Nuanced. - 4. Trevor Johnson: Community Leader

Episode Date: July 8, 2020

This episode focuses on the adversity of youth, and how role models can help change the trajectory for young people. Trevor Johnson obtained his Bachelor's Degree from the University of the Fraser Valley. He is mindful, intelligent, and very humble. We discuss his background, and personal development. Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Hello, friends, and thank you for listening. I asked my next guest to come on because his story truly had an impact on myself. In this conversation, we talk about the impact of role models and the difference they make on an individual's direction in life. He is an amazing friend, a brilliant thinker. Please give it up for Trevor Johnson. And we're live. I think that you are an amazing role model, and I've learned so much about you over the past couple of years. We first met through restorative justice. I've learned a lot about some of the adversity you faced as a child, and growing up in a

completely different world, I met you in more of a university atmosphere, and then learned about all of your background and all of the experiences you've had that led you to that point. And I think that that's what part of this podcast is about is explaining to people that the starting point isn't always pretty. It's not always the place you imagine it. Yet you get to this point where everything's so much different in a university context and we don't really talk about how we got there. And I think that that's a really useful step because most of our interactions were already so normalized in a university setting that we were talking about current events, policies, stuff like that. And we didn't get into the background of who we were until almost later on. And so I think that that's something that people can use to motivate themselves to go to university is to realize that most of the people there got there from a very different starting place. There's a few different moments that I remember with your parents, because you grew up up north.

Right. I grew up as a Jehovah's Witness, which is a very interesting religion. If you want to call it religion, some like to call it occult, either or works. And as you can imagine, a young curious Trevor at around the age of 11, 12, exploring the world, it didn't really fit the Jehovah's Witness narrative that my parents followed, and that definitely caused some issues. At an early age, my father, he was also really struggling with mental health issues. And in Prince George in particular, in 80s and 90s, I don't know if in Prince George in particular, but just at that time, mental health had a lot of states. stigma to it. So it was something that the family tried to hide and it wasn't very well understood. So that added to the issues. There was a, there was some violence in the home at times. Not awesome times. Yeah, fair enough. I was, I grew up Catholic and went to catechism. And for me, that was a, that was a tough time to go through because they were living a completely different

reality than I was, in that most of the community members were two-parent families, lots of children, some of them lived on farms. It was really like a wealthy community, and I had no idea what that was like. And so it was all these ideals I was being told about and that I should live this way. And then having to survive, it's a completely different approach. And the people I'm dealing with daily, are not that supportive, or not that friendly. And then you go to church and they're saying, well, you should be like this all the time. And that's great, but I'm not living in the same world you guys are. When I go back downtown Chilliwack and you guys drive back up to Promontory or Sardis or wherever you're from, your communities are completely different

than mine. So your messages aren't resonating the same way. I don't know if you experienced that at all. I found that the Jehovah's Witnesses actually were quite similar. It was when I went out into the community that it was really, I was different. Not allowed to go to birthday parties, not allowed to associate with anyone who wasn't a Jehovah's Witness. I remember neighbors, neighbor kids coming over and asking if I could play and me like just pleading with my parents and they'd be like, nope, unless they find Jehovah. You know, and in school sitting every Easter, Christmas, anytime there's a birthday

celebration, Valentine's Day, getting sent out in the hallway and just sitting there while everybody got to like eat cupcakes and have parties. So that made me a lot, made me feel a lot different than my peers, knocking, you know, Saturdays instead of playing sports or stuff, we were knocking on people's doors. And yeah, there's a lot of, I got picked on a lot early on over it at school. It was obviously I didn't fit in. Yeah. And interestingly enough, didn't fit in at school, but in the Jehovah's Witness religion, I didn't get along with the kids there either. So I just didn't really seem to fit in anywhere growing up. What was that like? What was the interactions between, what were the differences? Honestly, the Jehovah Witness kids were so

mean. Really? They were brutal. Yeah, you know, I remember there was my parents' best friends, there was these two brothers and they just made it their mission to try to every time we got together they wanted to make me cry or at least that's how I interpreted it um maybe like the the weirdest thing I remember was when they would hold me down on this block um by the fire pit and the older brother would come running with the axe to come and you know pretend to chop me and then the younger brother It would quickly move me and the axe would chop on the block. I remember trying to explain this to my parents. But again, the person was an elder and, you know, it just, yeah, so I just didn't fit in.

And it just, I found a lot of comfort in reading. That's where, when I was a kid, I read, I was very, I didn't, I didn't understand that I was academic at the time. Yeah. But I just, I found comfort. academics what books were you reading back then um i loved fantasy um back then it wasn't um i mean there was nonfiction um anything to do with history i loved stuff on world war two um i really loved reading stuff on the nazis uh back then not because i i liked nazis but just the the

history of the jehovah's witness in nazi germany um so do you know anything about that a little bit yeah like the purple triangle and they were political prisoners along with the Jews and they they faced a lot of adversity and death and torture and you know Hitler had said he was going to wipe them off the planet um the interesting thing and one of the things actually and I still respect this about the witnesses they could have left at any time all they had to do a sign a piece of paper saying yeah we say yes to Hitler no to Jehovah but they didn't because they're very like, no, screw you. Yeah, we don't, we don't seem to know what that's like anymore.

So then from there, what happens after that? It is the fan at home and at the church. I remember when I told my parents, like, you know, guys, I am not going there anymore. I want nothing to do with it. The people are just horrific to me, like the kids. And I got friends and I just don't want anything to do with it. My dad was like, no, like, I'll drag you kicking and streaming to church. And I was like, that's fine.

When I walk in the door, I'm going to go up, I'm going to grab the mic. And I'm just going to be like, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. And if someone tries to take it from me, I'm going to assault them. So when my dad called the church or the kingdom hall was like, this is what my son said. What should I do? And of course, they're like, well, don't bring them here. Yeah, I still remember that day, the day I got to stay home. The family went to church and I got to stay home.

That was awesome. Probably a huge changeover. It was. It was, again, just recognizing that I could make change. you know, my actions or, you know, I could impact or affect what was happening around me. That's awesome. Yeah, I remember when I stopped going and none of the family was all too thrilled about it, but it was this idea that I knew what I didn't want to do and I knew the people who were there. It wasn't like I was saying I didn't want to go and I had no idea what it was going to be

like. I knew exactly what it was and I didn't fit in. I had way too many questions to be any joy to be around because the main one that I would ask was how could someone create like hell and heaven and be both good? Like I didn't understand that and they don't have a, they're not used to questions in the Catholic Church. No. There's no time to raise your hand and ask questions. So that was my experience. Yeah, the witnesses, they loved questions and they love answering questions. For me, it was just a big part of it was like, you guys are mean and there's friends over here that aren't mean or that I want to hang out with. I didn't like being different.

I just, the whole thing was about being different. Like, you're not like them. We're different. You have to go out of your way to be different. Yeah. You learn really quickly as a kid, as a Jehovah's Witness kid, that being different isn't always good. Yeah.

