October 19, 2023 • 44 mins
Darren Waller and Donny Starkins invite you to join them on an incredible journey of love, resilience, and redemption in the upcoming episode, "Love Unbroken." Cybill Fox and Rob Richardson share their deeply personal story of enduring 21 years of incarceration while keeping their love and commitment alive. Beginning as high school sweethearts and enduring a tough separation through incarceration, their account highlights their enduring love and indomitable resilience. Their story embodies hope, illustrating that determination and unity can conquer the most formidable adversities. Prepare to be moved and inspired by their transformative journey as they lead with heart and purpose, defying all odds to emerge stronger together.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Okay, welcome back everybody. We're here for another episode of
Comeback Stories. And today we are here with Sybil Fox
and Rob Richardson known as Fox and Rob, who are
a New Orleans couple whose marriage survived despite years of incarceration.
So their story was profiled in a documentary called Time,
(00:36):
and then their book is called Time, The Untold Story
of Love that held Us together when incarceration kept us apart.
Welcome to the show, Fox and Rob.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Oh, thank you so much for joining us. What a title,
Comeback Stories.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Hey, we all have one and we all love one.
And I think we're about to hear another epic comeback
story from the both of you. Dan, I don't know
if we had a guest a duo ever.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Before no I was going to bring up this is
the first time we've ever had a duo. But I
feel like as we dive deep in, we'll see how
you know, just through you guys's love and the endurance
of that love, how you guys are one. So it's
really like we're interviewing one person, but.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
We received that one.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Derek.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Could you guys start and maybe just give us a
little background how or of the two of you, and
then how the two of you became one.
Speaker 6 (01:36):
Oh wow, I guess it will take us all the
way back toneen ninety, nineteen eighty seven. Where we met
is a high school sweethearts through a mutual friend of ours.
Now depends on which one of us you ask this
particular question as far as the answer that you get,
because there's my version as to how we met, and
then of course there's Fox's version as to how it
(01:57):
is right the truth.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
None is care.
Speaker 6 (02:01):
So, so I'm gonna give my my version. But the
version that that I hold to is Uh that Fox
and I met while she had a girlfriend of hers,
Uh was shooting hooky from school.
Speaker 5 (02:16):
One day we were taking a mental health day.
Speaker 6 (02:19):
And that's her story. She's sticking to it. And uh
on say on said mental health day.
Speaker 7 (02:25):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (02:26):
The mutual friend that we shared needed a ride home
and knew that I was home visiting from arow from
the from the military all leave went by to offer
them a ride.
Speaker 7 (02:36):
Fox answered the door.
Speaker 6 (02:38):
Uh. From the moment she answered the door, something came
over me that I think some people may uh call
the keen to our love at first sight, So it
was gonna take maybe the rest of the day in
order for me to actually figure that part out and
whether or not she had UH had me had me
smitten in UH in such a way crazy enough, I
ended up inviting my friend over. He came over with us,
(02:59):
and then UH, long story short, he tried calling Fox
later to no avail. And later on that night, I
came back home realizing that I hadn't used the phone
since the last time that a friend of mine made
the phone called the Fox, and we had an old
service that used to be in place back there called
Start sixty nine, So I didn't Start sixty nine and
then went right back to Fox's number, to which I
(03:22):
started talking to him and she immediately stopped me and
she says, wait a minute, She said, I thought that
you were wonder as a man. Wanda is the mutual
friend that I mentioned at the onset? Well, I said, well,
no one and I just friends. She said, well, that's
not what she told me. And I took the advantage
of yet another service we used to have, called three Way.
Speaker 7 (03:41):
I said, well, won't we called all three way? That
way we can hash all of this out.
Speaker 6 (03:45):
So she ended up calling it on three way, and
probably about a few minutes into the into the conversation,
I saw it in Wanda was continuously misrepresenting our relationships.
Speaker 7 (03:55):
So I cut in and I said, well, dam how
do we get to this point? You know?
Speaker 6 (03:59):
Of course she was busted in the moment she conceded,
and to say to say the least, there after Fox
and I stayed home.
Speaker 5 (04:07):
I was at little was at that point, you know.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
But that was what nineteen eighty seven, And here we are,
thirty six years later, twenty six years in matrimony, six
sons that we have raised together after having served twenty
one years as a formerly incarcerated couple in Louisiana before
we received clemency from our governor in twenty and eighteen,
and actually the only family in the state of Louisiana
(04:34):
that received clemency out of over two thousand applicants in
twenty and eighteen. So if that's not a comeback story
for you, I just don't know what he is.
Speaker 6 (04:43):
So to answer your question, Darren, it was at that moment,
after spending twenty one years separated and apart from one another,
that Fox and Rob were born. It was a constant
reminder to us to never do anything to our create
that level of separation between us again.
Speaker 7 (05:00):
Hits.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
We spell our names as one Fox, A N D.
Rob God like Paul to us all they all saw
to Paul, it was a transformation moment.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
For us, you know, you know, coming from you talk
about not wanting to create that separation ever again. And
I feel like it's important to highlight how that separation
came about because I feel like there are certain people
in America that may see as somebody that may have
committed a crime, and it's like, you know, they don't
(05:33):
know the story behind it, they don't know the human
experience behind it. Could you enlighten us on what may
have led you to do what you had to do, Like,
what was your human experience and your story that led
you up to feel like that was a decision that
you had to make just for your own life.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Well, I think one I have to say thank you
for explaining it is such. It was a human experience
and as long as we keep living, we're going to
have just those human experiences is what makes us human.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
And for us, after the six.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Months of being married, Rob and I had launched our
first business, had finally put our family together after ten
years of dating off and own again.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
And.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
In the midst of launching our first business, our investor
pulled out on us without without any type of answers.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
As to why or what changed or any of that.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
And we panicked between the investor pulling out on us
the new home we had purchased as our first family home,
we discovered it had a crack foundation and a bad
leak in the.
Speaker 5 (06:40):
Roof, with the whole thicken edition of the house was faulty.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
In the midst of that, if that wasn't enough, the
department that I was teaching in full time ended the
division in which I was teaching, so I lost my job.
And if that wasn't enough, our youngest son started having
seizures that they couldn't diagnose, landing us with a ton
of medical bills. And so, if there is a place
in the life that is called the end of your rope,
(07:07):
we found ourselves there in nineteen ninety seven. And when
you're at the end of your rope, I think one
of those things that holds us grounded is our moral compass.
And depending on how far you go down that rabbit
hole or how dark you allow things to get for you,
Darren and Donnie, it depends on the decisions that you
make at your lowest points. I've heard it said that
(07:29):
circumstances don't reveal the man a woman, don't make the
man a woman, They reveal them to themselves. And so
in that moment, with our faith being tested, our moral
compass got off and we figured if we couldn't get
it the right way, we would succeed at any by
any means necessary. And it was that mentality of what
(07:52):
we call the American dream syndrome, when you're willing to
do whatever you got to do to succeed or to
obtain the American dream. It took over us and landed
us to making a decision that we would end up
regretting for the rest of our lives. So, in nineteen
ninety seven would facebook financial challenges to spill it all
(08:12):
out for you. We tried to regain financial solvency by
taking money from a credit union.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I've heard you use the quote desperate people do desperate things,
and I could relate so much to that, and Darren
and ize our backgrounds come from addiction and we're currently
in recovery. And when I heard that quote from you Fox,
it just made me think about all of the desperate
things that I did in the depths of my addiction,
(08:41):
and in so many cases just really didn't get caught,
or if I did get caught, the consequences it just
it's looked it looked different. But I can relate so
much because at my rock bottom, I mean, the decisions
that I was making were out of complete desperation and
they were not wise decisions at all.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
But I think that's where the power lies, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I Mean, when we hit rock bottom, like Rob and
I have a quote where we say one thing about
rock bottom is once you reach it is nowhere to
go from the butt up.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
I mean, you know, like Donnie said, as being a
former addict and talking about that human experience, I always
try to let people know and inform them that I
didn't just want to become a drug addict just because
I wanted to run my life into the ground, or
I wanted to make poor decisions, or I wanted to
have this be my legacy. I was just somebody that
(09:38):
wanted to change my circumstance, wanted to change how I
was feeling, and ultimately those small decisions lead to a
place where yeah, your moral compass is off. But at
the end of the day, it's about trying to get
people to see people like us as people and not
as our mess because our mess may be where we're
currently at, but that's not who we ultimately are.
Speaker 7 (10:00):
And let's try.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
That's a message that we have to keep pushing because
it's so easy to just stereotype somebody or you see
something go across the TV and be like, oh man,
what was he doing, Like he's tripping, Like why would
he make that decision? But it's way more uncomfortable to
get into sit down with that person, sit across from them,
talk to them, get to know them, and see like, hey,
we all people that are really just trying to you know,
(10:24):
that's right, avoid our fear, get over our fears, you know,
step into a life that we want to live and
provide and protect and all these things. We all have
the same goals and we all have the same heart
posture at the end of the day if we can
allow ourselves to get there.
Speaker 7 (10:38):
I like that heart posture so true.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
So can you walk us through what the sentence scene was,
what the criminal system looked like back then? And then
what came up for the both of you as you
were faced with that sentence.
