The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Elizabeth Mikotowicz Artist, Fashion Designer, Writer, Activist Interview

Episode Date: April 16, 2023

Elizabeth Mikotowicz Artist, Fashion Designer, Writer, Activist Interview Legaleriste.com/en/Elizabeth.mikotowicz Instagram: EPM_art_1111 TikTok: EPM_art_1111

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the chrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys being here.

And thank you once again for tuning in. We've got some of the most amazing guests that we've had on lately and done some really interesting things. This morning we just had the author of the series of books. He's written like 150 books that are pretty crazy. He's done a lot of different movies. We had him on and some other stuff that we've had had going on this week it's been a crazy week so far and today we've got an amazing artist to talk to us about her work and her journey that she's taken

and done elizabeth mcconnell which is on the show with us today and she's gonna be talking to us about what she does she's an artist she's a fashion designer a writer and an activist as well and she's had an interesting journey through life and she's making the best of it as it were uh five years ago she was painting murals as a federal inmate and now she has her own environmentally friendly clothing company based upon art being sold in stores. She also works with the state representatives to get better laws on the table to protect people in vulnerable positions. Some of them have been passed, which is pretty awesome. I've never passed any laws myself. I need to get to work, I guess. She's trying to expose the corruption and cruelty within a system that is hidden from the public eye and rebranded as rehabilitation.

And the suffering of American people is a trillion dollar industry. Welcome to the show, Elizabeth. How are you? I'm great. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. We really appreciate it. And give us your dot coms where we want people to find you on the interwebs to get to know

you better um it's http uh colon slash slash www.legalleries.com slash en slash elizabeth.mccodowitz there you go that's a lot but there you go anything any other place you want to plug instagram etc center yep um I have a TikTok, Instagram, and I never go on Twitter, but all of my handles are the same. It's EPM underscore art underscore 1111. There you go. And so on the website, the link on the Chris Voss show, you've got a lot of your amazing clothing and artistry, and this is all your works. Is that correct? Yep. I painted all of the designs.

Actually, I have some here for you. This is one of my bags. And they also come in plus sizes, too. And I was so happy about this brand because, you know, as women, we have skinniness shoved down our throats and some brands size their clothes really, really small that aren't the real size. And I was just so happy that this brand doesn't do that because I don't want to contribute to body dysmorphia or mental health issues. Um, like this is one of my placemats, lucky koi fish. Um, I've got pillowcases. I've got shawls. I've got dresses. I've got pants. I've got shirts. There is something for everybody here. And I painted all these on my healing journey.

And, you know, it's been a long road, but, you know, here I am. And if you had told me five years ago that I would have my own brand being sold in stores, I probably would not have believed you. And on all the tags, there's a picture of the painting. And on the website, you can look at all the original paintings as well. Wow. And what do you normally paint? What version do you paint in?

Acrylic. There you go. Yeah, this is one of the actual paintings that I just got done. I don't have that one on close yet. And where do you find the inspiration for your ideas and what you paint? Well, this was my first painting of a series of women because it it was women's history month so um i'm doing women of all races ethnicities and you know just women and you know i've been inspired by trauma i've been inspired by you know the dystopian nightmare we're living in i mean i i i love

painting flowers too like there's just so much beauty in the world. But it kind of depends which mood I'm in. Like, some days I can paint something super gothic, and then the next day it'll be, like, flowers and butterflies. There you go. It's a beautiful expression of work. Did you always have this sort of talent, even from a young age? Yeah, I did. I always was into art and music and dance.

