Monday Aug 21, 2023

From a Prison Sentence to a Promising Future with Michelle Cirocco

From a Prison Sentence to a Promising Future with Michelle Cirocco

This episode was recorded Live at the Durango Juvenile Detention Facility in Phoenix, Arizona. We have recorded episodes here in the past with Cordero Holmes and Drakkar Wright, but this is the first time we have had a female guest speak in front of 16 young women currently serving time in the Facility.

Michelle grew up in a small town in western New York but moved to Arizona when she was 9. When she got to the "big city", she felt like she didn't fit in, so she became obsessed with being accepted by the new people around her and making the money she felt she needed to move out of the economic class she grew up in. In 8th grade, at age 13, Michelle found acceptance with a "bad crowd" and was kicked out of school for the first time. By 9th grade, at age 15, she realized she could make the money she wanted by dealing the drugs she liked to do. That same year, she was arrested on 65 charges of selling cannabis and spent a week in Durango. She was released with a felony conviction, three years of probation, and a short-lived new outlook on life.

This sentence seemed to set her on the straight and narrow. She cleaned up her act, got off probation early, and enrolled in a modeling school to pursue her dreams. However, the harsh modeling industry was not welcoming to her, and after being rejected at her first audition, she felt like a failure with no options to make her dreams a reality. This rejection brought back her childhood fears of rejection and being unable to create a life that was more than the one she came from.

At 19, she and her boyfriend decided their best option was to start a family. After having two kids and several dead-end jobs, she decided she could do better. So she left him to go find it, but with no real plan, she quickly fell back into what she knew and began not only selling drugs but also running a meth lab out of her house. Michelle tells us "She was making good money until she wasn't". In 1996, her life changed forever when she was given the maximum 7-year prison sentence for her crimes. She had two young kids and had no idea what to expect, except that her life would never be the same.

In prison, Michelle's counselor gave her the wake-up call she needed. He told her she could wait out the sentence worrying about what the other women thought about her and trying to fit in, or she could use the time to better herself. It took her losing everything to finally feel empowered to make a change and figure out how to get it all back. Michelle ultimately served 5 years, 11 months, and 26 days. This year, she is celebrating 21 years of freedom. She says the first step in her journey to redemption was taking a hard look at her life and figuring out how she got where she was. After that, she went through a recovery program, got serious about her education, and has since dedicated her life to working with women in prisons across the country to help them turn their lives around.

Throughout this journey, Michelle realized that the issue wasn’t the people around her but rather the fact that she was more concerned with their opinion of her than how she viewed herself. She had no idea who she was, what she cared about, or where she wanted to be, so she didn't know what steps it would take to make it happen. This is why, when working with incarcerated women, she tells them that setting and meeting goals is the key to making real change. She encourages them to use visualization practices, like vision boards, to dream bigger than they have ever imagined before to determine what they want their lives to look like, then break down the steps it takes for them to get there.

Michelle does warn that when you decide to change your life, people around you can resist, push back, and challenge you because they get envious, insecure, or feel like they are losing you. Generational incarceration and familial rejection can make this even more difficult. Looking back, Michelle sees her prison sentence as the best thing that could have happened to her because it gave her the space to dig in, believe in herself, rebuild herself, and connect with the resources she needed. 

“If I could have anything, what would it be?”

 In this episode, you'll hear:

  • That we cannot let other people's opinions of us be what we believe ourselves to be. 
  • The power of self-respect, visualization, and taking control of your life. 
  • Why people around you may push back when you are ready to make a change

 

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