You get picked on a lot and nobody wants to get picked on when they're a kid, right? For sure. So what was your social group after that? Who did you start to intermingle with? So it was more like the skater crowd, the weed smoking crowd, grade eight, was a lot of skateboarding and like white zombie and pearl jam and sitting in circles smoking weed and hacky sack. Yeah. It was really good. Until I started getting like kind of like picked on again and for being a skater. Just at the school I was at, just wasn't a popular thing to be. We had a crew called the Hart Boys, some good old boys, I guess. they didn't like the skaters. We were kind of known as the pussies. I never got beat up myself, too. A lot of the guys I kind of looked up to. They got beat up by the tougher guys. I did get beat up at one point. And at that point, I just started going to the gym. Yeah. That and I got kicked out of school in grade eight. What happened there? Well, I had found some pepper spray in my mom's drawer. And I knew what pepper spray was. But anyway, and I was telling some of the older guys at the smoke pit about it. And they said, why don't you bring it to

school and show us. I was in grade eight. And I thought at the very least maybe could trade it for some smokes. Yeah. So I brought it to school and I was showing the guys what it was and they're like, we'll spray it. And I was like, all right. So we all stood in a line and we sprayed it away from us while big gust of wind picked it up and blew it right back in our face. Oh, no. Yeah. They went running to the nurse and I'm like, I'm yelling at them. I'm like, it'll go away. You'll be able breathe again. They're freaking out. Yeah. So sure enough, I get called the office. Please are there, I get arrested for assault, assault

with a weapon and possession of a prohibited weapon, I think. You know, it's kind of funny, like being in the system now, I'm like, those charges would never, wouldn't stick now. Yeah. But yeah, I got nailed 13 years old. Yeah. Totally got nailed for that and got

put on probation and that really shifted everything for me. Really? Yeah, yeah, because initially I was scared, I was really scared, and I remember being in cells and this kid. I won't say his name because he was a kid at the time. He was like, why are you scared? And I'm, you know, I'm sobbing. And I tell him my story and what's going to happen and when I'm afraid. And he was like, you're a kid. He's like, they can't do nothing to you. He's like,

you just watch. You're going to walk out of here today. Yeah. And sure enough, I did. And and what he said always stuck with me. Like, I was like, I came out of there being like, fuck you guys. You can't touch me. I'll do what I want. Yeah. And that was a very different, that changed everything for me. In what way? I became determined to become a thug. I felt like that's how nobody could hurt me and I could get what I wanted. That probably makes a bit of sense because this person told you that you're kind of invincible, that there's nothing that can be done and you wanted to see how does that play out? If I do push this, how far can it be pushed before there are consequences? And I just wanted to kind of be like him. I mean, here is this kid who he was telling me like

his stories of adversity where he came from and he had no fear he had just this attitude of like hey i'm getting fed here this is awesome yeah you know not recognizing like hey this kid come from a place where he probably doesn't get to eat three square meals a day you know stuff like that so i i didn't recognize that at the time yeah and just thought this he didn't care that he was in juvie or jail sales sales attitude yeah was something i wanted because i was so scared all the time all the time like what did that arise a lot where you were just didn't feel confident in yourself. Well, yeah, right?

Just not fitting in. Yeah. I just always felt like I didn't fit in. Yeah. And now you can play this out to the extreme and actually be confident in yourself and be the person in the room that is completely calm in a circumstance where most people wouldn't be. Yeah.

And I guess I thought how to get there was by not caring. Yeah. Right? Because that's how it just came across at that time. That's a lot of people today. A lot of people pretend that they don't care where they work. They don't care what they're doing. and somehow I'm supposed to believe that that's a good thing that you don't care.

Like, not you specifically, but people who come across that way, I think it's great to care. And when you actually show that you're invested in something, people come around to support you because it's a good thing, but we don't know that. It took me a long time to undo that, actually. Like what you're saying, absolutely. Caring about something makes us vulnerable. Yeah. And at that time, I did not want any vulnerabilities.

I'd felt like I'd been vulnerable my whole life. And again, I couldn't have told you this at the time. Yeah. But looking back, I just didn't want to feel vulnerable anymore. Now, this kid kind of showed me how. Exactly. Yeah, I went through that with communication. I was always insecure about everything else about my body, being overweight.

I had so many insecurities. The one area I felt like I could control was communication. I could out-communicate you. I could find the point in your sentence that didn't make any sense and call that out. And hopefully win the discussion or argument. And that was just a defense of, I have control over this very small thing. And I'm going to lord it over you as much as I can. That's how I used to be.

And now it's like I would never do that because one of the things I've learned more recently is about straw man and strong manning and steel manning a position. Okay. So if you straw man a position, it's to take the weakest point of the argument and exploit that, where steel manning is to look at somebody's point, recognize that it's not the best, but see if you can get anything out of it. And I've switched over to that a lot more, talking to vulnerable people and realizing they're not going to perfectly explain all their problems to me. I have to kind of figure out what's going on. And that's, to me, steel manning their position and understanding exactly what they're talking about. It's hard for some people to actually communicate what they mean. And even if what

somebody saying isn't exactly right, I think you can still learn something from it. And that's taken a lot of learning, but it also took huge shift away from holding your traditional views and letting go of that idea of trying to be the best at something. And so what was that like moving away from that? What were the steps that you went through, moving away from trying to be the toughest person? That took a long time. Yeah. Because my whole teenage life was basically trying to be the tough person.

Yeah. I would say it almost took finding my wife. Really? Yeah, having that partner. And of course it happened before she became my wife. Yeah, it was definitely kind of learning, undoing, learning, and moving backwards and becoming vulnerable again. And it's something I'm still doing.

Yeah. You know, I still can sometimes see myself snap into that 14-year-old, almost that 14-year-old mentality if I feel threatened. But I've gotten really good at kind of recognizing it very quickly. Yeah. And de-escalating myself and working. you know reminding myself it's okay to be vulnerable and also recognizing that the ability to be vulnerable is strength yeah that that does take strength that the reason that i didn't want to be

vulnerable is because i was so scared of the hurt right so basically i was afraid i was afraid to take a punch yeah so i didn't take a punch i didn't even get in the ring yeah um but allowing myself to be vulnerable for me i'm taking the hits i'm willing to step in the ring and take the hits yeah so a big part of it was that that shift in recognizing and valuing vulnerability as a strength and not seeing it as a weakness. Yeah. Yeah, because you have to apply that so often that people don't even realize telling someone your story, sharing it on a podcast, is opening yourself up for criticism, opening yourself

up for admitting that you didn't make all the decisions you might have wished you could have made and exposing that you might have a goal that not everybody's on board with. And I think you do that really well with showing your passion for statistics and for methodology. It just comes out as this true passion that I don't have in the same way as you. But that's okay because we need someone to do it. And you're really passionate about it. So there would be no one else I would rather go to about statistics and methodology than you because it's a true passion.

and it's something where people could say, why do you bother with that? But it's something you're passionate about. Could you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. I don't know if, I mean, I think statistics are kind of a symptom or a byproduct of the methodology. I'm definitely no mathematician. I love being able to gather statistics and I love methodology. You know, I guess I just a big part of my narrative is I'm always trying to improve myself.