Speaker 6 (10:57):
I think it's important to know for people that are
listening in that the time that I was sentenced was
nineteen ninety seven, and this was just at the point
that the Clinton Crime Bill that kicked in. At that moment,
the Clinton Crime Bill created a thing called Truth and
Sentencing that required states who received federal funding from the
(11:17):
federal government to sentence people are convicted of crimes to
serve out. Eighty five percent of the Senates that had
been handed handed doubt as a result of those moneys
that states had taken for you know, people are committing crimes.
With that being said, I've received, as a first offender
a sixty year sentence, my nephew received a forty five
(11:38):
year sentence, and my wife to seven year sentences and
a five year sentence, you know, all as first offenders
in a crime that no one received. No one died
from the crime, no one was hurt physically hurt from
the crime in any and by no stretch of the
imagination do I b rate the trauma that takes place
(12:02):
when someone takes something of value from you, whether by note,
by firearm or whatever it may be. Uh, the fact
still remains is that it's a traumatic moment for you.
But what was equally as traumatic for us on the
other side of that was the the heavy sanctions that
had been handed out to us, especially when he kind
(12:23):
of looked out over the landscape as far as what
the national average was for people committing similar acts, as
well as a parish average for the parish where the
where the crimes themselves were committed.
Speaker 7 (12:36):
Uh So, these sentences were really.
Speaker 6 (12:40):
Outside of the social norms for what had been happening,
both in the nation as well as in the in the.
Speaker 7 (12:46):
Parish that had happened there.
Speaker 6 (12:48):
Uh So to say that we were bewildered, uh that
we were flabbergacied.
Speaker 7 (12:52):
We were floored.
Speaker 6 (12:54):
Man we uh we we I thought for sure that
maybe he was reading from someone else's sentencing transcript uh
in our particular matter. But it wasn't until we got
the paperwork ourselves and we realized that, okay, there was
no mistake made here. This was just flat out injustice,
you know, at a whole other level. So all probably
their end began began our fight of coour.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
So Fox, I like to know when at what point
did it go from Okay, like this is unacceptable, this
needs to change, to you wanting to step in and
be like, okay, like I'm gonna do something about this,
or I'm gonna do my part in seeing change come about.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
Probably the first night I went to prison.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
It was one thing to be housed in the in
the jail in the parish, but when I actually was
remanded to the Department of Justice for me, it was
in that moment of seeing how they were, how we're
housing human beings, and how it was that.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Man just the.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Deplorable conditions that they had US citizens living in state side,
not in a third world country, and the treatment of
those human beings. And I honestly thought that as an
American citizen, when we were casting our citizens into incarceration,
that we were doing so to rehabilitate them and make
(14:22):
them come out better citizens like they do in other
industrialized nations.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
But I did not realize how.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
In entrench slavery still is currently in the United States,
and that our prison system is a slave system by
a new name. And so my prayer when I got
to prison was Lord, just let me use my voice
for the voiceless.
Speaker 5 (14:47):
That are here. I had a master's degree by.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
The time I went to prison, and what I learned
while I was there was I met the first adult
in my life that could not read or write. And
not was it just one, it was many of them
striving to get just a literacy education in jail, in prison,
(15:10):
less and lonely, a ged while they were incarcerated. And
so I understood that I had a responsibility, that maybe
it wasn't just my action or me losing my moral
compass that got me here, but that I could use
this for the greater good of mankind and take my
transgressions and transform them to really become a voice for
(15:33):
the voiceless Darren, because we've all got a calling. And
sometimes we can let our downfalls in life be our
kid falls and we stay there, or we can let
them be our springboards for the work that was supposed
to do.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
In this life.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
And that's what Rob and I and our entire family,
our six sons, they bought in as well, to understand
that this system had done an injustice to our family.
Certainly we deserved to be chastised for our transgressions, but
we did not deserve the treatment that our state sanctioned
against us. And sometimes when these systems don't do right
(16:07):
by the people it represents, it is the people's responsibility.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
It is our duty to address the system.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
It is our duty to fight for our freedom, brother dere,
it is our duty to win. And so we set
out to win. We set out to show them that
you do this to me. Then, as I say in
Time movie, if you haven't seen it, check it out
on Amazon Prime. Nominated for an Oscar in twenty twenty one,
the most honored documentary of twenty twenty and that is.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
I say, success is the best revenge.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
How do we get back in a system that was
intentional about destroying us and our family?
Speaker 5 (16:46):
We succeed anyway.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Rob, I've heard you say. So you're faced with this
sentence and you say, if I'm going to get through this,
I'm going to have to use some of those core
principles that you know to be true. What were those
core principles for you that you had to put into
practice when you were incarcerated.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
Probably some of the ones that stand out most was
from a from my uncle. Uh yeah, given me some
some rules to live by when I first went off
to prison. And those rules are basically consistent of For one,
I knew that I had to I had to stand
like a man.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Uh.
Speaker 7 (17:26):
I knew that I had to speak truth to uh
to falsehood.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
And I knew that if I was ever going to
get through this, I knew that in order for me
to get through it, I had to come into it
with an attitude that I would never give up, that
I would not allow uh defeat UH to be to
be the end uh the end result of my fight.
Speaker 8 (17:45):
UH.
Speaker 6 (17:46):
So it means that I had to fight tooth and nail.
And so with that being said, I started, you know,
redirecting my energy.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Uh.
Speaker 7 (17:54):
I started redirecting my thoughts.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (17:57):
I started learning how to read the law because you know,
one of the things that you realize is that when
you're in a fight, no was gonna fight as hard
for you as you're willing to fight for yourself.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (18:08):
And with that being said, I knew that it wasn't
necessarily gonna be a lawyer that was gonna get me out,
because at the end of the day, lawyers go home
and they go to soccer meetings and pta meetings with
their kids, and they hang out with their wives and
their friends. You know, between work hours and those things.
And I'm not on their mind me or none of
their other clients. But for me, uh and our family,
(18:30):
you know, we breathe, we sleep out, we we ate,
we walked, we talked law all day long. And it
wasn't until I started practicing law or learning law on
my own that I even started to see breakthroughs in
my case. And that was after countless lawyers and and
(18:50):
uh and oh man, thousands to my tens of thousands
of dollars that had been spent, All lawyers that you know,
that had no clue as to how it is that
they were going to get me out. Uh, let alone
the fol of representation, you know, like cars and like
medicine and those kinds of things. You come to find
out that there are people that are specialized. People that
(19:12):
know how to work on engines, don't necessarily know how
to work on breaks. Those work on breaks don't necessarily
know how to work Transition doctors all don't work on brains.
They are not all heart surgeons, you know, and some
of them are just general practitioners. Well, in a lot
of this, I realized that a lot of lawyers, you know,
when you talk about your pre trial lawyers.
Speaker 7 (19:31):
Most of them are general practitioners of the field.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
They do a lot of deal cutting and that kind
of stuff that happens on the front end of sentencings.
But what I was in need of was a special
was a specialist, and specialists in this particular field are
hard to find.
Speaker 7 (19:46):
When you start.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
Studying case law on those things, you start realizing that
the specialists is the person that's locked up. You know,
you think about precedents and laws that change, that change
the momentum or the direction of where we go in
terms of how the pendulum of justice swings. It doesn't
happen as a result out of an argument that took
place that some fancy lawyer made.
Speaker 7 (20:08):
Inside of the court system.
Speaker 6 (20:09):
It happens from some jail house attorney that set up
in the wee hours of the night on the poor lighting,
that read between the lines where the right was not
necessarily written in order to you know, carve out an.
Speaker 7 (20:23):
Argument for fundamental justice and uh, and they.
Speaker 6 (20:27):
Prevailed on those matters, and as a result, we get
a change, or we get to a bend at our
laws that you know, kind of move us in a
different direction. And that didn't start happening for me and
my family until I started to take responsibility for the
situation that I had put myself in through my own choices.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
For real, No, for real, man, I think it's beautiful
that what I got from you is around perspective, like
as opposed to Okay, yes, I've been dealt a pretty
shitty hand, but I'm going to be an active participant
in the solution here. I'm going to educate myself. I'm
gonna teach myself. I'm gonna be a part of this
to the point where as you do that, the type
(21:09):
of energy, the type of you know, miracles that you're
attracting to yourself in that process is a powerful thing.
And I want to know something because you you guys fighting,
you guys trying to educate yourself. A lot of people
would want to have that breakthrough or that change happened overnight,
whereas you were in prison for twenty one years. So
(21:29):
it's like, what what do you think looking back like
with something that you can take from that time of
like I wish this fight could end earlier, but still
having gone through it, is there anything that's like a
valuable type of lesson that comes from that from having
to wait, and you know, like in just living in
this instagratification world, is there anything we can take from that?
Speaker 7 (21:50):
And you guys's perspectives.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
I think for me and I'm gonna ride finish it
because this brother here is one of the most patient
people I've ever met in my life. When you talk
about the patience of Joe, this brother studying our evens
in prison and the race of job God gave him.
But for me, it was about eating the elephant, onebity
at a time, knowing that as long as I get
(22:12):
up every day and I'm biting into this elephant dog one.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
It's gonna be devoured. It has.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
The second thing for me was about counting all my wins.
