Returning "Citizen Wayne" - with Wayne Boatwright
The Road to Rediscovery by Aubrey Johnson, S09 E29, April 11, 2024
https://rss.com/podcasts/the-road-to-rediscovery/1427140/
Episode notes
Wayne Boatwright is a self-proclaimed “Returning Citizen”, from the life of an Ivy-League educated Attorney to serving time in San Quentin due to a tragic incident.
Wayne’s journey is one of lesson-learning, reflection, redemption and more. Tune in, as Wayne gives a complete transparent account of his actions, familial consequences, and the life lessons that no Ivy-League education could ever reveal to him.
Wayne’s brutally honest perspective teaches us to own our actions and decisions - no matter how tragic - at the same time giving us the assurance of hope with the importance of family, and the power of change.
To learn more about Wayne and subscribe to his blog, visit
.
To learn about the great reform initiatives at San Quentin, visit
https://sanquentinnews.com
Wayne’s also part of a young men and father’s empowering group; helping them to love and protect their families: https://www.man2man-uya.org.
The Road To Rediscovery April 11, 2024 S9 E29
HOST: This is entrepreneur and author John McLaughlin thanking you for listening to another amazing episode of The Road to Rediscovery. It's time to sit back, relax, and listen as your host Aubrey Johnson safely navigates us through life's challenges and guides us on a rewarding path of self-discovery.
Our lives are laid out on a road of bumps, turns, struggles and more. How do we respond? How do we endure adversity for learning and growth?
I'm Aubrey Johnson and we'll explore these questions and more on The Road to Rediscovery.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Road to Rediscovery. I'm your host, Aubrey Johnson. The Road to Rediscovery is about reflecting on life lessons to learn and grow from them, and of course, pay it forward and uplift others who are struggling through dark times.
Now, as you've heard in countless previous episodes, this show takes a pretty deep dive into our darkest days, struggles, adversities, transformations, and more. And at times, I'll admit, it gets pretty heavy, but it's absolutely quite necessary for helping others and giving people hope. With that said, for a lighter, more spirited conversation, I want to personally invite you to…
Now, as you've heard in countless previous episodes, this show takes a pretty deep dive into our darkest days, struggles, adversities, transformations, and more. And at times, I'll admit, it gets pretty heavy, but it's absolutely quite necessary for helping others and giving people hope. With that said, for a lighter, more spirited conversation, I want to personally invite you to subscribe to our second podcast, our sister podcast, Talking In 3s.
Here, we'll talk about three of our favorite anything, countless topics from sports to pizza toppings, ice cream toppings, movies, TVs, shows, animals and so much more. I also invite you to share your favorite three things as well. To be a part of it, just join our public Facebook group and subscribe to the podcast.
I will leave links to both in the episode show notes. All right, my special guest is a self-proclaimed returning citizen. Having served time in San Quentin, he's accepted his journey, forged his path, and is on a mission of societal transformation and challenges us to do the same.
He's also an author and manages his own blog, Wayne's Substack. He's a man of reflection, lesson learning and introspection. We're going to hear about those lessons learned, including the importance of family and the power of change.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome Wayne Boatwright to the show. So Wayne, welcome to the show, sir. It's so great to have you here.
WAB: I'm looking forward to our conversation.
HOST: Oh, likewise. We're ecstatic to have you here, man. So Wayne, we have a lot to unpack, right?
I feel at least. You know, from a successful career as an attorney to prison, can you start us off by giving us a glimpse into what life was like for Wayne and family before that pivotal tragic incident?
WAB: Oh, interesting. Well, I'll give you an idea of what it was like to then Wayne and then what it is like to now Wayne as I perceive it. Great.
You know, I've discovered quite a bit about myself through my journey, not just my incarceration, but a lot of the introspection and work I did inside prison and since I've come home. And I like to say I burned down my psychic delusion house and then I had to rebuild it as an adult. So what I mean by that is I had the classic American meritocracy story as my life story that I told myself, the narrative, the script that I played for myself.
So I was raised by a single mother with a half brother in rent control housing in LA on food stamps. Got my first job at 16, bought my family's first car, my family's first TV, worked very hard. My senior year of high school, I only went to school for two periods and I did work study the rest of the day.
So further education wasn't my focus. My focus was survival and just trying to get by and make life a little better for myself, my mother, my grandmother and my brother. But I always knew I had potential.
And the way I tried to exercise that potential was I created a little mantra for myself and it was better, faster, stronger. So I knew that for me to succeed, I had to be better, faster, stronger. And that mantra is a form of pride is what it engendered in me.
But that pride was very useful for me. It got me to start going to a junior college when I was 21, taking remedial courses, going on to a regular university and ultimately going to Cornell Law School and becoming a lawyer. And I got to tell you from a kid from the West Coast, from the San Fernando Valley, the thought of going to an Ivy League Law School was a dream come true in so many ways.
And probably the first gigantic shock of my life, because I was woefully unprepared for that experience. I finally got somewhere where being smart wasn't enough. You had to be disciplined, and you had to be learned and educated and articulate.