Anybody who knows me knows that I'm never satisfied with who I am. And I always want to be someone different. In terms of methodology, where I get passionate about it, is applying it to evaluating programs or anything, really, just evaluating our actions, our activities, what we're doing and learning from what we're doing. Like, you know, typically when we do something, when we do an activity, there's a purpose behind it. There's an outcome that we want to achieve.

Yeah. And so I guess for me, I want to know, are we achieving the outcomes and can we do a better job? And what else are we achieving? Because, you know, especially lately, I'm getting really curious about what we, the unintended consequences. It's very like, for instance, a conversation. I was just reading a book by a gentleman, Paul Bourne. And he talks about the different, what's going on when we have a conversation, which, and there's so many different things, like even right now that are going on.

When he's talking about it, the context is community conversations. So a lot of people, if you want change in the community, a grassroots movement, you know, you bring people to the table to talk about it. But what's actually happening, right? Like, you're not only, like, the purpose is to come up with ideas. But one of the unintended consequences that is rarely measured is buy-in. Also, you know, you're getting buy-in from the community when everyone comes together and has this talk.

So what else is going on? Just recognizing that this is a way to get buy-in makes these community conversations is so much more valuable. So, yeah, just in terms of methodology, just I'm curious, I want to know. I just find that creating methods to find out is where it's at. And that goes with everything, programs, life.

I apply, I find I apply methodologies to all aspects of my life, especially there's some areas at work where I'm naturally biased. I just working with a youth person, maybe, for example I might just really like the youth and want them to succeed and have a super soft spot which can blind me to what's actually happening

so I have to set up indicators like okay so if this youth is going to progress what are the indicators of progressing otherwise if I just go by like my feelings or my guts or what I'm seeing might just be like no this individual is doing great they're doing great they're doing great but really they're not yeah so yeah methodology i think is just really important if we actually want to discover the facts

and identify what's going on in our lives and around us we have to it's not even just science just in our general lives we have to have a method that's figure it out that's so true because if you think about how many indicators do we have on whether or not we're progressing in our job we're there every day but we're never figuring out whether or not we're improving whether we're static what's going on there when we're doing most things university we're consistently expecting maybe bees all throughout from year one to year four and you think about well that's not really progressing that's staying in the exact same spot for four years straight maybe you're exposing yourself to harder topics but let's not forget c's get degrees yeah and but that

mindset is not about progression it's about staying in the same spot which is really interesting that you could apply that and say well first semester first year i got a c minus but year four in second semester, you could have all A's if you were to try and progress in the same direction. So how do you apply that to youth? Because that seems so interesting to be working with someone who you would naturally be biased towards. That's probably one of the hardest parts of working with youth, is that they are filled with potential. They have the whole world in front of them. How does that weigh into your mind? How do you just write down indicators? Actually, the agency has already got, how does that set up? The agency I work

Fort Chila Community Services. We already have a setup. So we're accredited through an international accreditation agency called CARF. And so what we do is we create a service plan the moment we start working with the youth, or at least when I start working with the youth and youth support, what we do after we meet with the youth and is we create a service plan. And that's where the youth identifies the goals that they want. so they're self-identified goals and then I help them create an action plan how are we going

to get to these goals and in doing so and then we create indicators of success so and it can just be really simple if the youth says I want to graduate high school an indicator you know we can have a couple different indicators obviously one of the indicators is getting a diploma but you know other simpler indicators to help measure them getting there are attendance yeah um and you know so might get permission from the youth to check on their attendance and and for me and i'm just using the attendance one because it's a really helpful one and because you're not going to graduate high school if you're not showing up to school yeah right and in the past when when we when i haven't checked on this i've had youth you know basically blown smoke up my ass and i really like these youth so i've just bought

into it and then you know fast forward months or year ahead and it's like what do you mean you haven't been going to school you've been telling me this whole time you've been going to school yeah right but i never i didn't do my due diligence i didn't set up the indicators you know especially at the beginning i was in different position reconnected i was learning and i didn't quite i just took everything at face value yeah i just you know if the youth said something i just automatically assumed it was correct yeah and i don't feel that that was as helpful as the as using indicators because again, when a youth has a goal, when they've identified a goal, I want to graduate from high school and said, okay, so how are we going to do it?

We come up with this plan. They say, well, I'm going to show up four days a week at least. Okay. So when we find out, though, that looking at the attendance, when I check in, once a month or once every two months, whatever it is, the attendance isn't there. Then we can say, hey, why aren't you going to school? Like, what's going on? It's just an indication that they're not going to be successful, right?

So it's just those little things. And it really isn't complicated, right? but it makes such a big difference just setting up these indicators and then just go and buy the indicator. That's so interesting because most people don't come up with goals for their life. Like if you think about that's a really good way of approaching things and you could hold yourself accountable in that way of saying I should try and complete these tasks and this is success within my own life and actually define it. But most people have no idea what success would look like every day in their life. It's like one day I would like to be.

a lawyer and they don't lay out the details of what that would look like yeah you know I'm lucky I love logic models and so I I use logic models a lot and that basically it's a plan to lay it out so it starts with my goal and then if you envision a pyramid it starts with the goal at the top and then it moves down right it the outcomes because those those outcomes are going to impact whether I reach my goal yeah those outcomes below them are the activities right so and I do that on a personal level. I do that for any of the programs that I'm working with. And I also do that sometimes with my youth. As we just lay out, you know, that action plan that I'm talking to, I'll lay it out a lot like a logic model. It's essentially what it is. So it's just, it's just a way

of looking at it. It's working backwards. It's saying this is what I want to, this is where I want to go. How am I going to get there? These are the outcomes are needed to get there. Okay. Well, how am I going to get those outcomes? These are the activities. Okay. What resources do I need? Yeah. And just working backwards. And I find it to be pretty. successful, at least on a personal level. And I'd like to say with some of, you know, with the youth that I'm working with at work, I've seen these service plans really help, you know, meet their goals. That makes sense because it makes, what makes logical sense, that if you spend time, each day you have to do certain things, you have to brush your teeth, you have to take these

small little steps in your day. And if you actually do them properly and make sure that that is just a part of your schedule, that you don't range on and ignore for a certain amount of time, that those things will improve within your life. If you clean your room 15 minutes a day, it's probably going to be clean by the end of the week because you've put in 15 minutes each day and that adds up. And it kind of sounds like the same idea

is that it's not just about one exam. It's about attending all the classes then doing the exam. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And how do you apply that in your own life? Well, it's so funny. I don't know if this is my life, but chatting with my son, my oldest son, he's 13.