Very often, when the victory didn't come out the way
we wanted to, We'll just skip over all the other
smaller wins, all the wins that we need to get us.
You know, It's like I don't watch a lot of football,
but my family does. Well.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
You know how they move the gold line and then
you get to the next goal.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
It's like the first down and the second bat and
the third down, and you keep going down, you're gonna
get a touchdown, right, So that's what the small winds are.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
To me, it's like the first down, and you know,
so I chill the first down. You know.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Some people are like, oh, it was just the first down.
I'm like, no, baby, it was a first down.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
You know.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
So all the wins, every man, and not just the
super Bowl, but it takes all those other wins to
get to the super Bowl. And then for me, probably
the last thing is that live at the moment.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
You know.
Speaker 5 (23:12):
It was at one point on our journey, I was.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
So busy living for the day that Rob was gonna
come home that I realized, Johnny, I wasn't living at all.
I didn't even have my children living. Everything we did
was we talked about the future. When your daddy comes home.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
We're gonna do this.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
When your daddy comes home, we're gonna like, it's gonna
be great. But I said, had to come to TIMS,
probably after we had done ten years. I had to
come to TIMS with the fact that I'm not guaranteed
to see when he comes home. Truth Enough, I'm working
toward it. Truthfully, I believe that it's coming, But honestly,
I don't know when God is gonna decide that it's
(23:49):
my last day here or his last day here, and
so I can't just live for when he comes home.
We have to live in the now. And so if
we are an incarcerated family, yeah, we know how great
we're gonna be when we are free family. Well, right
now out will one hellified, strong, incarcerated family. That's what
we are, and we're gonna celebrate that, and we're gonna
(24:11):
live in this moment and enjoy our visits.
Speaker 7 (24:14):
Darren.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I got to say, Man, I'm loving how you've really
made yourself at home in the big city. I'm curious,
how are you getting around? You a subway guy, cab uber.
Speaker 7 (24:25):
I'm glad you asked, Donni.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Man, I'm at the honor to partner with All American
Forward over in New Jersey. They've been taking really good
care of me since I got out here, and that's
why I love the most about it. Man. They treat
me like I'm family, not just a customer trying to
get a deal or just a statistic. You know, they
give me great service. You can tell they got to
commitment to quality. The innovation is unmatched. And just so
(24:46):
if anybody's you know, like me, trying to get around
in New Jersey, don't know where to go. I'm telling
you go check out All American Forward here in Jersey.
They're gonna take real good.
Speaker 7 (24:54):
Care of you.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
When we come back, you'll hear more of this inspiring
comeback story. There's so many, so many powerful principles that
they're and I talk about. I mean, you both are
rattling them off of Rob. You had talked about redirecting
your energy and redirecting your thoughts, and that's as a
mindfulness teacher, meditation teacher. I mean, this is the essence
(25:17):
of what we do right to Everything is energy. Where
our tension goes, energy flows, And as you were saying, Fox,
it's like that conditional happiness, like I'll be happy, I'll
be free when Rob gets out, and it's like no
happiness happens in the now, And it brings us back
to what you were just talking about about being in
the presence. Another word that comes up for me that
(25:40):
I'd love to have you both touch on is acceptance,
Like at what point? And I think a lot of
people struggle with acceptance as they think acceptance is giving
up or giving in. And I always remind people that
acceptance doesn't mean you have to like it. But we
do have to accept the reality of what's happened. Otherwise
(26:02):
we're just holding on to things that we can't control,
and I think that jams us up even more.
Speaker 7 (26:07):
That's right.
Speaker 6 (26:08):
I would have to add to uh that, donnie U
when you I'm talking about almost immediately that first thing
came to me probably one of my favorite Bible scriptures
that basically says that I have learned that whatsoever state
I begin that wish to be content, to be content
about something doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be
satisfied with the outcome or how things are are happening.
(26:32):
But what it does is that I think that there
is something that is empowering about about acceptance. It's in
that moment I think that you start to build out
the the the pathways for knowledge and insight to come
in in order to give you what's necessary in order
to fix the problem that's in front of you.
Speaker 7 (26:51):
But all too often, like you know, and when face
with conflict, when they're.
Speaker 6 (26:56):
Faced with with with troubles, you know, they they want
to they want to check out, you know, they want
to And it's normal, I guess, because I mean, you
think about it, Jesus almost wanted to check out, you know,
he asked up.
Speaker 7 (27:08):
To bitter comfort.
Speaker 6 (27:09):
You know that he was faced with, if it could
be removed from his lips, let somebody else have it.
Speaker 7 (27:14):
I don't want to have to go through it.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
But there was a moment of acceptance even for Christ
when he said, but if it's.
Speaker 7 (27:21):
Your will, then let dying will be done.
Speaker 6 (27:24):
So in that moment, I realized that I came from
from an ancestry of people that have been fighting for
over four hundred years to undo this condition that they
knew as slavery that we now know as mass incarceration.
Speaker 7 (27:39):
And it was in that moment that I had to
tap back in.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
I had to realize that the DNA that ran through
those people that it fought under conditions far worse than
the ones that I was facing in mass incarceration.
Speaker 7 (27:50):
And again that's not the b rate or.
Speaker 6 (27:52):
Denounce anything about mass incarceration, because it is about as
close as slavery as you're ever gonna get. But with
that being said, like I said, I knew that it
was in that moment the guy that called me to
do something something special up to me through a transform
my condition, my situation and make people all see it
as something all different than than what had the hand
(28:15):
that had been dealt to me.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I want to continue on the theme of the human experience.
I'd love for you guys to give us a glimpse
into the joy, the elation just exuding on your day
of release. But the same at the same time, what
were the emotions of transitioning back into daily life together?
Was there anxiety? Was there any level of fear for
(28:43):
individually and collectively? Like can you take us through the
entire experience of your release?
Speaker 6 (28:49):
Oh my god, it was like a fetal sweet kind
of moment. I mean, when you go from being in
a situation where there is that you know that you
don't have.
Speaker 7 (28:58):
The same level of stimulation.
Speaker 6 (29:00):
And keeping in mind too that when I went to prison,
I went to prison two years on the the side
of of our windows ninety five. You know, by the
time I had come home, my space had become a
thing that was no longer a thing by the time
I had come on U. When I left, you could
just wave at the gas tended and they would turn
the pumps all you pupa take a gas. You go
(29:22):
in and lay a twenty on the counter or whatever,
and you lead back out. When I came home, gas
pumps were talking to you. They were trying to sell
your stuff and all kinds of other things, and I'm like, wow,
this is this is crazy, you know, this is like
other worldly, you know. And uh, it was in those
moments that you kind of realize the the real uh
dissergers uh that our Department of Justice does to those
(29:46):
that are incarcerated because technologynology for me, while in prison,
was considered countraband, So the very thing that I needed
to know and needed to learn in order to be functioning,
and uh, you know, proactive in society was considered contraband.
(30:07):
To me, it was almost like enslavery when people were
not allowed to read and then all of a sudden,
the next day people were allowed.
Speaker 7 (30:14):
To be free enrolled. But you can't read, and you
couldn't read it, and you know, you're a grown man
or a grown woman.
Speaker 6 (30:19):
At this point or whatever, and it's like, well, how
do I function? How do I communicate in the new world?
You know? So those things were, you know, were really
challenging for us as a couple, being in a space
where I've been in the overcrowded dormitory. I mean, they
were more than a goal is the largest prison in
the world. There's more than six thousand men that are incarcerated.
Speaker 8 (30:40):
Where I was incarcerated, there were you know, more than
one hundred men in my dormitory, more than five hundred
of them on the pod where I lived, and more
than two thousand of them actually lived in that in
the yard space that we lived inside.
Speaker 6 (30:55):
So you're talking about sharing five showers with one hundred men.
You're talking about sharing one TV with one hundred men,
two telephones, one Kiosk, one coffee pot, one drake fountain,
five sinks, six urinals. Do you imagine the conflict that
is always present when you have that many men competing
(31:17):
for something essential essential, you know what I'm saying. So
coming home, you know, I was hopeful for privacy. I
was hopeful for some downtime and time alone and where
I wasn't necessarily happening to share my space, whereas my
wife had been fighting and battling for years so that
(31:37):
she could actually have me back in her space and
we could be in intimate spaces and we could be
you know, hugged.
Speaker 7 (31:44):
Up and up under each other, And that was challenging
for me.
Speaker 6 (31:47):
You know what was seen as a moment that you
thought that I would have been excited and elated to
be able to have my wife in the shower with me.
Speaker 7 (31:56):
It became like a thing of like, you know, like I.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
Was going through a moment because it was like, man,
I just want to get out of this condition, you know.
Speaker 7 (32:03):
So it was just like those little things we.
Speaker 6 (32:05):
Battled about how many times do married couples even supposed
to have sex in a week's time? You know, Thank
God for Google, because when the question is first poles,
I mean, you know how it is when it comes
to ment, you know, when it comes to your sex
drive or whatever. You know, that's that's something associated with
your all your masculinity. It's associated with your ego and
(32:27):
those kinds of things. And especially when women questioned it
on the other side of it or whatever. You know,
it's a real that's a good way to make you
go go solve, right, you know, So just having those moments,
but even in Google, thank God, you know, we realize
how many times are married couples actually have sex in
the course of a week by state back ery, you know,
(32:50):
she was saying by continent, you know, and I realized
in the moment, I'm like, Okay, well, numbers up, We're
doing pretty good here, you know. But again, like I said,
those are just many of the challenges that we faced
as a as a returning couple, you know, coming back
from the condition of our corn serration.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I would love to know a little bit about what
what makes love last. You guys were able to keep
a marriage together after years twenty one years of incarceration.