Things that I wasn't that good at, but I knew I was smart, right? And that had suited me well up until that point. The law school wasn't an easy road by any stretch of the imagination.
It was a tough three years, the ones that I rolled up my sleeves and took just as seriously as I had my prior life. For example, I worked throughout law school, unlike many of my classmates who focused only on their studies. I'm not talking about the summer internship.
I'm talking about during the school years, I was working. I didn't want to take a lot of debt on, borrow money, right? I wanted to take care of myself.
So that philosophy suited me very well. But now the current Wayne recognizes the shortcomings of that defense mechanism, which is what that philosophy really was. I was using it to protect myself, not just to improve myself.
I had to be better, faster, stronger, because I couldn't trust anybody, right? I had this fear that other people were not reliable. So I had to do it on my own.
“That had been my experience my whole life. And so that defense mechanism that had suited me so well until that point started to fail me as I began my time in the legal profession, both as a student, where you need to have study groups to do well and work with others. Something I wasn't very good at joining.
But also as a law firm, when you go to a law firm, the key component of any legal profession is to find yourself a mentor who can kind of guide you through that process. And I wasn't able to develop that relationship. And this is where a lot of these different issues that I'm sure you talk about a lot on The Road to Rediscovery.
I love that word, rediscovery, by the way. It's not new. It's not new.
We're rediscovering something. You just don't recognize you've forgotten it.
HOST: A hundred percent.
WAB: And so what I realized was I was raised in a home where adult men were evil. They abandon you, they leave you, they don't take care of you, they beat you. What my mother and grandmother had gone through with their marriages and relationships had created an orientation for me, unconsciously, I only realized this later through years of introspection and hard individual work, had gotten me to believe that I can't trust men either.
So I couldn't find a mentor to guide me, kind of like a father figure in a lot of ways. That's what a mentor is. I couldn't trust a person like that.
So I wasn't able to develop that relationship. And that has good things and bad things. It was great in one way because it motivated me to go overseas and become a foreign legal consultant.
So after practicing law for two years, passed the California bar the first time, like I said, I was smart, these weren't hard things. Worked in LA for two years and then realized I wanted more. And I had always had a focus on international, global relations.
I was always a curious, adventuresome kid even. So I had an opportunity to go to Korea and I worked for the dominant law firm in South Korea. And when I say dominant, people say, okay, it's Korea, whatever.
This firm now generates over $1 billion in billings every year. And for our audience who think they know what a billion is, I'm going to do something I practice with my kids when I say this. Don't call it a billion.
It's $1,000 million. Now you understand it. It's $1,000 million.
And that's what that law firm generates. And I got to work there. And I had all the adventure I could ever want as a lawyer for the six years I was there.
In fact, met my wife and the mother of our two children while I was there. And after being there for six years, I knew I wanted to come back. I took a global position with a company called Accenture, which is a global multinational consulting firm, very large.
And in my global position, I got to travel all over the world with them. And I brought my wife with me because I was smart enough to take advantage of that.
HOST: Of course.
WAB: So whether it was Athens or Paris or Sydney or Tokyo or London or Madrid, whatever, she got to come see those places with me. But again, I got bit by the startup bug. Now, this is something you may not be that familiar with.
We all think we know what Silicon Valley is about, but I got to tell you, I was based in Palo Alto for work and lived in San Francisco when I moved back to the US in 1998. So I got to see the tech explosion that happened. In fact, I went through two of them, right?
Right.
I loved it. The creativity, the desire to try something new, the willingness to explore and take risks just enthralled me. And so I left my safe, big job at Accenture and became an independent lawyer and consultant working with startups.
But again, that defense mechanism, and that's what it was. That's what the pride was, and that's what the mantra was, better, faster, stronger. I suddenly found it wasn't as useful.
It wasn't as useful as I needed. So how could I cope with that failure? How could I cope with that challenge that I didn't know how to overcome because I had limited my options?
I couldn't ask for help. I couldn't find a mentor. And I was finding I couldn't do it.
HOST: A lot of the stuff in that area is totally brand new. There's no track record to follow, right? You're blazing a new trail.
WAB: And so as those challenges came up, I started seeking coping mechanisms as we all do. Now, in my case, the coping mechanism was alcohol. And that's what it is.
I think we do ourselves a disservice when we identify it merely as an addiction or as an illness. No, it's a coping mechanism. We're using that to deal with an underlying problem.
And unfortunately, I think much of our mental health professionals and other experts focus so much on the addiction, which again is merely a coping mechanism. And don't address the underlying issue that had you choose that coping mechanism and the coping mechanism could be gambling, it could be smoking, it could be drugs, it could be alcohol, it could be sex. Those are all coping mechanisms.
And I think in our society, we've lost sight of that. We think that's the issue. If you just cure that alcoholism, you'll be fine.
It's like, well, no, then I have to replace it with a different coping mechanism unless I deal with the underlying problem.
HOST: Yeah, that's right. And Wayne, quick question about that. This is great stuff.