And we literally just had that conversation where, you know, if you just spend, I don't need you to clean your room entirely, but spend 15 minutes a day on it, right? Like, always be chipping away at it, chip, chip, chip. And yeah, and his room is actually really clean right now. So I'm stoked. Well, and we could apply that to so many more complex things than just a room. You could apply that to wanting to be in a different career in five years and say these are the

steps I would have to take in order to get there. And I would have to do 15 minutes a day of studying. I would have to research what school I want to go to for 10 minutes a day. I would have to do these little things that will eventually. bring you to your your final goal. Yeah. And I guess that was always in me. Like I said, because ever since I was, as long as I can remember, I've always been

about improving myself. I've never been satisfied with who I am. And I've always wanted to improve myself. So I think that I've just always been looking for methods and ways to improve myself. And of course, you know, I want to be able to identify that I've done better too. So almost measuring. And again, not this hasn't been academic always, but just on my own, at my own level. just finding ways to measure if it might measure success.

Yeah. We have to get into it because your life is so interesting to me because you did start out from just basically the polar opposite of self-improvement every day and looking for those things. Where did all of that come from? That probably would have came from my role model or my mentor. Ken, I mean, I've had a few different role models and a few different mentors, but, you know, the one in my life that just stays true would be Ken.

Okay. Who he started off as my ISP worker. What is that? It's like a special, it's an intense supervision when you're on probation. So they identified me as being someone who I wasn't, I was a risky youth, I guess, or an at-risk youth. They didn't feel it was in the community's best interest for me just to come and visit my probation officer once every couple weeks. So they assigned a youth worker to track me down in the community and meet with me once to twice a week. And how did he play a role in your life? What happened there that worked? He took a trauma-informed

approach, definitely. So what he did was different than what anyone else did. Because when I finally met him, I was living in a group home. I'd been kicked out of my school district after I got into it at the school district office. My probation, or not probation, with my principal and some of the higher-ups. Yeah. I think I wound up jumping on the table and kicking books at them. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I was the rowdy 14. year old. So he came in at a time when I just, everybody was my enemy. I identified everyone as my enemy. They were trying to limit my freedom. They're trying to take stuff away from me. And he just came in very different. And it seemed like he wanted to empower me right off the back. And he came in with

his book. It's called the Dow Leadership. It's an amazing book. It's by a guy named John Hyder. And essentially what it is is it takes Taoism, you know, the tradition, the book Dow to Jing. and it turned and John Hider interpreted it through a leadership lens. John Hider's a, he was a psychologist, and he reinterpreted it. And that's what Ken used to engage and interact with me. So initially I didn't really want to engage with them, but he was willing to take me out for a burger and some fries. And he'd play chess with me a little bit.

And then he would open up this book, that would have these little poems. And he just, you know, asked me to read it and get my, my feedback on it. And essentially, you know, the biggest one was what has, what's happening when nothing is happening. It was just a little riddle. And I just always remember it because it was the first riddle he ever told me that I started to understand and it started getting that process working. Yeah. And, yeah, so he just, he worked at empowering me.

He really used the chess. I didn't realize at the time, but when he was, when he was playing chess, with me he was gauging where I was at and he was finding not only was he engaging with me but he was finding where I was at and then and then he was kind of filling in the gaps so when he was seeing these gaps and I had a lot of cognitive gaps I couldn't see the processes I just I would jump from zero to 100 and didn't see anything in between yeah so you know he just worked he worked the gaps with me I remember one time this is an awesome story and you would not get away with it nowadays. But I remember telling him like, fuck the system, your rules suck. The system sucks.

Anarchy rules, you know, and he said, really. And we're driving down from the heart highway in Prince George and we're going the back roads as highlands. It was called. And all sudden, he flies in, it's a highway and he flies two lanes over into oncoming, like where the oncoming, there was no traffic, but we're oncoming traffic. And he's flying down the hill. And I'm like, what is going on? And he's going really fast. And he's accelerating. And I ask him,

like, what the hell are you doing, man? What are you doing? And he was like, what do you mean? Fuck the rules, man. And he's, and I'm like, you're going to get us killed.

You're not allowed to do this. This is crazy. And he's like, I can do whatever I want. There's no rules. Yeah. Eventually after I start panicking, I freak out.

And, you know, he goes back in. He was like, well, I thought rules didn't matter. Yeah. Well, and all sudden rules, you know, matter. And that was a huge. And again,

I'm not saying that, was a yeah flying down the highway on the wrong side definitely not recommending that to any youth workers yeah but wow did it ever have a lasting impact on me and did it ever shift my thinking or I had to I literally had to ask myself well do rules matter yeah because I was scared shitless in that at that moment it really had an impact on me fair enough that is that is incomprehensible to have gone through something like that and to learn something from it. And obviously that was kind of his intent

to put you in that circumstance. We're not advising this, but it is interesting that you can get something out of something that we would never be allowed to do today. Absolutely. Yeah. And so what else happened there? Well, eventually he took me in.

He became my foster dad. Really? Yeah. Did he do that for other people? He did. Yeah. He had kind of like a suite in his basement. There was my foster brother, Robin, and then there was myself, and it was really good because Ken took that opportunity.

I think he, even though I didn't realize it at the time, leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses the way I did, I lost my culture, basically, and I was cultureless. And at the time, I was running with an indigenous street gang, I guess. So Ken took the opportunity. He realized I was already interested in indigenous culture. Well, most of my friends at the time were indigenous, so. And Ken's indigenous. And he just, he started teaching me a little bit about the cultures and introducing me to people. I remember going to my first sweat, which was, again, one of those, one of those times in life that it's, it changed my perspective.

Yeah. Yeah, I just overall worked to empower me. Even, even when I got kicked out of his house, it was empowerment. Because as he put it, like, we, we had come to an agreement. I would do A, B, and C. and he would do A, B, you know, A, B and C. And if either one of us failed to meet this, there was consequences. I quit school.

So I wasn't meeting the obligations. And he was like, nope, you know, this area is for someone who is working towards goals. You identified these goals. Now you're saying, no, you had said that if that was the case, you'd be leaving. So now you can leave. Yeah. It was the first time I got kicked out of a house without, like, someone being mean to me about it. Yeah.

And it was weird because I wasn't even angry because I couldn't blame him. because I guess it was one of the first times of my teenage life I owned something yeah and I realized this was me I made the choice and got me into this um situation I'm I don't like and I'm uncomfortable with yeah um and then he stuck by me though right like he didn't he wasn't angry there was zero anger um it was just I got to teach you this yeah and now I'm going to support you to show you how not to fall flat on your face yeah um which you did right he supported me the whole time. That's amazing because you were able to, for the first time, make a mistake or make a judgment call and take complete ownership of it and not have anyone say that you're a bad person,

that you're a fool, that you're not going to succeed and you're going to fail without them, which is what a lot of people do when you don't take their advice to the tea. Yeah, yeah, and he did the opposite, which was really empowering because for me, like group homes and, you know, probation officers and other workers that I'd been with, it was so disempowering. It was if you don't listen to us, you're going to get it. We're going to, you know, you're just going to fail. And that just wasn't the approach he took. He took a very empowerment.