But what would you say makes love last? Like? Why
does one couple stay together while another falls apart? I mean,
you guys were able to do it through twenty one
years of separation and incarceration, and most people are struggling
(33:31):
to keep a marriage together and they don't have any
issues near like that one. So what makes it stick?
Speaker 3 (33:39):
I think for me, one of the first things I
would have to say is that I clearly understood that
we were stronger together than we could ever be apart.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
I found value in numbers.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
When you think about the insect kingdom, you don't just
see one ant, you know, you don't see an ant
by itself, You see ants around of One of the
things that I share what I'm speaking is that when
you see a roach in your house, you know, you
don't just say have one roach, you got roaches. So
for us, it was about if the animal kingdom, you know,
(34:10):
lions they travel in pride, and fish they swim in schools,
if they understand nature, understands the importance of us being together,
that that was something that I needed to implement in
my own life, that my husband and I and our
children we were stronger together than we could ever be apart.
The second thing for me is about being intentional. I
(34:33):
was intentional that if Rob and I were not gonna
make it, it wasn't gonna be because of the state
of Louisiana said we couldn't be together. Just the fact
that they were insistent about denying us our family made
me more intentional to say, oh, no, if we don't
make it, it'll be on our own terms. But it
won't be because you said we can't make it. You
(34:54):
said we can't be together.
Speaker 7 (34:57):
Yes, adreed. And it just made me think.
Speaker 6 (35:00):
Fox and I was just watching a comedy skit on
the Netflix or so the other night and one of
the comedians and they had a profound moment when he
made the statement, and it piggybacks off what Fox mentioned
about stronger together. And he said that our goal has
to be to keep our couples together, because when we
keep our couples together.
Speaker 7 (35:21):
We keep our families together.
Speaker 6 (35:23):
And when we keep our families together, we keep we
keep our communities together. And I went one further and
saying that when we keep our communities together, we keep
our nation together. And when we keep our nations together,
we keep our world together. So we understood at the
at the smallest level, at the micro level of it all,
(35:44):
that if we could stay together, then we can make
the rest of this, uh, this workout for us.
Speaker 7 (35:50):
And I guess they say the.
Speaker 6 (35:54):
Proof is into putting, but it is definitely in our
experience at this moment, you know, because never giving up
on one another, understanding that our you was something special
uh to us, even if it was not to someone else,
and we uh it was something that was worth fighting for.
And we had made a vow to one another till
(36:14):
death do us part. Not incarceration, not hard times, uh,
none of the things.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (36:20):
But we as long as we had our breath and
breadth and our lungs and you know, the vigor to
get up and move and so forth, we were gonna
make sure that we stayed together at all costs.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
I think that that would probably just be one of
the things that we would want to encourage your listening audience,
Doney and Darren.
Speaker 5 (36:39):
To do, is to hold on to each other. Oftentimes,
when difficult times arise.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
In our lives, the first thing we do is get
rid of somebody that close to us. We off, we attack,
We target those people that are closest to us, and
normally it's our family members. And instead of clinging to
one another doing the tough times, instead we we create more.
Speaker 5 (37:01):
Conflict with one another during the tough time.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
So I would just challenge you to hold on because
it's better on the other side. And again, we are
always stronger together than we can ever be apart.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
That's that's that's good right there. I've been married for
seven months as we record this podcast.
Speaker 7 (37:21):
Congratulations.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
That's that's a word of encouragement I could take with me.
So I appreciate you, guys. I'll let you know as
you guys, I saw you guys developed a nonprofit. I
look to know how as you guys's purpose joining together
since twenty eighteen, how has that continued to expand over
these last five years?
Speaker 5 (37:41):
Fight fight, Fight Fight.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
We believe that to be free is to free others,
and what God has done for us, we have been
commissioned and ordained to do for other people. Our ministry,
our nonprofit, has rich family ministries and we have an
initiative called Participatory Defense Movement NOLA PDM. NOLA dot org
is our website, but we teach legal awareness to families
(38:06):
that are justice involved. We are one hub that is
practicing this model out of forty hubs across our country,
and we judge our success by how much time we
save someone from serving time in prison versus how much
time they actually serve. And so to date, our organization
we started six months after I came home from prison
(38:27):
and to date, four years later, we have saved thirty
four hundred years of time behind ours to include bringing
home the longest serving woman in our country through clemency,
as well as being able to change a pass resolution
in law in twenty twenty one that has given over
(38:51):
three thousand families and opportunity to come home on parole
of people who thought that they were going to die
there because they had such a lengthy sentence. So yeah,
that's the work that we do every day and for
those that may want to follow our work or find
out more about what we're doing, our website is foxinarrib
dot com and reach Familyministries dot org where they can
(39:15):
find out more about that work there, and all of
our handles as well are Fox and RID.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I love that you guys are essentially creating pathways back
to freedom. And I feel like in my role as
a teacher, teaching, teaching yoga, leading as a personal development
or life coach, it's the same thing. It's creating pathways
back to freedom. Whether it's in a yoga class. If
you're moving your body and breathing intentionally, you're moving energy.
(39:42):
You're essentially freeing yourself from yourself or all of the
things that the body remembers, because they say your issues
are in your tissues, and so to be able to move,
to move that stuck energy in the trauma, the things
and the emotions, the unwanted stuff that we pushed down,
it's in there. So when you talk about creating pathways,
(40:03):
that would you know, means every run's so deep for
me and maybe in a well definitely in a different
way than it maybe does for you too, because mine
was rooted in the addiction and being bound in that.
So I have a bracelet on my wrist that says
the word freedom, and it's it's just I want to
be free, and in order to be free, it's about
(40:25):
service and freeing others. So yeah, to be free is
to free others, and it's the easiest way to get
out of our own way is just to go go
help somebody else.
Speaker 7 (40:34):
Yeah, well, said don Yes, well, and.
Speaker 5 (40:37):
Then I got one more for you, Donny too.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
You say like the intentions, I think you say it
is where you set the court in you intentions, something
about you intentions, What I say is where the mind goes.
Speaker 5 (40:48):
The behind follows Oh yeah ah man.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
Well, I want to thank you guys so much, just
for your story, for your resiliency individually and collectively with
fel like a lot of people will be blessed from
hearing your story, seeing your story in the documentary, by
going and checking you guys, and your workout on the website.
So we just want to thank you and honor you
for taking taking the time in your life to spend
(41:15):
a few mens with us, because I feel like somebody's
life is going to be changed from hearing this. So
we just want to.
Speaker 5 (41:20):
Say thank you, We thank you.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
It takes a lot to take our mess and turn
it into a message for other people and to be
that vulnerable. So Donnie and Darren, we thank you for
your vulnerability and how you're blessing our world by sharing
your story and your truth.
Speaker 5 (41:37):
Thank you both.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah, thank you so much. I'm wondering if you can
leave Darren and I and our listeners with a nugget
of maybe there's a there's a couple out there that's
they're just ready to throw in the towel, they're ready.
Speaker 7 (41:50):
To give up.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
What would be some advice that you would give a
couple that's just really struggling. They know they're struggling, but
they don't know what to do about it.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
I would give them the advice that Rob gave us
when we were in our lowest moment during our marriage,
about thirteen years into incarceration. God just so happened to
have him in a marriage and family counsel and course.
Speaker 5 (42:14):
And what did you learn in that course? Baby? That
saved our marriage.
Speaker 7 (42:18):
Probably one was, first of all, you have to get
over yourself.
Speaker 6 (42:21):
But secondly it is that you have to treat your
relationships like a bank account. And the objective of a
bank account pretty much holds true to that of a relationship.
The main goal is to place far more deposits into
the relationships than the withdrawals that you're.
Speaker 7 (42:36):
Gonna take from time to time.
Speaker 6 (42:38):
But if you place enough deposits into the relationship, he
can withstand some of the withdrawals that are just gonna
come with life, you know, as a whole. So by far,
that was really one of the greatest takeaways that I
had from the class. And crazy enough, the Arthur's name
was Gary Smalley and the name of the book was
(42:58):
Making Love Last Forever, Dottie. You know, just ironic that
you even mentioned that just seconds ago, But yeah, that
would probably be some of the greatest advice that I
could give to young couples, aged couples, you know.
Speaker 5 (43:13):
And the likes is just put more in and you
take out.
Speaker 7 (43:20):
Simple, simple. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Thank you so much to the both of you for
coming on and sharing your story. And we love a
good comeback. We love the people that are turning their
mess into their message and their pain into their purpose,
and you two are doing it and it's a legit
power couple. And it was an honor to for you
two to be our first duo here on Comeback Stories.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
So thanks again, but we look forward to coming back
And for your listeners you're viewing audience, our book Time
is available. The book really goes further than the documentary
into our truth along the way and so the nuggets
are there that you know that we need to encourage us.