And when I kind of lost my way, I kind of lost it. But in prison, I painted murals at some of the facilities, and I would paint portraits and people's coffee cups. And I'd have somebody steal some floor wax to seal the and people's coffee cups. And, you know, I'd have somebody steal some floor wax to seal the paint on the coffee cup so it wouldn't wash off. Well, that's interesting. So let's talk about your origin story because you have a journey that starts,

you started as an orphan, you're adopted at a very young age. Take us through some of that. Well, I had a great family growing up and, you know, there's always trauma with adoption, whether you had a good family or an abusive family. And I was really blessed because these people really loved me and supported me. And, um, you know, it wasn't until I, you know, got out on my own i got into some really violent relationships um my son's father uh the first beating put me in the hospital um yeah and then you know a month later he hit me with a wooden dowel because he didn't have a cigarette and i said we'll get a job then and that was all

it took and my skull was showing it was right above my eye they had to sew the muscle back then the skin back i couldn't lift this eyebrow for a month and then i started getting seizures from it and the doctors gave me opioids and at first i took it but then when they're like all right you have to go to the pain clinic now and i'm like but that i found out i was pregnant when i was in the hospital for that wow so that was like a horrible dose of reality. And when I tried to refuse because I'm like, I'm pregnant, I don't want my baby to have, you know, opioids. And I don't want to get I don't want to become addicted myself. They said I was on too small of a dose to get addicted. And I think this is because I was on state insurance, you know, because I had never

been treated like this before I was on my parents private insurance. So middle class, you know, I was treated, you know, differently. And now that I was on state insurance, they threatened me with child protective services. If I didn't take the opioids, they because they said my blood pressure was going up. So you know, it was putting the baby in, you know, harm's way. But it doesn't make sense. Because when Oh, oh, you take opioids, it makes the pain receptors in your brain more sensitive. So when it wears off, you're in twice the amount of pain. And you know, I also was getting sears. And so my daughter had to start staying with my father because I would I had a toddler running around and I would be incapacitated, you know, for however long. And I was so scared, I was gonna wakeacitated, you know, for however long. And I was so scared I was going

to wake up to, you know, something happened to her. And that was, that was really awful because there was nothing I could do about it. It was no, no medication I could take. There was no, you know, therapy. They're just like, it's brain damage. Like you're going to have to ride it out. And so, you know, the beatings got worse. I mean, he would trap me in the bathroom and torture me for hours. I mean, there was sexual assault there, you know, it was really bad. And when I finally gave birth to my son, like I had postpartum depression really bad, like to the point where I was like, I don't want to call it psychosis because it wasn't psychosis. I wasn't hearing or hallucinating

or anything, but I would have these like final destination scenarios go through my head. Like, and then he thought it was funny. So like, I'd have panic attacks to the point where I couldn't pick my son up. Cause like, I was scared I was going to drop him or some freak accident was going to happen. And he'd start messing with me and be like, well, imagine if this happened and then the chain reaction to this and then you know it came through the window like he'd see he'd feed into you know my mental health issues which made it 10 times worse and you know by the end he strangled me to the point where my windpipe collapsed in on itself and for up to a year after he was gone it would close because of the damage like the doctor described it as like you know if you bend a plastic tube you can you know put it back to its

original shape but it's still got that crease so it can easily fold in on itself that's what my windpipe is doing and i would have to chug water just to be able to breathe and yeah it was terrifying and then i eventually went to spruce run the battered women's shelter in Bangor and they turned me away with two beds open. They're now called partners for peace. Um, but they turned me away with two beds open at first. They called me a liar because I had no tears. They said, well, most women come in here and they're crying and upset. I wasn't, I didn't cry on cue basically. And so I went and I got my hospital records. The scar on my face wasn't enough for them. So I went, I got the

hospital records and the police reports. And then they did a complete 180 and they said, after talking with police, your injuries are so extensive and your situation is so dangerous that it puts the other women in the shelter in danger. The girl that got the bed, the guy didn't even hit her. He kicked her car. And yes, that's, that's domestic violence, destroying property. Absolutely. But in compared to my situation where I would have died if I hadn't gone to the hospital, you know, and so I had made a deal with my father that, um, if I couldn't get in there to get help because I lost my apartment because of him, because the cop showed up,

I was in public housing and they were like, yeah, you gotta go. And nothing I could do. And they, they wouldn't help me. So I, my dad's like,

if they can't help you and you can't get into housing, like you need to sign these kids over to me because if he shows up with the cops i have to hand your children over to him yeah so well child it was my son but you know regardless you know that was like rock bottom for me because once i signed my kids over i lost my state insurance you know we had paula page as the governor then and when i went to dhs, why did I lose my main care? And they're like, well, you either have to be pregnant or have children in your care to get medical insurance. So I couldn't go to the doctor anymore. I couldn't get therapy.

