The lived reality of the racist prison system can get lost in the swirl of facts and figures surrounding mass incarceration. Frigid cells in winters and sweltering conditions in summers; the volatility and capriciousness of hostile guards and correctional staff; food barely fit for human consumption; isolation from one’s community and deprivation from the routines and small freedoms that made up one’s identity prior to incarceration. The trauma of such an experience is undeniable, and extends far beyond prison walls—from overpoliced communities subjected to the constant presence of police surveillance and terror, to the families and relationships put under the strain of separation. Dr. Da’Mond Holt returns to Rattling the Bars for the final installment of a two-part interview, this time speaking with host Mansa Musa and his friend Lonnell Sligh, about their respective experiences behind bars, and the implications of the prison system as a deliberate system of mass trauma affecting Black and other working class communities of color.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino, Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling The Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Joining me today is Dr. Da’Mond Holt from Trauma… Where are you from?
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
The Trauma Center of Hope, from Tucson, Arizona.
Mansa Musa:
Trauma Center of Hope from Tucson, Arizona. And my good friend Lonnell Sligh, say hi to our audience Lonnell.
Lonnell Sligh:
Hello everybody. Thank you for having me. I’m Lonnell Sligh.
Mansa Musa:
Today we are talking about black trauma, what happened to us. We have Dr. Holt here as a referee between me and Sligh. Me and Sligh been beefing forever. I want you to mediate this beef, right Doc, since you a traumatologist. Because he got the Golden Gloves Award and all that. So I’m thinking about just hitting him and running, not to have no more Trump, but I jest.
Today we going to be talking about, both me and Lonnell together, have served almost a hundred years in prison. So today we’re going to be talking about, not only how we process the trauma that we undergone, but our views on it as it relates to the prison system. But more importantly, we want you Doc, Dr. Holt, to contextualize a lot of this stuff for the benefit of our audience. Because we’re of the opinion that we need to build a movement around trauma.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Yes.
Mansa Musa:
We’ve been having this conversation off camera. But more importantly, we wanted to talk about, as it relate to the prison industrial complex, when should we start addressing it? Should we wait to post-release or pre-release, or when they first go in the system?
Lonnell, talk about yourself, aight. How much time was you initially serving?
Lonnell Sligh:
Two life sentences plus a hundred years.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
How much time have you done thus far?
Lonnell Sligh:
33.
Mansa Musa:
All right.
Full disclosure, Lonnell was sent out state. He’ll talk about that a little bit. We had just got him back to the state of Maryland where he’s presently, his family lives, his children live. He got a wonderful loving family. Talk about your journey. Let’s talk about how you wind up in Kansas.
Lonnell Sligh:
Okay. As he stated, we long-time time friends, we were in Jessup Correctional Center together. And at the time it was a killing field. In Jessup, we seen the need that we had to do something if we wanted to move forward and not be locked down or shut down.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Lonnell Sligh:
So we started a program called the Rebuilding Our Youth program, and it became highly successful. We had gangs and people from all different walks in the program. Just like I said, it became successful. So in success when you in the midst of the belly of the beast, you have jealousy, envy, which we here to talk about now. Trauma. A lot of traumatized people.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Lonnell Sligh:
Even myself. As we know, when you traumatize, you don’t know how to deal with situations or things that you might want to do, so you take the low road.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Lonnell Sligh:
So anyway, in the midst of that, I ended up getting sent out of a state to Kansas. That was most definitely traumatizing because I was sent away from my family.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Lonnell Sligh:
In the midst of me doing something that we thought was great and we thought was good. So anyway, I went to Kansas, and this is a whole new process and a whole new journey. In my past way of thinking, when you go into a new environment, you got to set a tone. Because that’s that trauma, that’s that way of thinking. But I had fortunately moved in my journey, whereas though I was more comfortable with myself and I was on a positive movement, whereas though I was bettering myself. Because that’s one of the things that we were fortunate to do; a lot of people don’t get that opportunity.