So I would offer our book time, the untold story
(44:02):
of the love that kept us together when incarceration kept
us apart.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
There you go, go get it. Listeners, go check that out,
Go check that out.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
Me out.
Speaker 5 (44:12):
Yeah, I'll be glad, don't know so much peace.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Okay, welcome back everybody. We're here for another episode of
Comeback Stories. And today we are here with Sybil Fox
and Rob Richardson known as Fox and Rob, who are
a New Orleans couple whose marriage survived despite years of incarceration.
So their story was profiled in a documentary called Time,
(00:36):
and then their book is called Time, The Untold Story
of Love that held Us together when incarceration kept us apart.
Welcome to the show, Fox and Rob.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Oh, thank you so much for joining us. What a title,
Comeback Stories.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Hey, we all have one and we all love one.
And I think we're about to hear another epic comeback
story from the both of you. Dan, I don't know
if we had a guest a duo ever.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Before no I was going to bring up this is
the first time we've ever had a duo. But I
feel like as we dive deep in, we'll see how
you know, just through you guys's love and the endurance
of that love, how you guys are one. So it's
really like we're interviewing one person, but.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
We received that one.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Derek.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Could you guys start and maybe just give us a
little background how or of the two of you, and
then how the two of you became one.
Speaker 6 (01:36):
Oh wow, I guess it will take us all the
way back toneen ninety, nineteen eighty seven. Where we met
is a high school sweethearts through a mutual friend of ours.
Now depends on which one of us you ask this
particular question as far as the answer that you get,
because there's my version as to how we met, and
then of course there's Fox's version as to how it
(01:57):
is right the truth.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
None is care.
Speaker 6 (02:01):
So, so I'm gonna give my my version. But the
version that that I hold to is Uh that Fox
and I met while she had a girlfriend of hers,
Uh was shooting hooky from school.
Speaker 5 (02:16):
One day we were taking a mental health day.
Speaker 6 (02:19):
And that's her story. She's sticking to it. And uh
on say on said mental health day.
Speaker 7 (02:25):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (02:26):
The mutual friend that we shared needed a ride home
and knew that I was home visiting from arow from
the from the military all leave went by to offer
them a ride.
Speaker 7 (02:36):
Fox answered the door.
Speaker 6 (02:38):
Uh. From the moment she answered the door, something came
over me that I think some people may uh call
the keen to our love at first sight, So it
was gonna take maybe the rest of the day in
order for me to actually figure that part out and
whether or not she had UH had me had me
smitten in UH in such a way crazy enough, I
ended up inviting my friend over. He came over with us,
(02:59):
and then UH, long story short, he tried calling Fox
later to no avail. And later on that night, I
came back home realizing that I hadn't used the phone
since the last time that a friend of mine made
the phone called the Fox, and we had an old
service that used to be in place back there called
Start sixty nine, So I didn't Start sixty nine and
then went right back to Fox's number, to which I
(03:22):
started talking to him and she immediately stopped me and
she says, wait a minute, She said, I thought that
you were wonder as a man. Wanda is the mutual
friend that I mentioned at the onset? Well, I said, well,
no one and I just friends. She said, well, that's
not what she told me. And I took the advantage
of yet another service we used to have, called three Way.
Speaker 7 (03:41):
I said, well, won't we called all three way? That
way we can hash all of this out.
Speaker 6 (03:45):
So she ended up calling it on three way, and
probably about a few minutes into the into the conversation,
I saw it in Wanda was continuously misrepresenting our relationships.
Speaker 7 (03:55):
So I cut in and I said, well, dam how
do we get to this point? You know?
Speaker 6 (03:59):
Of course she was busted in the moment she conceded,
and to say to say the least, there after Fox
and I stayed home.
Speaker 5 (04:07):
I was at little was at that point, you know.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
But that was what nineteen eighty seven, And here we are,
thirty six years later, twenty six years in matrimony, six
sons that we have raised together after having served twenty
one years as a formerly incarcerated couple in Louisiana before
we received clemency from our governor in twenty and eighteen,
and actually the only family in the state of Louisiana
(04:34):
that received clemency out of over two thousand applicants in
twenty and eighteen. So if that's not a comeback story
for you, I just don't know what he is.
Speaker 6 (04:43):
So to answer your question, Darren, it was at that moment,
after spending twenty one years separated and apart from one another,
that Fox and Rob were born. It was a constant
reminder to us to never do anything to our create
that level of separation between us again.
Speaker 7 (05:00):
Hits.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
We spell our names as one Fox, A N D.
Rob God like Paul to us all they all saw
to Paul, it was a transformation moment.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
For us, you know, you know, coming from you talk
about not wanting to create that separation ever again. And
I feel like it's important to highlight how that separation
came about because I feel like there are certain people
in America that may see as somebody that may have
committed a crime, and it's like, you know, they don't
(05:33):
know the story behind it, they don't know the human
experience behind it. Could you enlighten us on what may
have led you to do what you had to do, Like,
what was your human experience and your story that led
you up to feel like that was a decision that
you had to make just for your own life.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Well, I think one I have to say thank you
for explaining it is such. It was a human experience
and as long as we keep living, we're going to
have just those human experiences is what makes us human.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
And for us, after the six.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Months of being married, Rob and I had launched our
first business, had finally put our family together after ten
years of dating off and own again.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
And.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
In the midst of launching our first business, our investor
pulled out on us without without any type of answers.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
As to why or what changed or any of that.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
And we panicked between the investor pulling out on us
the new home we had purchased as our first family home,
we discovered it had a crack foundation and a bad
leak in the.
Speaker 5 (06:40):
Roof, with the whole thicken edition of the house was faulty.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
In the midst of that, if that wasn't enough, the
department that I was teaching in full time ended the
division in which I was teaching, so I lost my job.
And if that wasn't enough, our youngest son started having
seizures that they couldn't diagnose, landing us with a ton
of medical bills. And so, if there is a place
in the life that is called the end of your rope,
(07:07):
we found ourselves there in nineteen ninety seven. And when
you're at the end of your rope, I think one
of those things that holds us grounded is our moral compass.
And depending on how far you go down that rabbit
hole or how dark you allow things to get for you,
Darren and Donnie, it depends on the decisions that you
make at your lowest points. I've heard it said that
(07:29):
circumstances don't reveal the man a woman, don't make the
man a woman, They reveal them to themselves. And so
in that moment, with our faith being tested, our moral
compass got off and we figured if we couldn't get
it the right way, we would succeed at any by
any means necessary. And it was that mentality of what
(07:52):
we call the American dream syndrome, when you're willing to
do whatever you got to do to succeed or to
obtain the American dream. It took over us and landed
us to making a decision that we would end up
regretting for the rest of our lives. So, in nineteen
ninety seven would facebook financial challenges to spill it all
(08:12):
out for you. We tried to regain financial solvency by
taking money from a credit union.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I've heard you use the quote desperate people do desperate things,
and I could relate so much to that, and Darren
and ize our backgrounds come from addiction and we're currently
in recovery. And when I heard that quote from you Fox,
it just made me think about all of the desperate
things that I did in the depths of my addiction,
(08:41):
and in so many cases just really didn't get caught,
or if I did get caught, the consequences it just
it's looked it looked different. But I can relate so
much because at my rock bottom, I mean, the decisions
that I was making were out of complete desperation and
they were not wise decisions at all.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
But I think that's where the power lies, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I Mean, when we hit rock bottom, like Rob and
I have a quote where we say one thing about
rock bottom is once you reach it is nowhere to
go from the butt up.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
I mean, you know, like Donnie said, as being a
former addict and talking about that human experience, I always
try to let people know and inform them that I
didn't just want to become a drug addict just because
I wanted to run my life into the ground, or
I wanted to make poor decisions, or I wanted to
have this be my legacy. I was just somebody that
(09:38):
wanted to change my circumstance, wanted to change how I
was feeling, and ultimately those small decisions lead to a
place where yeah, your moral compass is off. But at
the end of the day, it's about trying to get
people to see people like us as people and not
as our mess because our mess may be where we're
currently at, but that's not who we ultimately are.
Speaker 7 (10:00):
And let's try.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
That's a message that we have to keep pushing because
it's so easy to just stereotype somebody or you see
something go across the TV and be like, oh man,
what was he doing, Like he's tripping, Like why would
he make that decision? But it's way more uncomfortable to
get into sit down with that person, sit across from them,
talk to them, get to know them, and see like, hey,
we all people that are really just trying to you know,
(10:24):
that's right, avoid our fear, get over our fears, you know,
step into a life that we want to live and
provide and protect and all these things. We all have
the same goals and we all have the same heart
posture at the end of the day if we can
allow ourselves to get there.
Speaker 7 (10:38):
I like that heart posture so true.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
So can you walk us through what the sentence scene was,
what the criminal system looked like back then? And then
what came up for the both of you as you
were faced with that sentence.
Speaker 6 (10:57):
I think it's important to know for people that are
listening in that the time that I was sentenced was
nineteen ninety seven, and this was just at the point
that the Clinton Crime Bill that kicked in. At that moment,
the Clinton Crime Bill created a thing called Truth and
Sentencing that required states who received federal funding from the
(11:17):
federal government to sentence people are convicted of crimes to
serve out. Eighty five percent of the Senates that had
been handed handed doubt as a result of those moneys
that states had taken for you know, people are committing crimes.
