Human Up Season 2 Ep 4: Motherhood, Redemption, and Reclaiming Your Humanity with Nicole Christie

This is a transcript of Human Up Podcast Season 2, Episode 4 with Nicole Christie which you can watch and listen to here:

Dave: Welcome to the Human Up Podcast. I'm your host, Dave Marlon, and today I am thrilled and honored to have Nicole Christie as our special guest. Welcome Nicole.

Nicole: Thank you, Dave, for having me.

Dave: How long have we worked together?

Nicole: Since 2012.

Dave: Wow. That's a long time.

Nicole: The end of 2012, but yes. Yeah, little bit.

Dave: That's amazing. When I first met you, I remember you talking about that you had heard of solutions, the rehab I worked when you were still inside.

Nicole: Correct.

Dave: Can you tell us that story? What happened?

Nicole: Yes. By the time I had met you at Solutions Recovery, I was currently on house arrest at that point in time, after doing four years and 11 months inside of this prison system here in Las Vegas. So I grew up in Northern Nevada and got into a bunch of trouble attending college in Reno at UNR and ended out again getting into a bunch of trouble and ended out in prison for four years and 11 months. I did four years at the main prison, and then I did 11 months at camp. I got out on house arrest. I was currently on house arrest for 18 months. For 18 months, and then six months on parole.

Dave: Wow. You are pretty, and you don't seem like the kind of person when I think of somebody who went to prison or to camp, what's camp?

Nicole: Camp is a minimum custody location that you are still considered an inmate in the state of Nevada, but it is a lower level minimum custody you are a part of. It's called NDF, it's the Nevada Division of Forestry, and you actually train and you pack, you do APAC test just like a Nevada division of forestry employee does. And you go out and you clean up Las Vegas, you clean up different areas like washes. You cut down trees, you learn how to be a Sawyer, and you go and clear bushes up bushes and trees up at Mount Charleston. It's quite the give back process, I would say. It was amazing. And after being locked up in a prison for four years and stepping out into an environment where you are still inside of an institution, but you are able to leave on a daily basis and be able to do things and be out in society now we are watched, of course, we have officers that are a part of the NDF business, I guess, and so they would obviously monitor us while we were out.

Dave: You said you were a Sawyer. I don't know what that is. What's a Sawyer?

Nicole: A Sawyer is somebody that is trained to cut down really big trees. So you end out learning how to do or how to work a chainsaw.

Dave: Wow. You know how to use a chainsaw.

Nicole: I do. I've falled trees very, very big on the side of Mount Charleston out here in Vegas. I did that for about three or four months. We also did controlled burns, so we did a lot of controlled burns at the top of Mount Charleston as well.

Dave: So the Department of Forestry has some kind of arrangements with the Department of Corrections to utilize inmates for labor to clear away forest fire risks. And you volunteered for that.

Nicole:

You do volunteer for it. It is a goal for many inmates as it is a way to get out of the main prison, but you do have to be considered minimum custody, which is you can't be a threat to others or the community at that point in time.

Dave: Wow.

Nicole: Yeah,

Dave: That sounds like a cool experience despite the fact that

Nicole: It's never thought I would be Yes. In a million years, never thought I would have been there. But looking back, obviously I was exactly where God wanted me to be at that point in time.

Dave: Yeah. I remember vividly meeting you in the courtyard. We used to have barbecues for anybody in recovery or new in the community, and I met you in that courtyard there and you say it's 2012, but it seems like yesterday.

Nicole: I know. Yep. You've been helping people for a very long time,

Dave: As have you, because I remember, well, actually, before we get that, I want to talk to you about Sean and Jackson. Do you remember shortly afterwards you started dating Sean? And I remember when you were carrying Jackson.

And I remember you coming to me and you were like, Dave, I don't know how to be a mom. I'm not sure if this is my jam. Still sorting out who Nicole was in this world. Do you remember us talking about that?

