00:02 - Stacey (Host)
96 years.
00:06 - Mark (Host)
You know, I hear you say that and, knowing what that means now it's still shocking that she had to hear 96 years.
00:13 - Stacey (Host)
Do you know somebody who's 96 years old?
00:15 - Mark (Host)
I do not. That's a good point.
00:17 - Stacey (Host)
Right.
00:19 - Mark (Host)
We're talking about our guest Cheryl Armstrong, who committed a crime and was sentenced to 96 years at the age of 16. So you got to add 16.
00:26 - Stacey (Host)
Right, she's 16, so she should be tried as a juvenile, but they tried her as an adult.
00:31 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, and that's what her sentence was. And this conversation goes back to when she was before that crime and it was a pretty heinous crime and she owns it. She knows what she did, she knows it was wrong, it was a mistake and all the way through her many decades in prison and her transformation, 30 years in prison, but she started off as like this sweet suburban girl who got into the wrong crowd. Wrong crowd. Same old story, right.
00:57 - Stacey (Host)
Was on drugs and made a horrible mistake that she still talks about now. It haunts her. It haunts her.
01:05 - Mark (Host)
It haunts her.
01:05 - Stacey (Host)
You asked the question. I love that. It haunts her. And then one day in prison she decided she was going to change it all and she was going to help people and she was going to work to get rid of this guilt that she felt.
01:19 - Mark (Host)
With no indication that she would ever get out.
01:22 - Stacey (Host)
Exactly.
01:22 - Mark (Host)
Right, she just did it. She went and got degrees and she just started to plan for a positive future, hoping she would get out Wow.
01:30 - Stacey (Host)
Fantastic. You guys are going to love this.
01:32 - Mark (Host)
Good conversation, enjoy, cheryl Armstrong.
01:37 - Stacey (Host)
Hi, I'm Stacey.
01:39 - Mark (Host)
And I am Mark, and this is the Gurus A Game Changers podcast. Welcome everybody. So since my son was a little kid, I had always told him that I didn't want him to do two things, make two mistakes. One was to do drugs of any kind, and the other was to commit a crime. We could handle anything else as a family, but those two mistakes have a tendency to take your life in a trajectory that is sometimes profoundly negative.
02:05
Right Now, few people know the true impact of those mistakes than today's guest, cheryl Armstrong. When she was just 16 years old, she was convicted of a crime with some others, a crime in which two people were killed. And, despite her young age, she was tried as an adult and she was given a sentence of a mind blowing 96 years. So for nearly three decades. That's where she grew up and she lost appeals and she lost hope, and at some point she came to just accept she was either going to die in prison or she was at best going to leave as a very old lady. But something kept gnawing at her. She didn't want her life defined by one mistake, one action she took when she was a teenager. So after nearly a decade of being, in her words, a miserable mess, riddled with guilt, riddled with shame. She took control of her thoughts, filled her time with positive purpose. She got a college degree, she got a master's degree and she began planning her life betting on the hope that freedom would come, and it did.
03:08
The laws surrounding extreme sentences for minors changed and she was released, and what she has done with that newfound freedom will inspire you, and how she's trying to help others in their need for reinvention will give you a better feeling and strengthen your belief in the power of a second chance. Cheryl Armstrong, welcome to the show.
03:32 - Stacey (Host)
Cheryl, Hi thank you Welcome, welcome, welcome, okay, wow, I'm just going to get right into it. Wow, wow, wow. I mean, what an intro, by the way, very good intro, mark, you were sentenced to 96 years at the age of 16. That's even, I think at the time that was super controversial. I didn't even know what a presumptive range was.
04:09 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
So when I found out that 96 years was possible, I still couldn't wrap my mind around that and I thought that that that would never happen. So when I was at my sentencing hearing and it was it was crazy. Typically they allow the prosecutor to to do their presentation first and the victim's families and whoever else gets to get up and make their statements, read their letters, and the judge refused to allow them to do that.
04:42 - Mark (Host)
And.
04:42 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
I remember thinking why is that happening? Well, it was happening because he had already made up his mind that he was going to give me 96 years before the hearing ever started. So the defense, our side, was allowed to present our statements. My family got up and spoke. I read my statement. All of that the prosecution never even presented and he just sentenced me to 96 years and but I mean you were a minor, right.