I couldn't go to rehab. I couldn't do anything. And they had turned me away. So I was just desperate, scared, terrified. Drug dealers ended up protecting me. They gave me places to stay, places to hide, work, drugs to sell. Undoubtedly enough, I was tough as hell from the trauma. I didn't back down. I wasn't scared to die at this point. And, you know, I could handle myself in the street. Like nothing scared me after this man. So, you know, I got deeper and deeper into the streets. You know, it was like, I always had one foot in and one foot

out because I was always like, I just got to get a place and then I can get my kids back. And then I can just get my life back on track. And it was always just one more flip, one more flip. And every time I went to go look at an apartment, my trauma was so bad. I would just picture a million different ways of getting killed in that place. And I would always like back out and I'm like, no, this is too close to this street or, you know, someone can see me over here. And it was just so bad. And I just fell further and further. And eventually I caught charges in 2011 with the state. And then in 2013, when I thought it was all done and over with, I was done selling drugs. The feds picked it up and then there I go off, off to prison. Um, and, but you know, it really opened my eyes to this i thought racism was over in this country like growing up in maine it's 94 white people you don't see it and you don't really

hear about it and once i went to prison i mean i couldn't believe you know this i mean for instance i met a handful of women that were sterilized against their will in prison and this was this was before trump filled up the ice camps with refugee women and you know you heard about the these refugee women getting sterilized against their will they've been doing this to american women and the one thing i noticed that correlated them that they all had in common is is none of them were white. And now all of a sudden, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it's a great day for white lives. And so, I mean, it's not only systemic racism.

It's straight up genocide. Like, you are trying to take these people out. And, you know, just this tone of voice that they would use with me compared to how they would talk to black inmates. I mean, it was just, it was crazy to me. And it wasn't so much in the North, but they sent me to Alderson. And, you know, the abuse on everybody in prison is terrible. I mean, my first week at Somerset County in Maine, I witnessed an entire pod of women get stripped because they signed up for a razor and a male sergeant wanted a list of who shaved their vaginas and who didn't.

Those that did were punished. Like in the words of Britney Spears, that's what sex traffickers do. Like you're, you're controlling someone's personal grooming habits. Like you people are sick. I mean, I've watched women, you know, die in there from no medical treatment, very treatable things. I mean, and the other thing at Somerset County, they have cameras that are illegally placed in cells. And this is a problem all across the country too. They will have cameras, you know, on areas where there's a toilet, where you can't get away from

the camera and it's on your living quarters This is a problem and most of these a lot of these cops are predators Well, you're six times more likely to get sexually assaulted by a cop than you are a civilian And I'm not here to say all cops are bad because that doesn't help anything and to be honest You know for every cop that hurt me or tried to oppress me or you know, for every cop that hurt me or tried to oppress me or, you know, cause harm to me in some way, there was another officer who was sticking up for me and risking their jobs doing so trying to get it to stop. And that's the problem too. You know, the good cops, you know, never get anywhere. And it's like the ones who are corrupt and vicious and cruel, you know, they're the ones who get promoted.

I had a sergeant telling me to kill myself while I was in solitary on the wrong medication that was putting me in psychosis. And then when I got out, it was in the paper that she told another inmate to do that. And they had to cut him down from a suicide attempt. And that woman still works there. She is still getting, you know, a pension from the taxpayers money. And so when I went to Alderson after they forced me to strip in front of these cameras and because of my trauma, because of what my ex did to me, he would make me strip in the bathroom and torture me for hours like to the point where i beg him to kill me and just get it over with this triggered that trauma so i was like losing it and this lady was you know that was when she was coming in telling me to kill myself like she

after she had forced me to strip in front of these cameras so her male you know staff can get a show and so when i went to alderson i filed what's called a PREA complaint. And that stands for Prison Rape Elimination Act. And it's anything sexual, like sexual harassment, rape, anything, it all goes under PREA. So when Alderson got the complaint back, they wouldn't even let me hold it to read it myself. They read it to me and wouldn't let me have a copy of it. They wouldn't let me send it home. They wouldn't let me, they wouldn't even let me hold it. It was my complaint that I filed. Like I want everybody to imagine filing a complaint on the outside against something and then being told, Oh, you can't have the, you can't have the paperwork to prove that you filed