Nicole: I remember it vividly in my headspace at that point in time in my life, I had done almost five years in prison. So in my head, I was going from house arrest to baby arrest. At that point in time, I looked at having a child as something that was going. I got out of prison and I was ready to prove myself. I wanted to do good things. I wanted to prove to myself that I was a good person and to so many people that I had hurt. So at that point in time, having a baby was like, this is going to stop all my dreams from coming. True. So that's where I was then. Yes. And I remember coming to you and I was worried about my job and you were like, this is going to be the greatest thing. It will change you, but it will be the greatest thing that ever happens to you. And I remember, yes, that conversation like it was yesterday

Dave: Was, it

Nicole: Was, what

Dave: Was it, the greatest thing?

Nicole: Oh my God. As you know me, my greatest gift and obsession in life is my child.

Dave: Yeah. Anytime I've talked to you And how old's Jackson now?

Nicole: He's 11.

Dave: He's 11. Anytime I've talked to you in the last 12 years, your so primary purpose and focus in life is being not just a mom, but a just and righteous mom for Jackson. To me, seeing you and the way you are, I see all kinds of craziness in the world right now. But seeing you and what happened to you biologically or biochemically, it really gives me hope for the world because we're still wired, right? You certainly are.

Nicole: Yes. Thank you. Dave.

Dave: How was Jackson doing?

Nicole: Jackson is an amazing little soul. He's like an old soul. He's doing well. He is in fifth grade and transitioning to go to a middle school, he's so good and never gets in trouble, but the attitude is slowly starting to pop up. So learning and navigating that as he's 11 and I'm like, you have life by the butt. There's no reason for you to ever have attitude with us. So I'm navigating that part right now. But I mean, yeah, we push him to be a good person, I hope. And just learning to become a parent with each different age is a learning experience for me.

Dave: Oh God. Help him when he starts eyerolling his mom, but it's gone.

Nicole: Oh my goodness. Yeah. Everybody's like, you baby him and you love him so much. But at the same time, I also realize that I want him to be a good human and shaping him is part of my job. So hopefully,

Dave: And the emancipating is difficult for all of us as it will be for you. Can I ask, what has motherhood taught you about yourself?

Nicole: Motherhood has taught me, oh my goodness, specifically. I feel like it's shaped me in every way possible. It's different. So I'm constantly learning. When you see the world, not only through your eyes as I feel like we're all just children trying to grow up, I'm still just a person trying to grow up myself while I'm raising a child. I am constantly learning from him, and I constantly see the world differently through his eyes. So I will have maybe a strong belief system because of what I have been through in my life, but then I will have conversations with children are very smart and they absorb so much. I will have conversations with him and it will give me a different perception on something that I feel like there's no way he could teach me. And then he ends out teaching me. So I mean, every day is different with him. That's beautiful.

Dave: Yeah. That's funny. Out of the mouth of babes. Remember just some of the silly things. My son Owen, he would look at me and say, daddy, why do they call them side burns? They're not burning. They're the best, aren't they? Things that make you scratch your head. And I remember when I met you in that solutions recovery courtyard, and we had talked and you had said you wanted, after meeting you for a little while, you had said, I'd asked you one of your dreams and you said, Hey, I want to have a salon. Now, you weren't a cosmetologist. Why was that dream important to you?

Nicole: At that time, I was selling haircare products. I had a friend who when I got out of prison, was on house arrest. I had to report to parole and probation, but I was able to work. So during that point in time, I was selling shampoos and things like that. And being on the Solutions Wellness Campus was a place you wanted to be. You felt welcomed and everybody kind of had their own thing going on, but everybody came together. And so your vision of solutions and having this wellness campus was something I wanted to be a part of. So as far as being a part of your vision and opening the salon, those two kind of connected. And then I've always, again, I've had this, I don't know what it's this, I dunno if it's spirit led or what it is, but I in my head, have ways that I want to be successful. And so the idea of nurturing something and growing something and being successful at it was a part of my, a dream of mine for sure. So yeah, the Salon and Solutions Recovery, I mean there still is nothing like it. Vegas stronger is close, stronger is

Dave: Close, and we still aspire to develop that quo.