And I want us to continue. But hey, quick question about that. Sure. When it comes to the terms, okay, addiction and coping mechanism, does the term coping mechanism target... Is that term more targeted from an accountability perspective than say addiction? And if so, is that part of the reason why that root cause is, I don't know, misdiagnosed and just termed as an addiction?
WAB: Oh, interesting, interesting. Yes, I think our society seeks to find simple answers to complex problems. Right?
There are a myriad of coping mechanisms, but there are also a myriad of underlying issues that might drive you to seek that coping mechanism. It's not a simple answer, and it's unique to each individual. I would take it another level, though, that I was lucky enough to also live in Argentina for two years, as well as in Korea for six, and had a global position with Accenture.
“So I worked a lot with different cultures and different languages. English is a language that's horizontal. Korea is a language that's vertical.
You have like six different tenses to a verb depending on the status of the person as you talk vertically, right? Hierarchical.
We're horizontal. We're all middle class. We all use the same simple verbiage. But the other challenge with our language is it's noun based, not verb based.
And what I mean by that is when we say you're an addict or you have an addiction, these are nouns that we're using. So it's a permanent state. If we used a verb, I have an addictive personality or I have this active word for addiction rather than the noun, then I think we'd have a better flexibility.
We paint ourselves into a corner, not just with our cultural standards, a fee-for-service health care system that has to call it something if it wants to get paid, for example, an addiction. So I'm going to call it that so I can get paid for it. But we also have a problem in our language with this concept of using a noun, which is a permanent state.
This would be, yes, I took AA for a number of years. AA wants you to recognize and keep to the forefront your addiction and always admit you're an addict. And I understand that mindset given our culture and our language.
Right. But I would contend you don't have to keep that at the center of your identity. I do not dance to the 12 step personally, even though many people have found it very successful.
And I admire them and I'm grateful they found something that worked. Another way of characterizing the same term is there's something that is a trigger. That has you seek your coping mechanism.
And that trigger is that underlying trauma. Now we're going to get into another level of problem here. Trauma is not the event.
You had a woman on recently who was sexually abused as a child. I would contend the sexual abuse itself, that traumatic act or event isn't the issue. For most people, trauma is how you respond to the traumatic event.
That's why some people could have the same challenges as others and seem to be able to go on normally. And people say, well, why is that? And we try to blame our genes and we try to blame these other things.
No, it's because you're looking, I think it's because you're looking at the wrong issue. The event is not the trauma. The trauma is how do you respond to that event?
You may respond by developing a defense mechanism that's unhealthy. For example, have you ever heard of Gabor Maté since you do a lot of stuff in this space? Gabor Maté has written a bunch of books.
He's a Canadian, Hungarian immigrant, but he was basically raised in Canada, a professor, a lot of work, clinical work as a doctor with people dealing with addiction. And his concepts of explaining this, that trauma is how you respond to an event, not the event itself, is brilliant. And I'd recommend for anyone in your audience, if they're curious about this, just do a search on Gabor Maté, M-A-T-E, and they'll find him.
“So this is the conceptual frame. And if you take me down that road, I'm going to go there. So these are some of the things that I have learned and never would have learned if my coping mechanism of addiction hadn't gotten so bad that I became a drunk driver and was so drunk and so proudful that I thought I could continue to drink and drive that I got blackout drunk and had a head on collision going the wrong way on a freeway.
That's how bad my coping mechanism of alcoholism had become. And yes, by that stage, it had become a physical addiction. But that's not where it started.
And that's not where it will end. Even if you can deal with that, you have to get to this concept of the trigger as I see it. And I think many of our professionals, they build a wall around that trigger.
So you can't trigger it. That's what they teach you to do. Matthew Perry, the TV star who recently passed away, he probably spent millions of dollars trying to deal with his addiction.
Not to mention he spent millions of dollars on his addiction problem. But my point is, he found a way around all the walls he had been taught to build and got to that trigger. That coping mechanism was more important to him.
It gave him a sense of safety at an emotional level that he probably didn't even recognize consciously. And so he went back to it. And he found a way around all the defense mechanisms and walls that he built around that to get to that trigger.
In my philosophy, you have to dismantle that trigger. And to do that, you have to face whatever that underlying trauma, not just the act that had you build the defense mechanisms and coping mechanisms you're using, but that whole process. Only then can you actually heal.
And heal is rediscovery because in essence, what we're saying is trying you to get back to your authentic or your complete self, not have parts of you broken off as a defense mechanism. Many people, for example, that I dealt with, and I went to San Quentin State Prison as an inmate, and I was on what's called the main line, which is no safety for me. I was with the guys who had all…
HOST: Gen pop.
WAB: Yeah, I was in the general population, and I learned a lot there, but I also learned that the number one defense mechanism that probably everybody uses is they shut off some or all of their emotional self. Then they don't have empathy. How do you explain the acts they've done if they had an ounce of access to their empathetic part of themselves?
We all have empathy. It's built into us as humans, right? It's who we are.