this complaint. And Somerset admitted to everything I was complaining about. And they basically, they deemed it unfounded. So it wouldn't go any higher. And that's how they bury the abuse. complaint and Somerset admitted to everything I was complaining about and they basically, they deemed it unfounded. So it wouldn't go any higher. And that's how they bury the abuse. They'll say, yeah, we did it. So what? And this is the problem. All these institutions, whether it's a college, whether it's a boarding school, whether it's, you know, the military, they get to conduct their own investigations. And so they control what the outcome is. And this is, this is a big problem. They're killing people. They're destroying investigations. And so they control what the outcome is. And this is, this is a big problem. They're killing people. They're destroying lives. And you know, the funny thing is when I got out, the, the captain and four of his subordinates at Alderson all got convicted of raping and stalking inmates and tampering with Priya evidence. Y'all can go look that up. Captain Grimes, Alderson.

And so I was not even their biggest victim. And he only got 10 years for getting caught, for being charged with raping over five women. And only 10 years. If they had been regular civilians, he would be gone at least 30 years. But because we're inmates, our trauma and our lives aren't valued. And so how do you turn this into, you know, helping create new laws? And I think you've got two laws that you've helped get put into place. Yep. I'm actually working, well, with that whole thing with the PREA and not giving me my paperwork, they refused to give it to me even after I got out.

So there's no consequence there by law. They have to give you the paperwork, but there's no consequence if they don't. They told me to get a lawyer and subpoena it like these officers literally told me to get a lawyer. So I got a lawyer and he's like like i can't subpoena anything without an open case and i can't open a case without the paperwork they know this so if if there needs to be a consequence for every day they stonewall an inmate so this is the one i'm working on now it's not passed yet but i think it should be passed across the board if if they stonewall an inmate they need to be fined like 500 a day yeah you know that something

needs to happen these officers and these jail institutions need to be held accountable and that goes for colleges and you know other institutions that put their reputation over people's lives and but the one that i did uh was working on that got passed in Maine, they mandated all jails provide tampons and pads for women free of charge. So that was that was a victory because, you know, these jails are so cheap, they get over $100 a day per inmate, they can buy the stuff in bulk, you know, and they don't have tampons and you have it's pulling teeth is easier than getting these people to restock your pads. And yeah, I mean, women would make their own tampons and end up getting infections. Like it's really bad. And I've had,

I've watched women guards go, go ahead, bleed on yourself. What do I care? So the game became go up to the biggest, most masculine male guard and make him feel as uncomfortable as possible because you can guarantee he will go get more than enough just to get this issue out of his face. I shouldn't laugh, but I can see the intimidation. I'm picturing it in my head, the intimidation of the male guard. So how are you working with legislators and how did you get that passed? I mean, you've gone through this whole experience, you've come out of prison, you're trying to go through rehabilitation. I think you may have had some issues there from what I understand in your bio. Yeah. When I was on probation, my trauma was so bad. Every

time I left my house, I had a panic attack. It also didn't help that the prison had me on $1,300 worth of psych meds that get you physically dependent on them. Wow. And so I had no way to pay for it. So I started detoxing off all of these psych meds. And you do detox just like you do with opiates or anything else because your body gets used to it and some of like lithium your heart can stop yeah if you just stop taking it so this was a problem because the page was still in office but when i got out um on when i was done with probation i went back for nine months to danbury and once i got out janet mills took over maine

and i'm so happy she did. You know, she got the page out of there and she expanded Maine care for everybody. So I was able to continue my recovery. I was able to get properly medicated. I was able to go to therapy, trauma therapy, whatever I needed. And I still struggled, but you know, I had a chance, a fighting chance just because of that. It's funny because I had never planned on doing anything political, but there was a cop in Maine up in Calais. He gave a high school student drugs to give to her mother who was trading the drugs for sex acts, basically. Wow.