05:12 - Stacey (Host)
I mean you were 16. Why did they charge you as an adult?
05:16 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
Well, they had what they called I'm. I'm initially from Colorado, so they have what they call the violence a couple of years prior to when my crime happened, and they held a special legislative session after all of these juvenile crimes were committed murder cases and they created these new, harsher laws for juveniles. And I mean this was happening across the country. There are thousands of cases where juveniles have ended up with life without parole sentences or virtual life sentences. What is? That's what my sentence is called a virtual life sentence. So, um, wow, yeah, I mean this was common practice in the nineties when he came came down with that result.
06:05 - Stacey (Host)
It was, I'm sure you and your family were crushed. It was devastating.
06:12 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
It's hard for me to describe to people what I was going through emotionally and mentally, because I believe that a part of me just went into shock.
06:21 - Mark (Host)
Yeah.
06:22 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
And so I was almost numb to what was happening, and so you would think that there would be this outpouring of emotion. But there, there really wasn't. Initially, um, as the the months and the years started, right that that came.
06:39 - Mark (Host)
What was it? What was it like walking as a 17 year old, right At that point? What was it like walking into an adult prison? Was there this holy shit moment?
06:50 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
Right. So just to just to say this. I want to just clarify that's a total embarrassment for me now as an adult. I was an urban white girl, you know, had a good upbringing. I don't have excuses, I don't have trauma. I made bad choices, that's just what it is. There was a lot more, as you said, holy shit moments that came when I was first arrested.
07:15
I talk about how, when I was in the juvenile detention facility, I had said on the phone to my poor mother that if I went to prison I was going to kill myself. On the phone to my poor mother that if I went to prison I was going to kill myself. And I feel a lot of guilt behind that statement because I can imagine what that did to her at the time. But I was just convinced I wasn't going to be able to handle it. When you know, I was like I can't do this, this can't be my life for the rest of my life. I never did attempt anything like that, but I had a lot of thoughts around that because being in prison for the rest of your life, in my mind at the time that's not living right, miserable existence, and I just felt so trapped. But I will tell you that the county jail was so miserable that I was actually somewhat relieved to get to prison.
08:04 - Mark (Host)
I've heard that. I've heard that. I've heard that jails county jails are worse than federal prisons.
08:08 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
Wow, Very true. I was in a state prison but yes.
08:11 - Stacey (Host)
County jails are worse than the prisons for sure what was so miserable about the county jail? Just bad conditions, yeah.
08:18 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
Yeah, so they had me in segregation, first of all because I was a juvenile. They wouldn't house me with general population, and so they gave me this little janky black and white TV, because they were supposed to afford me the same privileges that the other people got there, and so I would get to go outside for an hour every few days. I would wake up in the mornings to grab my breakfast tray and there'd be ants crawling all over the floor. I will never forget it. It was just disgusting there, and a lot of negative energy, a lot of addicts that were, you know, fresh off the streets, and so it was just a terrible environment.
08:58 - Stacey (Host)
When they moved you to state what was the difference difference.
09:10 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
Well, prison is a different, there's a different vibe to it, and I will say that there is obviously many bad things that happen in prisons, and when I first was in prison, it was more like a real prison. I always say that changed down the line, but when I got there, that changed down the line, but when I got there I had my own room. So back then they housed you based upon your custody level. I was closed security, the highest security level, because of the length of time that I had received in prison and my charges. So I actually got to go and live in my own cell with my own toilet, my own sink, but there was intimidation factors going on. Like you know, I was just 17 when I got there and so, instead of trying to just chill out, I kind of felt like I had to dig my heels in deeper and portray this image. So I wouldn't have problems because I knew, like this is where I'm going to be. I don't want to be a victim in any way here, and so that's what I did.
10:13 - Stacey (Host)
So what does that mean? So you like staked your like. This is how you weren't fighting people like no.
10:19 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
I know I'm actually really not a very violent person. I've had probably a handful of fights or violent incidents in my lifetime. It was more just this angry, hateful energy that I was emanating and I was very verbally abusive, threatening to other people. Very negative, hateful person.