They think they don't because of the defense mechanisms they've dealt to shut off their emotions, to deal with the experiences that they had, virtually all of them as young children, because that's where many of these defense mechanisms are built. They don't even know it's a defense mechanism. They think it's who they are.
HOST: Yeah.
WAB: That's the irony is the defense mechanism has been with them so long. They think it is them. But learning how to recognize, no, this is a defense mechanism that I built, and I need to dismantle this.
See what's underneath and release that part of myself that I've locked up and hidden away to become a complete person is what rediscovery is in my interpretation of that word.
HOST: Well, I appreciate you clarifying and being so articulate in what the rediscovery meant for you and also painting a picture in the mind's eye of identifying the trigger and as well as having those defensive walls built up over so much time. To your point earlier, these walls are solid.
They're tall.
And over so much time, the inmates have built these walls to where they think it's their identity, it's who they are, when really there's so many layers beneath what they've built over the years. It takes an awful lot for them to rediscover who they are prior to when those walls were first built. Wayne, this is absolutely extraordinary.
And I want to ask about the process, okay? And part of the process in your starting your journey of reflection and introspection, which I'm guessing may have happened when you started your journey in San Quentin.
Did you feel that part of that road to rediscovery for you, did it require enduring, I don't want to say the consequences, but enduring the cause and effect of that incident?
WAB: It did, and that journey is a common journey within San Quentin. I won't say all prisons. San Quentin is based in Marin County, about half an hour north of San Francisco, and in many ways, I think it's analogous to Silicon Valley.
San Quentin is the Silicon Valley of criminal justice reform and restorative justice. It has a myriad of different nonprofits and organizations who come in and volunteer their time and effort to help men on their journey of rediscovery. And all focus on different facets and in different ways.
I was lucky to go to San Quentin because I had access to those groups. And I stayed in the gen pop because I wasn't going to go into a safety situation where I wouldn't have access to those groups. It was important to me to learn this.
You know, it's not just knowing something needs to be done, right? The real issue is how do you then do it? And you need a power source.
You need an energy source. And I have to tell you I had two energy sources. And they weren't God.
They weren't an intrinsic desire to change. I had shut off parts of myself that probably knew I needed to change, but I couldn't talk to them, right? I shut them off so long ago.
I didn't even know they were me.
HOST: Yeah. Yeah.
WAB: No, the power for me was the power of murder. I took a life, Aubrey.
I took a life.
I injured others, but I tore a woman out of her family before her time. She was never allowed to say goodbye. Her family was never allowed to say goodbye to her.
If you think you know what power is, you have a very different perception of it when you take a life. And at that point, you need to choose, do you want to continue to use that power in the same way you did, or do you have to take responsibility for it and learn to control it? So the realization I had was I had this immense frightening power.
I could take a life. And I had to make sure that I would do everything I could to learn whatever I needed to learn and unlearn whatever I needed to unlearn so that I would never put anybody else at risk of taking their life again. I had to take responsibility, not just for the act, right?
For the power the act represents. That's what it motivated me to do this work. Do you think I wanted to re-examine my childhood?
Come on. I mean, my childhood had suited me quite well as far as I knw, right? So no, it was the power.
But I'd say an equal power was the amazing gift of parents and to have two young children that I was responsible for because I had destroyed their trust in me. And I had an obligation. I had a duty to do all that I could to both show them I could take responsibility for my actions and face them as an adult, not hide from them, but also to be an example that I could learn from my mistakes and my failures and the tragedy that I had caused.
Because in essence, I didn't destroy one family with my crime. I destroyed two families with my crime. That's the reality.
Less than six months into my sentence, the mother of my two children came by herself and asked me for a divorce. When I talk about burning down my psychic delusion house, I'm not talking about my self-image as a good person, just that. It's much more than that.
But those kids didn't….
“They had been hurt enough by my actions. My job was to become the best parent and the best co-parent I could possibly be to them, especially given the fact they were only six and eight when I went to prison. So they were very young.
And to her eternal, eternal credit, my ex, I like calling her just ex, it just sounds good to me. My ex honored her commitment to bring our children to visit me in San Quentin my full time in prison, regardless of what was happening with her career or personal life. She knew she had made that commitment and she honored that commitment, and it was essential for me.
And my recovery and road to rediscovery to have access to my children, to be reminded of the responsibilities that I had, not just to make sure I didn't take another life, but to do all I could to make sure I hadn't ruined the lives of two young children. Because are you familiar with something called the ACE score? ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experience Score.”
“Federal government has created this. It's a brilliant concept where they look at chaos generating events in children's lives. Unstable household, moving a lot, loss of a job of a parent, loss of a parent, divorce, sickness.
It could be a myriad of different things. These are all called ACE events, events, negative events. My children now had a bunch of negative events that had occurred to them.
So what could I do to help them stay as stable as possible? So they could, yes, they've been wounded. Okay.
That wound had to become a scar, and they had to stop being a victim and become a survivor.
HOST: That's right.