So when I got to Kansas, it was a nightmare. And just like I say, it was traumatizing. But I took that opportunity to say, okay, I’m mad and I’m in a new environment, but I’m going to continue my journey because this is who I am now. This is what I built myself to be. This is what I believe and this is my passion.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Lonnell Sligh:
So I went to Kansas and seen the lay of that land and seen that they were a hundred years behind the time, I use that as a terminology, but they were behind the time. So I was able to bring the same mindset that I had in Jessup that I left him with, to there.
Mansa Musa:
Dr. Holt, let’s unpack that, right, because we talked early about the different types of trauma and fight or flight.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
In your analysis, because you put in the book, you got in there about the prison industrial complex and the impact of that particular institution on people of color, black people, African-Americans. Talk about that right there. How do we deal with that industry? Because now we’re talking about an industry, prison industrial complex. As he just said, it’s arbitrary and it’s capricious that is designed primarily to punish.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Yes.
Mansa Musa:
So in that environment, how do you look at what needs to be done? When do we need to address the trauma? Trauma led us in there and when we get out, trauma’s going to get us back in there if we don’t address it. Talk about your analysis when you talk about the prison industrial in your book.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
So not only the industry, but I believe the system itself, the justice system period is a traumatizing environment and a traumatizing system.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Not just on the back end when you’re incarcerated, but on the front end when you are overly policed in our community, where traffic stops is a deadly experiences for black and brown people, where indictments and the way that processing is done for black and brown people on just the front end. We haven’t even got to the prison system yet. We’re talking about how we are prosecuted, how juries are selected.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
We don’t really pierce through a lot of those layers of how traumatizing that is for black and brown people. I mean the fact of the matter is we just incarcerate too many people. We incarcerate more black and brown people than anywhere in the world. And the system is designed on purpose. People say it’s a broken system. It’s not a broken system.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Right.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
That system has been designed and architect to do what it do.
Mansa Musa:
It’s highly functional.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Yeah. It’s highly functional and, believe it or not, very profitable.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
The justice system is also a billion-dollar industry where different subcontracts all got their hands out to make money on people who have been incarcerated, even to the bail system that needs to be reformed. We have a lot of people who have not even been adjudicated sitting in county jails for months, and they lose their home, they lose their job, they lose their families. All of those different things. That’s nothing but trauma my friend. Then we get to the prisons; when now you are convicted, many people that are black and brown have wrongfully been convicted, have not been exonerated, and they’re sitting in prison innocent.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
So prison is a traumatizing experience; being confined as an animal, treated as an animal, institutionalized, mentally, abused by prison guards, gangs all over the place, sexual assaults, rapes and murders and shanks, all of that stuff. The violence impacts the brain in such an overwhelming condition. And if you’re in that environment for a 24-hour experience, the brain that the [inaudible 00:08:57] is overwhelmed, the HPA is releasing so much cortisol that your first several days of the introduction of being in prison, being fresh meat, coming into that environment, makes the brain so overwhelmingly traumatized and on high alert to where your brain can’t relax. It can’t sleep. Insomnia is real. You can’t sleep because you don’t know if it’s life and death.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Depending on what beef you have, going to sleep might be death for you.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
So imagine, just sleep deprivation. Being cold and not comfortable, no real soft mattress. All of those things plays a part on the traumatization of incarceration. The paranoia begins to develop. Then because of the fact that the environment is so animal-like in behavior, you have to start turning off your natural senses and emotions, just to survive the night.
And the treatment, the dehumanizing experience, the demonizing experience, the stigmatization experience, the marginalizing experience of being in a prison environment does severe damage to the brain. It doesn’t just impact the brain. I believe that your brain starts being rewired starting day one. And it stays stuck in that rewired frame, not even when you get out. And that’s when it gets dangerous. Because when you’re released, your brain stays in a rewired state. And this is the reason why when people and my brothers and sisters come out of prison, they are not the same. They are not the same. Your children know it, your spouse know it, your family know it. You have been almost unhinged and rewired to live in a animal-like condition. But the question is when you’re back released in society and normalcy, how do you shift abnormal-like behavior for 30 years of conditioning to normalcy? The switch doesn’t just happen like that.