10:43 - Stacey (Host)
That was the past, though right, I mean, that was the past, and I think I think you even have said in some podcasts too, that you were just an angry teen. You know, I think when the whole thing came down, you actually were on probation for anger control classes, and I think, do you think maybe that was one of the reasons why the judge was a little extra harsh on you, or no, no, I don't.
11:06 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
So I think the. Do you think maybe that was one of the reasons? Why the judge was a little extra harsh on you, or no? No, I don't.
11:11
So I think the crime that we committed is the reason why I mean it's about as bad as it gets. And I said I think I talked in my book about how I gave them plenty of reasons, the maximum sentence, even though it is harsh, it seems, because I I was in the car, I didn't commit the murders. Uh, I did have plenty of involvement. It was my idea to go to the house that night and took me about 10 years to even be able to take responsibility for that out loud, you know.
11:38 - Stacey (Host)
I and I, I appreciate that accountability, I think that's. I just wonder, like that angry teenager like, and I and we know cause we've. We have teenagers where I've had a teenager. My kids are in their twenties now but where do you think that anger comes from? I mean, you don't have it now, somehow you've shed it, but like when you were a kid, where did it come from? Like what?
12:00 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
I don't ever think that I will completely know the answer to that question. I know that I was alone a lot. My parents were working all the time. I had all this time on my making bad choices. Now, that doesn't mean that anything that I ever chose was anyone else's fault, but I just got in with those wrong types of people and that's how I started smoking weed. And then I was experimenting with other drugs and which led to me using meth for a while up until my arrest, and so honestly, I feel like I would have become a serious addict had I not gone to prison. In some ways it saved me. Wow, I think the anger thing, because I evaluated that for many years when I was in prison and again, not blame casting but all of my brothers, my dad, my stepdad they were all really fantastic people to the people they loved, but they were also all very violent.
13:09
And they're just this common thread amongst them that nobody was going to mess with them and and they had the final say when anybody that challenged them on anything, and so I kind of equated respect with anger you know and I almost want, I worshipped my brothers when I was a kid, and so it's like I wanted to model that same type of behavior.
13:33 - Stacey (Host)
Were you the youngest? How many brothers you have.
13:35 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
Three brothers and four stepbrothers.
13:37 - Stacey (Host)
Whoa, so you were the youngest and the only girl.
13:40 - Mark (Host)
Were you and are you haunted at some level by what happened?
13:47 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
Absolutely. How so? Yeah, well, there's no undoing a tragedy of this level, right? I mean, you can't. I think about my victims, my victims' families. I think about the way it changed the course of my family's life forever. I don't have a relationship with the only brother that I have who's left alive. The other two have died because of my crime. It haunts me because what we did was absolutely terrible. What we did was absolutely terrible. We took the lives of two people that didn't deserve it and over pretty much nothing, right, teenage drama, and it's hard to say those things, even 30 years later, out loud publicly. But I think that it's important that I take accountability for the lack of care and respect that I had for other people when I was a teenager.
14:48 - Mark (Host)
Yeah.
14:50 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
But also you know the whole, turn your pain into your purpose, Like I'm a living walking example of that, because the ways that it haunts me, I use that energy for good now.
15:02 - Stacey (Host)
I'm wondering was there a moment when you were in state and you were like, when did you decide that you wanted to, like, change your attitude? And you say you talk a lot about mindset. So when was it? When did you say to yourself you know what I'm, I am going to change my mindset, like what was the pivotal moment?
15:23 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
I think that there were probably a handful of them, but the one that I wrote about in the book is really a very simple moment, and that's that's why I've become such a believer of how the little things are the big things. If you're paying attention to what people are saying and to the signs you get in your life, you notice those little things and they can completely change the course of your life. And I basically was talking with a good friend, the only positive friend that I had at the time, and she was telling me how people respected her and she was kind to them and I remember talking about oh well, you know, I feel like I need to act the way that I do because I want that respect from people, and I just recognize that that wasn't real respect and that isn't really the impression I wanted to leave on people anymore.