With that being said, I've received, as a first offender
a sixty year sentence, my nephew received a forty five
(11:38):
year sentence, and my wife to seven year sentences and
a five year sentence, you know, all as first offenders
in a crime that no one received. No one died
from the crime, no one was hurt physically hurt from
the crime in any and by no stretch of the
imagination do I b rate the trauma that takes place
(12:02):
when someone takes something of value from you, whether by note,
by firearm or whatever it may be. Uh, the fact
still remains is that it's a traumatic moment for you.
But what was equally as traumatic for us on the
other side of that was the the heavy sanctions that
had been handed out to us, especially when he kind
(12:23):
of looked out over the landscape as far as what
the national average was for people committing similar acts, as
well as a parish average for the parish where the
where the crimes themselves were committed.
Speaker 7 (12:36):
Uh So, these sentences were really.
Speaker 6 (12:40):
Outside of the social norms for what had been happening,
both in the nation as well as in the in the.
Speaker 7 (12:46):
Parish that had happened there.
Speaker 6 (12:48):
Uh So to say that we were bewildered, uh that
we were flabbergacied.
Speaker 7 (12:52):
We were floored.
Speaker 6 (12:54):
Man we uh we we I thought for sure that
maybe he was reading from someone else's sentencing transcript uh
in our particular matter. But it wasn't until we got
the paperwork ourselves and we realized that, okay, there was
no mistake made here. This was just flat out injustice,
you know, at a whole other level. So all probably
their end began began our fight of coour.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
So Fox, I like to know when at what point
did it go from Okay, like this is unacceptable, this
needs to change, to you wanting to step in and
be like, okay, like I'm gonna do something about this,
or I'm gonna do my part in seeing change come about.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
Probably the first night I went to prison.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
It was one thing to be housed in the in
the jail in the parish, but when I actually was
remanded to the Department of Justice for me, it was
in that moment of seeing how they were, how we're
housing human beings, and how it was that.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Man just the.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Deplorable conditions that they had US citizens living in state side,
not in a third world country, and the treatment of
those human beings. And I honestly thought that as an
American citizen, when we were casting our citizens into incarceration,
that we were doing so to rehabilitate them and make
(14:22):
them come out better citizens like they do in other
industrialized nations.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
But I did not realize how.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
In entrench slavery still is currently in the United States,
and that our prison system is a slave system by
a new name. And so my prayer when I got
to prison was Lord, just let me use my voice
for the voiceless.
Speaker 5 (14:47):
That are here. I had a master's degree by.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
The time I went to prison, and what I learned
while I was there was I met the first adult
in my life that could not read or write. And
not was it just one, it was many of them
striving to get just a literacy education in jail, in prison,
(15:10):
less and lonely, a ged while they were incarcerated. And
so I understood that I had a responsibility, that maybe
it wasn't just my action or me losing my moral
compass that got me here, but that I could use
this for the greater good of mankind and take my
transgressions and transform them to really become a voice for
(15:33):
the voiceless Darren, because we've all got a calling. And
sometimes we can let our downfalls in life be our
kid falls and we stay there, or we can let
them be our springboards for the work that was supposed
to do.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
In this life.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
And that's what Rob and I and our entire family,
our six sons, they bought in as well, to understand
that this system had done an injustice to our family.
Certainly we deserved to be chastised for our transgressions, but
we did not deserve the treatment that our state sanctioned
against us. And sometimes when these systems don't do right
(16:07):
by the people it represents, it is the people's responsibility.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
It is our duty to address the system.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
It is our duty to fight for our freedom, brother dere,
it is our duty to win. And so we set
out to win. We set out to show them that
you do this to me. Then, as I say in
Time movie, if you haven't seen it, check it out
on Amazon Prime. Nominated for an Oscar in twenty twenty one,
the most honored documentary of twenty twenty and that is.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
I say, success is the best revenge.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
How do we get back in a system that was
intentional about destroying us and our family?
Speaker 5 (16:46):
We succeed anyway.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Rob, I've heard you say. So you're faced with this
sentence and you say, if I'm going to get through this,
I'm going to have to use some of those core
principles that you know to be true. What were those
core principles for you that you had to put into
practice when you were incarcerated.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
Probably some of the ones that stand out most was
from a from my uncle. Uh yeah, given me some
some rules to live by when I first went off
to prison. And those rules are basically consistent of For one,
I knew that I had to I had to stand
like a man.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Uh.
Speaker 7 (17:26):
I knew that I had to speak truth to uh
to falsehood.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
And I knew that if I was ever going to
get through this, I knew that in order for me
to get through it, I had to come into it
with an attitude that I would never give up, that
I would not allow uh defeat UH to be to
be the end uh the end result of my fight.
Speaker 8 (17:45):
UH.
Speaker 6 (17:46):
So it means that I had to fight tooth and nail.
And so with that being said, I started, you know,
redirecting my energy.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Uh.
Speaker 7 (17:54):
I started redirecting my thoughts.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (17:57):
I started learning how to read the law because you know,
one of the things that you realize is that when
you're in a fight, no was gonna fight as hard
for you as you're willing to fight for yourself.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (18:08):
And with that being said, I knew that it wasn't
necessarily gonna be a lawyer that was gonna get me out,
because at the end of the day, lawyers go home
and they go to soccer meetings and pta meetings with
their kids, and they hang out with their wives and
their friends. You know, between work hours and those things.
And I'm not on their mind me or none of
their other clients. But for me, uh and our family,
(18:30):
you know, we breathe, we sleep out, we we ate,
we walked, we talked law all day long. And it
wasn't until I started practicing law or learning law on
my own that I even started to see breakthroughs in
my case. And that was after countless lawyers and and
(18:50):
uh and oh man, thousands to my tens of thousands
of dollars that had been spent, All lawyers that you know,
that had no clue as to how it is that
they were going to get me out. Uh, let alone
the fol of representation, you know, like cars and like
medicine and those kinds of things. You come to find
out that there are people that are specialized. People that
(19:12):
know how to work on engines, don't necessarily know how
to work on breaks. Those work on breaks don't necessarily
know how to work Transition doctors all don't work on brains.
They are not all heart surgeons, you know, and some
of them are just general practitioners. Well, in a lot
of this, I realized that a lot of lawyers, you know,
when you talk about your pre trial lawyers.
Speaker 7 (19:31):
Most of them are general practitioners of the field.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
They do a lot of deal cutting and that kind
of stuff that happens on the front end of sentencings.
But what I was in need of was a special
was a specialist, and specialists in this particular field are
hard to find.
Speaker 7 (19:46):
When you start.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
Studying case law on those things, you start realizing that
the specialists is the person that's locked up. You know,
you think about precedents and laws that change, that change
the momentum or the direction of where we go in
terms of how the pendulum of justice swings. It doesn't
happen as a result out of an argument that took
place that some fancy lawyer made.
Speaker 7 (20:08):
Inside of the court system.
Speaker 6 (20:09):
It happens from some jail house attorney that set up
in the wee hours of the night on the poor lighting,
that read between the lines where the right was not
necessarily written in order to you know, carve out an.
Speaker 7 (20:23):
Argument for fundamental justice and uh, and they.
Speaker 6 (20:27):
Prevailed on those matters, and as a result, we get
a change, or we get to a bend at our
laws that you know, kind of move us in a
different direction. And that didn't start happening for me and
my family until I started to take responsibility for the
situation that I had put myself in through my own choices.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
For real, No, for real, man, I think it's beautiful
that what I got from you is around perspective, like
as opposed to Okay, yes, I've been dealt a pretty
shitty hand, but I'm going to be an active participant
in the solution here. I'm going to educate myself. I'm
gonna teach myself. I'm gonna be a part of this
to the point where as you do that, the type
(21:09):
of energy, the type of you know, miracles that you're
attracting to yourself in that process is a powerful thing.
And I want to know something because you you guys fighting,
you guys trying to educate yourself. A lot of people
would want to have that breakthrough or that change happened overnight,
whereas you were in prison for twenty one years. So
(21:29):
it's like, what what do you think looking back like
with something that you can take from that time of
like I wish this fight could end earlier, but still
having gone through it, is there anything that's like a
valuable type of lesson that comes from that from having
to wait, and you know, like in just living in
this instagratification world, is there anything we can take from that?
Speaker 7 (21:50):
And you guys's perspectives.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
I think for me and I'm gonna ride finish it
because this brother here is one of the most patient
people I've ever met in my life. When you talk
about the patience of Joe, this brother studying our evens
in prison and the race of job God gave him.
But for me, it was about eating the elephant, onebity
at a time, knowing that as long as I get
(22:12):
up every day and I'm biting into this elephant dog one.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
It's gonna be devoured. It has.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
The second thing for me was about counting all my wins.
Very often, when the victory didn't come out the way
we wanted to, We'll just skip over all the other
smaller wins, all the wins that we need to get us.
You know, It's like I don't watch a lot of football,
but my family does. Well.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
You know how they move the gold line and then
you get to the next goal.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
It's like the first down and the second bat and
the third down, and you keep going down, you're gonna
get a touchdown, right, So that's what the small winds are.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
To me, it's like the first down, and you know,
so I chill the first down. You know.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Some people are like, oh, it was just the first down.