He did not get a sex charge and this made me so he got a drug charge but this made me so mad because this cop who's 30 years on the force so he's well versed in addiction was extorting this woman for her mental health and her addiction and as a woman who's been to prison if a cop were to come on to me, you know, the only thing I'm thinking is what, what am I going to jail for when he says no. And so I called the DA up, like, why didn't you charge him with a sex crime? He's like, because the way the law is written, it's consent. So, um, he goes, but you've made a lot of good points. So if you can't contact some of the state legislatures, they can put bills on the table like that. So that started

me on this journey. And I contacted Charlotte Warren about this whole situation because correctional officers, there's no such thing as consent with an inmate because the position of power they have over inmates, you know, it's not consent. we're not allowed to say no to them basically cops should be the same way as civilians they have authority and power over us so they're and why are cops getting sexually gratified on taxpayers dime anyway that's true they shouldn't be happening and you know if a cop uses his badge to try to talk a woman into, you know, having sex with them, like you don't have game other than your badge. Like you can't get a girl without, you know, flashing the badge in her face. Like that's intimidation, you know, to me, at least it is not to speak for every woman, obviously.

But, you know, I would think it would be. Yeah. And the other law that I got passed. So there's this huge problem we have a huge homeless problem up in maine and it skyrocketed during the pandemic and it's all across the country before the pandemic there were three empty properties for every homeless person in this country now there's 29 so these landlords were charging all of these application fees and they were getting like triple the rent. You know, you get 10 people to pay $100 a week for an application fee that you don't even look at. You're just literally they're paying money for you to say no to them.

I mean, when we tried to move, we paid over $1,000 in application fees just for landlords to tell us no. And then they're not even renting the apartments. Like you mean to tell me you've had 40 people apply and you couldn't find one tenant? Wow. This is a scam. So I talked to the state reps about it. I'm like, this is what's driving the homeless numbers up. These greedy landlords scamming people for application fees and processing fees. You know, they want like $100 per person and then another $250 for a processing fee. They're not even looking at the applications half the time. So they passed a law for a tenant bill of rights saying that you cannot charge any fees

unless if a lease is signed. Wow. Yeah, they were having this scam in Las Vegas for a while where these people were advertising stuff and taking the fees, and they weren't even going to fill the thing. They were making more money off the fees than they would renting the place. There's no integrity in this country anymore. It's just whatever capitalistic scam you can get over on people,

and it's destroying this nation so yeah i was pretty proud of that so you come out of prison you're working on these things and then you you start to delve and discover your art or expand your artwork yeah um i did a couple art shows during addiction awareness month and then i joined the bengal art society and i did some shows with them and then i actually i i did some writing contests too and i won two years in a row and got two of my poems published um i'm also i'm in the editing process of my memoir so um it's called no justice just us so i'm hoping to have that published by the end of this year so i like that title well the very first cell i was in um it said there's no justice in the system it's just us in the system and so i thought that was kind of like stuck with me and you've you've done some

different uh political art as well on top of your other stuff tell us a little bit about that i'm looking at it online well when um the george floyd thing happened um i was just thinking about every group in this country that has been affected by white supremacy and it was basically everyone other than white men so i did a kind of a collage of, you know, all the groups and I did another prison one with, you know, an eagle incarcerated. And I think it said, uh, land of the free. And then I crossed out free and wrote highest, uh, rate of incarceration. We make up 25% of the global incarceration population. That's one fourth. Like it was one fifth. It's gone up to one fourth now. Like we have more people in prison than

entire continents and it's sick and it's only going to get worse over the pandemic. All these jails across the country were taking PPP loans and expanding their prisons. The money that was supposed to go to the people was going to expand prisons. Now they're criminalizing homelessness. They're fining people for feeding the homeless, for having basic compassion and human empathy. And it's a free workforce for them. Everyone's like, well, why do they want people in prison?