Like, what is it that you want to do? How are we going to get there? And he never went about things telling me, like, that's good or that's bad, which was awesome because there was so much baggage with good and bad for me because it was very religious. Yeah. So he switched the narrative on that to just there's negative consequences and positive consequences. What one do you want? That makes sense because that's, I talked about this before, but that's the case with most things is no matter how high the goal, you have to pay a consequence for it. And you have to be willing to, obviously if you're going to university,

I think I used this before, you're going to have to pay for it. So there's a financial consequence to wanting the best for yourself. And if you're going to educate yourself, to try and get this better job that will pay more, you're going to have to suffer for the next couple of years to get to that point and telling someone that just obeying all the rules, you'll pay no consequences, isn't true.

You have to figure out what the consequences are and if there's a way to deal with them. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So where did you go from there after that? Because you obviously worked with Ken. You left school, and where did you go after that? I moved, I moved down to Langley. I moved in with my sister because my parents weren't an option.

And Ken's house wasn't an option. Group homes weren't an option because I just went AWOL. Yeah, so I moved, I moved to Langley, Walnut Grove. And I started going to school at Walnut Grove Secondary. And that was really cool. It was very eye-opening. I got to see, I just got to see something different than Prince George than what I was used to.

Yeah. And it really showed me that there was more out there than just that little piece of land that I was so willing to live and die by up to Prince George, right? Yeah, it was really great up until, without getting into it, got into a confrontation at a party with some youth. They went a little gangster on me and jumped me. So I thought I could, yeah, so I took the, long story short, I got kicked out of Langley. Yeah.

And I had to go back to Prince George. And then I had to do a little bit of time on house arrest and then in juvie because of what, how I'd responded to those guys in Langley. Yeah. And that was a big change too. It happened at the right time. And I know, you know, our backgrounds are criminology. So, of course, we're going to say youth shouldn't be locked up. Yeah.

But I'm glad I got locked up. And the reason being isn't because I was a menace to society and I was, but it's the people who I was surrounded by. And I don't mean the youth I was locked up with. I mean, the COs, the correctional officers, they were so positive. And they so wanted us to do well. It was, it wasn't how I had thought jail would have been. Yeah. Or juvie.

And, you know, they really focused. I got stuck in, I got put into this program almost immediately called the Boweren House. And what it was was we didn't have bars on our windows. house on the property we could come and go as we pleased if we wanted like we could enter and leave the house and we focused on health on just built on healthy activities uh so it was we'd wake up and you know we would we'd eat we'd work out we'd do some schooling um we'd go on nature walks or swimming reading but it's just our days were filled with activities and therapy and again a lot of the correctional officers they actually knew people who i knew in the community

And it just made it, it was eye-opening for me. Just to see these folks who were in such a position of authority, I mean, but they never really treated me bad, despite they had so much power. I mean, a correctional officer has so much power over you. They treated me really well and they really seemed to care about me. And it had an impact. I went out to juvie that time with the idea that I wasn't going back

and I wanted to do something with. my life yeah and then because that's just phenomenal that that exists and I don't think as a community we call great support out as much as I think we should we thank the person individually but saying that this whole system that we would call pretty negative as criminology students had such a positive impact and that individuals had such an positive impact is the whole purpose of the podcast is that I believe there's people out there that make a difference that turn things around for people, and we never talk about them. And you're an example of if you took just a report card of your youth and said,

how is this person going to turn out, where you are today and the difference you make and you educate me and you educate lots of people on important topics and kind of show that that stigma is a bad idea and that we don't get a lot from it. So where did you go after once you decided I'm not going back to Juvie? Well, there's a period and I won't get into it, but it was just kind of the best description would be tumultuous. Yeah. A lot of growth. There was moving forward, moving back, moving forward, moving back.

And it culminated in me deciding to leave Prince George. I was about 19. And my bio parents had moved to Ontario, where my. grandparents live and I decided to move out to Prince George because despite me trying you know I I feel I worked really hard um but the the group that I hung out with I loved them so much and I just couldn't bring myself to completely disassociate with that group yeah and it kept bringing me back down bringing me back down so I left Prince George and um it was great I moved to Ontario and I just decided to start over again. So I didn't, I didn't tell anybody about my history,

my background. I pretended like I had a perfect life. I remember working, I got a job serving food at a restaurant, which was amazing. I just loved it. And I was hanging out with the servers. And the servers are, they're a chipper kind of crowd, you know, they're, they're smiley, they're happy, they're fun everything they're everyone that you know the crew that I always wanted to hang out with but never got a chance to yeah um so I just kind of mimicked them yeah um you know I made up stories about going to Disneyland you know with my family I had the perfect family life all of this and it was really good because for the first time in my life I got to just fit in even if it was based on BS yeah it was the first step of kind of feeling what normalcy would

look like absolutely it was great um nobody knew who i was and i could just be who i wanted to be yeah um eventually that it it started to feel shallow yeah um and i just i wanted to just explore so um i wound up moving from ontario uh to calgary uh the intention was to move to vancouver or surrey i think but uh i stopped in at calgary and visited um my cousin and calgary was it was such a fun city at the time it was so young. It was booming. So I stuck around there and I wound up again working in a restaurant, bartending. And that was an amazing. It was really amazing. And I kind of started, I started off with that pretending to be someone else, but my past, we were close enough to Prince George that my

past caught up with me and some shit hit the fan. So the people I worked with got to know a little bit more actually about me and they still accepted me yeah which was really cool that that was a very interesting point where i started accepting who i was like and kind of melding who i was with who i wanted to be yeah and and not being super scared of it and and letting people into my life a little bit telling them a little bit about who i was and you know my history yeah i went through that as well because growing up, I didn't tell many people about the struggles I went through. And it was nice to go to school and to come across as normal and to kind of keep my home life at home and keep my school life at school. But over time, I have kind of let some of that go. I think like 16, 17, 18, I started to realize that most of the people I know don't really know who I am. And so trying to face that, I started to slowly say like, hey, this is. some of my background. This was my childhood. And the immediate reaction was, how have I known you for like 15 years? And you've never said a thing about it. And that was a huge growing point because

at first it was like such a shame, hideaway thing. I've been through these things and I know this life. And then it kind of helped the relationship with people once they knew that I did have vulnerabilities that I did have. And that's where you're starting to break down those walls and share those things with people yeah i found the same thing erin like i couldn't figure out why i didn't have a lot of close friends a lot and in certain periods of my life and and what you know in ontario that was that was one of them where i couldn't get close to anybody because i was so full of shit yeah and yeah that's it's hard to vulnerability is just part of intimacy yeah right if if you want to be close with people you you got to become vulnerable absolutely and

you cover it up in so many weird ways because one of them was that I owned a car and like not that I owned a car but my family owned a car and we didn't. And then people would expect like well why don't you come to this location and I'd be like well the car's in the shop like there was clear reasons

why I wasn't attending and it was just too hard to admit because you want to fit in and the acting like you're fitting in is the very thing that removes you from the ability to say I don't have a vehicle would you be able to drive me Like, that's the very thing that's preventing you.