I'm like, no, baby, it was a first down.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
You know.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
So all the wins, every man, and not just the
super Bowl, but it takes all those other wins to
get to the super Bowl. And then for me, probably
the last thing is that live at the moment.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
You know.
Speaker 5 (23:12):
It was at one point on our journey, I was.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
So busy living for the day that Rob was gonna
come home that I realized, Johnny, I wasn't living at all.
I didn't even have my children living. Everything we did
was we talked about the future. When your daddy comes home.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
We're gonna do this.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
When your daddy comes home, we're gonna like, it's gonna
be great. But I said, had to come to TIMS,
probably after we had done ten years. I had to
come to TIMS with the fact that I'm not guaranteed
to see when he comes home. Truth Enough, I'm working
toward it. Truthfully, I believe that it's coming, But honestly,
I don't know when God is gonna decide that it's
(23:49):
my last day here or his last day here, and
so I can't just live for when he comes home.
We have to live in the now. And so if
we are an incarcerated family, yeah, we know how great
we're gonna be when we are free family. Well, right
now out will one hellified, strong, incarcerated family. That's what
we are, and we're gonna celebrate that, and we're gonna
(24:11):
live in this moment and enjoy our visits.
Speaker 7 (24:14):
Darren.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I got to say, Man, I'm loving how you've really
made yourself at home in the big city. I'm curious,
how are you getting around? You a subway guy, cab uber.
Speaker 7 (24:25):
I'm glad you asked, Donni.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Man, I'm at the honor to partner with All American
Forward over in New Jersey. They've been taking really good
care of me since I got out here, and that's
why I love the most about it. Man. They treat
me like I'm family, not just a customer trying to
get a deal or just a statistic. You know, they
give me great service. You can tell they got to
commitment to quality. The innovation is unmatched. And just so
(24:46):
if anybody's you know, like me, trying to get around
in New Jersey, don't know where to go. I'm telling
you go check out All American Forward here in Jersey.
They're gonna take real good.
Speaker 7 (24:54):
Care of you.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
When we come back, you'll hear more of this inspiring
comeback story. There's so many, so many powerful principles that
they're and I talk about. I mean, you both are
rattling them off of Rob. You had talked about redirecting
your energy and redirecting your thoughts, and that's as a
mindfulness teacher, meditation teacher. I mean, this is the essence
(25:17):
of what we do right to Everything is energy. Where
our tension goes, energy flows, And as you were saying, Fox,
it's like that conditional happiness, like I'll be happy, I'll
be free when Rob gets out, and it's like no
happiness happens in the now, And it brings us back
to what you were just talking about about being in
the presence. Another word that comes up for me that
(25:40):
I'd love to have you both touch on is acceptance,
Like at what point? And I think a lot of
people struggle with acceptance as they think acceptance is giving
up or giving in. And I always remind people that
acceptance doesn't mean you have to like it. But we
do have to accept the reality of what's happened. Otherwise
(26:02):
we're just holding on to things that we can't control,
and I think that jams us up even more.
Speaker 7 (26:07):
That's right.
Speaker 6 (26:08):
I would have to add to uh that, donnie U
when you I'm talking about almost immediately that first thing
came to me probably one of my favorite Bible scriptures
that basically says that I have learned that whatsoever state
I begin that wish to be content, to be content
about something doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be
satisfied with the outcome or how things are are happening.
(26:32):
But what it does is that I think that there
is something that is empowering about about acceptance. It's in
that moment I think that you start to build out
the the the pathways for knowledge and insight to come
in in order to give you what's necessary in order
to fix the problem that's in front of you.
Speaker 7 (26:51):
But all too often, like you know, and when face
with conflict, when they're.
Speaker 6 (26:56):
Faced with with with troubles, you know, they they want
to they want to check out, you know, they want
to And it's normal, I guess, because I mean, you
think about it, Jesus almost wanted to check out, you know,
he asked up.
Speaker 7 (27:08):
To bitter comfort.
Speaker 6 (27:09):
You know that he was faced with, if it could
be removed from his lips, let somebody else have it.
Speaker 7 (27:14):
I don't want to have to go through it.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
But there was a moment of acceptance even for Christ
when he said, but if it's.
Speaker 7 (27:21):
Your will, then let dying will be done.
Speaker 6 (27:24):
So in that moment, I realized that I came from
from an ancestry of people that have been fighting for
over four hundred years to undo this condition that they
knew as slavery that we now know as mass incarceration.
Speaker 7 (27:39):
And it was in that moment that I had to
tap back in.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
I had to realize that the DNA that ran through
those people that it fought under conditions far worse than
the ones that I was facing in mass incarceration.
Speaker 7 (27:50):
And again that's not the b rate or.
Speaker 6 (27:52):
Denounce anything about mass incarceration, because it is about as
close as slavery as you're ever gonna get. But with
that being said, like I said, I knew that it
was in that moment the guy that called me to
do something something special up to me through a transform
my condition, my situation and make people all see it
as something all different than than what had the hand
(28:15):
that had been dealt to me.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I want to continue on the theme of the human experience.
I'd love for you guys to give us a glimpse
into the joy, the elation just exuding on your day
of release. But the same at the same time, what
were the emotions of transitioning back into daily life together?
Was there anxiety? Was there any level of fear for
(28:43):
individually and collectively? Like can you take us through the
entire experience of your release?
Speaker 6 (28:49):
Oh my god, it was like a fetal sweet kind
of moment. I mean, when you go from being in
a situation where there is that you know that you
don't have.
Speaker 7 (28:58):
The same level of stimulation.
Speaker 6 (29:00):
And keeping in mind too that when I went to prison,
I went to prison two years on the the side
of of our windows ninety five. You know, by the
time I had come home, my space had become a
thing that was no longer a thing by the time
I had come on U. When I left, you could
just wave at the gas tended and they would turn
the pumps all you pupa take a gas. You go
(29:22):
in and lay a twenty on the counter or whatever,
and you lead back out. When I came home, gas
pumps were talking to you. They were trying to sell
your stuff and all kinds of other things, and I'm like, wow,
this is this is crazy, you know, this is like
other worldly, you know. And uh, it was in those
moments that you kind of realize the the real uh
dissergers uh that our Department of Justice does to those
(29:46):
that are incarcerated because technologynology for me, while in prison,
was considered countraband, So the very thing that I needed
to know and needed to learn in order to be functioning,
and uh, you know, proactive in society was considered contraband.
(30:07):
To me, it was almost like enslavery when people were
not allowed to read and then all of a sudden,
the next day people were allowed.
Speaker 7 (30:14):
To be free enrolled. But you can't read, and you
couldn't read it, and you know, you're a grown man
or a grown woman.
Speaker 6 (30:19):
At this point or whatever, and it's like, well, how
do I function? How do I communicate in the new world?
You know? So those things were, you know, were really
challenging for us as a couple, being in a space
where I've been in the overcrowded dormitory. I mean, they
were more than a goal is the largest prison in
the world. There's more than six thousand men that are incarcerated.
Speaker 8 (30:40):
Where I was incarcerated, there were you know, more than
one hundred men in my dormitory, more than five hundred
of them on the pod where I lived, and more
than two thousand of them actually lived in that in
the yard space that we lived inside.
Speaker 6 (30:55):
So you're talking about sharing five showers with one hundred men.
You're talking about sharing one TV with one hundred men,
two telephones, one Kiosk, one coffee pot, one drake fountain,
five sinks, six urinals. Do you imagine the conflict that
is always present when you have that many men competing
(31:17):
for something essential essential, you know what I'm saying. So
coming home, you know, I was hopeful for privacy. I
was hopeful for some downtime and time alone and where
I wasn't necessarily happening to share my space, whereas my
wife had been fighting and battling for years so that
(31:37):
she could actually have me back in her space and
we could be in intimate spaces and we could be
you know, hugged.
Speaker 7 (31:44):
Up and up under each other, And that was challenging
for me.
Speaker 6 (31:47):
You know what was seen as a moment that you
thought that I would have been excited and elated to
be able to have my wife in the shower with me.
Speaker 7 (31:56):
It became like a thing of like, you know, like I.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
Was going through a moment because it was like, man,
I just want to get out of this condition, you know.
Speaker 7 (32:03):
So it was just like those little things we.
Speaker 6 (32:05):
Battled about how many times do married couples even supposed
to have sex in a week's time? You know, Thank
God for Google, because when the question is first poles,
I mean, you know how it is when it comes
to ment, you know, when it comes to your sex
drive or whatever. You know, that's that's something associated with
your all your masculinity. It's associated with your ego and
(32:27):
those kinds of things. And especially when women questioned it
on the other side of it or whatever. You know,
it's a real that's a good way to make you
go go solve, right, you know, So just having those moments,
but even in Google, thank God, you know, we realize
how many times are married couples actually have sex in
the course of a week by state back ery, you know,
(32:50):
she was saying by continent, you know, and I realized
in the moment, I'm like, Okay, well, numbers up, We're
doing pretty good here, you know. But again, like I said,
those are just many of the challenges that we faced
as a as a returning couple, you know, coming back
from the condition of our corn serration.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I would love to know a little bit about what
what makes love last. You guys were able to keep
a marriage together after years twenty one years of incarceration.