Mansa Musa:
Let me pick up on that right there.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
All right. And I’m going to come to you next, Sligh. All right, I’m going to give a situation.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
All right. They killed the police in the Maryland Penitentiary, [inaudible 00:11:44]. So naturally the state respond by, they’re going to do a fact-finding mission. So they had the previous attorney general, Stephen Sacks; they had the speaker of the house, the general assembly; and they had the house, the delegate. They came into what this place was called South Wing. Now I did a lot of time on South Wing. They came in there. When they left, they was on the front porch of the penitentiary like they was shaking, visually shaking, and this is where they say they came from. They say they came from the innermost circle of hell. Man, I did anywhere between three, four and five years in that spot. I didn’t feel like I was in hell. Talk about that, Sligh. Talk about when did you start? Because you ain’t come in the system the Lonnell Sligh you see today.
Lonnell Sligh:
Absolutely.
Mansa Musa:
You know what I mean? You come in the system, the Lonnell Sligh that was ready to, anybody say the wrong thing…
Lonnell Sligh:
I’m going to deal with it.
Mansa Musa:
You want to deal with it. Where did you make that shift at? When did you come to that shift? Because what he just outlined is something that both Carlisle or a horror movie; if you was to take and not speak on trauma and say this is a script for the next horror movie, Freddy Krueger. Then you could take everything he said, said and say, okay, just put Freddy Krueger in the character. Talk about that Sligh.
Lonnell Sligh:
Just like you stated to how they came out of the South Wing, for me, I consider myself not a monster, but I was ready to deal with whatever came to me. Because that’s just the mentality that I had when I first came to prison. I was living a lifestyle in the streets that had me in that mind frame. But for me, once I got to prison, it took some years, it took some time. It took me, like he said, going to the lockup, sitting on that shelf. But I had a lot of people in my ear that always asked me, “What is your problem? Even though you say you never getting out of prison, you still have a lot of things that people would love to have.” Through that I just started thinking and analyzing it.
Then it dawned on me how my way of thinking was that my way of thinking was crazy and insane. So once I got that in my mind, then that’s when I started making the transition into trying to re-educate myself. Because I knew something was wrong, and that’s why I said I didn’t know nothing about the trauma until later on. But that right there was the spark for me, and thirty-something years later, I’m here today.
Mansa Musa:
Hey doctor, talk about that right there. Because that’s something that is common in prison. That’s a commonality in prison. We come in one way; in the midst of being in there, the light come on, what they call the aha moment. But peel that back. Is that that junction? Have I processed, have I come to the realization that I got trauma? Or am I just, now I’m rewiring myself to say, “I got to change my thinking in order to get out of prison. Because if I stay where I’m at, I’m not going to get out.”
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
You understand what I’m saying?
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
I understand what you’re saying. Before you can change your thinking, there’s a process. The process is number one, you have core beliefs. Once you have your core beliefs, then you have your thoughts, which is your thinking. Your thinking is in charge of your actions, and if you continue to have a certain level of actions for a certain amount of days, it turns into behavior. And then once you have a set behaviors, it turns into habits. You can’t get over here and impact your habits when you have not shifted your core beliefs.
Lonnell Sligh:
Absolutely.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Your core beliefs is your reality. It’s what’s real to you. Now I can think all kinds of things about you, but if you don’t believe it in your core reality, it doesn’t matter about what I think. Now I’m even talking about it as a doctor. I can believe I see hope in you, but if your core beliefs is so dark you can’t even see a glimpse of light, then it doesn’t matter how much light I see in you. Your core beliefs have been damaged. So in order to really shift your thinking, and a lot of times coming out of prison, we have stinking thinking.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
So your life can’t change until you shift your stinking thinking. How you do that? Number one, you got to shift how you believe.
Lonnell Sligh:
Absolutely.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
You got to believe in a higher power more than you, whether that’s God or whatever. And you also got to believe in yourself. Now in my perspective, I believe in the power of God. Two, then your core beliefs have to impact how you think. Thinking has everything to do with who you are. As the scripture says, “As a man thinketh in his heart,” holy, “So is he.” You are the product of your thoughts. Your life cannot change until, number one, you change your belief system. Your belief system impacts your thoughts, then thoughts impact your behavior. Behavior impact your actions. Actions impact your habits. You can’t change your bad habits until you go push that rewind back and go back through those steps, one by one, and start shifting those things in the right direction.
