Marchell Taylor: We have to really get this thing out where judges, DAs, parole board members have to know that they're incarcerating individuals that should be hospitalized. I should have been hospitalized before I did 21 years. I just want to see people transformed and changed. I don't want to see people suffer. I suffered.
Sam Fuqua: That's Marchell Taylor Sr. and this is Well, That Went Sideways! A podcast that serves as a resource to help people have healthy, respectful communication. We present a diversity of ideas, tools, and techniques to help you transform conflict in relationships of all kinds. In this episode, we talk with Marchell Taylor about his journey through childhood trauma, an undiagnosed brain injury, and incarceration. His story highlights the need for proper diagnosis and treatment for individuals in the criminal justice system. It's a need Marchell Taylor responded to himself by developing programs for inmates and by his work as a screener for TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury, and as a peer specialist for WellPower, a mental health services provider in the Denver, Colorado area.
I'm Sam Fuqua, co-host of the program with Alexis Miles. Hi, Alexis.
Alexis Miles: Hi, Sam.
Sam Fuqua: And we're so pleased to be joined for this episode of Well, That Went Sideways! by Marchell Taylor Sr. Hello, and welcome.
Marchell Taylor: Thank you. I appreciate this opportunity to be able to share, um, this story, you know. I really do. I appreciate you guys. Let's get this thing going so we can inspire some lives, maybe.
Sam Fuqua: I think where that starts for me, Marchell, is, is with you telling your story for our listeners. Talk about your early years, what it was like for you growing up, and, and then how you ended up in the criminal justice system.
Marchell Taylor: Yeah. So, growing up in less than valuable environments in Detroit in the 70s, uh, 80s, um, and literally experiencing domestic violence, molestation, at a young age, drugs, alcohol, father came back from Vietnam, whatever he experienced over there, his coping mechanism was morphine and, and heroin. And he came back from Vietnam and super imposes disorders on to my entire family. Uh, started stealing, uh, from my mom, and at this time she had five kids. So him, of course, experiencing PTSD or whatever it was, I didn't understand it then, none of us did, we were kids, uh, he began to teach us maladaptive ways to cope. Drugs, induced us with alcohol at very young ages, showed us how to steal from stores. And so, at six, seven, eight, nine years old, in fact, I would even say at ten, I became a drug addict and alcoholic by ten years old. And, um, growing up in those environments, not understanding how to deal with stress, not having a understanding of mental health issues, especially in note, and I hate to say, but it's the truth, and in minority communities, we don't understand mental health. We don't understand when a person says that you have these disorders, what it means. So of course, growing up in those environments, mom divorcing dad and marrying another veteran that came back with not so much as the same, uh, disorder, but still came back violent and end up in, would, would, would beat my mother in front of us, it literally rewired my brain to operate ineffectively throughout life.
So, you asked me what led me to prison is, uh, not having the right skills or tools to deal with trauma, to deal with stress. Trauma led me to prison. Traumatic brain injuries led me to prison. My environment, living 

in those less than valuable environments around domestic violence, around robberies, around, I mean, it was just in those communities. And you know, if you don't have the right guidance, the right tools to deal with stress and trauma and traumatic brain injuries, mostly all of us, mostly everyone in those communities was led right to prison, you know. And, and the courts didn't identify, uh, that our behaviors were due to injuries, traumatic brain injuries, mental health, uh, disorders, psychological injuries. So, back then when, and we were getting our time or, or, or growing up in those communities and judges were sentencing us, they didn't have an understanding of mental health either.
Sam Fuqua: You mentioned, uh, or I had read that in addition to the upbringing and the environment you just described, you had a brain injury yourself as a kid, right? You were in a car accident?
