March 15, 2024 • 39 mins
In this episode, we talk with Marchell Taylor about his journey through childhood trauma, an undiagnosed brain injury, and incarceration. His story highlights the need for proper diagnosis and treatment for individuals in the criminal justice system. It's a need Marchell Taylor responded to himself by developing programs for inmates and by his work as a screener for TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury, and as a peer specialist for WellPower, a mental health services provider in the Denver, Colorado area.
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Episode Transcript
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Marchell Taylor (00:08):
We have to really get this thing out where judges,
DA's, parole board members haveto know that they're incarcerating
individuals that should be hospitalized.
I should have been hospitalizedbefore I did 21 years.
I just want to see peopletransformed and changed.
I don't want to see people suffer.
I suffered.
Sam Fuqua (00:27):
That's Marchell Taylor Sr.
and this is Well, That Went Sideways!
A podcast that serves as aresource to help people have
healthy, respectful communication.
We present a diversity of ideas, tools,and techniques to help you transform
conflict in relationships of all kinds.
In this episode, we talk with MarchellTaylor about his journey through
(00:51):
childhood trauma, an undiagnosedbrain injury, and incarceration.
His story highlights the need for properdiagnosis and treatment for individuals
in the criminal justice system.
It's a need Marchell Taylor respondedto himself by developing programs
for inmates and by his work as ascreener for TBI, traumatic brain
(01:14):
injury, and as a peer specialist forWellpower, a mental health services
provider in the Denver, Colorado area.
I'm Sam Fuqua, co-host of theprogram with Alexis Miles.
Hi, Alexis.
Alexis Miles (01:27):
Hi, Sam.
Sam Fuqua (01:28):
And we're so pleased to be joined for this episode
of Well, That Went Sideways!
by Marchell Taylor Sr.
Hello, and welcome.
Marchell Taylor (01:36):
Thank you.
I appreciate this opportunity to beable to share, um, this story, you know.
I really do.
I appreciate you guys.
Let's get this thing going so wecan inspire some lives, maybe.
Sam Fuqua (01:49):
I think where that starts for me, Marchell, is, is with you
telling your story for our listeners.
Talk about your early years, whatit was like for you growing up,
and, and then how you ended upin the criminal justice system.
Marchell Taylor (02:03):
Yeah.
So, growing up in less than valuableenvironments in Detroit in the 70s,
uh, 80s, um, and literally experiencingdomestic violence, molestation, at
a young age, drugs, alcohol, fathercame back from Vietnam, whatever he
(02:24):
experienced over there, his copingmechanism was morphine and, and heroin.
And he came back from Vietnam and superimposes disorders on to my entire family.
Uh, started stealing, uh, from my mom,and at this time she had five kids.
So him, of course, experiencingPTSD or whatever it was, I didn't
(02:47):
understand it then, none of usdid, we were kids, uh, he began to
teach us maladaptive ways to cope.
Drugs, induced us with alcoholat very young ages, showed
us how to steal from stores.
And so, at six, seven, eight, nineyears old, in fact, I would even
say at ten I became a drug addictand alcoholic by ten years old.
(03:12):
And, um, growing up in those environments,not understanding how to deal with
stress, not having a understanding ofmental health issues, especially in
note, and I hate to say, but it's thetruth, and in minority communities,
we don't understand mental health.
We don't understand when aperson says that you have
(03:33):
these disorders, what it means.
So Of course, growing up in thoseenvironments, mom divorcing dad and
marrying another veteran that cameback with not so much as the same,
uh, disorder, but still came backviolent and end up in would, would,
would beat my mother in front ofus, it literally rewired my brain to
(03:57):
operate ineffectively throughout life.
So, you asked me what led me to prison is,uh, not having the right skills or tools
to deal with trauma, to deal with stress.
Trauma led me to prison.
Traumatic brain injuries led me to prison.
My environment, living in those less thanvaluable environments around domestic
(04:19):
violence, around robberies, around, Imean, it was just in those communities.
And you know, if you don't have theright guidance, the right tools to deal
with stress and trauma and traumaticbrain injuries, mostly all of us,
mostly everyone in those communitieswas led right to prison, you know.
And, and the courts didn't identify, uh,that our behaviors were due to injuries,
(04:45):
traumatic brain injuries, mental health,uh, disorders, psychological injuries.
So, back then when, and we were gettingour time or, or, or growing up in
those communities and judges weresentencing us, they didn't have an
understanding of mental health either.
Sam Fuqua (04:59):
You mentioned, uh, or I had read that in addition to the
upbringing and the environment youjust described, you had a brain
injury yourself as a kid, right?
You were in a car accident?
Marchell Taylor (05:10):
Yeah, I was in a car accident when I was nine.
And I, my mom, I think what they say isI was too young to really understand,
but my mom, she said the gas line brokeand she was backing up from a wall
and trying to turn and it acceleratedand hit the wall going like 40 miles
an hour and literally totaled the carwhile I didn't have my seatbelt on.
(05:32):
I was trapping myself in.
And, of course, in those days, we'reboys, you go to the hospital, they
stitch you up go back home, letus know if anything else happens.
After that, I can see, I seemyself getting more violent.
And then, and then, now we're in Flint.
So looking at, I mean, literally, we,so I left Detroit about just about seven
(05:53):
or eight and moved to Flint, but wasgoing back and forth with my dad lived
in Detroit and my mom moved to Flintto get away from my dad, actually, and
to go down to Flint to seek employment.
Believe it or not, she was in a mentalhealth field for nine years and never
even discussed mental health with us.
But, growing up, like I said, growingup in those areas and having, um, the
(06:17):
guidance of, I would say, of deceivers.
What else can you expectthe child to do, right?
If those are the only skills we had: drugs, alcohol, stealing, robbing. (06:22):
undefined
If those are the only skills that wewere taught in those environments, how
can you expect us to do anything else?
We don't understand mental health.
We didn't understand anxiety disorders.
We have no idea because first thingyou tell a person that's in those
communities if you have mental health,and those times, that doesn't apply
(06:46):
to us, else for the white folks.
And that's the truth.
And, and so, not being able to identifyat young ages, the TBI or the mental
health issues is what led me to prison.
Not understanding grief.
Not understanding how to deal with grief.
Not understanding how to dealwith prefrontal cortex damage.
Not having any identificationof a mental health issue.
(07:08):
Not understanding anythingabout anxiety disorders.
Not understanding anything aboutborderline personality disorders.
All these things is what I was diagnosedwith after doing 21 years in prison.
After doing 21 years in prison.
I'd be dog, if someone comes in front,and I'm a criminal justice advocate
right now, I go in court and I arguecases for individuals and I bring
(07:30):
up mental health right out the gate.
If I know you come from adversechildhood experiences, I bring
up TBI and I'm a TBI screener.
So, I'll collect that data and I'llbring it up right out the gate because
they didn't do that for me 25 years ago.
They just sentenced me andgave me 25 years, you know.
I mean, I've been out about five but...
So, I went through out life sufferingwith these disorders and never, never
(07:55):
understanding or have an identificationof them, or how to deal with them.
Never having the tools torationalize effectively, to reason
effectively, to use good judgment.
My judgment hardwired me to use illjudgment, if you want to call it.
So, those were the tools and skills I had.
(08:15):
And then again, the criminal justicesystem punished me for my illnesses
and never even gave me treatment.
And the DOC is not goingto give you treatment.
They're not going to do anything butlock you in a, in a confined cell
because they look at your behaviorsas defiant, and not as that this
person has an illness and need help.
(08:35):
And I'd like to say this, if I was ajudge and your file came in front of me
and you came in front of me I would knowright away that this person ability to
reason or rationalize is not in placebecause you wouldn't be in front of me.
If you had the ability to use goodjudgment, if you had the tools to,
to, to plan effectively, to playeffectively, to reset yourself
(08:58):
effectively back to baseline state ofsafety, you wouldn't be in front of me.
But most of us that come fromthose communities live in survival
mode, brains, bodies, minds,parasympathetic sympathetic nervous
system stuck, frozen in survival mode.
How do you expect someone todo anything different than what
they were taught, you know?
(09:20):
So, that's what led me to prison,did 21 years and came out and 36 days
later I robbed a Papa John's pizzaand went back facing life in 2016.
Sam Fuqua (09:31):
And if I heard you correctly, it was not until that offense that
put you back in prison that someonein the criminal justice system fought
to take into account that you mighthave a brain injury or other issues?
Marchell Taylor (09:48):
David Kraut.
He was a public defender.
And, uh, this was the firsttime someone ever, ever noted.
And, and, and let me say this, 2016when I did rob the Papa John's pizza,
my brain, it did, it just shut down.
My brain, body, the brain, body,and mind can only take so much
stress before it shuts down.
Before it just don't, youknow, and, and it did.
(10:09):
And I was suicidal and I took a bunchof pills and went to the county jail.
I knew I was going to get life.