16:14 - Mark (Host)
And it wasn't how I was raised either.
16:16 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
You know, my mother was the kindest person I've ever known in my life. She was not violent, she was not an addict. No-transcript I'm in prison the rest of my life or I get out next year. This isn't who I want to be anymore and what was the first step?
17:00 - Stacey (Host)
like, was the first thing that you did to change? Was it getting books reading applying to school? Like, what was the first thing that you did to change? Was it getting books reading applying to school? Like what was the first thing you did?
17:07 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
I started taking college classes.
17:09
But, when I first did that, I was my heart wasn't in it yet, I was doing it for my mom, but I started realizing like, oh, I actually am, you know, somewhat smart individual and this is giving me a sense of purpose. So my education, that's what it did for me, more than anything else, cause in my mind I thought I'll never be able to use this college degree. What's the point? But it changed my character and I. I used to think in such black and white terms, with everything that getting more educated really helped me to see that the gray areas in life and that was that was a big deal for me. My thinking used to be very rigid.
17:48 - Stacey (Host)
At what point was that Like, was that how many years in? Because at that point you're still thinking I'm here for 96 years, like I'm here forever. I can't imagine like, okay, now, just like what you said, so I'm going to get a college degree and still be in prison. You know what I mean. Like for the rest of my life. To have that sort of internal motivation, I think is pretty cool.
18:14 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
Yeah, what it did is just gave me a sense of purpose, and I really needed that. I needed to feel like I was not just the person who committed my crime, because I wasn't. I wasn't just that person in my heart, deep down inside me. That isn't who I really was, was. And so I needed to prove to myself as well as really the rest of the world at that point like I just I wanted people to know I'm not bad through and through. There's a lot of good things about me, but I was so lost in my guilt and my shame and my anger and all the pain I had it was hard for me to dig myself out of that hole.
19:00 - Mark (Host)
Hey guys, thanks for listening. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review, give us a follow, subscribe, all those things. All those things. We love it because we read each and every comment and it helps shape the show, so we would appreciate it.
19:14 - Stacey (Host)
Please, and back to the show.
19:16 - Mark (Host)
You know. It reminds me of something that Clayton Kellum, a gentleman that we had on our show, had gone to prison. I can't remember how long, but he was, I think, 21, when he went to prison. He was relatively young and he said he had to have the realization that this is not who he was. This is just something that was on his timeline, which I thought was well put, because he knew he was going to get out at some point. It wasn going to get out at some point. It wasn't a sentence as as big as yours or as long as yours. But he also said that he had a very different prison experience because there were a group of older inmates who saw his potential, knew what he could become when he got out and took them under, took him under their wing. So he had a very different experience. He had this sort of like guidance and protection and encouragement and support. Did you have anybody doing that for you at 17, 18, 19 years old?
20:01 - Stacey (Host)
no women well wait.
20:03 - Mark (Host)
How about a decade later? Or or 15 years late? No, women is that women?
20:09 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
no, no, not really, not really. That's more of a thing in the men's prisons anyways, because there's a lot more politics in men's prisons than women's. Uh, I actually clicked up with a bunch of negative people when I got into prison, because they were just like me, yeah. So I clicked with people and there were a couple of positive people around me that were older and had done some time already but, and they kind of claimed they were trying to take me under their wing, but I really wasn't available for the taking. I was just so lost in the other part of what was going on. I wasn't interested in that yet.
20:48 - Mark (Host)
Anyway, so you just found one friend, one positive friend, the entire time you were there.
20:54 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
There were a couple. A couple. There were a couple.
20:57 - Stacey (Host)
She didn't need them because she had this newfound purpose. And then, but when you did have the newfound purpose, the people who are around you in your world, like they, had to probably try to drag you down. Right, I mean, there's nobody that was like oh, this is great, good for you, cheryl. Let's, let's, let's see you go to college and graduate.
21:12 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
There weren't necessarily a lot of people that tried to drag me down, but what I have found happens is the more that you change for the better in prison, the lonelier your life gets. That's how I always explain it, because you just don't click with people anymore. There's not a whole lot of people in there that are really dedicated to changing their mindset to such a high degree that they never use drugs again, never go back to prison, or that they're even just genuinely happy people most of the time, because those are really big changes to make and it takes a lot of time when you were in as dark of a place as I was as a teenager, and so most people just aren't willing to put in that work or they don't know how. They don't know how to do it.