Marchell Taylor: Yeah, I was in a car accident when I was nine. And I, my mom, I think what they say is I was too young to really understand, but my mom, she said the gas line broke and she was backing up from a wall and trying to turn and it accelerated and hit the wall going like 40 miles an hour and literally totaled the car while I didn't have my seatbelt on. I was trapping myself in. And, of course, in those days, we're boys, you go to the hospital, they stitch you up, go back home, let us know if anything else happens. After that, I can see, I see myself getting more violent. And then, and then, now we're in Flint. So, looking at, I mean, literally, we, so I left Detroit about, just about seven or eight and moved to Flint, but was going back and forth with, my dad lived in Detroit and my mom moved to Flint to get away from my dad, actually, and to go down to Flint to seek employment. Believe it or not, she was in a mental health field for nine years and never even discussed mental health with us.
But, growing up, like I said, growing up in those areas and having, um, the guidance of, I would say, of deceivers, what else can you expect the child to do, right? If those are the only skills we had: drugs, alcohol, stealing, robbing. If those are the only skills that we were taught in those environments, how can you expect us to do anything else? We don't understand mental health. We didn't understand anxiety disorders. We have no idea because first thing you tell a person that's in those communities if you have mental health, and those times, that doesn't apply to us, else for the white folks. And that's the truth. And, and so, not being able to identify at young ages, the TBI or the mental health issues is what led me to prison. Not understanding grief. Not understanding how to deal with grief. Not understanding how to deal with prefrontal cortex damage. Not having any identification of a mental health issue. Not understanding anything about anxiety disorders. Not understanding anything about borderline personality disorders. All these things is what I was diagnosed with after doing 21 years in prison. After doing 21 years in prison.
I'd be dog if someone comes in front. And I'm a criminal justice advocate right now, I go in court and I argue cases for individuals and I bring up mental health right out the gate. If I know you come from adverse childhood experiences, I bring up TBI and I'm a TBI screener. So, I'll collect that data and I'll bring it up right out the gate because they didn't do that for me 25 years ago. They just sentenced me and gave me 25 years, you know. I mean, I've been out about five but... So, I went throughout life suffering with these disorders and never, never understanding or have an identification of them, or how to deal with them. Never having the tools to rationalize effectively, to reason effectively, to use good judgment. My judgment hardwired me to use ill judgment, if you want to call it. So, those were the tools and skills I had. And then again, the criminal justice system punished me for my illnesses and never even gave me treatment. And the DOC is not going to give you treatment. They're not going to do anything but lock you in a, in a confined cell because they look at your behaviors as defiant, and not as that this person has an illness and need help.

And I'd like to say this, if I was a judge and your file came in front of me and you came in front of me I would know right away that this person ability to reason or rationalize is not in place because you wouldn't be in front of me. If you had the ability to use good judgment, if you had the tools to, to, to plan effectively, to play effectively, to reset yourself effectively back to baseline state of safety, you wouldn't be in front of me. But most of us that come from those communities live in survival mode, brains, bodies, minds, parasympathetic sympathetic nervous system stuck, frozen in survival mode. How do you expect someone to do anything different than what they were taught, you know? So, that's what led me to prison, did 21 years and came out and 36 days later I robbed a Papa John's pizza and went back facing life in 2016.
Sam Fuqua: And if I heard you correctly, it was not until that offense that put you back in prison that someone in the criminal justice system fought to take into account that you might have a brain injury or other issues?
Marchell Taylor: David Kraut. He was a public defender. And, uh, this was the first time someone ever, ever noted. And, and, and let me say this, 2016 when I did rob the Papa John's pizza, my brain, it did, it just shut down. My brain, body, the brain, body, and mind can only take so much stress before it shuts down. Before it just don't, you know, and, and it did. And I was suicidal and I took a bunch of pills and went to the county jail. I knew I was going to get life. I knew that because this was my seventh felony, three robberies. This is a robbery would have kidnappings, two charges, uh, at one time and they trump them all the way up, but it's my seventh felony. So, when my attorney came to me and said, "Look Marchell, they're filing a habitual criminal on you. You have seven felonies with these two. You have three robberies. How did this happen?" And, I just broke down and cried. He opened the laptop, showed me the videotape of it, and he asked me how did it happen? And I said, "I don't know, man." I said, "I just know I can't go back and do life." And I just broke down and started crying. I said, "I want to apologize to that person." I just broke down, started crying. And he said, "You know what?" He looked at my paperwork. He said, "You just did 21 years in prison." He said, "How long did you do straight?" I said, "Almost 15 straight." He said, "Then you got out and went back for another three and you got," I said, "Yeah."