I knew that because this was myseventh felony, three robberies.
This is a robbery would havekidnappings, two charges, uh, at
one time and they trump them all theway up, but it's my seventh felony.
So, when my attorney came to meand said, "Look Marchell, they're
(10:29):
filing a habitual criminal on you.
You have seven felonies with these two.
You have three robberies.
How did this happen?"
And, I just broke down and cried.
He opened the laptop, showedme the videotape of it, and
he asked me how did it happen?
And I said, "I don't know, man."
I said, "I just know Ican't go back and do life."
(10:50):
And I just broke down and started crying.
I said, "I want toapologize to that person."
I just broke down, started crying.
And he said, "You know what?"
He looked at my paperwork.
He said, "You just did21 years in prison."
He said, "How long did you do straight?"
I said, "Almost 15 straight."
He said, "Then you got out andwent back for another three
and you got," I said, "Yeah."
He said, "I know exactlyhow this happened.
You have mental health issues, man.
(11:10):
You don't know how to, you don't even haveany skills or tools to live in society."
He said, "But guess what?
I'm gonna send you to this program.
If you don't mind going, I'm gonnasend you to the men's transition
unit at the old County jail, DenverCounty, and they're going to help you."
He said, "You let meworry about this case."
He said, "I'm going to go talk tothese people because you did a lot
of time and they can't expect youto come home and have the tools.
(11:32):
He said, "You need mental health issues.
You probably have traumaticbrain injury and everything.
Let me set you up and sendyou over to the old county.
I was downtown at the Denver County jail."
I said, "Yes, please.
Whatever, whatever will help."
So they send me over there to themen's transition unit and they start
giving me, they gave me an assessment,Brain Injury Alliance that came down,
gave me a TBI assessment, screening,everything, and then, uh, determined
(11:57):
that I have prefrontal cortex damage.
I didn't know any of that.
I didn't even know what a prefrontalcortex or a frontal anything.
But what happened is while I didall of that time in prison, I
studied business for 16 years.
I locked myself in sales.
I went to the library.
I started studyingeverything on marketing.
I started.
So, I had this businesseducation before I came home.
(12:20):
I just didn't have the toolsand skills to deal with stress,
grief, loss, any of that.
And, being locked away from societyfor so long, after coming home,
I went in when it was pagers andI came out when it was phones.
So that was scary.
I came out when you would go to grocerystores and check your own stuff out.
That was scary.
Everything was scared, totalk to people was scary.
(12:40):
And so, no wonder I went back,you know, because I had been
conditioned to that environment.
So that's what happened.
I go to the county jail,they give me the CBT.
They get, Dr.
Nina Minagawa, uh, Dr.
Gafford, Dr.
Bradford, they start setting meup with all kinds of treatment and
start teaching me about the brain.
Dr.
Brad McMillan, he started doing traumaclasses in the county jail because if I
(13:01):
figured if I had that injury, I wantedto know what the cause, how I fix it.
What the heck?
I want to, even if I had to go do life,and that's what my doctor says, she said,
"Even if you have to go do life, wouldn'tyou want to be able to control your
emotions and regulate your, your anxiety?
Wouldn't you want to beable to control yourself?
(13:21):
And I was like, "Heck, yeah.
I ain't been ready to ever do that.
When I get angry, I go to zeroto 100 and I'm back in jail."
She said, "Yes, I do, please."
And I started learning and learningand I was facing life and I started
the Rebuild Your Mind Mental HealthChallenge from the County jail.
(13:44):
I had a Corey Shively, my brother,my guy, brother, and my business
partner, was standing right bymy side through the whole way.
And he was like, "What do we do, bro?"
I said, "I'm going to startgetting 40 inmates together."
I said, "It's 40 people in thisprogram, and this MTU program all
of us is facing a lot of time."
I mean, we had sex offenders,murderers, everybody.
I said, "I'm going to, I bet youneither one of them have family
(14:06):
that sent letters to judges.
I'm going to start challengingjudges, DAs, parole officers,
probation officers to talk abouttheir own mental health issues."
Because if I didn't know I hadit and I didn't know I had these
things all of this time, I wonderhow many of them don't know.
And so, as, we started theRebuild Your Mind Mental Health
Challenge, you can Google it.
And we made history withit, actually, in this state.
The first inmates that everstarted a campaign and a mental
(14:29):
health challenge from the DenverCounty jail, you can look it up.
And so, 40 letters start going to all ofour judges challenging those judges to
talk about their own mental health issue.
Uh, 40 letters was going to paroleofficers every week to where the
parole board said, okay, stopsending the Rebuild Your Mind stuff.
We don't know who that is,and they're doing that.
(14:50):
As we understand, and, and it went viral,got to the news, and the judge, after two
and a half years and seeing the campaignand seeing the support and seeing the
county behind me did not give me oneday in prison for my seventh felony.
Gave me eight years mental healthprobation and 16 years suspended
(15:14):
and said, "If you do come backit's going to start with 16.
But Marchell, with the support that you'vesecured while you were in this county jail
and the doctors you have and the treatmentyou received, I'm going to have to go on
the side of treatment today and I'm notgoing to give you one day in prison."
Changed my life forever.
Change, and I was already changed.
I already had treatment.
(15:34):
So the difference was, I was ableto, uh, I studied the brain at
that time for two and a half years.
I studied, uh, not just my injury,I just became enamored with the
brain, as I started studying.
I was like, oh wow, this is what PTSD is.
This is what the amygdala is, amygdala.
This is the, you know, Ijust really got into it.
(15:56):
Uh, Dr.
Bessel van der Kolk was oneof my biggest Inspirations.
I studied his book and as I did, I wentand explained to that judge also, vividly
like a doctor, because I literally justreally studied the study study, and he
said, "I've never heard an inmate explainthe brain or brain injuries like that."
And, and he looked at theDA and says, "You know what?
(16:18):
I understand the severity of his crime,"he said, "but I also understand the power
of treatment and we've never heard aninmate talk like this and have come in
here and I've seen," because I've beengoing back and forth to him for two and
a half years so he's seen the progress.
And, and I came home, got with DU and,been partnered with DU ever since.
(16:40):
Uh, Professor Kim Gorgon's, wecalled our wonder woman of brain
science and a graduate school toprofessional psychology, got behind
the Rebuild Your Mind campaign,supported the bill that I wrote.
I wrote a bill while I was inprison to get TBI screenings in DOC.
Now they're doing it at Vista.
I just felt like if I didn't knowand they kept punishing me for my
(17:03):
sicknesses, someone else, we haveto really get this thing out where
judges, DAs, parole board members,have to know that they're incarcerating
individuals that should be hospitalized.
I should have been hospitalizedbefore I did 21 years.
I just want to see peopletransformed and change.
I don't want to see people suffer.
I suffered for a long, since Iwas six years old, I suffered.
(17:27):
And I went through that suffering.
And in prison and whatsoothed that suffering is I
found education is soothing.
When I came home, I was a highly educated,mentally ill parolee with a traumatic
brain injury and didn't even know it.
Sam Fuqua (17:43):
That is an amazing story and thank you for sharing it.
Alexis Miles (17:48):
Marchell, first, I want to just applaud you
for the work that you've done.
You have changed the whole paradigm,because the whole system is built on
this mythology that everybody's on alevel playing field, that people make
conscious choices to do the things theydo, and what you've just said is no.
(18:10):
Our brains get structured andprograms in certain ways because
of the environments that we're in.
So thank you for explaining that so well,and for talking about what can be done to
move people into a deeper understandingabout behavior, human behavior.
Thank you for that.
Marchell Taylor (18:29):
Wow, thank you.
Alexis Miles (18:30):
Yeah.
So, you are literally changingthe way people see, um, criminal
justice, behaviors that are deemedcriminal and, and all of that.
So thank you.
Marchell Taylor (18:42):
Thank you.
Alexis Miles (18:43):
I did want to ask you a follow up question.
Rebuild Your Mind, so is that theprogram that you put together?
Can you say more about that program?
Marchell Taylor (18:54):
Me and my business partner and my guy brother, when
I was facing that life sentence,you know, when you're facing
that kind of time, you're, you'regrasping for any lifeline, you know.
It's like, God, I just did 21 years.
I'm going to go backfor the rest of my life.
And now that I was getting thetreatment, I, I told Corey, I said,
"Man," I said, "let's see if we can,uh, do a Rebuild Your Mind challenge."
(19:15):
And that's what the challenge was.
I said, because we want torebuild the mind of individuals
in the criminal justice system.
And how many individuals out there that'sgoing to the service with traumatic
brain injuries before they get to it?
How many officers shooting kidsand had traumatic brain injuries?
How many judges had traumatic braininjuries, mental health issues?
So, we were like, I said, "Bro, wecould do the Rebuild Your Mind."
(19:38):
He's on the outs.
I'm on the end, facing life.
So, he's looking it up on Google.