21:58 - Stacey (Host)
Along the way? Were you trying to appeal and get the sentence? You know, make the sentence less Like? Were there certain things you were putting in place to try and make that happen? Or like, so like, while you're, you know, in college, were you still thinking to yourself, maybe there's a chance the sentence could be less?
22:16 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
I always hoped that, but there were, you know, many different rounds of appeals that I lost all the way up into, like before a few years. Within my release, when I got out, I had lost another appeal. That one went all the way up to the U S Supreme court and I really had high hopes for that one, because at that point a lot of the laws were changing and my sentence at that point was just like are you kidding? 96 years for a person who didn't actually commit an act of violence. And we thought we had some good legal arguments and I still lost.
22:52 - Stacey (Host)
But you were the first woman accepted into the Juveniles Convicted as Adults program, right? So can you tell me about that? How did you find out about it? Did your lawyer bring it to you?
23:03 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
No, no, you found it. Well, we were very plugged into everything that was happening politically. We had been for years, because my mom was a big advocate for me, and so the more that I changed and you know there's not a lot of people they had college degrees in prison, especially on a master's degree level. So I kind of was an example of oh you know, this is an example of a person who was rehabilitated Look at what she's done in here and I had a lot of support, and so my mom was actually asked to speak at the hearings for this program that got passed and it's called J-CAP stands for Juveniles Convicted as Adults Program. It was a three-year program and basically they were teaching you they were supposed to be teaching you how to be successful when you got out of prison.
23:58
Now, there were some elements of it that were great. Uh, I had a therapist in the program that I actually bumped heads with, he drove me nuts. He actually taught me some, some great things, and so I'm grateful for him in the end. Uh, because he he did show me some things about myself, which, of course, made me mad at the time, you know and so he showed me some things that helped me to grow before I got out.
24:25
But you know a lot of the program. They would teach you how to set goals. That's the example I always use. So there was a lot of frustration for me at that point because I'm, you know, 40 years old. Frustration for me at that point Cause I'm, you know, 40 years old and I'm like well, I know how to set a goal. I'm not still 16 or 17. And so I just did what I had to do and and do not get me wrong I am so grateful to the state of Colorado for creating that program and allowing people like me in it, because, technically, the law changes that happened applied to juvenile life without parole sentences, which I did not have oh, interesting, interesting, so you.
25:06
So it shouldn't have applied to you interesting. I'm very, very grateful that I was a part yeah.
25:12 - Stacey (Host)
Did that help you eventually get out earlier? Or what was the? What happened? That's what got me out, that's what got you. This program is what got me out.
25:18 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
So I got out a good 13 years sooner than I would have been even eligible to ask for parole the first time because of this program. It's huge, that is huge.
25:34 - Mark (Host)
So you, you wrote, you wrote a book called plant your energy, face your demons and transform your life, which I think you've done. You're facing your demons, you've, you know, you're being very open with us and we appreciate that certainly, um, and you definitely transform your life. In that book, which I think is a workbook style, there's exercises for people who I, I assume well, I won't assume who's the book for, how about that?
25:58 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
So obviously the main target audience is people who have dealt with addiction, who are addicts and convicts.
26:05 - Mark (Host)
Yeah.
26:05 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
But if you read the book, the book applies to pretty much any human being. We all have thinking patterns that are flawed. We all have something in our past that has traumatized us and affected our behaviors and our thinking. We all want to be better people. We all have triggers. I just explore what all of that looks like for me and I give some examples of my time in prison, and so I have a high level of relatability with that population, obviously. So that has been my target audience, but as I build my business, I'm trying to expand on what.
26:44
I'm doing. I don't want to just limit myself.
26:47 - Mark (Host)
How driven are you today by your lost time, and are you driven at all by a sense of needing atonement for your sins?
26:59 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
if you will, absolutely both those things are what drive me. Uh, I always say now that you know, the best thing that I could do is live my life the best way that I can to honor the people that I've hurt in the past. And also, yeah, I absolutely feel like I have to make up for lost time, you know.