He said, "I know exactly how this happened. You have mental health issues, man. You don't know how to, you don't even have any skills or tools to live in society." He said, "But guess what? I'm gonna send you to this program. If you don't mind going, I'm gonna send you to the Men's Transition Unit at the Old County Jail, Denver County, and they're going to help you." He said, "You let me worry about this case." He said, "I'm going to go talk to these people because you did a lot of time and they can't expect you to come home and have the tools.” He said, "You need mental health issues. You probably have traumatic brain injury and everything. Let me set you up and send you over to the Old County. I was downtown at the Denver County Jail." I said, "Yes, please. Whatever, whatever will help." So, they send me over there to the Men's Transition Unit and they start giving me, they gave me an assessment, Brain Injury Alliance that came down, gave me a TBI assessment, screening, everything, and then, uh, determined that I have prefrontal cortex damage. I didn't know any of that. I didn't even know what a prefrontal cortex or a frontal anything.
But what happened is while I did all of that time in prison, I studied business for 16 years. I locked myself in sales. I went to the library. I started studying everything on marketing. I started. So, I had this business education before I came home. I just didn't have the tools and skills to deal with stress, grief, loss, any of that. And, being locked away from society for so long, after coming home, I went in when it was pagers and I came out when it was phones. So, that was scary. I came out when you would go to grocery stores and check your own stuff out. That was scary. Everything was scared, to talk to people was scary. And so, no 

wonder I went back, you know, because I had been conditioned to that environment. So that's what happened. I go to the county jail, they give me the CBT. They get Dr. Nina Minagawa, uh, Dr. Gafford, Dr. Bradford, they start setting me up with all kinds of treatment and start teaching me about the brain. Dr. Brad McMillan, he started doing trauma classes in the county jail because if I figured if I had that injury, I wanted to know what the cause, how I fix it. What the heck? I want to, even if I had to go do life, and that's what my doctor says, she said, "Even if you have to go do life, wouldn't you want to be able to control your emotions and regulate your, your anxiety? Wouldn't you want to be able to control yourself?” And I was like, "Heck, yeah. I ain't been ready to ever do that. When I get angry, I go to zero to 100 and I'm back in jail." She said, "Yes, I do, please."
And I started learning and learning and I was facing life and I started the Rebuild Your Mind Mental Health Challenge from the county jail. I had a Corey Shively, my brother, my guy, brother, and my business partner, was standing right by my side through the whole way. And he was like, "What do we do, bro?" I said, "I'm going to start getting 40 inmates together." I said, "It's 40 people in this program, and this MTU program all of us is facing a lot of time." I mean, we had sex offenders, murderers, everybody. I said, "I'm going to, I bet you neither one of them have family that sent letters to judges. I'm going to start challenging judges, DAs, parole officers, probation officers to talk about their own mental health issues." Because if I didn't know I had it and I didn't know I had these things all of this time, I wonder how many of them don't know. And so, as, we started the Rebuild Your Mind Mental Health Challenge, you can Google it. And we made history with it, actually, in this state. The first inmates that ever started a campaign and a mental health challenge from the Denver County Jail, you can look it up. And so, 40 letters start going to all of our judges challenging those judges to talk about their own mental health issue. Uh, 40 letters was going to parole officers every week to where the parole board said, okay, stop sending the Rebuild Your Mind stuff. We don't know who that is, and they're doing that.