Well, because a hospital, here's just one example. A hospital saves $350,000 a year having their dirty linen washed by inmates instead of paying people minimum wage. This is what it's all about. They paid us $5.25 a month to work 40 hours a week. And then in prison, they'll jack up the prices of everything like a package of ramen noodles that cost 50 cents out here cost a dollar 80 in there or a dollar 50 i can't even remember what it is now but you know uh an mp3 player that costs 12 at walmart they charge us 89 they are making so much money off of us and they're not they're not feeding us properly they are working people to death.

Um, this one girl slipped on the ice while she was shoveling snow. That was her job. She broke her leg and went by the time they took her to the hospital days later, her bone had fused back together. So they had to re break her leg. And so they're not allowing her any pain meds because she's an inmate. And so that is cruel and unusual punishment. I have watched so many women die in there from very treatable things because these people would just not treat them. Wow. Wow.

That is unfortunate. And so you did a lot of art in prison. It was kind of a way for you to cope with your trauma. I actually have some pictures of some of the murals I did at Lanbury. of art in in prison it was kind of a way for you to cope with your trauma i actually i actually have some pictures of some of the murals i did at cranberry yeah so they only let me paint with blue so i call it my blue period which is fitting because it's i was in prison um but yeah there was this long hallway and they wanted quotes and they wanted beautiful stuff on the wall. They let me have freedom with whatever I wanted to paint

as long as it was beautiful. So that was pretty cool. Yeah. And you can see one of the quotes, sort of. Yeah. And then that's my phoenix. There you go. You know, I think one of the interesting stories about your journey

that can probably help others, especially if you're right about it, is healing through trauma through art. And I know there's a lot of people over the course of being artists that have done that and that have really connected with themselves, etc et cetera. And very interesting that way. So there's this style of art called Zentangle and it's like meditative art and it's really easy. My mom sent me some of the books when I was in jail, one of the jails that wouldn't allow me to paint. So I was having a really hard time with um trauma and being triggered and going into flashbacks and like i would like literally hallucinate i was back in my old apartment that's how bad it was and so i would do zentangle art because it's like meditative and you don't have to think about it you just kind of do it and you don't have to be good at it it's just doing little designs but

i'm currently making an adult coloring book with um with this style of art because it helped me and i'm also including like all of the things that i learned about trauma that you know helped me like i've had so many people say oh it happened a long time ago like you got to get over it well the part of your brain that stores traumatic memories does not register time. So that's why it always feels like it happened yesterday when it was so long ago. And, you know, that really helped me, you know, kind of figure out, you know, my healing journey and, you know, why I was still, you know, holding on to things for so long. Like time does not register, you know, time does not heal all wounds. That's just something nice they say to you.

Yeah. And so you, you find that, uh, there's a meditative sort of process when you're painting and you're processing your imagery and sharing your emotions and things like that. Writing's another big way that you can do to, to do stuff. And I think sharing that journey with people and how that can help them heal. Have you ever tried going maybe back into prisons and teaching other inmates maybe how to do art and stuff like that? Or maybe that's probably not for you right now. In Maine, I don't think I would do that. But in another state, yeah, I would do something like don't think I would do that. Um, but in another state, yeah, I, I would do something like, especially with the juveniles, like, you know, I'm so sick of the GOP. We got

to get armed guards in the schools and dude, you armed the, you, you put cops with guns in these schools. And the only thing you did was send a bunch of black kids to jail. And I was when, when I was at Cumberland county they they would bring juveniles from long creek it's the only juvenile center in maine and whenever they wouldn't behave there they'd send them with us well i can't tell you how many girls came because they were getting sexually assaulted by high-ranking officers and you know then then they get caught and then it'd be in the paper and then they you know the guy would quit or whatever and then the same thing would happen again well this one girl she was 17 and she ended up snapping because she repeatedly kept getting raped by a high

ranking officer and she finally snapped and stabbed him with a pencil so they brought her with us they told her she was going back for her last two weeks on christmas and she slit her throat that night that was better than going back there i mean she lived thank god but that's better than going to some of these facilities and you know these it's worse for kids because you know i can stand up and say they did this they did that but children are what they say is you know less valued and can considered you know it's it's not it's it's like not taken seriously and it's just really too bad like what this country is doing to people and the kids and they they i mean that judge just got sentenced for getting a payoff for every kid he sent to a juvenile center and you know you have judges that are sentencing people to the jails they own