So it is very important that when we’re talking about people coming out of prison, it is not as simple, from my per perspective, to just give an inmate a job and give them a house. Well, you can give them a job and a house, but if you ain’t healed the brain, it doesn’t matter how many resources that you give them, they will relapse and go back into recidivism. So we have to go back to that root cause of healing the brain. My other book is called Get Your Mind Right. You can’t change your life till you heal your brain. You want a better life, we got to heal that brain, get that brain functional at the level that it needs to be in order to impact people’s lives. So my last point is what I was alluding to is when we go into prison, the prison is designed not only just to punish, but the prison is designed to create monsters.
Mansa Musa:
That’s what it is. That’s what it is. That’s right.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
It’s to create monsters.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
It’s really you going on Nightmare on Elm Street.
Mansa Musa:
That’s where you’re at.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Whether if it’s 20, 30, 40 years. And you stay there with Freddy Krueger until you’re like Freddy Krueger. And then when you come out, we wondering why recidivism is high. Well first of all, I always say too, the prison industry need to stop false advertising. They need to stop lying. What do you mean by that, Dr. Holt? Hold on, I’m glad you’re asking me. I’m going to tell you for free. What I mean by that is they have been lying to us for years calling prison, the Department of Corrections. They don’t correct nothing. It’s really the Department of Punishment, not Correction. Because if it was correction, then you’d be getting education. If it was correction, you’d be getting mental health support. If it was correction, you’d be getting rehabilitated from addictions and substance abuse. It does not correct. So we need to change it from DOC to DOP, because it’s more about punishment than it is correction. So Dr. Holt is on record on your show saying they need to stop all this doggone lying, talking about they correcting.
When you’re correcting you should leave better than the way that you were. What we are doing is we leaving men bitter than better. So when you coming out of prison, we got more bitter people than we have better people. And when bitterness sets in without correction, it turns into a mental and spiritual cancer and it begins to erode on the inside. This is also what we call suicide ideation, where people are hanging themselves in prison because they have lost all light hope and they have no future to change.
Mansa Musa:
There you go. Dr. Holt, you got me getting ready to say amen. Hello.
According to Dr. Holt, we got no authority. We got no authority. Stop that doggone lying.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Stop that lying.
Mansa Musa:
Sligh, talk about in your transition. Because mind you audience, this is gladiator school. The JCI Jessup Correctional Institution. I’m going on record, Dr. Holt; JCI is the only institution that I know of that was founded on the knife. When you came to JCI, you ain’t ask for no clothes, no change of underwear. You ain’t ask for no a bed roll, you asked for a knife. The first thing you asked for, “Give me a knife.” And then you proceeded to, “Where I’m going to sleep at? Give me something to sleep on. Give me a pillow,” if I wanted one. Or, “Who I’m in the cell with.” But prior to that, when you came into the system, if you knew somebody, if I knew Lonnell, if me and Sligh was homeboys and I knew him; when I came in the joint, I ain’t got to ask for a knife. He going to say, “Look, here, you need this right here.” So in terms of trauma, the first thing I would think is, “Okay, who do I got a problem with?”
Lonnell Sligh:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
Because you giving me something to protect myself with, there’s obvious that I got a problem with somebody. Now talk about that. Because you was down in JCI at the inception of it, when they started, when it was, they were flying the helicopter in there. Talk about how you was able to navigate that and not get caught up. Or not get caught beating nobody up.
Lonnell Sligh:
Yeah, I heard that. You didn’t have to say that. But nah, you absolutely right. When I first got to JCI, it was at the beginning stages, and it was a killing field. The helicopter land there weekly, regularly. And it wasn’t just for inmates, the residents, it was for the staff as well. But the thing that helped me was the people that was around me that I knew when I got there. I had a few good brothers there that just gave me the lay of the land. Because when, just like he said, when it opened up, they was closing down the penitentiary because of a whole bunch of shenanigans. So it was built on, like he said, the knife.