WAB: That was the goal that I had. I wanted them to become survivors. And I knew I had a responsibility, not just as their father, but as the one that had actually caused the wounds that they had faced.
There was a time, there was 18 months where my young son wouldn't visit me in prison because he was made fun of and made to feel shame by his classmates because his father was a criminal and was in prison. And so the hurt that he experienced. Now, of course, developmentally, we need to use the right language.
He thought he was angry, but that wasn't anger. That was shame. That was other emotions that he didn't have the sophistication to articulate or deal with, nor was it the time for me to educate him.
That time would come. At that time, my job was to try to stay as connected with him as I could. And successfully, after 18 months, he came back to visit regularly.
And we have maintained that strong relationship. In fact, we're recording this today on a Thursday. Tomorrow, Friday, is the home opener of the San Francisco Giants baseball team.
And my son is home from spring break. He's a sophomore at University back east. And we're going to go to the opening game tomorrow.
HOST: Oh, that's wonderful.
WAB: We have an intimate relationship. It is a beautiful relationship.
HOST: iIf you don't mind, I just have to say, the example you gave me of you and your son going to the Giants opener, okay, I mean, that is a manifestation of your commitment to become the best parent and co-parent and your ex's commitment to honor in bringing the children, you know, while you were in San Quentin. And I mean, those are foundational, you know, that leads up to this wonderful time you're going to spend with your son on Friday at the Giants' opener. I really, truly must commend you and your ex with her in honoring her commitment to bring the children in you in taking that self-accountability and just quite honestly introspect and reflect and look for those areas in where you know you need to improve and to just outright say, I let my children down.
You know, “I destroyed not one family, but two families.” I mean, that's a lot to say. And you know, before you started explaining that, Wayne, I was going to ask you, what was your North Star in helping you navigate through this when you served?
And you explained two things. One thing, being your children, I was expecting, okay, I mean, you know, we always want to work hard for our children and provide and be the best we can for them. But the other thing I didn't expect, and you really eloquently explained why, is the power of murder and taking that in and what you did in taking a life, because that helped reframe and reset yourself in just being quite transparent and saying, I can't take another life.
I have to learn from this. I really, really must commend you for that, because, again, I mean, you could have easily fell into the same, I don't want to say trap, but the same ditch as the inmates and start building these walls, right?”
WAB: Many of them do, unfortunately. I wish more took advantage of these programs that are available, but a good number do. When I said I wasn't the only one, there are a great number of men who are on that journey of rediscovery and restorative justice that they seek.
And I'm frustrated that our criminal justice system doesn't recognize that. If the goal is public safety, there's a lot of guys that are inside who are not a threat, in my opinion, to public safety. And my opinion is based on six years living, going to groups with their…
Well, even more than that. I never disclosed I was an attorney when I was in San Quentin. I just told the guys I was a startup techie guy, but I became the managing editor of the San Quentin News.
And we will put in the show notes the link for the San Quentin News. It's just sanquentinnews.com, but we'll put it in there. It writes 40 to 60 articles a month that discuss what goes on in the criminal justice system in not just San Quentin, but in California nationally and even globally.
It writes a great number of articles, but a lot about the different ways that men are seeking to take responsibility for their actions and become contributing members again of their community. Somebody gave me a visual for this that I love, and I'm going to share it with you. If I have one thing to say to our listeners, if you're putting that trust that your family has in you at risk, do everything you can not to destroy that trust.
That trust was built up over a lifetime. It's little drops that fell into a bucket. And if you've got that trust, it's a nice, heavy, stable bucket that can help everybody and it's full.
But when you destroy that trust, you overturn that bucket, and now it's empty. And you got to make sure you deal with the issues you have to deal with so there's a solid bottom on the bucket. But you can never refill that.
It's drop by drop. It doesn't happen. I still am working to regain the trust, more so of my daughter than of my son, to be honest.
But I'm still working very hard at that, because I destroyed that trust with my crime. And I have to own that. And part of that process is meeting the kids where they are.
This is a term I like to use. Meet them where they are. I learned this from Alice Miller, who's a famous author and psychologist.
She was a practicing psychologist for 30 years in Switzerland. This is translated from German into English. It's not that well known here.
Her first famous book is called The Drama of the Gifted Child. And gifted does not mean IQ of 160, a translation error. It's the drama of a child.
And her book explaining childhood trauma and the consequences of it for all children. She's talking about everybody, not just those who've experienced traumatic events that justifiably have led to trauma. Again, as one of your former speakers when she was molested as a young girl.
But she came up with the concept of meeting them where they are. And I love this concept. And so one way to do that is to try to reach out and have as many touches as you can with your children.
Before our interview, and in fact, it's a tradition of mine, if I'm speaking about parenting and fatherhood, I go back for the seven days prior to our discussion, and I count how many communications I've had with my kids across the various platforms. It's usually a text message or Instagram or Snapchat. My daughter likes Snapchat, my son's okay with Instagram.
We use text a lot, right? In the past seven days, I had 259 communications. Now, many of them could simply be one word.