yeah the new conflict of interest how is that happening and you know biden kind of did away with the private prisons but all they did was rebrand themselves and open up the ice camps that's where all the refugees are going now and nobody is checking them that's why you know i love paris hilton for coming forward and talking about her experience at the boarding school and, you know, using her platform and, you know, her privilege to put an end to it for others, because, you know, it's, it's not just the boarding school, it's all institutions that have too much power. And, you know, I'll say it again, these institutions cannot be allowed to continue investigating themselves yeah yeah there needs to be a third party that that gives oversight and everything to that and all that good stuff

what's a message that uh you know we i had an author on the show one time and she she wrote books and she was sometimes having trouble writing books and uh you know you get you get stuck with writing a book in and you're like okay you know I get your brain kind of freezes up and she was one time at a book tour doing a book signing and this gal came up to her and said you know I read your books while I was in prison and it really helped me and it made all the difference and we shared your book among us, all the ladies in prison and we would, you know,

have like a community thing in there in prison and read your book. And, and it, it helped us want something better and to build a better life. And so she said that one of the things he does now is she keeps a picture and she has a photo of this woman in her orange jumpsuit in prison and she realized that she's not writing mostly for herself she's writing for other people and so now when she writes she's thinking about how she can give uh her experiences and her you

know how she deals with her issues and everything else uh to other people to inspire them through books and stuff and so maybe there's an avenue that you can do there with your writing and you can inspire other inmates that there's a chance, an opportunity to come out and make a better life for themselves. Yeah. You know, my dad sent me a book with a bunch of writing prompts. I started writing this book when I was in prison. Like I was literally writing chapters as, you know, my time went along. And when I got out, I was so overwhelmed. I couldn't even like sit down and focus on anything. It took

me like, like literally a couple of years to get out and like work on this book again, because a lot of the chapters are really traumatic. I mean, like, for instance, I was in prison with all the female veterans that were thrown away by the military for standing up to their rapists. Wow. Like in the military. Yeah. And they all became addicts or, you know, whatever happened, you know, one of the girls, she fought back, like they all tell these, you know, military women to do, Oh, you have a gun. Well, she fought back and she got court marshaled or whatever they call it and charged for assault on an officer so like you know the military my and i have like no respect for the military at

this point after being in prison with you know these women that were in the military i have no respect for it it breeds predators and it protects predators god bless our troops and all that but you know it's just a patriarchal institution that, you know, doesn't care about women. They can't even get, you know, armor that fits them properly. Yeah, that's true. I think I've heard that. You know, it's kind of made designed for the males. So what's, you're working on the book.

You're working on new laws that are going on. Are you going to, are you going to, you're doing more displays of your artwork, taking them out to shows and things like that? Well, I'm down south now, so I'm trying to figure out the best avenues and the best ways to do that. You know, selling your stuff online, there's so many different avenues,

so many different places and stuff. And I think it's great you found this wonderful outlet to help yourself, but also help other people. And there's a message and a journey think it's great. You found this wonderful outlet to help yourself, but also help other people. And there's a message and a journey behind it as well. I want to get, I want to get my brand in like a big department store, like Kohl's or something like that. That's my goal. I'm going to figure out how to do it. But also for anybody out there who, you know, has been in my shoes, struggle with mental health issues, you know, whatever has a shady pass. There's something called vocational rehab. And that really helped me get this business, you know, up and running. Like I didn't know how to write a business plan. I knew

nothing about that. And they helped me with that. Like I got a financial advisor, they helped me get a $10,000 grant. And I'm sitting there like, Oh my God, I've never gotten this much money before legally so this is this is great you know another thing you could do is start a community there's a lot of people to start communities online uh youtube videos they'll they'll do a patreon or community to help other women who've been through these sort of trauma issues and uh are trying to rehabilitate their lives because people need something like that they need somebody who goes hey i've went through what you went through and i i found a

