know what he looks like maybe not even the back of his head for real um because I just kept looking down but because it also was um the it was it was the spark that led me to not pay attention to him overall right not pay attention to him not make it about him and so yeah he has my forgiveness because I never really made it about him and I also um learned some things about his upbringing or lack of upbringing and you know things he was exposed to broken home incarc
erated father mother on drugs lead poisoning so many cousins being raised by a grandparent who probably had too much on her plate and this is not to make excuses ever because other people who've been impacted by something similar may feel that way wait a minute you taking their side no I'm in reality I'm in reality that these are the things that lead people to to have whether it be mental illness or you know trauma or lack of self-awareness lack of self-identity you know um lack of um empathy or
feeling for other people if you don't love yourself if you don't care about yourself if you haven't been taught to prioritize your own needs why would you care about somebody else right and so I'm just in reality about that and I can forgive those things absolutely because I can forgive them in other people why can't I forgive them in the situation where the situation is close to me or has impacted me right but you have a question I was saying that that's special because there are other people
who go the other way I mean I I I just when you were talking I I flashed back uh there's a friend of of mine who is in prison life without parole and he's turned to this wonderful wonderful person and I've been racking my brains about how to get him a re Hearing in some way to say he's ready to go home after more than 30 years and I I maybe I shouldn't have done this but I called a woman who was there when her partner was killed and as soon as she heard his name this is more than 30 years at mor
e than 30 she said he can burn in hell with such anger and wrath that it was like it had just happened like it she had not moved on the anger so your your attitude I mean a lot of people the revenge is that desire for they have made it about him yeah I understand that Revenge though I was at I was in that place it's it's it's work even forgiving yourself is work you you can forgive yourself for having done something and then you get re-trigger and then you hate yourself again and then you have t
o do the work all over again to forgiving yourself it's work so I I can't blame that person I don't say that I'm completely separate from that person I understand that too I understand that rage that emotion of like wait a minute my loved one will never come back yeah and so why then should I give any Grace to someone who is still living and who maybe has a chance to see the light of day again or even gets to feel the sun rays on their cheek through a prison cell my husband will never feel the S
un Ray on his you know whatever it is right I understand that too and I think that's a very valid emotion emotions are valid I think the the conversation about forgiveness and who that person is today are two separate conversations though that was the butt that I was about to say before you ask that question I think it's my business if I forgive the individual who killed my husband and nobody else's no one should judge me for it no one should even expect it though it's my business it was my own
internal process that I needed for myself to me forgiveness is release so I needed to release myself from it but it doesn't release him from anything now he is on his own path that is not my business as to whether or not he is growing and evolving and that's for him to decide and in terms of whether or not he's ever released on Pro parole or you know he's granted release on his on his due date that's a conversation for the powers that be to have about you know whether this person is no longer a
danger to society and really should be released and be able to live a a new life and and and enjoy Freedom right to me those are two separate conversations I think maybe he for sure he needs to forgive himself probably he needs forgiveness from his own family and his own Community because we're social creatures and we live amongst one another and we we don't Thrive by ourselves and so you do need that acceptance and that Embrace from the people that are going to be in your life but does it does
he need it from me I'm not in his life and he's not in my life I don't think so I don't think that it's my my place to forgive him nor do I think he deserves or has the right to ask it from me I think it is an individual process for each one of us our paths cross on one day on one instance and the rest is history but that is my feeling about it yeah that is that is not to say that that's how somebody else who's been impacted by something similar should feel I would never dictate or imply how som
ebody else should feel but this is my journey because I really don't want my life to be defined by this one thing and I also simly don't believe that someone who has committed crime whether they're incarcerated for it or not because that's another conversation should be defined by their one act if they've changed if they've grown they're still living they still have something to give I want this young man to contribute to society in a different way it would be it would be the greatest joy of my
life to know that he is far removed from that young 15-year-old and that he's a completely different person that he's somebody that I could literally sit down next to like I'm sitting down next to Conrad I'm not saying you did anything like that I'm just saying like it would be it would be it would give me so much joy and um it would be such a beautiful thing for me to know that that's his former life all those cells have died he's a new person um and I I may never know that but that's what I wa
nt for anyone who's done something we're all here to live and grow and learn from our experiences and grow our soul before we leave here and leave with some lessons and I don't think anybody should be robbed of that even people who have committed violent crimes well that's that's a very special attitude and very appreciative of you and and so was Ricardo I shared with him uh how his interview was going to be used um and I shared with who else is g to be on on the show including your story and um
I wanted to play for you his response uh that's a hard one there you know because we we like to say Time Heals wounds but it doesn't it's no time to heal that wound like that when you lose somebody special like that when only thing I could tell her is I admire her first and foremost and I understand her grief as well because on one hand she don't want to see this person do a lot of time but on the other hand she don't want her husband forgotten and and it takes a special person to forgive forgi
veness is is not for the person who victimize you forgiveness is for her so she can move on in her life and not to be bitter and angry and consumed with Revenge you know hate which can eat you up inside and that's hard Hill to swallow because everybody can't forgive I understand the tug of w between the good and evil and hopefully one day she can find it in herself if I was her I want to meet this person that's me and I also want to see if this person has forgiven them for taking another life I
want to see how this person living right now I don't care how much of a killer you are how how crazy you are at the end of the day everybody know right from wrong and I knew right from wrong but forgiveness is hard it took me almost 27 28 years to forgive myself for taking somebody's life and I still feel the guilt and shame sometimes you know took a life and that's not me I'm not no Jason or or and I think everybody has some redeeming qualities in them but they got to work hard it's not easy be
cause you can't get somebody back a life yeah so it's something I got to live with for the rest of my life so for me I try to be the best person I can be each and every day so I think that's a good note to close out this episode um I hope that everybody who's listening or watching finds it as thought-provoking as as we did and we'll maybe like discuss it over dinner with their friends and family and meanwhile please um follow And subscribe to our podcast and share it with others thank you thank
you Pam thank you con thank [Music] you
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