Or it might just be a thumbs up to something that was said. The point is, it's virtually always daily, and it's very open, and it's very comprehensive. We discussed my daughter's dating life and the fact that she's a senior in high school and trying to decide which university to go to and the traumas and opportunities that represents.
With my son, he's spending a semester in Washington, DC, where his university has a satellite campus, so we're talking about his internship. He does three days a week, as well as his classes, as well as his desire to get an internship, not this summer, but next summer, because he's worried about where he's going to get a job when he graduates, and so he has to do a lot of interviewing and all of that. But the point is, they're willing to share their struggles with me.
HOST: Meeting them where they are.
WAB: Meeting them where they are, and then being an enlightened witness when you do. Meet them where they are, but then being an enlightened witness, which means don't tell them what to do, but make sure they're making an informed decision about what they're doing. Ask them questions.
Don't tell them what to do. Yes, no. And that's not easy.
HOST: That's delicate. You have to take a delicate walk over that, right?
My daughter deciding what university she wants to go to. Trust me, I got an opinion on this one, right?
Yes.
But she's got to decide. She has to own it.
Yes.
She has to own it. And I want to give her the space to do that, but I'm still going to ask her questions to make sure she's making an informed decision. I think too many parents just allow their kids.
They think they're helping them by saying yes, and it's like, no, enlightened witness doesn't mean yes. It could well mean, hey, what? What did you do?
“Or what do you want to do? Let's talk about this. You know?
HOST: And then they know you're engaged.
WAB: And they know you're engaged. That's a great way of putting it
.
HOST: Yeah. And see, to me, Wayne, in what you have demonstrated in the journey that you've gone through, and them as being witnesses and being impacted by it, you are the quintessential example of what we should represent to our children from a humility standpoint. We don't always get it right.
We're parents. We're not always right. There's times when we fall short.
A lot of times, we're human just like them. And whenever something happens that's not in our favor, we must own it. It's the same thing that you're teaching your daughter in, you know, her plans for higher education after high school graduation, you know, what she decides and it's informed, an informed decision she must then own, right?
And not only are you expressing that, you have demonstrated that by being the example. And that is, to me, I mean, that just closes the loop and makes it totally solidified and gains credibility with your children. And speaking of like your children and your daughter and so forth, Wayne, I want to ask you a question about second chances.
Second chances. It's a short, simple question. I don't know if it requires a complex answer or not.
Maybe it does. But I wanted to ask you, Wayne, are second chances a two way street?
WAB: Of course. Of course.
HOAT: And in what ways do both have to work together to make the second chance work?
WAB: A lot of the way I look at the world is if you're oriented in the right way. The information is we can limitless, frictionless, and free. We're inundated, overwhelmed.
Yes.
“So the issue, I don't want to talk about a study or a fact or something like that. But if you're oriented the right way, you have a chance of actually addressing issues in their proper place.
Yeah.
So a second chance is never deserved. It's right. I think people get that wrong.
Yeah. If you get a second chance, it is a gift.
Yes.
And you should be acknowledged that way. I think way too many people, especially if they're sucked in the victim mindset, think they deserve things. It's like, no, no, you don't deserve.
How do I say this? The way that I see things, let's take the word respect, which is used a lot in prison and misunderstood. Nobody deserves my respect.
You got to earn my respect. You deserve my courtesy. You deserve me to be polite and treat you like a human being, but you don't deserve my respect.
You want my respect, you earn it. That's the way I look at it. That's the example I try to leave.
And it doesn't matter what you do. So I got disbarred as a lawyer because of my crime, justifiably so. And at the level I was working at, these guys don't want to take risks.
I can't get a job in that space again. I'm an alcoholic to them, right? Even if I know that I take my sobriety seriously and I haven't had a problem with it, there's no reason they should risk their career or their business on it, right?
I get that. So I do whatever I can do. I've had 28 jobs in the five years since I've come home.
I do anything. One of those jobs is working as a server at a catering company. It's a high-end catering company.
I mean, I've catered Gavin Newsom events and the GooGoo Dolls have played and all this other stuff. I'm serving at events I used to attend. That's how far I've fallen.
“I like to say I fell. I fell from grace. I've fallen.
Yes, and a lot of people still think I'm a black sheep. I think I'm a black swan. And if I get a chance to explain why, hopefully they can see that.
But I'm a black sheep to a lot of people and to my kids. Right. I got an Ivy League Law School degree.
I'm in a catering company. But I also knew my kids had to learn the value of money and the value of hard work. So this past summer, I had both of them join me and work with me at the catering company as servers because I wanted them to learn that, yes, my daughter was also an intern in the San Francisco DA's office.
And yes, my son also interned at a hedge fund, but they still had to work these catering gigs because I wanted them to learn what real work was. And I got to tell you, one of the happiest moments I ever had, you had asked, what do we learn from our kids? It's one of the questions that you wanted to ask.”
I'm probably stepping on your line, but I read that in our notes. And for Father's Day, I asked the kids, I said, well, what have you learned from me? And my son said, you know, Dad, I got to say, I'm surprised.