Absolutely. Yeah. So from there, you're now in Calgary and people are starting to know. Where do you go from there? I just had a lot of fun in Calgary. But too much fun. Bartending. It was just one big party.

And I don't think I was, I don't think there was a, I went for about a year and I don't think I was sober even one day. Really? Yeah. And I'm not saying like I was fall, you know, falling on my face drunk every day. But again, just the source. serving crowd. I worked at this place, the Metropolitan Grill, right on 17th Ave, and it was so fun. And it was just a nonstop party. And, you know, after work, we would, like, go out to the other bars,

like the whiskey or the drink. And we'd just party all night long. It was so much fun. But my brother, not my biological brother, but my brother, Chris, who we kind of, when I was about 14, 15, we just found each other and connected. He brought me home. Yeah. But I had no hope to go to one day. And he just, he kept me. But he just called me up and he was like, man, you're going to become an alcoholic. And, you know, his bio dad, he had had some, he'd witnessed what alcoholism, you know, the leads to. Yeah. Yeah.

And he was like, I'm coming to get you. And I was drunk talking to him like, oh, yeah, that sounds like a plan. And you can imagine how surprised it was the next day when he actually showed up. Yeah. To get me and was like, no. And my roommate was really ticked, too. What was that like to have somebody care? so much and to believe what they're telling you and to follow through on it.

It's hard to explain. Yeah. You know, it meant a lot. Yeah. And still does. So, yeah, I went back. We went back. And he was going through an interesting time himself.

So when I had left Prince George, he had climbed the ranks of like the thugs and the gangsters. And he had gotten to a really scary place. And he decided to leave. So he had moved away from, from Prince George. And he also had a son. We just focused on work and just hanging out and hanging out with his kid. It was one of the greatest, like, one of the best times of my life that going to

Abbotsford and meeting my nephew, you know, not for the first time, but, you know, because I was there when he was a baby. Yeah. But just, yeah, and he was just, he was just awesome and he was just so full of life. And I really think that being around my nephew like that helped change. and both me and my brother, right? Like, we wanted to do better. Yeah.

We didn't want to be like the shitty parents that we had witnessed with others. Yeah, we focused on doing what we identified as being good. And that was holding down a job and staying relatively sober. Yeah. And that's, yeah, for about a year or two, that was just what life was about, was just working. Yeah. And I met my wife at the time. Or did you meet her?

I met her at a birthday party, a friend of mine from Prince George, who is my sister-in-law's cousin. She worked with my wife at Randy River, this clothing store that used to be around. And I didn't realize, but I guess she thought I was cute. So my sister-in-law had kind of told her, yeah, you can hook up with, we'll hook you up with Trevor. So that was cool, except she didn't really talk to me throughout the night. And we wound up, it was in Chilwack here. We started off at Bozini's. and we wound up at, what was it, Area 51, I think it was called.

Where is that? Or where was that? It's where Korky's is now. Okay. So it used to be a nightclub, and there was like cages and stuff in there. And, yeah, it got pretty intoxicated. And I was walking out the door with two friends, two female friends who had told me they were sisters. And then my sister-in-law and Amanda met us at the door.

my sister-in-law shouldered one of the girls. Really? Yeah, I kind of shouldn't pick a fight but just got all rowdy and I was like, wow, this is, I just knew I'm, I'd done something wrong. So I went and I sat with my brother. Yeah. And he was just laughing. He was like, oh, you've done it. Yeah.

Anyways, they came back and my wife just looked at me and she didn't say anything. She's just staring at me. She was like, you're a fucking prick. And I was so confused at the time. and we left the bar. We went to Ronda's house. And at the end of the night, when we were all leaving, she just looked at me and she was like,

well, are you coming or what? We've been together ever since. That's awesome. Yeah. That's amazing. And so what else went on right after that? Because I think you were working in a mill at one point, right? Yeah.

So I left me and my wife. we quickly moved it wound up moving in together and getting our own place and I just quickly realized that the type of life that we wanted in terms of finances I wasn't going to be able to contribute to that life working as a bartender as a server so I wound up long story short I wound up at the rigs and the oil rigs and I really really liked that and also what was going on in our life at that time is my wife had gotten pregnant and she'd lost the baby so we had to find out what was going on she really wanted children and so did I and we had to go for all these tests and it I can't remember

how many how many times we got pregnant and lost the babies but it was like four or five maybe and eventually we were told we couldn't have kids and it all happened really fast we were told we couldn't have kids and I was working so I just decided forget it and go and work on the rigs and just focus on making money. So I've been working on the rigs for about a year, just over a year. And I was on days off. And I was supposed to go back to the rigs the next day. And my wife gets this phone call from her cousin, who lived in Cologne.

And she comes in, she looks at me and she says, do you want a baby? I'm like, what? And she was like, my cousin just called me. And she has a friend who didn't know she was pregnant. And she's about to give birth. And she wants to give the baby up for adoption. But she wants to give it to someone she knows we'll look after it. And we were brought up.

do you want a baby? I'm like, um, yes. I went out to the rigs. I did my two weeks. And then when I flew in, I flew back to Kelowna, or no Penticton, sorry, and met my wife there and met the mother. Long story short, we came home with a baby. Really? Yeah, I was in the room and everything. It was insane. Yeah. Yeah, it was just a crazy feeling. I remember, well, first off, it was a really uncomfortable feeling being in a room with someone giving a natural childbirth when you've just like met them. Yeah. But when, boy, when Noah came out, Like, I was just overwhelmed with this feeling. Like, I could punch through a semi-truck or something.

Like, I will protect you. Yeah. I'll do whatever I have to to make, to make life good for you. Yeah. Yeah, it was an awesome feeling. So soon after, you know, we bring Noah home and I have to go back to work. And it was really difficult. And I remember, like, my buddy's on the rigs.

They were trying to help me. I don't remember my one buddy. I think he was trying to give me words of comfort. And he said, don't worry about it. You know, he's like, you know, my daughter, she would, every time my wife would come and pick me up from the airport, she would cry when I got in the vehicle until she was about five because she didn't know who I was and I was like yeah guys I'm out I can't because we would been told that we couldn't

have children so I was like well I'm not gonna like spend all my time up north I mean I like you guys but not that much yeah I hang out with my wife and kid and so yeah I went back and I started working at the mill and I remember the first time so I went and I got this job at the mill and I remember my first paycheck and I think that was maybe like one of the first time and only times I cried in front of my life when I just looked at that check and I started crying and I was like, I've spent more drinking with my buddies at the airport than this stupid check. Yeah. Because it's going from rig money to money that you make it the mill. But we figured it out. Yeah. Yeah. It took a couple weeks, a couple paychecks and all of a sudden it became

normal. Yeah. And then from there. Well, I worked at the mill for about seven years. Yeah. From there it was just, you know, life. Yeah. But I was about 30 years old, turning 30. And my son, Noah, was getting old enough that I couldn't hide that I smoked from him. Not that he knew. I never smoked in front of it. But he was just getting old enough that was like, he's going to figure this out. So I decided to quit smoking. And I'd been smoking since I was about 12 years old at that point.