positive way into the light and uh i'm going to help other people and and women are big in the community they're very social they're very community oriented just their biology has always been that way and so in prison we make families like i had like six different mothers and 20 different aunties and a whole bunch of sisters like and you know this whole like pinning women against each other it was so weird because i didn't find any of that in prison i found so much support and like you know these women believed in me more than i did like my girl dawn she she, she just got on her own show. She's like a motivational speaker now. I'm so proud of her, but she was like, I want

you to do a portrait of my family. And I didn't do portraits back then. I didn't think I could. And I'm so glad she like forced me to do it because apparently I'm really good at it. And I just didn't have the confidence myself to do it. And like that, like it's not that shady hater, you know, competitive energy. Like we're all in the gutter. So it was like a lot of trying to lift each other up. And it was just really nice change from, you know, what I'm used to, I guess. Well, your ability to do artwork is awesome. I mean, I can just do stick figures.

That's about all I can do. And then they're really awful looking stick figures so i mean i appreciate your art and everything you're pouring into it and i like your translating clothing uh you know i've got some friends that they do they make art and they they put on tiktok and they as they're drawing it or like youtube they'll do like live things as they're drawing it and people tune in and they build community and and that's another great way to you know sell products and move stuff so i'm glad you're doing all this and you're you're activating this world uh anything more you want to tease up or touch on before you go out um well i think there's a lot of stigmas in this country you know when it comes to addiction and

you know women in prison like i had conservative women tell me when i got out if you don't want to get raped by cops and don't break the law and go to jail like just say you're okay with cops being predators like yeah just go ahead and say that um and you know 70 of women in prison when they go in have some sort of domestic violence or sexual assault in their background like these are the women that are getting locked up they're not these you know criminals that are made out to be, they are women who have slipped through the cracks of society that is, you know, failing them. You know, my generation did what we were supposed to do. We went to college, we took out these crazy loans and now we're swimming in debt. We trusted our doctors

who were lied to by big pharma when we had ADHD or anxiety or depression or a broken bone. And we were given all of these meds that, you know, made us lose our mind. And then when we got addicted to them, we got locked up for it, you know, all for profit, whether it's the insurance companies, whether it's big pharma, whether it's the prisons, whether it's the rehabs that have a 94% failure rate, and it's no refund. A friend of mine drank a cup of coffee in the wrong area of the rehab, a petty rule. They kicked him out, no refund, $30,000. And then they just fill that spot. That is corruption to me. And then he got out and overdosed because that's what happens when someone that fragile, you wouldn't kick a cancer patient out of their rehabilitation

if they drank a cup of coffee in the wrong part of the building. Like they had, they just have petty rules and they hold addicts to these crazy standards when they're not in the right state of mind. Like I had to face my trauma before I could get clean. Like that was the reason I kept relapsing because, you know, when, you know, I had a, uh, when a therapist tell me I was one of the most dangerous types of addicts because I had chronic pain it was traumatic you know and I was an addict on top of it so you put those three things together and it's a much harder monster to overcome because every time

I'm in pain my brain is gonna pull up this you know drug card every time i have a post-traumatic stress trigger my brain is gonna pull up that you know drug card you know that's that's how she explained it as like files like your brain keeps and it will like terrorize you you know with and that's why with trauma when you wake up so much in the middle of the night your brain from nightmares your brain is literally trying to scare you awake because it feels vulnerable while it's sleeping there you go well it's these are all issues that need to be worked on and i think if you if you one of the things you can do is make it as your mission in life a way to help other people help reconcile

some of these things passing the laws you're talking about. And I think pouring yourself in your art like you do and sharing that artwork is probably the best healing for you and for other people, especially when they understand, you know, what goes in behind it and everything else. Give me your.com, Elizabeth, so people can find you on the interwebs and get to know you better and order up your work. Yep. HTTP colon slash slash www.legalarice.com slash en slash Elizabeth dot

McAuliffe. And my social media handles are all the same. It's EPM underscore art underscore 1111. There you go. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it thanks for sharing your journey and continued success in what you're doing thank you thank you

thanks to my audience for tuning in go to goodreads.com for just christmas youtube.com for just christmas and linkedin.com for just christmas all those crazy places we are on the internet thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time