Everybody at the catering company loves you and wants to work with you. The other servers, the front of the house, the back of the house, the cook, the owner, they all want to work with you. And you always step up.
You never step back. If somebody drops a tray of glasses, you're the first one there with a broom and a dustpan, even if it's not your assignment. If somebody doesn't have water at their table, and it's not your responsibility to manage that table, you're pouring water at that table.
And so I was able to be that example for him. Now, I hope he learns, I hope he has the most successful career that he wants. And I hope he's financially stable and happy and has all of that.
“I'm not saying he has to do what I did, but I wanted to show him that your job is never to step back. Your job is to step up and help when you can help and be there for others. And do it with a smile on your face.
Don't act like it's a chore.
HOST: Yeah. And they've seen that, right?
WAB: They've seen that. They don't know that when I was in South Korea working there, I met George Soros and Michael Bloomberg and the King of Norway. They don't know these things.
That's not the dad they know. The dad they remember went to prison and came out and has a hard time paying his bills. But at least they know I take whatever I do seriously, and I act like a professional, and I'm not bitter about it.
I'm grateful to have that job.
HOST: I tell you, that's awesome. Another facet in how you demonstrate the example to be to your children and giving them a glimpse into participating in this catering job so they can learn what real work is like, and it teaches humility as well. And it removes the sense or feeling or even assumption of entitlement.
WAB: Which is usually subconscious. That's the problem. You have to bring that into reality.
You got to bring it into the world. Now they can see what... Now, when they get irritated, when they're serving…
I'll tell you one of the greatest things about this job. I get told thank you a hundred times a night.
Yes, I believe it.
My unconscious subconscious mind needs to hear that probably more than my rational self does, but it feels good to be told thank you that many times. But they can learn what an obnoxious guest is and sure, he's committed that they'll never be that type of guest themselves.
They're learning important lessons.
That's true. That's right.”
HOST: And not only that, take that high road and maintain your civility, maintain your courtesy. There's a way to maintain your courtesy and dignity in the midst of that with the wrong customer. And still feel good about yourself after the fact and not blame yourself or beat yourself up for say losing your cool.
Wayne, this is absolutely fabulous. You have given us so many lessons throughout your time in prison, as well as what you've learned during your journey as an attorney, and throughout your family aspect of your life with your ex, with your children. This is absolutely tremendous.
As we get close to wrapping up, I wanted to ask you this question. And you know what? Quite frankly, based on the context of this question, if you choose to forgo responding, just let me know and we can always edit this out.
But especially being a former attorney, this is why I kind of preface with what I just said there.
But this is something I was interested in knowing. In your experience on this side of the justice system, and in the lessons you learned about redemption, forgiveness, second chances, transformation, is there anything you feel that can or should be applied to our justice system for improvement?
WAB: Yes, there are many easy, clearly beneficial steps that can be done, both at the federal as well as at the state, as well as at the local or county level. We really have three different prison systems. We have a county jail or a city level.
We have a state prison system, and then we have a federal prison system. They're all distinct, and they've all got their unique challenges and opportunities that can be done within them. And they're all failing in their own unique ways, I have to put it that way.
Yeah, there's a lot of ideas that are being test marketed, shall we say, at San Quentin right now. I commend Governor Newsom in his attempt to create what he's calling a rehabilitation center and converting San Quentin from a normal prison into a more unique prison. There are many challenges with the way they're trying to do that, and I'm not going to get into the weeds about what those challenges are, but the aspirational goal is wonderful.
And I think if our goal is public safety as it should be, public safety is number one. But our goal in many times is not, we claim it is not punishment per se. Punishment is removing you from society.
That's supposed to be the punishment. But in reality, these systems in many ways are designed to keep on levels of punishment well beyond necessary for public safety. It's malicious at times, to be honest.
And at the same time, the goal of public safety is paramount, is first, and should be dealt with. I'll give you an example of one of these things. I speak at a number of panels on topics like this.
So I spoke at one, gosh, just a little over a year ago. And the panel, there were six of us on the panel. And I was the only white guy, an Asian, two Blacks, and two Latinos, right, was on the panel.
And they asked me, well, what's the biggest difference between all of you guys up there? And I said, well, the biggest difference between all of us is I've got a head of hair, and the rest of these guys are bald. Right.
I don't want people using race as an excuse, even though it is a legitimate issue and has to be addressed. I'm not saying that. But it becomes a defense mechanism.
We don't need it as a defense mechanism. And so I challenged the parole process in California because California has a disproportionate number of guys on what are called indeterminate life sentences. So they're sentenced to 20 years, which is a set sentence up to life.
So after 20 years, they get to go before the parole board. And if they're found suitable, they get out. But if they're not found suitable, they could stay in until life.
But they'll have a number of different hearings to assess whether they're safe to come back to society or not. And so we had a retired lieutenant in custody, black man, African-American. And he was explaining the benefits of the system and how well he thought it was going.