He said, "There's alreadya Rebuild Your Mind."
I said, "Is there a RebuildYour Mind challenge?
A mental health challenge?"
He said, "Nope."
He said, "Okay, bro."
And so we did it.
And this is what happened.
When we started doing it, and from thatprogram, MTU, we secured the support,
and he's like a brother to me today,his name is Deputy Mike Jackson, he is
(20:01):
a 30-year deputy at the Denver CountyJail, and he's the president of the
Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 27.
He said, "I will back you."
He said, "We've never seen aninmate promote mental health."
And he had been knowing me foryears because when he started
I was shortly coming in.
So we kind of grew uptogether in that dang thing.
But he, and when he seen me said,"Marchell, aren't you tired of this?"
(20:23):
I said, "Yes, I am, bro."
And he was like, "Well,you're in the right program."
And he said, "And I'mgoing to support you."
He said, "Go call your brother.
Tell your brother that the FraternalOrder of Police is going to support
your campaign while you're incarcerated.
And I'll meet with him anddo the first challenge."
I said, "Are you serious?"
So, he met my brother on the outs.
That video gets it.
So then, that's how it kind of gotto the news because they seen that
(20:46):
we had the Fraternal Order of Police,and he came to court for me and
everything and, and we built a bond.
And, um, right now I still goto the lodge, we still work
together and that's what happens.
So, it became the RebuildYour Mind Challenge.
DND, you got involved.
Kim Gorgans, that's ourwonder woman of brain science.
She's the lead neuropsychologist.
She started calling us downto speak at our schools.
(21:08):
And then in January, this Januaryto March, he gave us 31 students,
forensic psych students to helpus build, Rebuild Your Mind, out.
And so, it's just, it's been a, a,a, a traumatic journey, but it's
also been, right, dialectical.
It's also been an amazing journey when youcan finally live in the power of wellness.
(21:28):
And that's what I promote, treatment.
Get the treatment, please,because it transform your life.
I live a very healthy andpretty good life, you know.
I like to say that, and it's becauseof the treatment I finally received the
identification and the, the support.
The support.
I've had a lot of goodmental health support.
Alexis Miles (21:51):
So, you've talked about the power of information,
the power of treatment.
And I also think I'm hearing you saythe power of relationships with people.
Marchell Taylor (22:01):
Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what was my journey.
It was building those relationships and,and also, the relationships came when
I was able to understand like when youtell a black person or Mexican or people
of color that they have mental healthissues, I always say this, most of the
time they're going to say, "Yeah, right.
I don't have no mental health issues.
I just need more money."
(22:22):
You could go to a prison and ask ahundred inmates that are facing life,
do they have mental health issues?
They're going to tell you, "Iain't got no mental health issues."
"Dude shouldn't have tested me like that."
Or, "He shouldn't have did that."
But, if you go to those inmatesand say, "Hey, do you feel agitated
inside all the time and have youfelt that way for a long, long time?"
(22:43):
And they think, they say, "Yeah, I have."
"Do you find yourselfsnappy all the time?"
And they say, "Yes, I do."
"Have you found yourself feeling in fearall the time while you be in these cells?"
"Hell yeah, I do."
That's mental health issues.
You can't tell a person they have it.
It's anosognosia.
Anosognosia is the inabilityto see our own illnesses.
(23:05):
And, it's only becausethe way it's explained.
You can't go to a black personand say you got anxiety disorder.
You got borderline personality.
But you can go to him and say, if youfeel anxious all the time, every day,
and when you wake up and you can'tfocus or concentrate because you got a
hundred things, if you feel in survivalmode every day, nine times out of ten,
I can tell you, you're sympathetic,parasympathetic, your brain waves,
(23:27):
everything is out of whack, and it'sgoing to hard to be make effective
decisions, and relationships in your life.
You know?
Now I know this.
I didn't know it, when I wasgoing through it, you know, but
now I do because I've been on aprofessional side for seven years now.
So, I'm trained well to be able to see it.
Have like that, saythat third eye, I guess.
(23:49):
And it's sad.
It's sad to see, especially whenyou see it in your own family that's
still struggling with meds, stillstruggling, and you can't help them.
It's like you try to givethem all the resources, but
they just don't see it, right?
Alexis Miles (24:03):
Marchell, I think in the Black community and maybe in other
communities of color, to say that you havemental illness or mental health Issues,
there's such a stigma attached to that.
It's a big stigma.
It's like, no, that's not somethingthat happens in our community.
Marchell Taylor (24:21):
That's right.
And that's why we lost a RebuildYour Mind challenge because
we wanted to destigmatize it.
We wanted to show individuals that wasin a professional field who, if they had
it, if they can identify it, so I guessthat kind of piqued the judge's interest.
Because he was like, wow.
And he asked at the, at the hearing,he said, "What made you decide to
do the Rebuild Your Mind Challenge?"
(24:44):
I told, I said, "Because I didn'tidentify my issues and I wanted to know
what judges are sentencing individualsthat don't even, that have these
same issues or have similar issues."
He said, "That was genius."
Alexis Miles (24:57):
I totally agree because, when, as I hear you
talk about it, you took the labeloff and you use the symptoms.
Because people can relate to thesymptoms, but not to the label.
So yeah, that was profound.
Marchell Taylor (25:10):
And that's what I try to do everywhere I go is one question
that I asked everybody, everybody.
And this is what my doctor, NinaMinogawa, and I challenge you guys
on this call to ask everybody, yourkids, your mates, whoever it may
be, coworker, "Do you feel safe?"
That was the biggest question for me.
And I automatically, I was in prison,in jail facing life, and I said,
(25:31):
"Yeah, I feel safe," because I feltlike I can protect myself, right?
I told my doctor, I said, "Yeah,I feel safe," and she said,
"Oh, you feel safe, Marchell?"
I said, "What do you mean?
Yeah."
She said, "Where do you feel safe at?"
And that stopped me in my tracks.
She said, "Tell me.
Be mindful and tell mewhere you feel safe.
Do you feel safe when you go back in thatcity or knowing that you're facing life?
(25:52):
Do you feel safe politically?
Do you feel safe financially?"
I was like, "No."
She said, "Well then, be mindful.
You don't feel safe.
You could say you feel safe incertain places," but it engaged
the conversation and it'll engageit with other individuals, kids,
because then you can explain thatand say, "Where do you feel safe?
In your school?
(26:12):
In your class?
With your friends?"
Because that's what we wanna know.
We wanna know if you don't feel safeinside, you're gonna superimpose your
disorders on everything else around you.
I only know from experience.
You, I didn't grow upto be the darn Joker.
And when I was a kid, I knewI was going to be Batman.
I had all the gadgets and everything.
I didn't plan on turning intothe Riddler or the Joker.
(26:36):
You know, I didn't.
They made a whole, thattrauma transformed me.
I was going to save lives and savethe people that were suffering.
And that darn trauma and them TBI'sturned me into the Joker, darn it.
Now I'm trying to transform individualsback into humans instead of mutants.
(26:57):
I just kind of, you know, andI just, the reason I say that
I can, I'm a peer specialist soI use my story to help others.
And I kind of make jovious of it.
Like, I know I went through it.
I went through the trauma and I'mlike a comedian, kinda, I really am.
I do comedians in front of, and so I, I,I let people know, "Hey, I suffered it and
(27:18):
there's a way out, and there's a way out.
You don't have to stay in the suffering."
Steve, my supervisor at WellPower, hesaid, "Emotional pain minus acceptance..."
This is a equation.
"Emotional pain minusacceptance equals suffering."
(27:42):
You have to accept the pain.
You have to feel the anger, feel the hurt.
You can't numb it, get high, coke itaway like I did, drink it away, sex
it away, fight it away, rob it away.
It does not happen.
You have to accept the painof losing a mother at 17.
Accept the pain of molesters cominginto your house and molesting
(28:03):
you at young age or attempting.
Accept the pain of your fatherintroducing you to drugs and
alcohol, knowing that that's thewrong thing to do it for a child.
Right?
You have to accept that beforeyou could move, you know.
And most of us won't accept it.
We, most of us have not even identifiedit because we stay so high or drunk.
It's just a raw and cut truth.
(28:23):
You know what I mean?
Most of us stay so high anddrunk and so away from it, we,
we don't know how to accept it.
We don't even have the toolsand skills to accept the pain.
That's the sad part.
Sam Fuqua (28:35):
For someone listening to this who may be identifying or, or
knows someone in their life who they,who they're now identifying some of
what you've talked about with, canyou talk a little bit more about first
steps, whether it's me listening tothis thinking, yes, something else
is going on, or I know someone who Ithink something else might be going on.
(28:59):
You've, you've used the acronymTBI screening, that's Traumatic
Brain Injury screening.
So, that sounds like one initial step.
But how do people get started?
Marchell Taylor (29:08):
Identification.
We have to help individuals identifyit, and we can't use the same
terminology that psychologists use.
You got to meet people where there are.