In the last week, Angela and Isabelle and Vanessa all kind of bounced into my life, and I realized Johnny Hedley, there was a bunch of beautiful souls that worked for you in there. And you're absolutely right, it was an integral part of the Solutions Recovery campus. And I remember we had somebody who'd be lying in group that they really had a recurrence and they didn't know what to say, and then they would go get a haircut, and then they would tell their haircutter, their haircutter, then somehow whisper like, Hey, this person's struggling. And it allowed us to just have one more level of connection with our clients so we can help them because we didn't want to narc them. We just wanted to help them. And the unfortunate thing about the disease of addiction is that it pushes us into isolation, and it pushes us into secrecy and being able to let people know that we love them regardless of their secrets and want to help them regardless. And that we've done bad things too. And we are all works in progress trying to get better. But I'm so grateful that you and I were able to work together to help build that. That was amazing.

Nicole: The self-care was extremely important to our clients. The self-confidence, a lot of them had lost for so long. Looking in the mirror was a struggle for them. And so to be able to connect, as you said, and build that community that would connect solutions clients and everything we had on the campus to the salon, we had many people that it was important to them that they looked and felt their best, especially on a family day. You would have family days that would allow the families to come in and visit their loved ones and connect with them. And so that self-confidence that just by getting a haircut or getting their nails in or something, it boosted their self-confidence. And that self-care aspect was, I feel very, it was a very important modality that you had added to the services that the clients received on the campus. And you fought for that too because the clients loved it. And it's not something you can bill for or it's not one of the services that was always included in the substance abuse, mental health kind of campus. But it was something that the clients absolutely loved. So

Dave: It's funny, I just wrote a book called Saving Lily, and nobody epitomized the need for the salon and the integration of that as Lily did, who wasn't her real name, but I remember bringing her in and she was a severe schizophrenic. She had severe trauma, PTSD, she was using heroin for two years, homeless on the streets. And when she came in and we had her in the residential level of care, she refused to bathe, she refused to talk. She was nonverbal. She was just there for 19 days. And I had started, I had two of the clients write letters, one to the governor's office saying, how do you have my son or daughter in your treatment center with this absolute animal who doesn't or clean themselves? You need to extricate this pariah from your facility. And on the 19th day, she went into the salon and you guys dyed her hair and you cut her hair and washed her hair. And on the 20th day, she woke up and she went in to see everybody and she knew everybody was because she was nonverbal, but she'd been paying attention and she just started talking like a normal girl. And everybody's like, what happened? And I remember she said, I looked in the mirror and I didn't see the terrible dirty girl that I'd been. I saw myself as a beautiful child as a kid. And that allowed her to make a flip. And with that, I recognize this isn't about haircuts.

Nicole: No, not at all.

Dave: This is about allowing people to feel good about themselves, to help break free from whatever shame or guilt or hindrances that are holding them back. So as you know, we have a little salon downstairs that I'm still trying to get more robust, but when you feel good about the way you look, it crosses the emotional and mental boundary of who you are and it can help you get to new levels, which we all want.

Nicole: We all want. Agreed. Agreed.

Dave: Now working together for, is that 16 years you ended up helping at this point, thousands of people come in because you shifted from, even when you're in the salon, you helped me with an admissions role, but you've been doing that more and more lately. I just realized you've probably helped a thousand people come in and access treatment.

Nicole: Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

Dave: Could you describe your role? Could you tell people what you do so they understand what your role is in admissions?

Nicole: Well, admissions, yes. I did have the salon at Solutions Recovery, but I did many admissions. I did work in the admissions department for quite some time, and that is answering the phone or speaking to somebody in person, either somebody who is struggling themselves that's lost and hopeless, or a family member that is desperate to try to save their loved one. So at this point, yeah, it's probably been a thousand With Vegas Stronger, you get emails through different platforms on a daily basis that you will respond to personally to each of them, and then you forward them to me, and then I end out calling that individual, trying to gain a little bit more of a connection, a little bit more of an accountability I feel like when connect to them. And then we schedule them for assessments. I do that through our MAP program, which is our Medication assisted treatment program with CCDC.

And then we also work with a platform called Open Beds, which is basically like a state crisis. Those that call in to the crisis hotline, they take the phone calls and then they disperse those referrals to where they potentially would be best fit. And so we take those on a daily basis. We get them via email and stuff, and we reach out to those admissions as well. And it's basically connecting with them or listening to mom call a hundred times, trying to save their kid who's strung out and living on the streets and not eating and in danger. And that kind of hopelessness is frightening for somebody. So just having our team on the other end of that is a huge support to them. Or of course, anybody that's personally struggling, we are that kind of sounding board for them as well. Right.