Yeah. And when they finished, rather than going to the next question, I said, I got a question for the lieutenant. And I said, Lieutenant, I know that you personally have written a number of letters to the parole board for certain inmates who are getting ready to have a parole hearing.
Lieutenant, how many of your fellow officers have written a letter like that? Mm-hmm. And he had to admit virtually none of them.
“if I were to change one thing in the letter, I would make it what's called proactive, not reactive. And so I would get the officers who are in there to have a commitment to write letters for inmates who are going on parole in whatever form so they can recognize this man is going to go back to society. Their orientation is they want to keep you there for life.
How do I change that orientation? The way I change that orientation is have a requirement that they write these letters. And it will also give them a little humility to get to know these guys a little bit better.
And it will also get the inmates to have the mindset that I better not be an asshole to all of these guys because one of them might be writing a letter for me. It wins all the way across the board.
That's a change I would make.
And I find a lot of the laws that change are useless. They make you feel good, but they don't really have an impact. If you look five years down the road of some of these criminal justice reform efforts, they've had a de minimis impact on the system in my opinion.
But here's a real thing that could really be done that could have a real impact on both custody as well as those who are incarcerated. I tell you what requirement that they write a letter.
HOST: Wow, Wayne, that hits straight between the eyes for a response. It really and truly does. And I don't care whether it's city, state or federal, and whatever problems they have, your response hit right between the eyes and no one can claim they didn't understand your response.
I want to thank you for that response because that is something that you can truly speak to and it's what you lived. And I tell you, I mean, I hope to San Quentin's credit and to the governor's credit, okay, for them to be trying out these types of programs and so forth, that means a lot. It says a lot.
And I'm hoping that in time, you know, like everywhere from the warden to the guards, you know, change that culture from the old traditional mindset of keeping these guys caged up forever to rehabilitating them, you know, and also with a priority of safety, into society again, to where they can contribute. Safety first.
Safety first, 100%.
So Wayne, how can the listeners follow you or connect with you and learn more about, you know, about your journey and subscribe to your blog?
WAB: Well, thank you for offering that. Aubrey, I actually like to write. I was a lawyer.
I like to write more than I like to talk. And I found that, you know, I went to prison in 92. I had a, excuse me, 2012.
I went to prison in 2012. I had a Blackberry. Okay. I got out. Technology's changed a lot. The world's changed a lot since I've come back.”
And I look at the world with new eyes. And so I write a lot about things that I see differently. For example, I wrote one criminal justice system in six books, six themes that we could make it different.
I talk about, you know, my experience in prison. I talk about also, does inclusivity trump all? Should women with male physical bodies be allowed to compete in female sports if they're transitioning?
Election security, I talk about a lot of different things. And everything I write is, even though both, I use what's called medium and I use substack. You had mentioned substack earlier on.
Even though that platform does have a paywall, all my stuff is outside the paywall. It's free, open for anybody if they're curious about any of these topics and about my journey with my children and the work that I've done to reweave the tapestry of our relationship, to get back into their lives and to be worthy of their trust.
So just like that road to rediscovery, it's also a road back to their trust.
That is my aspirational goal in life is to earn their trust. The happiest day of my life would be if my daughter lets me walk her down the aisle.
HOST: Oh my goodness. Yes.
She's only 18. I'm not in a rush.
HOST: No, no, no.
WAB: I still have to earn it. I still have to earn it.
HOST: Yes, you do. Yes, you do. And I can't, again, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your transparency and your sense of realness in knowing these things and not just knowing them, but articulating them and emphasizing them.
It means a lot because, and to me, it also kind of prophesizes that you will overcome these things. You will regain that trust. You will regain the level of respect and adoration amongst your children.
And you are and you will be seen as a black swan and not a black sheep. Your wings will spread. You will fly.
Well, if you'd like, with your permission, Wayne, I would love to have the link to your blog in the episode show notes so the listeners can look at what you write and really take it in.
Absolutely.
Absolutely. Wayne, we've come to the end of a great conversation, man.
I want to stay in touch with you. I truly mean that from my heart of hearts, and I can't thank you enough for coming on the show, sharing your journey, sharing your insight, being vulnerable and transparent with our listeners.
.
WAB: Thank you for saying that. I'd like that. I'd like us to stay in touch. And I can only hope that if somebody can learn from my journey and not continue on the path to destruction that mine led down to, I would be very happy to hear that because my victim paid the ultimate price. She can't choose anything. But these people listening can choose.
They sure can. And that's what this show is all about. That's what it's all about.
And I want to thank all of you for tuning in and listening. And you may feel like this at times, but in our daily struggles and adversities, you're never alone. Hope is always around the corner.
I humbly ask that you please share this show with someone you know, needing motivation and support. And always remember that we're all roadies on this journey of life.
Thanks again for listening. We'll chat again soon. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of The Road to Rediscovery.
We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at roadsrediscoverypodcast.gmail.com and leave us any questions or comments you may have.
From The Road to Rediscovery: Returning "Citizen Wayne" - with Wayne Boatwright, Apr 11, 2024. This material may be protected by copyright.