You, so you have to understand,first and foremost, recognizing
the signs and symptoms.
Like I said earlier, if you go to aprison or minority community, probably
(29:29):
even a lot of white communities, andyou tell those individuals, "Hey, you
have a mental health issue, for real."
They'll probably deny it.
They'll probably deny it because theydon't identify the signs and symptoms.
So, the first thing is helpingindividuals understand what the
signs and symptoms look like.
And that is, uh, what doesanxiousness look like?
Or over anxiousness?
What does, uh, beingtoo reserved look like?
(29:51):
Or, or when you have a child or a, amate, someone stuck to where they're
afraid, are stuck in fear, and so they'reafraid to talk to someone, afraid to
set boundaries, of helping individualsunderstand it, what it looks like first
from a basic understanding and notmaybe a psychological understanding.
(30:12):
We got, like I said, you got tokind of meet people where they at.
So, you go to them and say, "Hey,look, do you feel like you can't
sit still for two minutes or one?"
And they say, "Yeah!"
And it's okay to sitstill and they feel it.
First, letting them identifywhat's going on in their bodies.
I always do this, three minutes,sit still for me and scan your body.
(30:32):
First and foremost.
People say they feel good.
You feel good.
Let's see where you feelgood at internally first.
Let's see if your organs feel good.
Let's see if your heart feel good.
So just scan your toes.
Let's start with the toes.
Sit still for me and try it.
Most people can't do it ifthey've never had, was able to do
mindful meditation or to meditate.
It's not coming from ours becausewe've been given, uh, gas, all go,
(30:55):
anxiousness, most of our life becauseof survival mode, lack of resources.
So, we've been in survivalmode most of our life.
So, our brains as hardwired insurvival, our bodies, our brains, our
minds, uh, again, our nervous system.
It's always on.
Go, go, go.
So, it's been, our brains beenpumping cortisol for so long that it
damaged other neurons in the brain.
(31:16):
Those neurons are impulseconducing cells, actually.
And when it damaged those impulse, uh,conducing cells, leads to anxiousness.
So now here goes the brain damage beinghardwired to operate ineffectively, right?
And, if no one ever comes and stops thechild in its youth to be able to use
(31:37):
the tools to breathe, to rationalize,effective in those moments, that
will become their condition, you see.
And now their body, brain and mind isconditioned to operate ineffectively.
Neuroception, I call it.
We believe what's safe is dangerand what's danger is safe.
Because our brains, because of theadverse childhood experiences, because
(31:57):
of the blows, I grew up to believe thatrobbing and stealing and doing all of
those things, I can get away with it.
It's safe.
You'll have your own independence,your money, and Instead of getting a
job and working and working two jobsand things, that was danger to me
because I couldn't receive the moneyor the independence that I would have
received from doing it the fast way.
So, that's putting the anxiousness intochildren that come from those communities
(32:21):
and not giving them the tools and skills.
So, that's just anxiety disorders.
That's just one.
Then you go to borderline personalitydisorders to where you start, if
you want to break it down to thesimplest form where a child could
understand it, you would have toexplain it, when the person experienced
that the symptoms and the signs.
Right now let me give you an example.
We're getting ready to go train fiveschools in Aurora under our TBI.
(32:46):
We have the only peerto peer TBI curriculum.
But when we go into these schools andtrain them in our curriculum, I'm not
going to talk to them like a psychologist.
I'm not a psychologist.
I'm going to talk to them at theirlevel so they can understand what, what,
so what their friend, if they have afriend that won't talk to anybody, then
there's some things we need to look at.
(33:07):
We're going to break it down towhere they'll be able to understand
it from a perspective of a child.
And so, that's one thing is helpingthem identify the signs and symptoms,
and then referring them out and gettingthem connected to the treatment is what
we've been doing mostly for individualscoming from the criminal justice system.
(33:29):
You got to understandthe signs and symptoms.
And that's the big thing.
This is what it lookedlike in your friend.
If you see this in your friends, youmight want to tell them he needs help.
Because then we can transform theyouth first, and they'll become
advocates and TBI screeners.
Alexis Miles (33:45):
Marchell, let's say somebody hears this podcast or otherwise hears
about this, and they want to take a firststep, is there a number they can call?
Is there...
Marchell Taylor (33:58):
Um, it's four of us TBI screeners over here at AYBOS Marketing
and Rebuild Your Mind, if you googleus, AYBOS Marketing and Rebuild Your
Mind, you would see that we are runningone of the most aggressive initiatives.
We have therapists, uh,that we refer people out to.
I also work at WellPower.
(34:18):
I refer people to WellPower all the time.
So you guys can call me at (720) 490-9834.
This is my personal numberbecause this is personal to me.
So, if you have a TBI or if you feellike you can't control your emotions,
if you regulate your emotions, can'tcontrol your impulses, um, you feel
(34:38):
agitated inside all the time, if yousnappy all the time, uh, and feel like,
uh, you just can't cope or you've beencoping the same way for so long, your
brain may be stuck in survival mode.
I was a ten year old alcoholic, uh,and let me say I was a 47 year old
male with the brain of a ten year oldchild when I came home from prison.
(34:58):
That's crazy.
And I want people to understand that I wasstuck, frozen, psychologically in time.
I was a modern day, uh, iceman, brain just stuck as a kid.
It was!
I did things the same way I didit as a kid when I came home.
I'm 47 years old at ten.
I was an alcoholic drug addict.
I come home at 47 years old, andI was still doing the same thing.
(35:20):
Tell me I wasn't stuck.
I was stuck psychologically in mypsychosocial stages of development.
People need to understand that.
This is, it's development stages, andif you don't develop correctly in those
stages, you pick up maladaptive ways todeal with those things and later on in
life, you'll get in relationships andyou'll still find yourself doing the same
(35:40):
things and relationships at 30, 40 yearsold that you was doing at five, because
you never made it correctly or nevereffectively made it through those stages.
You know, so we find ourselves stuck inbad relationships, relationships that are
violent, relationships that are unhealthy.
A lot of times if we look backin our past and that's what we're
doing, we're living in our presentpast, is what I like to say.
(36:03):
You know what I mean?
And so, we have to move forwardthrough those stages first.
And that's what's helped me.
Alexis Miles (36:09):
And it sounds like you're saying it's never too late to
go through those developmental stages.
Marchell Taylor (36:15):
Well, let me say this.
Um, I was facing life at the time.
That was an odd time to even think aboutany kind of treatment I was looking at.
I'd never come home.
But when my doctor, like I said, Dr.
Nina Minagawa, psychology services,she performed a miracle on me.
I always say she uprooted thatpsychological cancer that lived
in my brain and body for so long.
(36:37):
You know what I mean?
She did.
And it was hard.
And she said it, she said,"You got a lot of work to do."
And I didn't understand at first, butthen when she started explaining to
me about grief and loss, knowing thatI had already lost one of my sons
to heroin overdose or fentanyl, soshe had to help me get through that
and taught me about grief and loss.
A lot of us look at grief andloss, and I like to say that,
(36:57):
it's really quick, 'cause this isimportant, of just losing a person.
That this is what we grieve.
But sometimes we grieve losing a stationin life, losing a job, and we don't
deal with those things, losing a dream.
We grieve the loss of that,but we don't do that healthily.
And we continue to pick up those thingsand they, and they'll get into us
and they can affect us in bad ways.
(37:18):
And I never knew how to deal with grief.
Never knew the cycle of grief.
I got stuck in disbelief forso long when I lost my mom.
You know what I mean?
You know, it's cycles that you go through.
You go through disbelief,then, you know what I mean?
You start guilt and all of this, and Inever made it around that whole cycle.
I just would go rob somebody togive me some crack or alcohol
(37:38):
to not ever deal with it.
That's the work.
That's the hard work.
You got to go back into that and, andreface that, and deal with that in
a healthy way without drugs, withoutcrack, and I cried many, many days
because it felt so painful to have togo back and visit such painful memories.
Sam Fuqua (37:57):
Marchell Taylor, thank you for sharing your story and for your work.
Marchell Taylor (38:02):
Thank you both very much for this opportunity.
Sam Fuqua (38:07):
Marchell Taylor Sr.
works as a Traumatic Brain Injuryscreener and as a peer specialist for
WellPower, a mental health servicesprovider in the Denver, Colorado area.
Thanks for listening toWell, That Went Sideways!
(38:30):
We produce new episodes twice a month.
You can find them whereveryou get your podcasts and on
our website, sidewayspod.org.
We also have information on our guests,interview transcripts, and links to
more conflict resolution resources.
That's sidewayspod.org.
(38:52):
Our production team is Mary Zinn,Jes Rau, Norma Johnson, Alexis Miles,
Alia Thobani, and me, Sam Fuqua.
Our theme music is by Mike Stewart.
We produce these programs in Colorado,on the traditional lands of the
Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute Nations.