But for me, it wasn’t a thing of how I’m going to survive. The thing for me was how was I not going to kill somebody? You know what I mean? Because that’s what type of place it was. So for me, because let me remind you, I didn’t say this earlier, but I had a double life sentence plus a hundred years. So I was never supposed to get out of prison. That was supposed to have been my resting place. So when you have that kind of sentence, a lot of times we had that mindset that we going go in there and we going to make examples so that people know to stay out my way. But just like I said, fortunately I had a few people that was there that knew me from Lorton or from other places that gave me some guidance. And from that my mindset was, because I was never getting out, I was trying to get into a space where I’m going to figure a way to better myself and the people around me. Even though, just like I said, I knew I was never getting out of prison.
Mansa Musa:
Dr. Holt, talk about that. Because Angela Davis said in her book If They Come in the Morning, about political prisoners, by her and other political prisoners, she talked about that part of the prison industrial complex, where in that environment you foster a family. And in that environment, when you foster a family, that family in that environment, it becomes more than just to protect you. It becomes a place where you can get legitimate advice. Like you said, he had people saying things to him about like, “Man, look, you got to change your way of thinking, man.” Even though he had double life and a gazillion years, he chose to listen to them because he looked at him as being family and people that had legitimate interest. We talked about that earlier, we talked about people getting ready. Can you find that environment, people that can help you, encourage you, to get ready to do a self-examination?
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Most definitely. And I think what he had found, the brother had found, was a sense of community. Because another thing about the prison industry and incarceration is not only does it try to create and produce monsters, but it does it by the power of isolation. And it is to break you. Isolation is that breaking down process. It is to break you down mentally, emotionally, spiritually, to even where you feel your soul is dying. The spirit man is dying through the power of isolation. Because once now I isolate you, now the prison guard can perpetuate pain and punishment, belittling, and kill your soul. And that’s what a monster is.
Mansa Musa:
Soulless.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
A soulless person.
Mansa Musa:
Is that making sense?
Lonnell Sligh:
Absolutely.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
It’s a soulless person. That’s a scary situation. That’s why they need you in the cage, is because they’re making you a soulless human walking on that campus. And anything can happen. So they create it, but they’re scared of what they created and don’t know what to do with it.
But at the end of the day, if you don’t have a permanent life sentence, that means one day you’re going to get released to society. And what we are doing is we are releasing those type of individuals in the community, and they’re not mentally, emotionally and spiritually ready. So you asked the question, and we talked about in our first segment, readiness have everything to do with you wanting to go to the next level. Believe it or not, you ask her what does readiness look like? Believe it or not, that’s not an easy answer. It’s a very complex answer. But I can say in my experience and expertise, readiness has had everything to do with circumstances and situations. Sometimes a loved one have to pass away.
Mansa Musa:
Right. You got it, you got it, you got it.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Unfortunately.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Unfortunately, maybe a loved one might have to have passed away, and you didn’t get that relationship right. Let’s say for example, you got a brother, y’all been beefing and you was the black sheep of the family, and that person was jealous of you. Y’all been beefing all since your childhood and adulthood, and that person died, and you never got a chance to rectify that relationship, but you got four other siblings. Sometimes it takes losing that person, that loved one, and realizing I got four others. I need to take life serious and get it right before I finally get that light to show up and say, “You know what? I need to be ready.” Maybe it means you had to lose the relationship of your kids for you to finally recognize your temper is out of control, and you are burning every relationship that you have today. Every bridge now is burnt, you can’t even go back and walk no more. Maybe that may force you to say, “I need to do something about myself and get ready.” So it looks different for every circumstances, but it is all associated with the circumstances about readiness.
Mansa Musa:
You know what? I like that. Because when we look at the landscape, the prison industrial complex, it might just be as benign as, “I got to change the way I am. I don’t want to be seen like this no more. I’m a sleazy, slimy dopefiend, and every time somebody references me, they reference me with an adjective that’s descriptive of somebody less than human.” That can put me in a state of mind where I got I do self-examination. But at the end of the day I agree that it’s circumstantial, readiness is circumstantial.