Dave: Yeah, that's a beautiful thing and it is almost mind boggling. I've realized I've helped over 10,000 people come in. You personally have helped directed over a thousand in, but if just one of them, just the fact that we helped one person stop using methamphetamine or fentanyl and got their life back and became a son or daughter, became a mommy or daddy again, I mean, it's the biggest miracle all I can ever ask for in life. Agreed. Is being able to help others. So what an amazing blessing you and I have and what a blessing you are and helping these people.

Nicole: You give me the opportunity and the platform, but thank you, Dave. I appreciate that. I really do feel the weight of that, of what our team does When I'm out in the community or when I'm with friends, it's like when I speak about either solutions or Vegas stronger, it was majority of us will drive down the street and there's somebody who's homeless on the street and a lot of us just look straight. We don't even want to engage or look their way. And I was like that same population that people don't want to engage with come down to our facility and our team members, they not only look in their direction, they love on them and go above and beyond to meet a thousand different needs that are connected to the chaos of addiction, and it's beyond powerful. If you actually come down, it's chaotic. I always say there's never a dull moment, but it is truly meeting that individual and their needs, and it's not the prettiest time in their life. So our team is, oh my goodness, incredible. So thank you. I get to be a part of that. Yes,

Dave: I'm so grateful you are. Now, as you segued out of salon and more into community relations, helping people, interventions, whatever you want to call it, I was always kind of nudging you back onto the reentry side because I knew that was one of your passions, and because you recognize that just like the people in the street, people don't want to look at 'em, they don't want to acknowledge it. It's the same thing that with people in jail or prison, agreed. We just want to forget about them and nobody wants to look or acknowledge them. When agreed with just a little bit of love and help and support, we can help them not get stuck in a cycle of recidivism, but instead they could be mothers and daughters and sons and brothers and husbands and wives with their help. Now you kind of run our reentry program.

Nicole: Yeah. Yes, yes. I get to be a lead in it. Yes, absolutely.

Dave: You talked about, a little bit about the, you called it the CCDC match program, the Clark County Detention Center, medication Assisted Treatment Program. Can you just mention that again, what you do there?

Nicole: Yes. So Vegas Stronger, our team kind of partners with many different moving parts with CCDC, so you do have social services and housing, and then you have inside of CCDC where they distribute the actual medication and then you have transportation, and then you have outreach and inReach. We all kind of come together to basically connect with those that are incarcerated. They are inside of the jails and they will be getting out fairly soon. And so we meet them and give them an opportunity to basically what they are released from jail that they get to connect with us immediately. So we then work with their team. We provide transport, we find out when they're being released, and then once they're released, we pick them up, we bring them over to Vegas stronger, we assess them and we help get their medications, and then we help get them over to housing so they have a stable place to stay.

And then we set them up with treatment with us so they can continue to stay connected with us. And then it's on their terms, of course, to continue into treatment and to show up every day. That's the hard part, I think, for those coming out of jail because they want to run and see their family or they want to do many things other than come into treatment. However, we have found that by our team, connecting with them before they get out, I personally feel that I give them an accountability kind of connection that if they were just to get out normally and maybe they've upset mom, dad, kids, they have nowhere to really turn to when they get out, they remember our team and their faces and that we cared and we're like, Hey, this is the next step. Come see us. We literally will pick you up out of jail. And now the jail has always released inmates at like 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning. I believe the next day, four of Vegas stronger they have now that they're working with us, they wait to release them until we can pick 'em up the next morning, which is a really, really, really big deal. Anytime the justice system alters their process in ways is a really big deal. So I see the change that we are making and the education that we are providing with those that are already helping our incarcerated population.

Dave: That's awesome. I was going to say, what's the biggest challenge that people face when they're released, especially those on mat?

Nicole: The biggest challenge is they probably without any direction, they don't know their next step. I feel like a lot of them will say housing. They come out and they don't have anywhere to go, so their biggest challenge is going to be finding the healthy direction that they need to go and taking that next step. I feel like a lot of times they come out and they're still a little lost and their mindset might be wanting to go back to maybe using or going back to environment or family or friends that they shouldn't. I think making that next step to actually come to Vegas stronger and connect is one of the most important decisions they will make after being released.