(39:12):
To learn more about the importanceof land acknowledgement, visit
our website, sidewayspod.
org.
And this podcast is a partnershipwith The Conflict Center, a
Denver-based nonprofit that providespractical skills and training for
addressing everyday conflicts.
Find out more at conflictcenter.org.
We have to really get this thing out where judges,
DA's, parole board members haveto know that they're incarcerating
individuals that should be hospitalized.
I should have been hospitalizedbefore I did 21 years.
I just want to see peopletransformed and changed.
I don't want to see people suffer.
I suffered.
Sam Fuqua (00:27):
That's Marchell Taylor Sr.
and this is Well, That Went Sideways!
A podcast that serves as aresource to help people have
healthy, respectful communication.
We present a diversity of ideas, tools,and techniques to help you transform
conflict in relationships of all kinds.
In this episode, we talk with MarchellTaylor about his journey through
(00:51):
childhood trauma, an undiagnosedbrain injury, and incarceration.
His story highlights the need for properdiagnosis and treatment for individuals
in the criminal justice system.
It's a need Marchell Taylor respondedto himself by developing programs
for inmates and by his work as ascreener for TBI, traumatic brain
(01:14):
injury, and as a peer specialist forWellpower, a mental health services
provider in the Denver, Colorado area.
I'm Sam Fuqua, co-host of theprogram with Alexis Miles.
Hi, Alexis.
Alexis Miles (01:27):
Hi, Sam.
Sam Fuqua (01:28):
And we're so pleased to be joined for this episode
of Well, That Went Sideways!
by Marchell Taylor Sr.
Hello, and welcome.
Marchell Taylor (01:36):
Thank you.
I appreciate this opportunity to beable to share, um, this story, you know.
I really do.
I appreciate you guys.
Let's get this thing going so wecan inspire some lives, maybe.
Sam Fuqua (01:49):
I think where that starts for me, Marchell, is, is with you
telling your story for our listeners.
Talk about your early years, whatit was like for you growing up,
and, and then how you ended upin the criminal justice system.
Marchell Taylor (02:03):
Yeah.
So, growing up in less than valuableenvironments in Detroit in the 70s,
uh, 80s, um, and literally experiencingdomestic violence, molestation, at
a young age, drugs, alcohol, fathercame back from Vietnam, whatever he
(02:24):
experienced over there, his copingmechanism was morphine and, and heroin.
And he came back from Vietnam and superimposes disorders on to my entire family.
Uh, started stealing, uh, from my mom,and at this time she had five kids.
So him, of course, experiencingPTSD or whatever it was, I didn't
(02:47):
understand it then, none of usdid, we were kids, uh, he began to
teach us maladaptive ways to cope.
Drugs, induced us with alcoholat very young ages, showed
us how to steal from stores.
And so, at six, seven, eight, nineyears old, in fact, I would even
say at ten I became a drug addictand alcoholic by ten years old.
(03:12):
And, um, growing up in those environments,not understanding how to deal with
stress, not having a understanding ofmental health issues, especially in
note, and I hate to say, but it's thetruth, and in minority communities,
we don't understand mental health.
We don't understand when aperson says that you have
(03:33):
these disorders, what it means.
So Of course, growing up in thoseenvironments, mom divorcing dad and
marrying another veteran that cameback with not so much as the same,
uh, disorder, but still came backviolent and end up in would, would,
would beat my mother in front ofus, it literally rewired my brain to
(03:57):
operate ineffectively throughout life.
So, you asked me what led me to prison is,uh, not having the right skills or tools
to deal with trauma, to deal with stress.
Trauma led me to prison.
Traumatic brain injuries led me to prison.
My environment, living in those less thanvaluable environments around domestic
(04:19):
violence, around robberies, around, Imean, it was just in those communities.
And you know, if you don't have theright guidance, the right tools to deal
with stress and trauma and traumaticbrain injuries, mostly all of us,
mostly everyone in those communitieswas led right to prison, you know.
And, and the courts didn't identify, uh,that our behaviors were due to injuries,
(04:45):
traumatic brain injuries, mental health,uh, disorders, psychological injuries.
So, back then when, and we were gettingour time or, or, or growing up in
those communities and judges weresentencing us, they didn't have an
understanding of mental health either.
Sam Fuqua (04:59):
You mentioned, uh, or I had read that in addition to the
upbringing and the environment youjust described, you had a brain
injury yourself as a kid, right?
You were in a car accident?
Marchell Taylor (05:10):
Yeah, I was in a car accident when I was nine.
And I, my mom, I think what they say isI was too young to really understand,
but my mom, she said the gas line brokeand she was backing up from a wall
and trying to turn and it acceleratedand hit the wall going like 40 miles
an hour and literally totaled the carwhile I didn't have my seatbelt on.
(05:32):
I was trapping myself in.
And, of course, in those days, we'reboys, you go to the hospital, they
stitch you up go back home, letus know if anything else happens.
After that, I can see, I seemyself getting more violent.
And then, and then, now we're in Flint.
So looking at, I mean, literally, we,so I left Detroit about just about seven
(05:53):
or eight and moved to Flint, but wasgoing back and forth with my dad lived
in Detroit and my mom moved to Flintto get away from my dad, actually, and
to go down to Flint to seek employment.
Believe it or not, she was in a mentalhealth field for nine years and never
even discussed mental health with us.
But, growing up, like I said, growingup in those areas and having, um, the
(06:17):
guidance of, I would say, of deceivers.
What else can you expectthe child to do, right?
If those are the only skills we had: drugs, alcohol, stealing, robbing. (06:22):
undefined
If those are the only skills that wewere taught in those environments, how
can you expect us to do anything else?
We don't understand mental health.
We didn't understand anxiety disorders.
We have no idea because first thingyou tell a person that's in those
communities if you have mental health,and those times, that doesn't apply
(06:46):
to us, else for the white folks.
And that's the truth.
And, and so, not being able to identifyat young ages, the TBI or the mental
health issues is what led me to prison.
Not understanding grief.
Not understanding how to deal with grief.
Not understanding how to dealwith prefrontal cortex damage.
Not having any identificationof a mental health issue.
(07:08):
Not understanding anythingabout anxiety disorders.
Not understanding anything aboutborderline personality disorders.
All these things is what I was diagnosedwith after doing 21 years in prison.
After doing 21 years in prison.
I'd be dog, if someone comes in front,and I'm a criminal justice advocate
right now, I go in court and I arguecases for individuals and I bring
(07:30):
up mental health right out the gate.
If I know you come from adversechildhood experiences, I bring
up TBI and I'm a TBI screener.
So, I'll collect that data and I'llbring it up right out the gate because
they didn't do that for me 25 years ago.
They just sentenced me andgave me 25 years, you know.
I mean, I've been out about five but...
So, I went through out life sufferingwith these disorders and never, never
(07:55):
understanding or have an identificationof them, or how to deal with them.
Never having the tools torationalize effectively, to reason
effectively, to use good judgment.
My judgment hardwired me to use illjudgment, if you want to call it.
So, those were the tools and skills I had.
(08:15):
And then again, the criminal justicesystem punished me for my illnesses
and never even gave me treatment.
And the DOC is not goingto give you treatment.
They're not going to do anything butlock you in a, in a confined cell
because they look at your behaviorsas defiant, and not as that this
person has an illness and need help.
(08:35):
And I'd like to say this, if I was ajudge and your file came in front of me
and you came in front of me I would knowright away that this person ability to
reason or rationalize is not in placebecause you wouldn't be in front of me.
If you had the ability to use goodjudgment, if you had the tools to,
to, to plan effectively, to playeffectively, to reset yourself
(08:58):
effectively back to baseline state ofsafety, you wouldn't be in front of me.
But most of us that come fromthose communities live in survival
mode, brains, bodies, minds,parasympathetic sympathetic nervous
system stuck, frozen in survival mode.
How do you expect someone todo anything different than what
they were taught, you know?
(09:20):
So, that's what led me to prison,did 21 years and came out and 36 days
later I robbed a Papa John's pizzaand went back facing life in 2016.
Sam Fuqua (09:31):
And if I heard you correctly, it was not until that offense that
put you back in prison that someonein the criminal justice system fought
to take into account that you mighthave a brain injury or other issues?
Marchell Taylor (09:48):
David Kraut.
He was a public defender.
And, uh, this was the firsttime someone ever, ever noted.
And, and, and let me say this, 2016when I did rob the Papa John's pizza,
my brain, it did, it just shut down.
My brain, body, the brain, body,and mind can only take so much
stress before it shuts down.
Before it just don't, youknow, and, and it did.
(10:09):
And I was suicidal and I took a bunchof pills and went to the county jail.
I knew I was going to get life.
I knew that because this was myseventh felony, three robberies.
This is a robbery would havekidnappings, two charges, uh, at
one time and they trump them all theway up, but it's my seventh felony.
So, when my attorney came to meand said, "Look Marchell, they're
(10:29):
filing a habitual criminal on you.