As we understand, and, and it went viral, got to the news, and the judge, after two and a half years and seeing the campaign and seeing the support and seeing the county behind me did not give me one day in prison for my seventh felony. Gave me eight years mental health probation and 16 years suspended and said, "If you do come back it's going to start with 16. But Marchell, with the support that you've secured while you were in this county jail and the doctors you have and the treatment you received, I'm going to have to go on the side of treatment today and I'm not going to give you one day in prison." Changed my life forever. Change, and I was already changed. I already had treatment. So the difference was, I was able to, uh, I studied the brain at that time for two and a half years. I studied, uh, not just my injury, I just became enamored with the brain, as I started studying. I was like, oh wow, this is what PTSD is. This is what the amygdala is, amygdala. This is the, you know, I just really got into it. Uh, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk was one of my biggest inspirations. I studied his book and as I did, I went and explained to that judge also, vividly like a doctor, because I literally just really studied the study, study, and he said, "I've never heard an inmate explain the brain or brain injuries like that." And, and he looked at the DA and says, "You know what? I understand the severity of his crime," he said, "but I also understand the power of treatment and we've never heard an inmate talk like this and have come in here and I've seen," because I've been going back and forth to him for two and a half years so he's seen the progress.
And, and I came home, got with DU and, been partnered with DU ever since. Uh, Professor Kim Gorgon's, we called our wonder woman of brain science and a graduate school to professional psychology, got behind the Rebuild Your Mind campaign, supported the bill that I wrote. I wrote a bill while I was in prison to get TBI screenings in DOC. Now they're doing it at Vista. I just felt like if I didn't know and they kept punishing 

me for my sicknesses, someone else, we have to really get this thing out where judges, DAs, parole board members, have to know that they're incarcerating individuals that should be hospitalized. I should have been hospitalized before I did 21 years. I just want to see people transformed and change. I don't want to see people suffer. I suffered for a long, since I was six years old, I suffered. And I went through that suffering. And in prison and what soothed that suffering is I found education is soothing. When I came home, I was a highly educated, mentally ill parolee with a traumatic brain injury and didn't even know it.
Sam Fuqua: That is an amazing story and thank you for sharing it.
Alexis Miles: Marchell, first, I want to just applaud you for the work that you've done. You have changed the whole paradigm, because the whole system is built on this mythology that everybody's on a level playing field, that people make conscious choices to do the things they do, and what you've just said is no. Our brains get structured and programs in certain ways because of the environments that we're in. So, thank you for explaining that so well, and for talking about what can be done to move people into a deeper understanding about behavior, human behavior. Thank you for that.
Marchell Taylor: Wow, thank you.
Alexis Miles: Yeah. So, you are literally changing the way people see, um, criminal justice, behaviors that are deemed criminal and, and all of that. So thank you.
Marchell Taylor: Thank you.
Alexis Miles: I did want to ask you a follow up question. Rebuild Your Mind, so is that the program that you put together? Can you say more about that program?
Marchell Taylor: Me and my business partner and my guy, brother, when I was facing that life sentence, you know, when you're facing that kind of time, you're, you're grasping for any lifeline, you know. It's like, God, I just did 21 years. I'm going to go back for the rest of my life. And now that I was getting the treatment, I, I told Corey, I said, "Man," I said, "let's see if we can, uh, do a Rebuild Your Mind challenge." And that's what the challenge was. I said, because we want to rebuild the mind of individuals in the criminal justice system. And how many individuals out there that's going to the service with traumatic brain injuries before they get to it? How many officers shooting kids and had traumatic brain injuries? How many judges had traumatic brain injuries, mental health issues? So, we were like, I said, "Bro, we could do the Rebuild Your Mind." He's on the outs. I'm on the end, facing life. So, he's looking it up on Google. He said, "There's already a Rebuild Your Mind." I said, "Is there a Rebuild Your Mind challenge? A mental health challenge?" He said, "Nope." He said, "Okay, bro." And so we did it.