27:20 - Stacey (Host)
So I like to go see things and do fun things, you probably are inspiring people. What do you think you would say to like a young teen, Like, have you ever like I'm sure you've spoken to a group of teens before Like, what would you say to help them, maybe not go down some of your paths?
27:39 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
I mean, I know your book is probably pretty helpful for them too, but I mean one of the main things that I always point out is when you're younger, you're just so caught up in living in the moment. You're not thinking about, you know, having a career, buying a house, having things that mean something to you, creating your own family. You don't think like that when you're that young, and that was the problem with us. And now it's been scientifically proven right that your brain doesn't finish developing until your mid-20s, and so I always just encourage people to think about is this something that's going to matter to you a week or a month or a year from now? And it really never, is you?
28:25
know, most of the time you're like I'm not going to care about this, and so you get caught up in a moment, and a moment can forever change the course of your life, and so people need to stop and think about the choices that they make, which is kind of the foundation of what Plant your Energy is about. It's just really becoming mindful of what you are doing in each moment of your life and that's creating what's coming next for you. So we need to kind of wake up and pay closer attention to those little details.
28:56 - Stacey (Host)
Love that. How about, like on the flip side of that? I know you loved your mom. Your mom's been so supportive all these years. So what do you think you would tell parents that are dealing with a teen who might just be a little out of control and it happens to so many of us- so I hate when. I get asked this question.
29:14 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
Sorry, but I'm not a parent and so I I don't think that I was, I don't know. I don't even know that I would be a good parent. So that question is hard for me because I know that when I was a kid there was nothing that could be said to me. My mom tried to discipline me, me, or then she tried to be nice to me. She tried every single angle that she could to get me back in line and there was no talking to me. I did not care what anybody had to say. I was spinning out of control.
29:49
Now, thankfully, I was an extreme case and hopefully for most parents their kid isn't that bad, you know, and they can kind of be real back in. But that's where I think that I can have influences, because I have gone down that wrong path. And so you know, most kids don't really I hate to say this, but they don't really care what their parents have to say. They're a teenager and they just want to do what they want to do. And that's not all kids by any means, but the kids I was around, that's how we all felt.
30:22 - Stacey (Host)
And I think that's good for parents to hear. Do you know what I mean? Because parents, I think, believe that they can control in some way or they might feel that guilt, so hearing that from you, like there was really nothing any anybody could have done or said to change the trajectory of what happened to me. So it's so the parents who feel like it's their fault. Maybe they're going to feel a little alleviated by that. So I know you said you hate to answer the question, but that is a beautiful answer. I really liked it.
30:49 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
I'm glad you spun that in that direction.
30:53 - Mark (Host)
We'll send you a copy.
30:55 - Stacey (Host)
That's definitely a short.
30:58 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
I actually did used to tell my mom that, though I said you know it's not good, because of course she felt like it was her fault and I said you were the most incredible mother. I don't see how you could have done anything better than the way that you did it. I was just so far gone in doing what I wanted to do. There was just no talking to me.
31:17 - Stacey (Host)
What's the meaning of plant your energy?
31:22 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
Basically plant your energy is a mindset. I'm trying to teach people to have an awareness that every single thought we're thinking and every single action that we're taking is going to have a ripple effect. It's going to create the foundation for the quality of your life, and I now tell people that the quality of your life is a direct reflection of the work you're putting into it, and so we need to be mindful about, okay, when I make this decision in my life. Is this taking me the direction that I want to go? And I'm real big on trying to get people to tap into their why. What is your passion in your life? If you could have everything you dreamed of, what would that look like? Okay, so now, what's one step you can take towards building that? Because I dreamed of being a keynote speaker standing on a stage doing a public speech. I got to do that just a couple of weeks ago.
32:21 - Stacey (Host)
Fantastic, and so it's like planting seeds.