But what would you say makes love last? Like? Why
does one couple stay together while another falls apart? I mean,
you guys were able to do it through twenty one
years of separation and incarceration, and most people are struggling
(33:31):
to keep a marriage together and they don't have any
issues near like that one. So what makes it stick?
Speaker 3 (33:39):
I think for me, one of the first things I
would have to say is that I clearly understood that
we were stronger together than we could ever be apart.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
I found value in numbers.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
When you think about the insect kingdom, you don't just
see one ant, you know, you don't see an ant
by itself, You see ants around of One of the
things that I share what I'm speaking is that when
you see a roach in your house, you know, you
don't just say have one roach, you got roaches. So
for us, it was about if the animal kingdom, you know,
(34:10):
lions they travel in pride, and fish they swim in schools,
if they understand nature, understands the importance of us being together,
that that was something that I needed to implement in
my own life, that my husband and I and our
children we were stronger together than we could ever be apart.
The second thing for me is about being intentional. I
(34:33):
was intentional that if Rob and I were not gonna
make it, it wasn't gonna be because of the state
of Louisiana said we couldn't be together. Just the fact
that they were insistent about denying us our family made
me more intentional to say, oh, no, if we don't
make it, it'll be on our own terms. But it
won't be because you said we can't make it. You
(34:54):
said we can't be together.
Speaker 7 (34:57):
Yes, adreed. And it just made me think.
Speaker 6 (35:00):
Fox and I was just watching a comedy skit on
the Netflix or so the other night and one of
the comedians and they had a profound moment when he
made the statement, and it piggybacks off what Fox mentioned
about stronger together. And he said that our goal has
to be to keep our couples together, because when we
keep our couples together.
Speaker 7 (35:21):
We keep our families together.
Speaker 6 (35:23):
And when we keep our families together, we keep we
keep our communities together. And I went one further and
saying that when we keep our communities together, we keep
our nation together. And when we keep our nations together,
we keep our world together. So we understood at the
at the smallest level, at the micro level of it all,
(35:44):
that if we could stay together, then we can make
the rest of this, uh, this workout for us.
Speaker 7 (35:50):
And I guess they say the.
Speaker 6 (35:54):
Proof is into putting, but it is definitely in our
experience at this moment, you know, because never giving up
on one another, understanding that our you was something special
uh to us, even if it was not to someone else,
and we uh it was something that was worth fighting for.
And we had made a vow to one another till
(36:14):
death do us part. Not incarceration, not hard times, uh,
none of the things.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (36:20):
But we as long as we had our breath and
breadth and our lungs and you know, the vigor to
get up and move and so forth, we were gonna
make sure that we stayed together at all costs.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
I think that that would probably just be one of
the things that we would want to encourage your listening audience,
Doney and Darren.
Speaker 5 (36:39):
To do, is to hold on to each other. Oftentimes,
when difficult times arise.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
In our lives, the first thing we do is get
rid of somebody that close to us. We off, we attack,
We target those people that are closest to us, and
normally it's our family members. And instead of clinging to
one another doing the tough times, instead we we create more.
Speaker 5 (37:01):
Conflict with one another during the tough time.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
So I would just challenge you to hold on because
it's better on the other side. And again, we are
always stronger together than we can ever be apart.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
That's that's that's good right there. I've been married for
seven months as we record this podcast.
Speaker 7 (37:21):
Congratulations.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
That's that's a word of encouragement I could take with me.
So I appreciate you, guys. I'll let you know as
you guys, I saw you guys developed a nonprofit. I
look to know how as you guys's purpose joining together
since twenty eighteen, how has that continued to expand over
these last five years?
Speaker 5 (37:41):
Fight fight, Fight Fight.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
We believe that to be free is to free others,
and what God has done for us, we have been
commissioned and ordained to do for other people. Our ministry,
our nonprofit, has rich family ministries and we have an
initiative called Participatory Defense Movement NOLA PDM. NOLA dot org
is our website, but we teach legal awareness to families
(38:06):
that are justice involved. We are one hub that is
practicing this model out of forty hubs across our country,
and we judge our success by how much time we
save someone from serving time in prison versus how much
time they actually serve. And so to date, our organization
we started six months after I came home from prison
(38:27):
and to date, four years later, we have saved thirty
four hundred years of time behind ours to include bringing
home the longest serving woman in our country through clemency,
as well as being able to change a pass resolution
in law in twenty twenty one that has given over
(38:51):
three thousand families and opportunity to come home on parole
of people who thought that they were going to die
there because they had such a lengthy sentence. So yeah,
that's the work that we do every day and for
those that may want to follow our work or find
out more about what we're doing, our website is foxinarrib
dot com and reach Familyministries dot org where they can
(39:15):
find out more about that work there, and all of
our handles as well are Fox and RID.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I love that you guys are essentially creating pathways back
to freedom. And I feel like in my role as
a teacher, teaching, teaching yoga, leading as a personal development
or life coach, it's the same thing. It's creating pathways
back to freedom. Whether it's in a yoga class. If
you're moving your body and breathing intentionally, you're moving energy.
(39:42):
You're essentially freeing yourself from yourself or all of the
things that the body remembers, because they say your issues
are in your tissues, and so to be able to move,
to move that stuck energy in the trauma, the things
and the emotions, the unwanted stuff that we pushed down,
it's in there. So when you talk about creating pathways,
(40:03):
that would you know, means every run's so deep for
me and maybe in a well definitely in a different
way than it maybe does for you too, because mine
was rooted in the addiction and being bound in that.
So I have a bracelet on my wrist that says
the word freedom, and it's it's just I want to
be free, and in order to be free, it's about
(40:25):
service and freeing others. So yeah, to be free is
to free others, and it's the easiest way to get
out of our own way is just to go go
help somebody else.
Speaker 7 (40:34):
Yeah, well, said don Yes, well, and.
Speaker 5 (40:37):
Then I got one more for you, Donny too.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
You say like the intentions, I think you say it
is where you set the court in you intentions, something
about you intentions, What I say is where the mind goes.
Speaker 5 (40:48):
The behind follows Oh yeah ah man.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
Well, I want to thank you guys so much, just
for your story, for your resiliency individually and collectively with
fel like a lot of people will be blessed from
hearing your story, seeing your story in the documentary, by
going and checking you guys, and your workout on the website.
So we just want to thank you and honor you
for taking taking the time in your life to spend
(41:15):
a few mens with us, because I feel like somebody's
life is going to be changed from hearing this. So
we just want to.
Speaker 5 (41:20):
Say thank you, We thank you.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
It takes a lot to take our mess and turn
it into a message for other people and to be
that vulnerable. So Donnie and Darren, we thank you for
your vulnerability and how you're blessing our world by sharing
your story and your truth.
Speaker 5 (41:37):
Thank you both.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah, thank you so much. I'm wondering if you can
leave Darren and I and our listeners with a nugget
of maybe there's a there's a couple out there that's
they're just ready to throw in the towel, they're ready.
Speaker 7 (41:50):
To give up.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
What would be some advice that you would give a
couple that's just really struggling. They know they're struggling, but
they don't know what to do about it.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
I would give them the advice that Rob gave us
when we were in our lowest moment during our marriage,
about thirteen years into incarceration. God just so happened to
have him in a marriage and family counsel and course.
Speaker 5 (42:14):
And what did you learn in that course? Baby? That
saved our marriage.
Speaker 7 (42:18):
Probably one was, first of all, you have to get
over yourself.
Speaker 6 (42:21):
But secondly it is that you have to treat your
relationships like a bank account. And the objective of a
bank account pretty much holds true to that of a relationship.
The main goal is to place far more deposits into
the relationships than the withdrawals that you're.
Speaker 7 (42:36):
Gonna take from time to time.
Speaker 6 (42:38):
But if you place enough deposits into the relationship, he
can withstand some of the withdrawals that are just gonna
come with life, you know, as a whole. So by far,
that was really one of the greatest takeaways that I
had from the class. And crazy enough, the Arthur's name
was Gary Smalley and the name of the book was
(42:58):
Making Love Last Forever, Dottie. You know, just ironic that
you even mentioned that just seconds ago, But yeah, that
would probably be some of the greatest advice that I
could give to young couples, aged couples, you know.
Speaker 5 (43:13):
And the likes is just put more in and you
take out.
Speaker 7 (43:20):
Simple, simple. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Thank you so much to the both of you for
coming on and sharing your story. And we love a
good comeback. We love the people that are turning their
mess into their message and their pain into their purpose,
and you two are doing it and it's a legit
power couple. And it was an honor to for you
two to be our first duo here on Comeback Stories.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
So thanks again, but we look forward to coming back
And for your listeners you're viewing audience, our book Time
is available. The book really goes further than the documentary
into our truth along the way and so the nuggets
are there that you know that we need to encourage us.
So I would offer our book time, the untold story
(44:02):
of the love that kept us together when incarceration kept
us apart.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
There you go, go get it. Listeners, go check that out,
Go check that out.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
Me out.
Speaker 5 (44:12):
Yeah, I'll be glad, don't know so much peace.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Comeback Stories is a production of Inflection Network and iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Eric Balchunas
Donny Starkins
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