As we close out, Lonnell, talk about what you’re doing now.
Lonnell Sligh:
Well, right now I’m not fully out. I still have some conditions, but I made sure that I put myself in the space to continue what we started in JCI. And as we talked earlier about this movement for this trauma, because for myself and for Brother Mansa Musa, I think I could speak, we most definitely need a movement. And like he said earlier, when do you start in the prison complex? Because for us, we tried to start at the beginning and give people something to latch hold to from day one, even if they not ready. We was a firm believer. We always told guys, “Hey, if you come in here, we don’t care what you in here for, but you’re going to be respectful.”
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Lonnell Sligh:
Eventually some of those guys he had in here interviewing because they in spaces now where they leaders and they have their own programs. But for me right now I’m involved in a program called Evil Life Givers, Ditto House. I’m currently looking for employment as a peer counselor so that I can continue on the things that we started.
And I have a team of guys that we are doing our own thing. We networking with Kansas, to go to Kansas, because I started something in Kansas that now is taking off and it’s big. The people in Kansas has invited me back to Kansas to go inside the prison that I was incarcerated, the one that they sent me from Maryland to punish me to. They invited me.
Mansa Musa:
To come in and heal.
Lonnell Sligh:
To come in and heal. I meet with them weekly on Thursday with my team, and I also Zoom in on the program that not only did I found, but other programs as well that I was involved in.
Mansa Musa:
Dr. Holt?
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Yes.
Mansa Musa:
Going forward, what do you want to tell our audience and the world at large when it comes to how we should address trauma?
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
I always say that trauma may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility to heal from trauma. Because if you don’t, we gonna bleed on people that didn’t cut us. And not only people that cut us, but sometimes we also bleed on ourselves. It’s important that we identify where we are hemorrhaging and we’re bleeding from our trauma so that we, number one, can be in recovery and restoration for ourselves. And then two, we can go and promote and help somebody else recover as well. It’s very important that we understand that there is hope and there is a light.
In my work of treatment, I always, number one, promote love. I don’t start anything without love. Tina Turner said, “What’s love got to do with it?”
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
Love has everything to do with it. And one of the thing about prison, it abstracts love from us and we have to get that love back. Men, sometimes we don’t know how to love. We’ve had some rough experiences before prison and in prison; and then we come out, we don’t know how to build those attachments. But everything starts out with love because it’s the most powerful force in the universe. Nothing is more powerful than love because I believe God is love. And that’s where we start out with. So we also got to be, when we talk about readiness, do you love yourself?
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Dr. Da’Mond T. Holt:
And how much do you love yourself? What are you willing to do to show that you really love yourself? Because it’s hard to love others without you having your own self-love.
There’s hope. That’s why I call it not just the trauma center, I said the Trauma Center of Hope. That tells people that no matter what has happened to them, you can heal. Rather you have been sexually assaulted, whether you’ve been molested, whether your father walked away from you, rather your mother left you at the fire station and now you went through foster care through foster care. I’m telling you what’s love got to do with it, and that’s why we start out with love.
And then there has to have light. You start out with love, then everybody needs a beacon of light. We got to be able, despite the darkness that is happening to our lives and the nightmares we still have, that we are walking in the light. The light have to shine through the mist of darkness. That is what gives us hope; that no matter what has happened to us, I can heal and I can be the best version of myself. The quicker you become the best version of yourself of healing from trauma, the by-product is you can get your marriage back, you can get your children back, you can get your careers back. You can get all those things back when everything starts with the inner healing of you.
Energy can never be destroyed. It is only transferred. So it is time for us to create a movement of healing and releasing a powerful energy of healing throughout our nation. What the world needs now is love, sweet love.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it. What Dr. Holt just told us, say, “Don’t believe the hype.” It’s not fatal. Your injury is not fatal. It’s irreversible, it’s not. You can be healed if you believe. It’s not a hands-on moment, it’s not a hallelujah moment. This is a real movement. This is a real moment, this is the real news, giving you information about trauma.
Thank you Dr. Holt, thank you Lonnell for joining me. There you have, the real news surrounding the bar. We ask you to continue to support us, because we are actually the real news.
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