And this is what happened. When we started doing it, and from that program, MTU, we secured the support, and he's like a brother to me today, his name is Deputy Mike Jackson, he is a 30-year deputy at the Denver County Jail, and he's the president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 27. He said, "I will back you." He said, "We've never seen an inmate promote mental health." And he had been knowing me for years because when he started I was shortly coming in. So, we kind of grew up together in that dang thing. But he, and when he seen me said, "Marchell, aren't you tired of this?" I said, "Yes, I am, bro." And he was like, "Well, you're in the right program." And he said, "And I'm going to support you." He said, "Go call your 

brother. Tell your brother that the Fraternal Order of Police is going to support your campaign while you're incarcerated. And I'll meet with him and do the first challenge." I said, "Are you serious?" So, he met my brother on the outs. That video gets it. So then, that's how it kind of got to the news because they seen that we had the Fraternal Order of Police, and he came to court for me and everything and, and we built a bond. And, um, right now I still go to the Lodge, we still work together and that's what happens.
So, it became the Rebuild Your Mind Challenge. DND, you got involved. Kim Gorgans, that's our wonder woman of brain science. She's the lead neuropsychologist. She started calling us down to speak at our schools. And then in January, this January to March, he gave us 31 students, forensic psych students to help us build, Rebuild Your Mind, out. And so, it's just, it's been a, a, a, a traumatic journey, but it's also been, right, dialectical. It's also been an amazing journey when you can finally live in the power of wellness. And that's what I promote, treatment. Get the treatment, please, because it transform your life. I live a very healthy and pretty good life, you know. I like to say that, and it's because of the treatment I finally received the identification and the, the support. The support. I've had a lot of good mental health support.
Alexis Miles: So, you've talked about the power of information, the power of treatment. And, I also think I'm hearing you say the power of relationships with people.
Marchell Taylor: Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what was my journey. It was building those relationships and, and also, the relationships came when I was able to understand like when you tell a black person or Mexican or people of color that they have mental health issues, I always say this, most of the time they're going to say, "Yeah, right. I don't have no mental health issues. I just need more money." You could go to a prison and ask a hundred inmates that are facing life, do they have mental health issues? They're going to tell you, "I ain't got no mental health issues." "Dude shouldn't have tested me like that." Or, "He shouldn't have did that." But, if you go to those inmates and say, "Hey, do you feel agitated inside all the time and have you felt that way for a long, long time?" And they think, they say, "Yeah, I have." "Do you find yourself snappy all the time?" And they say, "Yes, I do." "Have you found yourself feeling in fear all the time while you be in these cells?" "Hell yeah, I do." That's mental health issues. You can't tell a person they have it. It's anosognosia. Anosognosia is the inability to see our own illnesses. And, it's only because the way it's explained.
You can't go to a black person and say you got anxiety disorder. You got borderline personality. But you can go to him and say, if you feel anxious all the time, every day, and when you wake up and you can't focus or concentrate because you got a hundred things, if you feel in survival mode every day, nine times out of ten, I can tell you, you're sympathetic, parasympathetic, your brain waves, everything is out of whack, and it's going to, hard to be, make effective decisions, and relationships in your life. You know? Now I know this. I didn't know it, when I was going through it, you know, but now I do because I've been on a professional side for seven years now. So, I'm trained well to be able to see it. Have like that, say that third eye, I guess. And it's sad. It's sad to see, especially when you see it in your own family that's still struggling with meds, still struggling, and you can't help them. It's like you try to give them all the resources, but they just don't see it, right?
Alexis Miles: Marchell, I think in the Black community and maybe in other communities of color, to say that you have mental illness or mental health issues, there's such a stigma attached to that. It's a big stigma. It's like, no, that's not something that happens in our community.

Marchell Taylor: That's right. And that's why we lost a Rebuild Your Mind Challenge because we wanted to destigmatize it. We wanted to show individuals that was in a professional field who, if they had it, if they can identify it, so I guess that kind of piqued the judge's interest. Because he was like, wow. And he asked at the, at the hearing, he said, "What made you decide to do the Rebuild Your Mind Challenge?" I told, I said, "Because I didn't identify my issues and I wanted to know what judges are sentencing individuals that don't even, that have these same issues or have similar issues." He said, "That was genius."