So when I was able to quit smoking, it was a huge accomplishment. And it really boosted my confidence so much so that I decided to go back to school and get my grade 12 because that's something that I'd never finished. And I wanted to be able to look my kid in the eye and be like, I got my mind. grade 12. Yeah. So I started going to, uh, at the ed center here in Chilliwack. I started going to night school. Teacher was Sheldon. I can't remember his last name now, but, uh, he hangs out at the, at the pub. So I still see him every now and then, give him a wave. I don't think he remembers who I am, but he waves back. It was a great opportunity. Uh, the teacher was really helpful. He recognized that I was working full time, sometimes 10 to 12 hours before I would show up at the

school. And he was really helpful and he didn't, uh, yeah, it was just, just, uh, overall, overall good experience and then I got my grade 12 and when I got it I got B plus honors and I was pretty excited about that and similar to that time we'd had some issues at work and I'd also gotten involved with bringing in a union and that happened the union even though we were told it will never happen that happened so I had a lot of these kind of confidence boosters while I was at the mill and I decided I'm gonna kick it up a notch try university go back to university yeah I really liked it. And actually, I wound up getting a, I got a scholarship from the union to go to my, the first year of university. And I was also on paternity leave, uh, because my second son was being

born. Yeah. And then so you go to university. And what was, what was the first course that you had taken? Psychology 101. I took three courses. Psychology 101, sociology, like the beginners, and Krim 100 with Kevin Burke. Yeah. And what was that like? It was awesome. Yeah. Oh my goodness. I felt when I remember taking psychology and I felt like the world had been opened up to me. Just like the mysteries of the world, it was one of the best feelings of my life. That first semester was just so intense and I just loved every minute of it. And then I got my grades and I just got like straight A's or straight A pluses, I think. And I was like, what the hell?

I'm not stupid. Yeah. Maybe I should keep doing this because my intention wasn't to like finish university. My intention was just to take some classes so that I could say, yeah I've done some university yeah but when I got all A's or A pluses I was like well maybe maybe I should explore this a little bit more maybe I should look into this so yeah and then and then there was the choice when I decided to leave work and become a full-time student yeah that's so interesting to me because my first year of university was exactly what most people's is it's just a transition

from high school there's not a lot of respect for the fact that you're with people who are passionate about what they're talking about or practice or research in the area they're talking about it was these are just other teachers who are going to tell me what to do and grade me and I'm going to have an exam and then I'm going to leave there wasn't that difference where you went in and you were like the world's being open up to me that didn't happen to me that's happening kind of now but it was because you don't have that same respect for it that I think you had going into it and feeling like that institution was intimidating you went in with that recognition that that was a big accomplishment yeah yeah and I was really intimidated by UFE

So I tried to go to UFE when I first came from Calgary to Abbotsford. I thought, you know what? I'm going to try and go to university. And my brother, he drove me to UFV in Abbotsford. And I went in and the office of the registrar, they were so rude to me, which is so weird because they're so nice to me now. Like I just love going in and talking to those folks. But I don't know, maybe it was just me.

Maybe it was the way I interpreted it. Maybe it just wasn't my time. I'm not too sure, but I left. I remember, I didn't even understand the words they were telling me that I needed. And I remember fighting back to try not to cry as I walked out, feeling like just a complete idiot. That was, yeah, that was in about 2000. Wow. So, yeah, it was, you know, universities can be such an intimidating institutions.

I don't see them that way at the moment or now, but yeah. Yeah, that's really true, especially coming from that world of not feeling like that was a place you were going to go and not having that ingrained in your mind because it's like middle school students now are planning their university education. Like, it's given at such an early time that they take it for granted when they go. And for some people, it's not even in the picture. And that's where you were at one point in time, was that you weren't even focused on that. And you didn't respect yourself as a person who could think or have profound thoughts and share that with the world at one point in time. And now it was Jonathan Heights class that we had together.

And I was just stunned at your marks, the information you shared with class, your perspective, it was all so shocking and so insightful. And I had no idea everything that you went through prior to that. Thanks, Eric. That was an amazing class. Jonathan Haidt's such a good professor. I 100% agree, but it was so unique because I had met you through restorative justice, and I had met you through a class, and I just thought everybody respected you in that

class. There wasn't a person in there that didn't specifically know your name. And I remember that. And that's how I've always remembered you because that's how you came across in that class. I didn't know that, but thanks. Well, just tell everybody what grade you got in some of the things in there because it was like 99%. And what did he say he couldn't give you the extra percent because there, yeah, well, he doesn't believe that there's such a thing as a perfect paper.

Yeah. But if there was a perfect paper, that would have been it. Yeah. That was a really good paper. Me and actually, Dane, we worked on not that specific paper together, but we each, you know, how he gave the topics. we both chose the same topic so we both really worked on that and oh boy i remember i thought i could actually feel pathways being burrowed into my brain trying to figure out and work on that paper that was

yeah because that's how i was introduced to you and then hearing all of this crazy backstory of what you went through to get there made me respect the education so much more because it's like this person has gone through hell to try and get to this point and i'm just sitting on my laurel half paying attention half not taking this class seriously and that really changed my perspective during years three and four because that was like a second year course or like beginning of a third year course and I had not taken a single course that seriously and said I'm going to put 100% in and if I get a B I get a B but I'm going to put everything I have into this that was after knowing what you like a little bit about you and your experiences because then it was like I have no excuses this person's

gone through way more to get here than me so I need to step up my game. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Thanks, man. That's why these things are so important is that I get to explain my experience, how I see you. And hopefully that goes through to the listeners as well, that I had no idea that you had gone to juvie, that any of these things happened to you. I just thought you were an incredibly intelligent individual. And that was right out of the gate. And then the backstory made me realize that we all can do this, that people are capable of these types of things. And so explain a little bit more of what happened after that course. Well, there was a, there was kind of a lot going on there. So I was working with Yvonne