You have seven felonies with these two.
You have three robberies.
How did this happen?"
And, I just broke down and cried.
He opened the laptop, showedme the videotape of it, and
he asked me how did it happen?
And I said, "I don't know, man."
I said, "I just know Ican't go back and do life."
(10:50):
And I just broke down and started crying.
I said, "I want toapologize to that person."
I just broke down, started crying.
And he said, "You know what?"
He looked at my paperwork.
He said, "You just did21 years in prison."
He said, "How long did you do straight?"
I said, "Almost 15 straight."
He said, "Then you got out andwent back for another three
and you got," I said, "Yeah."
He said, "I know exactlyhow this happened.
You have mental health issues, man.
(11:10):
You don't know how to, you don't even haveany skills or tools to live in society."
He said, "But guess what?
I'm gonna send you to this program.
If you don't mind going, I'm gonnasend you to the men's transition
unit at the old County jail, DenverCounty, and they're going to help you."
He said, "You let meworry about this case."
He said, "I'm going to go talk tothese people because you did a lot
of time and they can't expect youto come home and have the tools.
(11:32):
He said, "You need mental health issues.
You probably have traumaticbrain injury and everything.
Let me set you up and sendyou over to the old county.
I was downtown at the Denver County jail."
I said, "Yes, please.
Whatever, whatever will help."
So they send me over there to themen's transition unit and they start
giving me, they gave me an assessment,Brain Injury Alliance that came down,
gave me a TBI assessment, screening,everything, and then, uh, determined
(11:57):
that I have prefrontal cortex damage.
I didn't know any of that.
I didn't even know what a prefrontalcortex or a frontal anything.
But what happened is while I didall of that time in prison, I
studied business for 16 years.
I locked myself in sales.
I went to the library.
I started studyingeverything on marketing.
I started.
So, I had this businesseducation before I came home.
(12:20):
I just didn't have the toolsand skills to deal with stress,
grief, loss, any of that.
And, being locked away from societyfor so long, after coming home,
I went in when it was pagers andI came out when it was phones.
So that was scary.
I came out when you would go to grocerystores and check your own stuff out.
That was scary.
Everything was scared, totalk to people was scary.
(12:40):
And so, no wonder I went back,you know, because I had been
conditioned to that environment.
So that's what happened.
I go to the county jail,they give me the CBT.
They get, Dr.
Nina Minagawa, uh, Dr.
Gafford, Dr.
Bradford, they start setting meup with all kinds of treatment and
start teaching me about the brain.
Dr.
Brad McMillan, he started doing traumaclasses in the county jail because if I
(13:01):
figured if I had that injury, I wantedto know what the cause, how I fix it.
What the heck?
I want to, even if I had to go do life,and that's what my doctor says, she said,
"Even if you have to go do life, wouldn'tyou want to be able to control your
emotions and regulate your, your anxiety?
Wouldn't you want to beable to control yourself?
(13:21):
And I was like, "Heck, yeah.
I ain't been ready to ever do that.
When I get angry, I go to zeroto 100 and I'm back in jail."
She said, "Yes, I do, please."
And I started learning and learningand I was facing life and I started
the Rebuild Your Mind Mental HealthChallenge from the County jail.
(13:44):
I had a Corey Shively, my brother,my guy, brother, and my business
partner, was standing right bymy side through the whole way.
And he was like, "What do we do, bro?"
I said, "I'm going to startgetting 40 inmates together."
I said, "It's 40 people in thisprogram, and this MTU program all
of us is facing a lot of time."
I mean, we had sex offenders,murderers, everybody.
I said, "I'm going to, I bet youneither one of them have family
(14:06):
that sent letters to judges.
I'm going to start challengingjudges, DAs, parole officers,
probation officers to talk abouttheir own mental health issues."
Because if I didn't know I hadit and I didn't know I had these
things all of this time, I wonderhow many of them don't know.
And so, as, we started theRebuild Your Mind Mental Health
Challenge, you can Google it.
And we made history withit, actually, in this state.
The first inmates that everstarted a campaign and a mental
(14:29):
health challenge from the DenverCounty jail, you can look it up.
And so, 40 letters start going to all ofour judges challenging those judges to
talk about their own mental health issue.
Uh, 40 letters was going to paroleofficers every week to where the
parole board said, okay, stopsending the Rebuild Your Mind stuff.
We don't know who that is,and they're doing that.
(14:50):
As we understand, and, and it went viral,got to the news, and the judge, after two
and a half years and seeing the campaignand seeing the support and seeing the
county behind me did not give me oneday in prison for my seventh felony.
Gave me eight years mental healthprobation and 16 years suspended
(15:14):
and said, "If you do come backit's going to start with 16.
But Marchell, with the support that you'vesecured while you were in this county jail
and the doctors you have and the treatmentyou received, I'm going to have to go on
the side of treatment today and I'm notgoing to give you one day in prison."
Changed my life forever.
Change, and I was already changed.
I already had treatment.
(15:34):
So the difference was, I was ableto, uh, I studied the brain at
that time for two and a half years.
I studied, uh, not just my injury,I just became enamored with the
brain, as I started studying.
I was like, oh wow, this is what PTSD is.
This is what the amygdala is, amygdala.
This is the, you know, Ijust really got into it.
(15:56):
Uh, Dr.
Bessel van der Kolk was oneof my biggest Inspirations.
I studied his book and as I did, I wentand explained to that judge also, vividly
like a doctor, because I literally justreally studied the study study, and he
said, "I've never heard an inmate explainthe brain or brain injuries like that."
And, and he looked at theDA and says, "You know what?
(16:18):
I understand the severity of his crime,"he said, "but I also understand the power
of treatment and we've never heard aninmate talk like this and have come in
here and I've seen," because I've beengoing back and forth to him for two and
a half years so he's seen the progress.
And, and I came home, got with DU and,been partnered with DU ever since.
(16:40):
Uh, Professor Kim Gorgon's, wecalled our wonder woman of brain
science and a graduate school toprofessional psychology, got behind
the Rebuild Your Mind campaign,supported the bill that I wrote.
I wrote a bill while I was inprison to get TBI screenings in DOC.
Now they're doing it at Vista.
I just felt like if I didn't knowand they kept punishing me for my
(17:03):
sicknesses, someone else, we haveto really get this thing out where
judges, DAs, parole board members,have to know that they're incarcerating
individuals that should be hospitalized.
I should have been hospitalizedbefore I did 21 years.
I just want to see peopletransformed and change.
I don't want to see people suffer.
I suffered for a long, since Iwas six years old, I suffered.
(17:27):
And I went through that suffering.
And in prison and whatsoothed that suffering is I
found education is soothing.
When I came home, I was a highly educated,mentally ill parolee with a traumatic
brain injury and didn't even know it.
Sam Fuqua (17:43):
That is an amazing story and thank you for sharing it.
Alexis Miles (17:48):
Marchell, first, I want to just applaud you
for the work that you've done.
You have changed the whole paradigm,because the whole system is built on
this mythology that everybody's on alevel playing field, that people make
conscious choices to do the things theydo, and what you've just said is no.
(18:10):
Our brains get structured andprograms in certain ways because
of the environments that we're in.
So thank you for explaining that so well,and for talking about what can be done to
move people into a deeper understandingabout behavior, human behavior.
Thank you for that.
Marchell Taylor (18:29):
Wow, thank you.
Alexis Miles (18:30):
Yeah.
So, you are literally changingthe way people see, um, criminal
justice, behaviors that are deemedcriminal and, and all of that.
So thank you.
Marchell Taylor (18:42):
Thank you.
Alexis Miles (18:43):
I did want to ask you a follow up question.
Rebuild Your Mind, so is that theprogram that you put together?
Can you say more about that program?
Marchell Taylor (18:54):
Me and my business partner and my guy brother, when
I was facing that life sentence,you know, when you're facing
that kind of time, you're, you'regrasping for any lifeline, you know.
It's like, God, I just did 21 years.
I'm going to go backfor the rest of my life.
And now that I was getting thetreatment, I, I told Corey, I said,
"Man," I said, "let's see if we can,uh, do a Rebuild Your Mind challenge."
(19:15):
And that's what the challenge was.
I said, because we want torebuild the mind of individuals
in the criminal justice system.
And how many individuals out there that'sgoing to the service with traumatic
brain injuries before they get to it?
How many officers shooting kidsand had traumatic brain injuries?
How many judges had traumatic braininjuries, mental health issues?
So, we were like, I said, "Bro, wecould do the Rebuild Your Mind."
(19:38):
He's on the outs.
I'm on the end, facing life.
So, he's looking it up on Google.
He said, "There's alreadya Rebuild Your Mind."
I said, "Is there a RebuildYour Mind challenge?
A mental health challenge?"
He said, "Nope."
He said, "Okay, bro."
And so we did it.
And this is what happened.