Alexis Miles: I totally agree because, when, as I hear you talk about it, you took the label off and you use the symptoms. Because people can relate to the symptoms, but not to the label. So yeah, that was profound.
Marchell Taylor: And that's what I try to do everywhere I go is one question that I asked everybody, everybody. And this is what my doctor, Nina Minagawa, and I challenge you guys on this call to ask everybody, your kids, your mates, whoever it may be, coworker, "Do you feel safe?" That was the biggest question for me. And I automatically, I was in prison, in jail facing life, and I said, "Yeah, I feel safe," because I felt like I can protect myself, right? I told my doctor, I said, "Yeah, I feel safe," and she said, "Oh, you feel safe, Marchell?" I said, "What do you mean? Yeah." She said, "Where do you feel safe at?" And that stopped me in my tracks. She said, "Tell me. Be mindful and tell me where you feel safe. Do you feel safe when you go back in that city or knowing that you're facing life? Do you feel safe politically? Do you feel safe financially?" I was like, "No." She said, "Well then, be mindful. You don't feel safe. You could say you feel safe in certain places," but it engaged the conversation and it'll engage it with other individuals, kids, because then you can explain that and say, "Where do you feel safe? In your school? In your class? With your friends?" Because that's what we wanna know. We wanna know if you don't feel safe inside, you're gonna superimpose your disorders on everything else around you. I only know from experience.
You, I didn't grow up to be the darn Joker. And when I was a kid, I knew I was going to be Batman. I had all the gadgets and everything. I didn't plan on turning into the Riddler or the Joker. You know, I didn't. They made a whole, that trauma transformed me. I was going to save lives and save the people that were suffering. And that darn trauma and them TBIs turned me into the Joker, darn it. Now I'm trying to transform individuals back into humans instead of mutants. I just kind of, you know, and I just, the reason I say that I can, I'm a peer specialist so I use my story to help others. And I kind of make jovious of it. Like, I know I went through it. I went through the trauma and I'm like a comedian, kinda, I really am. I do comedians in front of, and so I, I, I let people know, "Hey, I suffered it and there's a way out, and there's a way out. You don't have to stay in the suffering."
Steve, my supervisor at WellPower, he said, "Emotional pain minus acceptance..." this is a equation, "Emotional pain minus acceptance equals suffering." You have to accept the pain. You have to feel the anger, feel the hurt. You can't numb it, get high, coke it away like I did, drink it away, sex it away, fight it away, rob it away. It does not happen. You have to accept the pain of losing a mother at 17. Accept the pain of molesters coming into your house and molesting you at young age or attempting. Accept the pain of your father introducing you to drugs and alcohol knowing that that's the wrong thing to do it for a child. Right? You have to accept that before you could move, you know. And most of us won't accept it. We, most of us have not even identified it because we stay so high or drunk. It's just a raw and cut truth. You know what I mean? Most of us stay so high and drunk and so away from it, we, we don't know how to accept it. We don't even have the tools and skills to accept the pain. That's the sad part.

Sam Fuqua: For someone listening to this who may be identifying or, or knows someone in their life who they, who they're now identifying some of what you've talked about with, can you talk a little bit more about first steps, whether it's me listening to this thinking, yes, something else is going on, or I know someone who I think something else might be going on. You've, you've used the acronym TBI screening, that's Traumatic Brain Injury screening. So, that sounds like one initial step. But how do people get started?