Dan Durand at the time, too. One of the big changes for me was working on a project with them on justice metrics, measuring the justice system and using indicators. That was my introduction to like the formal idea of measurements and methodology. So I took that and I ran with it after that, you know, and I kind of incorporated that my third and my fourth year, almost everything incorporated evaluation in particular collective impact and uh i really paid attention to stats um i really really worked hard on um stats and um i took every opportunity i could to work uh with professors and and just yeah increasing my knowledge yeah and then you graduated in what year 2016 and then you've been working now with so i was actually really lucky to um when i graduated and leanna kemp who was the

executive director at Restorative Justice at the time called me up and let me know about this new position with Chilat Community Services. It was an outreach worker for homeless youth and the whole position was to try to get them host. So I went, I put in my resume with Chihuac Community Services and I was lucky enough to get hired and start that position and really help. It was neat because it was a brand new position so so nobody had ever done it before so i got the opportunity to develop it uh with the person who was the um coordinator at the time kate healy and and we really got to from the bottom up yeah and it and it was an amazing opportunity i learned so much and it was it was a huge learning experience it took a lot of what we learned in university and really some of it

it just made it so like, oh, what we learned made so much sense and this is why we needed to learn it. And a lot of other stuff, I was just like, why? What? Yeah. This has, you know, on the ground, it's so different than what we learned, especially in terms of policy interpretation. You know, you come out of university being like, no, I read the policy. I know what it means. Yeah. And then you're on the ground and everyone's like, yeah, we all have a different interpretation of that policy. Yeah. And we follow that, right? Because you think, like, if a policy says this, everybody has to listen and do it this way. Yeah. Yeah. And that was a, that was a, boy, that was a tough piece of reality for me to grasp. And I really caused some ruckus at the beginning and

really pissed a few people off, stepped on a few toes. Which was good, though, because me stepping on those toes, there was actually one point where I really, really ticked off a social worker. Yeah. And she put in a complaint saying like I was she couldn't work with me. Yeah. So when when my my my supervisors looked into it and had to talk with me, what they recognized was yes, I did have a right to be pretty chapped because policy wasn't being followed. But that being said, um, sometimes relationships are more important than policy or just as important as policy. So what they decided was to work on, they decided to give me some extra support on, um, on on on how to work with people that was really great it was good it definitely changed well it just it just kept

you know it just kept me growing i mean i'm still growing right um but yeah definitely i i started to realize just how important relationships in this community was and now i'm at a point where i believe that the relationships are more important than the policy yeah you know or initially i would have said policy is way more important than relationships yeah so that's so interesting because you did really go full circle now you're in the position of helping youth go get through their issues and you are actually their role model and you can say sincerely that I've been through similar circumstances or I know I have some understanding of what you're going through and you're the person in that role trying to help yeah and that's been a double edge sort yeah um on the one hand obviously being able

to put myself in their shoes to feel the empathy you know have some understanding it's been really helpful. On the other hand, in particular, when I first started, sometimes I felt too much. It was almost overwhelming. And I started to, boundaries were crossed and it was hard for me kind of distinguish what they were feeling versus what I was feeling. Yeah. So there was a lot of work done on boundaries, creating boundaries, so that I could take, so the experiences that I had could be useful to, to the youth I was working with instead of just kind of throwing it. Just going through it together. Well, yeah, or just, you know, sometimes when I saw youth being mistreated at a group home, one example, right? Well, I had experiences of being mistreated in a group home. So my reaction,

I could have, you know, I should have started at 10, then went to 15 and then went to 20. Yeah. But my reaction was zero to 100. Yeah. Um, you know, I just, I bypassed all these other processes and just jumped right to like the representative of the child and the youth. Like, screw you guys, I'm going to get you. Yeah. Which, and that's not the purpose of the representative of the child and youth is not to get anybody it's to create that dialogue create those conversations but again being so new i just i didn't realize that i didn't i didn't understand how important the relationships were yeah well and you'd been there before so when you see somebody else in the position you were in it's like immediately i want to react and help everyone who is in that

circumstance because i know what that's like yeah but i was kind of interpreting it through the eyes of a youth too right where i so when i was a kid and i was getting kind of screwed over um at my group home that's how I interpreted it is like you're out to get me you're trying to harm me and what I've come to realize as a worker is people don't become social workers or group home workers or anything like that because they want to screw over kids typically everybody wants the same outcomes they want a safe community for the children and now where we get confused is we don't all agree on how to get there yeah right but that's I've come to really like that initially at the beginning I didn't like that I was like

Nope, I've read the textbooks. The policy says this. This is what we have to do. I know this. Yeah. And you don't. And now I'm like, I don't really know what, you know, content. Everything is so different.

You know, everything's different. I don't know. And I don't want to assume that you're trying to screw over a youth. Yeah. What's going on? And having that kind of like that taking the position of unknowing and not assuming, it has made all the difference. And a lot of.

of those people who initially I was like, oh, this person's no good at their job. They, you know, they're harming this youth. All of a sudden, I'm like, whoa, they are good at their job. They aren't harming this youth. Yeah. You know, this is, you know, I may not have gone the same approach as they are to, but they're not doing anything wrong. And instead of fighting with them, which takes resources away from the client.

Yeah. Let's work together. Let's, you know, just keep it, keep it going. Yeah. Not to say that if someone's in the wrong, you don't call them on it. but people aren't in the wrong as often as I thought they were at the beginning. And that's probably true for a lot of different positions because even in my role, we work with different people, but the goal is to see where the overlap is, see where we agree,

and then maybe the parts that we disagree kind of fade away when we're working together and just assuming that the person does have good intent is probably a good place to start rather than assuming the worst and trying to figure out what matches that view. point, which I think a lot of people do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, finding, finding that common ground, that's always your best bet I found. 100% because we get so caught up in what we view is the worst thing possible. And obviously, that arises when you're working with youth is what could be the worst thing that could happen to this person. And the second you see somebody moving towards what you believe is that,

it's like, well, then you've got the bad intent because you're steering it in that direction, even though that might not be the case. And we just might need it more information. The other question I wanted to touch on was role models in our community. That's obviously what the podcast is about, is trying to build some of those people up who are already doing really good things in the community. Would you be able to touch on that at all? Because you work with youth? Absolutely. I think our community, typically the group of individuals in our community working with youth, they do act as role models.

A great example is the rec program that Chilliq Community Services puts on. Um, the, one of the previous wreck workers, uh, Steve, he, I, I witnessed him as, act as a great role model. Um, in fact, so he left the program a while ago. There's been two people since. And some of the youth who, you know, they've, they're maybe 13, 14 at the time. And now they're, you know, 16, 17. And they still talk about them. And they still seek them out. Um, at the last Christmas. party i was at um one of the youth that used to be in in every youth that used to be in his program that was at their christmas party asked for him yeah right they want to know what he's doing um they just absolutely love them we we took a picture there was a photo booth and of all the kids you know they would want two pictures oh here's one for you and make sure steve gets one yeah right um so he impacted and these are youth who um they're doing really good and um they didn't necessarily, that wasn't necessarily the trajectory that was identified when

people first met them. Yeah. But, you know, I really feel that we do have a really good setup for role models here in Chiluac, whether it's like the rec program or, or Cyrus Center, just the whole setup of how Cyrus Center is, it seems like everyone there is set up to be a role model, whether you're the director or whether you're a volunteer. so yeah i think that we have a lot of great role models in our community um and from all different sectors even um like the religious sector there's a lot of youth pastors and pastors

out there um who are just amazing um and and just great role models and great people to have in the community so yeah we're we're really privileged here in chiloac that's awesome it was awesome to have you on i think that based on your experience through your youth and where you're now is so important for people to realize that it doesn't matter where you start. It just matters that you're continuing to try and move in the right direction. And learning about your past, after knowing about how smart you are in John's class, was really humbling. And it really set the stage for this. So I'm so grateful to have you on. Cool, man. It was really fun to be here. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks, sir.

So, you know, You know, I'm going to be. You know, I'm going to be. You know,