When we started doing it, and from thatprogram, MTU, we secured the support,
and he's like a brother to me today,his name is Deputy Mike Jackson, he is
(20:01):
a 30-year deputy at the Denver CountyJail, and he's the president of the
Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 27.
He said, "I will back you."
He said, "We've never seen aninmate promote mental health."
And he had been knowing me foryears because when he started
I was shortly coming in.
So we kind of grew uptogether in that dang thing.
But he, and when he seen me said,"Marchell, aren't you tired of this?"
(20:23):
I said, "Yes, I am, bro."
And he was like, "Well,you're in the right program."
And he said, "And I'mgoing to support you."
He said, "Go call your brother.
Tell your brother that the FraternalOrder of Police is going to support
your campaign while you're incarcerated.
And I'll meet with him anddo the first challenge."
I said, "Are you serious?"
So, he met my brother on the outs.
That video gets it.
So then, that's how it kind of gotto the news because they seen that
(20:46):
we had the Fraternal Order of Police,and he came to court for me and
everything and, and we built a bond.
And, um, right now I still goto the lodge, we still work
together and that's what happens.
So, it became the RebuildYour Mind Challenge.
DND, you got involved.
Kim Gorgans, that's ourwonder woman of brain science.
She's the lead neuropsychologist.
She started calling us downto speak at our schools.
(21:08):
And then in January, this Januaryto March, he gave us 31 students,
forensic psych students to helpus build, Rebuild Your Mind, out.
And so, it's just, it's been a, a,a, a traumatic journey, but it's
also been, right, dialectical.
It's also been an amazing journey when youcan finally live in the power of wellness.
(21:28):
And that's what I promote, treatment.
Get the treatment, please,because it transform your life.
I live a very healthy andpretty good life, you know.
I like to say that, and it's becauseof the treatment I finally received the
identification and the, the support.
The support.
I've had a lot of goodmental health support.
Alexis Miles (21:51):
So, you've talked about the power of information,
the power of treatment.
And I also think I'm hearing you saythe power of relationships with people.
Marchell Taylor (22:01):
Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what was my journey.
It was building those relationships and,and also, the relationships came when
I was able to understand like when youtell a black person or Mexican or people
of color that they have mental healthissues, I always say this, most of the
time they're going to say, "Yeah, right.
I don't have no mental health issues.
I just need more money."
(22:22):
You could go to a prison and ask ahundred inmates that are facing life,
do they have mental health issues?
They're going to tell you, "Iain't got no mental health issues."
"Dude shouldn't have tested me like that."
Or, "He shouldn't have did that."
But, if you go to those inmatesand say, "Hey, do you feel agitated
inside all the time and have youfelt that way for a long, long time?"
(22:43):
And they think, they say, "Yeah, I have."
"Do you find yourselfsnappy all the time?"
And they say, "Yes, I do."
"Have you found yourself feeling in fearall the time while you be in these cells?"
"Hell yeah, I do."
That's mental health issues.
You can't tell a person they have it.
It's anosognosia.
Anosognosia is the inabilityto see our own illnesses.
(23:05):
And, it's only becausethe way it's explained.
You can't go to a black personand say you got anxiety disorder.
You got borderline personality.
But you can go to him and say, if youfeel anxious all the time, every day,
and when you wake up and you can'tfocus or concentrate because you got a
hundred things, if you feel in survivalmode every day, nine times out of ten,
I can tell you, you're sympathetic,parasympathetic, your brain waves,
(23:27):
everything is out of whack, and it'sgoing to hard to be make effective
decisions, and relationships in your life.
You know?
Now I know this.
I didn't know it, when I wasgoing through it, you know, but
now I do because I've been on aprofessional side for seven years now.
So, I'm trained well to be able to see it.
Have like that, saythat third eye, I guess.
(23:49):
And it's sad.
It's sad to see, especially whenyou see it in your own family that's
still struggling with meds, stillstruggling, and you can't help them.
It's like you try to givethem all the resources, but
they just don't see it, right?
Alexis Miles (24:03):
Marchell, I think in the Black community and maybe in other
communities of color, to say that you havemental illness or mental health Issues,
there's such a stigma attached to that.
It's a big stigma.
It's like, no, that's not somethingthat happens in our community.
Marchell Taylor (24:21):
That's right.
And that's why we lost a RebuildYour Mind challenge because
we wanted to destigmatize it.
We wanted to show individuals that wasin a professional field who, if they had
it, if they can identify it, so I guessthat kind of piqued the judge's interest.
Because he was like, wow.
And he asked at the, at the hearing,he said, "What made you decide to
do the Rebuild Your Mind Challenge?"
(24:44):
I told, I said, "Because I didn'tidentify my issues and I wanted to know
what judges are sentencing individualsthat don't even, that have these
same issues or have similar issues."
He said, "That was genius."
Alexis Miles (24:57):
I totally agree because, when, as I hear you
talk about it, you took the labeloff and you use the symptoms.
Because people can relate to thesymptoms, but not to the label.
So yeah, that was profound.
Marchell Taylor (25:10):
And that's what I try to do everywhere I go is one question
that I asked everybody, everybody.
And this is what my doctor, NinaMinogawa, and I challenge you guys
on this call to ask everybody, yourkids, your mates, whoever it may
be, coworker, "Do you feel safe?"
That was the biggest question for me.
And I automatically, I was in prison,in jail facing life, and I said,
(25:31):
"Yeah, I feel safe," because I feltlike I can protect myself, right?
I told my doctor, I said, "Yeah,I feel safe," and she said,
"Oh, you feel safe, Marchell?"
I said, "What do you mean?
Yeah."
She said, "Where do you feel safe at?"
And that stopped me in my tracks.
She said, "Tell me.
Be mindful and tell mewhere you feel safe.
Do you feel safe when you go back in thatcity or knowing that you're facing life?
(25:52):
Do you feel safe politically?
Do you feel safe financially?"
I was like, "No."
She said, "Well then, be mindful.
You don't feel safe.
You could say you feel safe incertain places," but it engaged
the conversation and it'll engageit with other individuals, kids,
because then you can explain thatand say, "Where do you feel safe?
In your school?
(26:12):
In your class?
With your friends?"
Because that's what we wanna know.
We wanna know if you don't feel safeinside, you're gonna superimpose your
disorders on everything else around you.
I only know from experience.
You, I didn't grow upto be the darn Joker.
And when I was a kid, I knewI was going to be Batman.
I had all the gadgets and everything.
I didn't plan on turning intothe Riddler or the Joker.
(26:36):
You know, I didn't.
They made a whole, thattrauma transformed me.
I was going to save lives and savethe people that were suffering.
And that darn trauma and them TBI'sturned me into the Joker, darn it.
Now I'm trying to transform individualsback into humans instead of mutants.
(26:57):
I just kind of, you know, andI just, the reason I say that
I can, I'm a peer specialist soI use my story to help others.
And I kind of make jovious of it.
Like, I know I went through it.
I went through the trauma and I'mlike a comedian, kinda, I really am.
I do comedians in front of, and so I, I,I let people know, "Hey, I suffered it and
(27:18):
there's a way out, and there's a way out.
You don't have to stay in the suffering."
Steve, my supervisor at WellPower, hesaid, "Emotional pain minus acceptance..."
This is a equation.
"Emotional pain minusacceptance equals suffering."
(27:42):
You have to accept the pain.
You have to feel the anger, feel the hurt.
You can't numb it, get high, coke itaway like I did, drink it away, sex
it away, fight it away, rob it away.
It does not happen.
You have to accept the painof losing a mother at 17.
Accept the pain of molesters cominginto your house and molesting
(28:03):
you at young age or attempting.
Accept the pain of your fatherintroducing you to drugs and
alcohol, knowing that that's thewrong thing to do it for a child.
Right?
You have to accept that beforeyou could move, you know.
And most of us won't accept it.
We, most of us have not even identifiedit because we stay so high or drunk.
It's just a raw and cut truth.
(28:23):
You know what I mean?
Most of us stay so high anddrunk and so away from it, we,
we don't know how to accept it.
We don't even have the toolsand skills to accept the pain.
That's the sad part.
Sam Fuqua (28:35):
For someone listening to this who may be identifying or, or
knows someone in their life who they,who they're now identifying some of
what you've talked about with, canyou talk a little bit more about first
steps, whether it's me listening tothis thinking, yes, something else
is going on, or I know someone who Ithink something else might be going on.
(28:59):
You've, you've used the acronymTBI screening, that's Traumatic
Brain Injury screening.
So, that sounds like one initial step.
But how do people get started?
Marchell Taylor (29:08):
Identification.
We have to help individuals identifyit, and we can't use the same
terminology that psychologists use.
You got to meet people where there are.
You, so you have to understand,first and foremost, recognizing
the signs and symptoms.
Like I said earlier, if you go to aprison or minority community, probably
(29:29):
even a lot of white communities, andyou tell those individuals, "Hey, you
have a mental health issue, for real."