32:24 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
That's it Planting seeds to grow your energy, I love it and we have the power of choice and I think sometimes people forget that I work in the behavioral health field. Outside of what I'm doing with myself, you're choosing that. You keep choosing to have that life for yourself. You're not doing anything. So I'm always trying to encourage people like take action, do something. If you're not happy with what's going on with yourself, you can change what's going on. You know, and there might be an exception to that here and there in some extreme cases, but for the most part, we create our reality.
33:22 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, have you had any contact with or has anybody ever from the victim's families ever reached out?
33:31 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
So I've only had one encounter with one of the victim's family members, and it was one of my victim's cousins who I actually knew before the crime happened. I had been around him and, long story shortened here, I had a good friend who got out and hooked up with this guy, and so I actually called her on the phone one day and she asked me do you know who so-and-so is? And my heart just stopped because he was a person that I actually thought would hold one of the biggest grudges against me for what had happened, and so I didn't answer her at first. I was just so shocked by the question that she asked me again and I didn't even say yes, I I was just so shocked by the question that she asked me again and I said I didn't even say yes. I said why are you asking me that? And she told me that she was with him and that she the first thing he had asked her was do you know Cheryl Armstrong? And she's like oh, yeah, she called me mom. She's like that's my mom in there and she's I love her. And he was like yeah, well, this is why she's in there.
34:36
That was my cousin, and so I ended up talking to him on the phone that same day. He wanted to talk and that, hands down, it was one of the most life transforming and powerful moments of my life. He told me that he had forgiven me many years ago. He said I'll never forget what happened, but I forgive you. And he said you know, I knew you and I know that that's not who you are. I know how it goes. You get caught up. In a moment, things spun out of control. He just extended such kindness and grace to me and he said you know, I followed you over the years and I've seen what you're doing in there. And he said I think that you should get out, that you could do more good on this side than you can in there now. And I mean I sobbed through the entire phone call. It was so powerful.
35:26 - Stacey (Host)
How can we help you get the word out? Plant the energy I mean is that? Is it going to the general public or it?
35:32 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
mostly because I see I saw on your instagram that you're giving away books to the prison system and that's unbelievable, but I'm sure you want to sell some actually, if I'm being honest, I did sell those books, okay good, yeah, that was with a big client that I have it, which I'm not going to disclose too much on this yet, but I am going to be going into 16 more prisons in the next year, so I yeah, that is so cool, cheryl.
35:59 - Stacey (Host)
That's just amazing that you're doing that, really giving back like honestly, yeah, I want to help people break the cycles that they have in their lives.
36:07 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
You know, honestly, right now, one of the big things I'm trying to do is just gain followers on social media, and that is a tricky thing for me because I don't know the ins and outs of social media, having been in person all my life. So, yeah, that's what I'm kind of trying to navigate through right now.
36:26 - Mark (Host)
What are your handles on Instagram? How can they find you?
36:30 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
Plants your Energy.
36:31 - Mark (Host)
Okay.
36:31 - Cheryl Armstrong (Guest)
And same with Facebook Got it. And then I finally created a tiktok, but I'm not a tiktoker, I'm trying like okay, it's a thing. It's a thing, it's a thing, and so I'm trying to kind of get more in line with all of that stuff. But it's, it's weird for me because now I'm kind of old and out of touch with.
36:52 - Stacey (Host)
Don't you say that you're a lot younger than me? I think a lot, hey I didn't what cut cut that part. Eric cut that part we'll push this out and, you know, make sure it's out there in the world yeah, I think people need to hear it for sure.
37:08 - Mark (Host)
And um, congrats on all your current success and this new success of getting into more prisons. That's, that's super exciting. You I don't know what the recidivism rate is for women's prisons or you know female inmates, but you have to have a positive impact on that number. If, if, uh, you know these are your thoughts, what worked for you and you're just kind of sharing it so it can work for others. I think it's wonderful thank you all right.
37:31
well, thank you for joining us, thank you for having this great conversation and thank all of you. Take care, we'll see you soon.
37:41 - Stacey (Host)
You're still here. You're still listening. Thanks for listening to the Gurus and Game Changers podcast While you're here. If you enjoyed it, please take a minute to rate this episode and leave us a quick review. We want to know what you thought of the show and what you took from it and how it might have helped you. We read and appreciate every comment. Thanks, See you next week.