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