Marchell Taylor: Identification. We have to help individuals identify it, and we can't use the same terminology that psychologists use. You got to meet people where there are. You, so you have to understand, first and foremost, recognizing the signs and symptoms. Like I said earlier, if you go to a prison or minority community, probably even a lot of white communities, and you tell those individuals, "Hey, you have a mental health issue, for real." They'll probably deny it. They'll probably deny it because they don't identify the signs and symptoms. So, the first thing is helping individuals understand what the signs and symptoms look like. And that is, uh, what does anxiousness look like? Or over-anxiousness? What does, uh, being too reserved look like? Or, or when you have a child or a, a mate, someone stuck to where they're afraid, are stuck in fear, and so they're afraid to talk to someone, afraid to set boundaries, of helping individuals understand it, what it looks like first from a basic understanding and not maybe a psychological understanding. We got, like I said, you got to kind of meet people where they at. So, you go to them and say, "Hey, look, do you feel like you can't sit still for two minutes or one?" And they say, "Yeah!" And it's okay to sit still and they feel it.
First, letting them identify what's going on in their bodies. I always do this, three minutes, sit still for me and scan your body. First and foremost. People say they feel good. You feel good. Let's see where you feel good at internally first. Let's see if your organs feel good. Let's see if your heart feel good. So, just scan your toes. Let's start with the toes. Sit still for me and try it. Most people can't do it if they've never had, was able to do mindful meditation or to meditate. It's not coming from ours because we've been given, uh, gas, all go, anxiousness, most of our life because of survival mode, lack of resources. So, we've been in survival mode most of our life. So, our brains as hardwired in survival, our bodies, our brains, our minds, uh, again, our nervous system. It's always on. Go, go, go. So, it's been, our brains been pumping cortisol for so long that it damaged other neurons in the brain. Those neurons are impulse conducing cells, actually. And when it damaged those impulse, uh, conducing cells, leads to anxiousness. So now, here goes the brain damage being hardwired to operate ineffectively, right? And, if no one ever comes and stops the child in its youth to be able to use the tools to breathe, to rationalize, effective in those moments, that will become their condition, you see. And now their body, brain and mind is conditioned to operate ineffectively. Neuroception, I call it.
We believe what's safe is danger and what's danger is safe. Because our brains, because of the adverse childhood experiences, because of the blows, I grew up to believe that robbing and stealing and doing all of those things, I can get away with it. It's safe. You'll have your own independence, your money, and Instead of getting a job and working and working two jobs and things, that was danger to me because I couldn't receive the money or the independence that I would have received from doing it the fast way. So, that's putting the anxiousness into children that come from those communities and not giving them the tools and skills. So, that's just anxiety disorders. That's just one. Then you go to borderline personality disorders to where you start, if you want to break it down to the simplest form where a child could understand it, you would have to explain it, when the person experienced that the symptoms and the signs.


Right now let me give you an example. We're getting ready to go train five schools in Aurora under our TBI. We have the only peer-to-peer TBI curriculum. But when we go into these schools and train them in our curriculum, I'm not going to talk to them like a psychologist. I'm not a psychologist. I'm going to talk to them at their level so they can understand what, what, so what their friend, if they have a friend that won't talk to anybody, then there's some things we need to look at. We're going to break it down to where they'll be able to understand it from a perspective of a child. And so, that's one thing is helping them identify the signs and symptoms, and then referring them out and getting them connected to the treatment is what we've been doing mostly for individuals coming from the criminal justice system. You got to understand the signs and symptoms. And that's the big thing. This is what it looked like in your friend. If you see this in your friends, you might want to tell them he needs help. Because then we can transform the youth first, and they'll become advocates and TBI screeners.
Alexis Miles: Marchell, let's say somebody hears this podcast or otherwise hears about this, and they want to take a first step, is there a number they can call? Is there...