They'll probably deny it.
They'll probably deny it because theydon't identify the signs and symptoms.
So, the first thing is helpingindividuals understand what the
signs and symptoms look like.
And that is, uh, what doesanxiousness look like?
Or over anxiousness?
What does, uh, beingtoo reserved look like?
(29:51):
Or, or when you have a child or a, amate, someone stuck to where they're
afraid, are stuck in fear, and so they'reafraid to talk to someone, afraid to
set boundaries, of helping individualsunderstand it, what it looks like first
from a basic understanding and notmaybe a psychological understanding.
(30:12):
We got, like I said, you got tokind of meet people where they at.
So, you go to them and say, "Hey,look, do you feel like you can't
sit still for two minutes or one?"
And they say, "Yeah!"
And it's okay to sitstill and they feel it.
First, letting them identifywhat's going on in their bodies.
I always do this, three minutes,sit still for me and scan your body.
(30:32):
First and foremost.
People say they feel good.
You feel good.
Let's see where you feelgood at internally first.
Let's see if your organs feel good.
Let's see if your heart feel good.
So just scan your toes.
Let's start with the toes.
Sit still for me and try it.
Most people can't do it ifthey've never had, was able to do
mindful meditation or to meditate.
It's not coming from ours becausewe've been given, uh, gas, all go,
(30:55):
anxiousness, most of our life becauseof survival mode, lack of resources.
So, we've been in survivalmode most of our life.
So, our brains as hardwired insurvival, our bodies, our brains, our
minds, uh, again, our nervous system.
It's always on.
Go, go, go.
So, it's been, our brains beenpumping cortisol for so long that it
damaged other neurons in the brain.
(31:16):
Those neurons are impulseconducing cells, actually.
And when it damaged those impulse, uh,conducing cells, leads to anxiousness.
So now here goes the brain damage beinghardwired to operate ineffectively, right?
And, if no one ever comes and stops thechild in its youth to be able to use
(31:37):
the tools to breathe, to rationalize,effective in those moments, that
will become their condition, you see.
And now their body, brain and mind isconditioned to operate ineffectively.
Neuroception, I call it.
We believe what's safe is dangerand what's danger is safe.
Because our brains, because of theadverse childhood experiences, because
(31:57):
of the blows, I grew up to believe thatrobbing and stealing and doing all of
those things, I can get away with it.
It's safe.
You'll have your own independence,your money, and Instead of getting a
job and working and working two jobsand things, that was danger to me
because I couldn't receive the moneyor the independence that I would have
received from doing it the fast way.
So, that's putting the anxiousness intochildren that come from those communities
(32:21):
and not giving them the tools and skills.
So, that's just anxiety disorders.
That's just one.
Then you go to borderline personalitydisorders to where you start, if
you want to break it down to thesimplest form where a child could
understand it, you would have toexplain it, when the person experienced
that the symptoms and the signs.
Right now let me give you an example.
We're getting ready to go train fiveschools in Aurora under our TBI.
(32:46):
We have the only peerto peer TBI curriculum.
But when we go into these schools andtrain them in our curriculum, I'm not
going to talk to them like a psychologist.
I'm not a psychologist.
I'm going to talk to them at theirlevel so they can understand what, what,
so what their friend, if they have afriend that won't talk to anybody, then
there's some things we need to look at.
(33:07):
We're going to break it down towhere they'll be able to understand
it from a perspective of a child.
And so, that's one thing is helpingthem identify the signs and symptoms,
and then referring them out and gettingthem connected to the treatment is what
we've been doing mostly for individualscoming from the criminal justice system.
(33:29):
You got to understandthe signs and symptoms.
And that's the big thing.
This is what it lookedlike in your friend.
If you see this in your friends, youmight want to tell them he needs help.
Because then we can transform theyouth first, and they'll become
advocates and TBI screeners.
Alexis Miles (33:45):
Marchell, let's say somebody hears this podcast or otherwise hears
about this, and they want to take a firststep, is there a number they can call?
Is there...
Marchell Taylor (33:58):
Um, it's four of us TBI screeners over here at AYBOS Marketing
and Rebuild Your Mind, if you googleus, AYBOS Marketing and Rebuild Your
Mind, you would see that we are runningone of the most aggressive initiatives.
We have therapists, uh,that we refer people out to.
I also work at WellPower.
(34:18):
I refer people to WellPower all the time.
So you guys can call me at (720) 490-9834.
This is my personal numberbecause this is personal to me.
So, if you have a TBI or if you feellike you can't control your emotions,
if you regulate your emotions, can'tcontrol your impulses, um, you feel
(34:38):
agitated inside all the time, if yousnappy all the time, uh, and feel like,
uh, you just can't cope or you've beencoping the same way for so long, your
brain may be stuck in survival mode.
I was a ten year old alcoholic, uh,and let me say I was a 47 year old
male with the brain of a ten year oldchild when I came home from prison.
(34:58):
That's crazy.
And I want people to understand that I wasstuck, frozen, psychologically in time.
I was a modern day, uh, iceman, brain just stuck as a kid.
It was!
I did things the same way I didit as a kid when I came home.
I'm 47 years old at ten.
I was an alcoholic drug addict.
I come home at 47 years old, andI was still doing the same thing.
(35:20):
Tell me I wasn't stuck.
I was stuck psychologically in mypsychosocial stages of development.
People need to understand that.
This is, it's development stages, andif you don't develop correctly in those
stages, you pick up maladaptive ways todeal with those things and later on in
life, you'll get in relationships andyou'll still find yourself doing the same
(35:40):
things and relationships at 30, 40 yearsold that you was doing at five, because
you never made it correctly or nevereffectively made it through those stages.
You know, so we find ourselves stuck inbad relationships, relationships that are
violent, relationships that are unhealthy.
A lot of times if we look backin our past and that's what we're
doing, we're living in our presentpast, is what I like to say.
(36:03):
You know what I mean?
And so, we have to move forwardthrough those stages first.
And that's what's helped me.
Alexis Miles (36:09):
And it sounds like you're saying it's never too late to
go through those developmental stages.
Marchell Taylor (36:15):
Well, let me say this.
Um, I was facing life at the time.
That was an odd time to even think aboutany kind of treatment I was looking at.
I'd never come home.
But when my doctor, like I said, Dr.
Nina Minagawa, psychology services,she performed a miracle on me.
I always say she uprooted thatpsychological cancer that lived
in my brain and body for so long.
(36:37):
You know what I mean?
She did.
And it was hard.
And she said it, she said,"You got a lot of work to do."
And I didn't understand at first, butthen when she started explaining to
me about grief and loss, knowing thatI had already lost one of my sons
to heroin overdose or fentanyl, soshe had to help me get through that
and taught me about grief and loss.
A lot of us look at grief andloss, and I like to say that,
(36:57):
it's really quick, 'cause this isimportant, of just losing a person.
That this is what we grieve.
But sometimes we grieve losing a stationin life, losing a job, and we don't
deal with those things, losing a dream.
We grieve the loss of that,but we don't do that healthily.
And we continue to pick up those thingsand they, and they'll get into us
and they can affect us in bad ways.
(37:18):
And I never knew how to deal with grief.
Never knew the cycle of grief.
I got stuck in disbelief forso long when I lost my mom.
You know what I mean?
You know, it's cycles that you go through.
You go through disbelief,then, you know what I mean?
You start guilt and all of this, and Inever made it around that whole cycle.
I just would go rob somebody togive me some crack or alcohol
(37:38):
to not ever deal with it.
That's the work.
That's the hard work.
You got to go back into that and, andreface that, and deal with that in
a healthy way without drugs, withoutcrack, and I cried many, many days
because it felt so painful to have togo back and visit such painful memories.
Sam Fuqua (37:57):
Marchell Taylor, thank you for sharing your story and for your work.
Marchell Taylor (38:02):
Thank you both very much for this opportunity.
Sam Fuqua (38:07):
Marchell Taylor Sr.
works as a Traumatic Brain Injuryscreener and as a peer specialist for
WellPower, a mental health servicesprovider in the Denver, Colorado area.
Thanks for listening toWell, That Went Sideways!
(38:30):
We produce new episodes twice a month.
You can find them whereveryou get your podcasts and on
our website, sidewayspod.org.
We also have information on our guests,interview transcripts, and links to
more conflict resolution resources.
That's sidewayspod.org.
(38:52):
Our production team is Mary Zinn,Jes Rau, Norma Johnson, Alexis Miles,
Alia Thobani, and me, Sam Fuqua.
Our theme music is by Mike Stewart.
We produce these programs in Colorado,on the traditional lands of the
Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute Nations.
(39:12):
To learn more about the importanceof land acknowledgement, visit
our website, sidewayspod.
org.
And this podcast is a partnershipwith The Conflict Center, a
Denver-based nonprofit that providespractical skills and training for
addressing everyday conflicts.
Find out more at conflictcenter.org.
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