Dave: Yeah, a hundred percent agree. Oh, just thank God for Nicole. I'm going to ask if you know of a success story or is there anybody that reminds you of why this work matters?

Nicole: I mean, could you and I could sit and talk for hours about success stories? I will say, since we spoke a little bit about my story, can it be from solutions?

Dave: Sure. Just any story.

Nicole: I was doing admissions, it was at Solutions, and I just had Jackson and we had a young lady come in. She was just released from the hospital and they had brought her over to solutions to do an intake, and she was still wanting to leave and go get high, and she just had this baby, and the baby was born with crystal meth in their system, so they took the baby away. And I remember being upset. I remember being angry, I don't want to help you. I know logically what my job is, but everything in me was like, how could you? I was judging her, just I was completely judging her at that point in time. And I remember going through the process and helping her, and I remember her checking in to treatment and then a month or two later, she ended out coming into the salon and I met her again and she started getting her life back.

And she ended out being a part of her child's life and staying clean and sober for quite some time. She would come back to the barbecue, so we would see her there for years. She would come back and stay connected. And so that was powerful to me. It really took something that I was judging and I was like, I can't understand you in any way, shape or form to turning it into an opportunity for me to actually help her and maybe get her back on track again for something that I was judging. It's like a complete, I guess whatever you would say, that I was able to be a part of that story.

Dave: I love those success stories.

Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. And there's a bunch. Yeah.

Dave: Do you consider yourself a success story?

Nicole: I consider myself a success story in areas I'm constantly working on myself. I do feel that way. It's a constant learning process. It's a constant wanting to be better, a better human being, a better mom. I'm constantly at 39 years of age wanting to improve myself, but in healthy ways. So am I success story. I hope there are pieces of my life yes. That are successful. And then there's many pieces that are just, I'm always trying to be better at, if that makes sense.

Dave: Yeah. Thank goodness. Right on. The name of this podcast is Human Up. Can you tell me what Human Up means to you? Not just professionally, but personally?

Nicole: Okay. Human Up professionally is asking others to kind of stand up for what's right. And to help, I would say to Human Up is you have to make that choice. So it's to stand up and actually maybe make a difference in either your life or somebody else to human up. And then personally, I mean they probably go hand in hand right now. They overlap a lot. What I do professionally, what I'm able to do professionally and in my own life, human Up again, it's taking a stance for right and trying to do better, constantly trying to make that next choice a good one and a healthy one. I'm all about healthy choices. I've made the worst choices most people can make in their life in many different times. So my goal is just today to make healthy choices for myself and for those around me.

Dave: Bravo. I think that's the best answer I've heard. That was beautiful.

Nicole: Thanks Dave. Thank you.

Dave: Anything else we should talk about before we wrap up

Nicole: Or

Dave: Anything you want to ask me?

Nicole: Oh, has your okay for Human Up, your definition of Human Up now, do you think that has changed since you have been helping people who have struggled with substance abuse and mental health? Do you think human up evolves or it changes, or do you have a definite, this is what I'm standing behind when it says human up.

Dave: Thanks. It meant a lot of things to me. Mostly when I stopped being able to control my drug use, when I would ask my dad what the right thing to do is, he would tell me to man up and just stop. And to me, human Up was a higher order and it was genderless, and it was also something that I was not able to do without a community to help me. That makes sense. So that's from the recovery standpoint. Human up is that Now, to me, I think I've told you, I used to do mushrooms and smoke marijuana, and I was a philosophy major in college, and I was trying to figure out what the answer to life was. I read the Bible and the Torah and Decar and Nietzsche, and I was trying to figure out what's the point of life. To me, the answer is to human up and to help each other. It seemed foreign to me at the time I was in the seventies or in the eighties. And to me the answer was life was get money and get high. And human up seemed incongruent with it. But as I've grown and become, I guess the stage I'm in, I think the answer to life is we should all human up.

Nicole: Amen. Thank you!

Dave: My name's Dave Marlon. I'm honored to have had Nicole Christie on as a guest, and I encourage everybody to Human Up. Bye, Nicole. Thank you.

Nicole: Bye Dave. Thank you.