Marchell Taylor: Um, it's four of us TBI screeners over here at AYBOS Marketing and Rebuild Your Mind, if you google us, AYBOS Marketing and Rebuild Your Mind, you would see that we are running one of the most aggressive initiatives. We have therapists, uh, that we refer people out to. I also work at WellPower. I refer people to WellPower all the time. So, you guys can call me at (720) 490-9834. This is my personal number because this is personal to me. So, if you have a TBI or if you feel like you can't control your emotions, if you regulate your emotions, can't control your impulses, um, you feel agitated inside all the time, if you snappy all the time, uh, and feel like, uh, you just can't cope or you've been coping the same way for so long, your brain may be stuck in survival mode. I was a ten year old alcoholic, uh, and let me say I was a 47 year old male with the brain of a ten year old child when I came home from prison. That's crazy. And I want people to understand that I was stuck, frozen, psychologically, in time. I was a modern day, uh, ice man, brain just stuck as a kid. It was! I did things the same way I did it as a kid when I came home. I'm 47 years old at ten. I was an alcoholic drug addict. I come home at 47 years old, and I was still doing the same thing. Tell me I wasn't stuck. I was stuck psychologically in my psychosocial stages of development. People need to understand that.
This is, it's development stages, and if you don't develop correctly in those stages, you pick up maladaptive ways to deal with those things and later on in life, you'll get in relationships and you'll still find yourself doing the same things and relationships at 30, 40 years old that you was doing at five, because you never made it correctly or never effectively made it through those stages. You know, so we find ourselves stuck in bad relationships, relationships that are violent, relationships that are unhealthy. A lot of times if we look back in our past and that's what we're doing, we're living in our present past, is what I like to say. You know what I mean? And so, we have to move forward through those stages first. And that's what's helped me.
Alexis Miles: And it sounds like you're saying it's never too late to go through those developmental stages.
Marchell Taylor: Well, let me say this. Um, I was facing life at the time. That was an odd time to even think about any kind of treatment I was looking at. I'd never come home. But when my doctor, like I said, Dr. Nina Minagawa, psychology services, she performed a miracle on me. I always say she uprooted that psychological cancer that lived in my brain and body for so long. You know what I mean? She did. And it was hard. And she said it, she said, "You got a lot of work to do." And I didn't understand at first, but then when she started explaining to me about grief and loss, knowing that I had already lost one of my sons to 

heroin overdose or fentanyl, so she had to help me get through that and taught me about grief and loss. A lot of us look at grief and loss, and I like to say that, it's really quick, 'cause this is important, of just losing a person. That this is what we grieve. But sometimes we grieve losing a station in life, losing a job, and we don't deal with those things, losing a dream. We grieve the loss of that, but we don't do that healthily. And we continue to pick up those things and they, and they'll get into us and they can affect us in bad ways. And I never knew how to deal with grief. Never knew the cycle of grief. I got stuck in disbelief for so long when I lost my mom. You know what I mean? You know, it's cycles that you go through. You go through disbelief, then, you know what I mean? You start guilt and all of this, and I never made it around that whole cycle. I just would go rob somebody to give me some crack or alcohol to not ever deal with it. That's the work. That's the hard work. You got to go back into that and, and reface that, and deal with that in a healthy way without drugs, without crack, and I cried many, many days because it felt so painful to have to go back and visit such painful memories.
Sam Fuqua: Marchell Taylor, thank you for sharing your story and for your work.
Marchell Taylor: Thank you both very much for this opportunity.
Sam Fuqua: Marchell Taylor Sr. works as a Traumatic Brain Injury screener and as a peer specialist for WellPower, a mental health services provider in the Denver, Colorado area.
Thanks for listening to Well, That Went Sideways! We produce new episodes twice a month. You can find them wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, sidewayspod.org. We also have information on our guests, interview transcripts, and links to more conflict resolution resources. That's sidewayspod.org. Our production team is Mary Zinn, Jes Rau, Norma Johnson, Alexis Miles, Alia Thobani, and me, Sam Fuqua. Our theme music is by Mike Stewart. We produce these programs in Colorado, on the traditional lands of the Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute Nations. To learn more about the importance of land acknowledgement, visit our website, sidewayspod.org. And this podcast is a partnership with The Conflict Center, a Denver-based nonprofit that provides practical skills and training for addressing everyday conflicts. Find out more at conflictcenter.org.